Too Far

by Jason Starr

  Usually I was shy about approaching women, but without hesitating I went right over and said, ‘Hey, I’m –’

  ‘Jack Harper,’ she said.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said, ‘how did you –’

  ‘I was at your show last week, and the week before that in Brooklyn.’ She was glowing. ‘I love your music. You’re insanely good.’

  We began dating, After a week we were calling each other soulmates. She came to my shows, always cheering for me at the front of the stage. Her enthusiasm felt over the top, but it was flattering to have my sexy girlfriend cheering me on. Within two months I moved in with her. Six months later, we were married.

  My friends warned me that we were moving too fast, but I wasn’t interested in logic. Maria and I had a great year or so together, then she grew out her hair, lost the nose ring, and got a corporate job. I was happy for her and happy that at least one of us had a stable career, but we grew apart. She didn’t seem as interested in music anymore, especially my music. She stopped coming to my gigs, saying she needed to ‘get up early’ or gave other excuses.

  Meanwhile, my music career had hit a rough patch. My band wasn’t getting as many gigs, and studio work was drying up. Maria and I had talked about wanting a family, and I knew I’d need to find a way to bring in more income.

  I’d had a drinking problem since – well, since I had my first drink in high school. When Maria got pregnant, I promised to cut down, but I didn’t. When Jonah was born, I stayed home with him during the day while Maria worked, and at night I played gigs and got drunk. I never drank when I was around Jonah, but I was often hungover.

  Finally, I decided to do the right thing for my family and got sober. Maria, to her credit, stuck with me throughout this dark period. My music career had continued to dwindle so I got a real estate license to help bring in more income.

  Beating booze helped me to become a better father and a better man, but it didn’t help my marriage. Maria and I were living like roommates – roommates who didn’t get along most of the time. We got into a bad pattern of tag team parenting – I was with Jonah during the day and when Maria came home from work, she took over. We didn’t have a date night and didn’t socialize together. I hung out with friends from AA a couple of nights a week, while Maria entertained clients. We’d never had a lot of ‘couple friends’ – just Maria’s college friend, Steve, and his wife Kathy. But since they’d moved out of the city to Westchester, we didn’t even see them very often.

  Our sex life dwindled. Maria was focused on her career and began to travel more often for work. Whenever I initiated, she said she was too tired. She never initiated herself so I eventually stopped trying. I suggested marriage counseling many times, but she was opposed. She had never been in therapy, despite a difficult childhood, and she seemed threatened by the whole idea. I went into therapy myself for a while, but it takes two people to fix a marriage.

  Getting a divorce began to seem like a logical solution, and it would’ve been the best thing for Jonah. Maria and I weren’t exactly modeling a happy, loving couple. I had a feeling that divorcing Maria would be a nightmare, though. She could be charming, but she also had a vindictive side. Her cousin Michael was a cut-throat divorce attorney, and with the lower tier lawyer I’d have representing me, I’d be in huge trouble, especially if Maria pulled ‘the alcoholic card.’ She could leave me broke and try to get full custody of Jonah. I could counter that I was sober now and that I’d been a major part of Jonah’s life since he was born, but would these arguments hold up in court, especially with Michael representing her?

  With no viable option to escape my marriage until Jonah was in college, we muddled on.

  Rob had asked me if I fantasized. Yeah, I fantasized, but not about sex with another woman.

  I fantasized about getting out of my bad marriage, about breaking free.

  * * *

  After Jonah did his last few math problems, I went into the kitchen where Maria was unpacking our order from Seamless – Chinese takeout. We had a recurring order of chicken with snow peas, assorted mixed vegetables, General Tso’s chicken, and a large wonton soup.

  ‘So,’ I said, ‘how was Houston?’

  After a long pause she said, ‘Productive.’

  ‘Productive sounds good,’ I said. ‘Better than non-productive.’

  She seemed distracted, checking her phone.

  ‘Isn’t that IPO coming out soon?’ I asked.

  ‘IPO?’ She sounded confused.

