I go in the living room and sit with my drink resting on the edge of the chair armrest and my fingers only loosely around the glass. I look at the remote control for the TV on the coffee table in front of me and decide to leave it there. Now I just want to sit.
I swirl my glass, trying to get the ice cubes to move in an orbit. I’m making an effort to think through issues but I can’t find the starting point for any one of them.
I finish the drink and wipe the sweat from the bottom of the glass onto my suit pants. I drank fast enough that there wasn’t much. Once I’ve had two or three, I can slow down my drinking, so I go back to the kitchen to fix another before changing out of my suit. I make it with more gin and less tonic this time, since the gin is already getting harder to taste.
I walk past Julia’s office. Sketches of rooms in someone’s suburban home are lying out with catalog photographs of furniture and bed linens. A crib and rocker for a baby room. I keep walking to our bedroom. My suit is starting to feel like it’s made of shrinking burlap and my feet are hot in my shoes.
I hang the suit, lining up the pant creases, and fill the shoes with the shoe trees. As a kid I used to watch my father do this. I walk to the dresser to get a T-shirt, and on top of the dresser is a book with the kind of leather cover that can bend like a paperback. I recognize it as Julia’s diary and see there is a pen in the pages poking out for my attention. I flip the diary open to where the pen is and look up and down the pages without reading the words. I understand the hand is Julia’s. It feels like a stranger’s. I realize I rarely see her handwriting at all.
Before I can look away, my eyes have begun to decode words and take in sentences. I do it without thinking. Without allowing myself to think, so I can avoid the guilt that might otherwise stop me. The page is opened to an entry on December 19, 2005, and it looks like there are several more since then. She must have been rereading old entries.
I am fat. FAT! Emergency fat. So fat am I that I am mortified at the thought of Oliver seeing my giant . . .
Oliver. My eyes passing over the name knock me right off the page. I’m scrambling and unscrambling the letters to make sure that I’ve read it right. O-L-I-V-E-R. It’s actually written there, in her diary. I feel like I’ve been punched in the stomach. Everything about me has been threatened and is under attack. My hands are shaking and my body is weak as though I’ve had a lethal dose of caffeine. I peer back down at the diary and I find the word as though it was written in a different color ink.
. . . Oliver seeing my giant and ever-expanding ass making its way to the dinner table.
I stop again. Everything about this moment feels perverted. Maybe discovering infidelity by sneaking a look in another’s diary with drink in hand and in your own bedroom is the best way to find out.
This entry is more than a month old. My mind flashes to a confrontation with Julia coming home from the gym and me waving the diary like the prosecutor with exhibit A. That would spell the end and I know I’m no good at confrontation. Not just with Julia. I hate any kind. Some people thrive on combat, but I’m averse. I’ve been able to manage confrontation at work but never in my personal life. The stakes are too high and the damage is permanent.
I feel guilty having read any of the diary now. I’ve never read it before. Never thought about it, even when seeing the familiar binding on her nightstand or sticking out of her travel luggage. Sometimes she’d read parts to me. Unpack an old diary to read to me about her self-confessions and excitement when she got home from our first dates years ago. These are my experiences with the diary and I don’t want to contaminate them.
I lower the book. There is a strong argument that it is no violation to read the diary of a woman who has betrayed me. Or may have betrayed me. A woman who at a minimum cares enough about how fat her ass looks in front of another man to come home and write about it.
I need to read more, no matter how masochistic the impulse. My heart races with nerves and I look in the direction of the front door, which I could see only if I could look through walls. I’d make a terrible spy.
I skim pages braced for a sex scene with Oliver that she writes about wistfully, saying that but for her domestic prison and abusive husband, she could be with her true love. I skim over an encounter with a challenging client of hers and a conversation with her father that was so meaningless she got upset. Then I see
Nick hurt me last night. So deeply I may not recover. It revealed something about his view of me. Maybe it is something I need to consider, but his disgust with me was so thorough that I don’t know if we have anything left.
I check the date and it’s about the time of the Da Silvano dinner. Damn, I’m an asshole. I keep skimming but with less steam. There are only a few pages left anyway and then I see it.
Oliver called again. We had a long conversation and I have to admit I appreciate the attention. Where can I be honest if not here. Not sure how to handle this one.
I’m at the end of her pages and I put the diary down. There isn’t a sex scene but there’s confirmation of contact. Oliver is trying to have sex with her and she hasn’t been telling me about that. My instincts are telling me something is very bad.