  ‘For that biotech company,’ I said. ‘That’s why you were in Houston, right?’

  ‘That IPO was two months ago,’ she said. ‘I told you about it, remember?’

  I didn’t remember, but I said, ‘Oh, that’s right.’

  She was tapping out a text or email on her phone. Maybe a minute went by.

  I knew she wouldn’t ask me about my day unless I brought up the subject myself, so I said, ‘Well, my day was interesting. I showed an expensive apartment to Rob McEvoy.’

  ‘Who?’ She was still tapping, looking at her phone.

  ‘Rob McEvoy,’ I said. ‘You remember. My old roommate, we played in a couple of bands together.’

  Maria had never met Rob, but I’d told her stories.

  ‘Oh, that Rob.’ Now she looked at me. ‘Isn’t that the guy you’ve always thought was an asshole?’

  ‘The one and only,’ I said.

  I explained that he was looking for an apartment in Manhattan, leaving out that the apartment would be his fuck pad.

  ‘Well, let’s hope that comes through,’ she said, as she plated the General Tso’s.

  The comment might’ve sounded benign to a casual observer, but I heard, Let’s hope you finally bring in some money because I’m resentful as hell that I’ve been bringing in most of our income lately.

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ I asked.

  ‘It means I’m rooting for you,’ she said.

  ‘Are you?’ I said.

  Jonah was watching us.

  ‘Come on, Jack, let’s not get into this now.’

  Maria was right for not wanting to argue in front of Jonah, but I didn’t like how she was twisting things. She’d made a passive-aggressive comment, and because I’d challenged her, she acted as if I’d said something wrong. She’d done this before. It was a subtle way of stifling me, one of our many unresolvable problems.

  At dinner, the focus was on Jonah. Maria talked to him about school, and his homework, and I talked to him about soccer. I wasn’t very into soccer myself, but since Jonah was into it I’d boned up about Messi and Ronaldo, and I could hold my own in a conversation with an eight-year-old.

  A great thing about takeout – no after-dinner dishes. While Maria had some one-on-one time with Jonah, helping him with his homework, I went to an AA meeting at St. Monica’s Church on 79th Street near First Avenue.

  Whenever I could – usually a couple of times a week – I attended meetings throughout Manhattan. I went to St. Monica’s most often, though, because it was local and I had a lot of friends there. Many of my friends had moved out of the city over the years, others I’d had falling-outs with, and AA had become my main social life. Well, that or meet-ups and ‘sober parties’ at friends’ apartments.

  I often spoke at meetings, but tonight I was in the mood to just listen. Ricardo spoke for a while, and then a couple of new members shared their stories. After the meeting, I caught up with some friends, including Dave, a young, red-haired guy whom I was currently sponsoring. Dave was twenty-six, an ad exec, and he’d been sober for almost a year. After a rough period when I spoke to him maybe ten times a day, he had been doing well. He had a new job, a new girlfriend, and looked happy and healthy.

  When I was about to leave, he took me aside and said, ‘I just want you to know how much you’ve meant to me, Jack. Seriously, I don’t know how I would’v
e gotten through any of this without you.’

  ‘Hey, it’s why we’re here,’ I said.

  He gave me an energetic hug.

  When I returned to my apartment, at around ten, Jonah was already in bed, asleep.

  Maria had gone into the bathroom and was washing up, getting ready for bed. I sat on the couch with my laptop and checked my work email, and my schedule for tomorrow. Then my attention drifted and I checked out some Facebook statuses. Rob had posted a picture of his daughter dressed as the cat in her school play of Peter and the Wolf, and had written: So proud of my baby girl.

  I ‘liked’ his status – his daughter really was adorable.

  While I was online, Maria went into our bedroom and shut the flimsy door. She usually got into bed by ten – an hour before I did – to read, and was usually asleep by eleven. She got up early, at six-thirty, to go to the gym before work.

  I watched TV for a while the way I always did at night, with a headset so I wouldn’t disturb Maria and Jonah. I flipped around – the local news, part of an Arrested Development I’d seen a few times. I was zoning out a lot – worrying about work, hoping the sale with Rob came through. He hadn’t reached out to me with an offer, but then again he was distracted tonight with his date. I imagined them in Rob’s hotel room, having wild, screaming sex.

  At eleven, I turned off the TV, turned out the lights in the living room and kitchen, and joined Maria in bed. Reading on her Kindle, she didn’t seem to notice me. A few minutes later, she put the Kindle on the night table, turned out the reading light, and shifted onto her side, facing away from me.

  When I heard her light snoring I turned in the opposite direction and fell asleep too.

  4

  After morning drop-off at Jonah’s school, I rushed uptown to 95th between Park and Lex for a showing. It was a new-on-the-market, gut-renovated two-bedroom co-op on the third floor of a nice brownstone building on a tree-lined street, a block away from The Lower Lab, a desirable Upper East Side elementary school. The owners of the apartment were getting divorced and were eager to sell. There was so much tension between the sellers that their attorneys were showing the apartment to agents and the apartment was undervalued by about fifty thousand dollars. I knew the owners would agree to the first decent offer from the first preapproved buyer, and I had the perfect prospect – Alex Korin, whose wife had just given birth to their second child. Alex and his wife had gone out with me to look at apartments several times, and they were preapproved for a mortgage. The problem was four brokers were already viewing the apartment when I arrived and they also probably had clients interested in it.

  I reached Alex on his cell and said, ‘You have to get your ass uptown right now. I’ve got the perfect apartment for you, man.’

  Alex was in his thirties, owned a couple of bars in the city. I could be casual with him.

  ‘I just got to work and I have meetings all morning,’ he said.

  ‘I’m telling you,’ I said, ‘this is exactly what you’re looking for and it won’t last.’

  All real estate agents say that the apartments they’re desperate to sell ‘won’t last,’ even if they’d been stagnating on the market for months. Although this time I actually meant it, as far as he was concerned, I was full of shit.

  ‘I might be able to get there after three, but I’ll have to reach out and let you know.’

  ‘It’ll be gone by then, I’m telling you. Can your wife come see it?’

  ‘No, she’s taking my daughter to the doctor this morning. Looks like strep.’

  I tried to persuade him to figure out a way to see it, but he said it was impossible for this morning. I ended the call, dejected. I overheard Sally Engle, a seasoned, very well-known agent for a major realtor, telling the owners’ attorneys that she had several interested buyers on their way over. The other agents also had buyers rushing over, and I knew the apartment would probably be sold within an hour.

  It was raining. I didn’t have an umbrella, but I walked to my office anyway, not really caring or even noticing that I was getting soaked.

  Wolf Realty was in a modest storefront on a side street – 74th near Third. Most clients found out about us via word of mouth or online listings. There were three agents in the office, including me, and each of us had a desk adjacent to the left wall, mine in the middle. Our boss, Andrew Wolf, had his own space in a separate room in the back.

  No kid says to his parents, ‘I want to be a real estate agent when I grow up.’ Real estate could be lucrative if you get lucky, but it was usually a career that people fell into when another career didn’t work out. Take my coworkers, for example. Claire was an empty-nester who’d only gotten her real estate license three years ago because she had no recent work experience and couldn’t find a job doing anything else. Brian had worked as a film editor, shoe salesman, stage hand, waiter, editorial assistant, and dogwalker, and I doubted real estate would be his last career move. Andrew Wolf himself had only gotten into the real estate business after a few restaurants he’d owned had gone belly-up.

  When I arrived, Claire and Brian were talking on their phones, though they seemed to be on social calls. There was a lot of down time at our job. The New York City real estate market was hot, but we were competing against online listings, and even Airbnb. We all feared that real estate agents, like travel agents, would become obsolete. On days like this, my career, my future, and the future in general, seemed incredibly bleak.