I look around the bedroom and make an uncomfortable pivot of my feet, turning in a complete circle like I’m lost in the woods. I need to get out. I need to get out before she gets home. I’m in no shape to talk, no shape to be seen.
I’m in a sudden desperate rush. I need to clear the apartment, hallway, elevator, lobby, and city block before she gets near. I have pants, a sweatshirt, loafers, and a coat pulled on just enough to stay with me, and I get my keys from the dish in the foyer on the third frustrated swipe and I’m out the door. Time enough to straighten myself in the elevator.
I round out of the elevator and into the lobby with arms pumping as fast as can still be considered a walk and not a jog. Charlie sees me coming, and I can see he looks worried for me. My face is telegraphing trauma and in my mind Charlie perceives the cause and knows all. I’d appreciate talking to Charlie now but it’s more important to put distance between me and this building, as though I can hear the bursting, burping alarm sound that signals a nuclear reactor breach. I tighten my body language and stare to make sure there is no mistaking that I will leave the building without stopping to talk.
“Take care of yourself, Nick.”
“Thanks, Charlie.”
The gym is right, so I turn left and I’m away. I have no destination but keep a course going north and pull out my phone.
“Matt, it’s Nick. You have time to get together?”
“Sure, for a couple hours. I need to be at the theater by five thirty to get ready for the show.”
“That won’t work. I need someone who can get drunk.”
“Everything okay?”
“No. Nothing is.” It’s taking too much energy to collect my thoughts and talk on the phone. “I have to go. I’ll call you later.” I realize I’m walking fast and moving between people on the sidewalk.
I’m about to lose this woman. She’s on her way out of my life. We’re no longer two people in love but two people held together by a contract without the magic that makes you see the other person in a generous light. That spell is broken.
I love Julia and I want to save my marriage. I hear Sue’s words again and I know the common thread of the problems isn’t with my job and it isn’t with Julia. It’s me. I need to make a change. I ask myself what I’m prepared to do, and this time I demand an answer.
I suddenly stop in the middle of the sidewalk like Forrest Gump stopping his cross-country run. People behind me have to alter course to the side or they’d run up my back. My swirl of emotions is coming to rest at pissed off. I’m wired and I need a release. My anger is directed mainly at Oliver and I want to see him. He’s not the heart of the problem but he’s the heart of the symptom and that seems like a great start. I don’t know if it’s sadistic or masochistic, but I want to be in the same room with him, come what may.<
br />
It’s still office hours, so I take out my cell phone to call him at Bear. If he answers, I’m going to tell him I’m on my way to see him, then hang up before he can say anything. I want to get to him face-to-face and tell him to stay away from us. I won’t reveal anything about what I know and don’t know, I’ll just scare him. If I scare him enough, I might learn something.
The main reception puts me through. “Mr. Bennett’s office.”
“Hi, it’s Nick Farmer from fixed income. I need to speak with Oliver.”
“He’s not in the office at the moment, Mr. Farmer.”
“Back later or is he traveling?”
“I don’t know, sir. He won’t be in today.”
“Vacation.”
“Yes, sir. Yesterday he mentioned that he won’t be available today, but I don’t think he’s traveling. May I try to get a message to him?”
“No, thanks.” I hang up. What the hell is he doing?
I dial 411 for Oliver’s home number. And address. Even better if I just drop in.
I’m already about ten blocks north of my place and near Bar Six, so I stop in for a few drinks to get myself ready and to pass an hour. I want to get closer to early evening so there’s a better chance he’s home. Bar Six is narrow and deep and looks like an old-world Italian trattoria only a little fancier. On the left by the entrance is a small bar with a copper top and it’s wide open. I order a shot of tequila and a Stella. The bartender seems to recognize that I’m on serious business and am taking my drinking seriously.
I want to get my plan together but I realize I don’t have a plan, I have only a motivation. I don’t have enough information for a plan. I don’t know if anything has happened, but I know he wants something to happen and I want to get rid of him.
I have two more beers and get ready to leave. Oliver lives all the way on the Upper East Side, so for good measure I have one more tequila shot while I put on my coat and leave. My stomach feels full of tequila and nervous acid. As I’m waving for a taxi on Sixth Avenue, I think about what I’m about to do and that I hardly know myself right now. This is the lowest and sickest place I’ve ever been. Surely this must be rock bottom, and I tell myself that it is.
Oliver lives across from the park on Fifth Avenue in a nice building, where the taxi drops me off. I hadn’t contemplated getting past the doorman, and I decide quick and obnoxious is the best way.