  As I waited for my PC to boot up, my gaze drifted toward the sign I’d hung above my desk: GOD IS MY COPILOT. When I started going to AA, my first sponsor had suggested that I keep inspirational reminders around me. Sometimes the sign seemed corny, even a little kooky, but I looked at it every morning anyway.

  I began my usual routine, browsing new listings that had come in – nothing very interesting – and then got a text from Maria: Steve and Kathy invited us over next Sat

  Steve was an old friend/ex-boyfriend of Maria’s from college, one of the friends she occasionally went hiking with. Steve and Kathy had two sons – one Jonah’s age.

  I texted Maria: I might have an open house that day, but I’ll try to move it

  She responded: Okay, I’ll accept

  I hadn’t told her that I could definitely go, only that I’d try, but I didn’t feel like correcting her.

  Then I got a text from Rob McEvoy: Brothaman!! On way to airport. Holy fuck, last night was incredible bro. That woman was insane. I can barely walk today!!

  I was pissed that he was leaving the city already – I’d thought he’d be in town for another day or two. And where the hell was his offer?

  I wrote: Wow, already? Thought you’d be in town longer

  Then I got: Yeah some shit blew up at LA office. Be back in town soon and we’ll jam!!!

  And another: And I’m still jonesing for that apartment. B in touch soon!

  ‘Fuck me,’ I said.

  I felt like a total idiot for believing that Rob, notoriously unreliable Rob, would come through for me.

  I read the text again. If he was really ‘jonesing’ for it, why couldn’t he make an offer now? It wasn’t like he needed to go back to L.A. and talk it over with his wife: Hey, honey, mind if I buy a fuck pad in Manhattan? Was it possible he’d been bullshitting about his income and that he actually couldn’t afford the apartment? I didn’t get why he would bust my chops to this extent; then again isn’t that the way everybody rolled in L.A.?

  I texted: Sounds great, man! Safe flight!

  I figured there was no use probing for the truth. He was either full of shit or he wasn’t, and there was nothing I could do to change that.

  ‘How was it?’

  Claire’s voice startled me. She was standing next to my desk.

  ‘Wow, somebody’s edgy today,’ she said.

  ‘I didn’t have my coffee yet,’ I said.

 
‘Isn’t coffee supposed to make you edgy?’

  ‘Good point,’ I said. ‘Then I guess it’s just a side effect of losing a sale first thing in the morning.’

  I told Claire what had happened at the showing.

  Then she said, ‘Yeah, I thought I had a hot one yesterday. She was a new divorcee, empty-nester from Westchester, looking to move back to the city. You know that oversized one-bedroom on 78th and Second?’

  ‘The one with the cherry cabinetry,’ I said.

  ‘Right,’ Claire said. ‘She loved it and she had immaculate credit and was preapproved and everything. She said she’d call me later in the day to make an offer. I didn’t hear from her, so I called her this morning and –’

  ‘She offered on another apartment,’ I said.

  ‘How did you know?’

  ‘It’s like asking me how do I know if I’m having the same recurring nightmare?’

  Brian came over and said, ‘Oh, pa-leeze. What’re you two complaining about now?’

  ‘Notice how I’m not complaining to you,’ Claire said to him.

  ‘Got an accepted bid yesterday,’ Brian said, ‘my second this week, third in two weeks, and I closed on that 69th Street co-op on Monday. But yesterday’s was the biggie. I listed it last week, got the asking price, eight sixty-two. I don’t think they’ll have any problem passing the board either – a lawyer and a doctor.’

  Just what a struggling real estate agent wanted to hear about – somebody else’s sale.

  ‘Congratulations,’ I said, trying to muster up some enthusiasm.

  Later, Brian went to lunch and Claire left to meet a client. I should’ve made a few calls to potential buyers, but I wasn’t in the mood. I was feeling generally depressed about my life. Aside from Jonah, nothing had gone the way I wanted it to go. Although I knew I was just in a rut now, and I’d get out of it eventually, knowing this didn’t make me feel any better.

  I was looking through a file of my recent contacts when Andrew Wolf exited his office.

  ‘How was that open house?’ he asked.