I walk in fast and right by him like a resident. He was expecting me to stop and inquire after someone, so I’m a few steps past him before I hear, “Sir?”
I don’t say anything because I’m searching around for the stairs as I get deeper in the lobby. It would be too awkward to wait for an elevator.
“Sir, who are you here to see? I’ll need to call ahead.”
“Oliver Bennett.” I offer this over my shoulder and I see the stairs.
“Sir, if you’ll wait here, I need to call ahead.”
I’m at the base of the stairs. I turn around and point right at the doorman. I’m not angry with him at all, but I’m angry as hell. “Five A. You call him!” This has the effect of completely stunning him, and I’m up the first flight of stairs and maybe more before he recovers.
I take the stairs two at a time and it feels good to release some energy and recalibrate myself. By the fourth floor I’m getting spent, so I slow down to catch my breath and get ready for Oliver.
I’m standing in front of 5A and about to ring the doorbell but stop myself. I think better to knock and knock loudly than to ring the doorbell. It’s a small detail but will make a nice difference. I want to do this just right.
I knock as loud as I can without hurting the door or myself. I finish a second assault and hear the door latch turn. The door opens only a quarter of the way and Sybil fills up the available space.
“Nick?”
Damn. I hadn’t thought about this. Kids could be here too. I’ll just tell her I need to speak with Oliver privately and we’ll find some room. “Hi, Sybil.”
She firms up her position and her arm tenses behind the door, giving the sense that she would like to close it. She’s backlit by a huge chandelier and it makes her skin look cold and out of focus. There’s an opalescent sheen to her like a Renoir bather. “What can I do for you?”
“I’d like to speak with Oliver for a minute.”
“He’s not here.”
Son of a bitch. She reflexively leans back a bit to get out of the way of the door she’d like to slam. She seems to be operating on instinct and her instinct is screaming that I’m not a friend to her.
The phone starts to ring and she looks behind her, torn. I guess it’s the doorman sounding the alarm. Her manners prevail over instincts. “One moment, Nick. Come in.”
I step into a small foyer that opens to a huge living room lit by the chandelier. There’s a hallway to the left that looks like it leads to bedrooms and one to the right leading to the kitchen. I don’t see any kids.
She picks up a phone from a writing table in the living room. It’s one of those new phones meant to look old, made of brass and porcelain with a fancy cradle so the phone hangs vertically. “Hello . . . Yes, he’s here . . . Yes, fine . . . Thank you, Sam.” She cradles the phone.
“Is Oliver out of town?”
“He is.” I’m certain she knows exactly as much as I know, which is an incomplete and unhealthy amount, but she’s chosen defiance over sharing sympathies. She’s lumped me into the enemy camp and I have the urge to break her veneer and see her whimper through a confession.
“Business or pleasure?” I try to make it sound as customary as exchanging a greeting and that I don’t care about an answer.
“He’s golfing. He flew to Palm Beach early this morning to play. He might be back tonight. Probably first thing tomorrow.”
“Avid golfer.”
“At least once a week, year round. In the winter that means more travel.” She catches that this could sound like a complaint, so she brightens her face and rambles on. “He’s at the Everglades Club today, which is a great old course. One of Oliver’s dear friends is a private client money manager in Palm Beach who’s struggled with alcoholism. He moved to Palm Beach after rehabilitation for a quieter life, and Oliver visits him often to support him and help him along.”
This all sounds hollow. She’s trying to make his golfing seem altruistic, but it sounds false and makes me think of potpourri spray over crap. The mix is worse than just the crap. “I just can’t get into golf. It seems like a holdover from nineteen fifties misogyny. Who wants to spend a whole day on a golf course except a person who would rather not be at home?”
Now it’s her turn to brush away a comment. “With Oliver it’s really about helping a friend. They bond over golf and Oliver’s helped him to be two years sober, which he credits almost entirely to Oliver.” I get the sense she badly wants to believe this. She seems like a person acting not in the pursuit of life but in the avoidance of death, a child under a bed hiding from an intruder.
“Rehab is for quitters. I think Keith Richards said that. Genius.” Even I don’t know what I’m talking about now. I’m still pissed but I’ve lost sight of what I can accomplish here. It might be good if Sybil passes on to Oliver that I was here and that I know, but I don’t think she’s able to confront him and she’ll say only that I stopped by to say hi.
She smiles at my comment, willing to pretend that she thinks I was trying to be funny. Is it possible that Oliver is in Florida helping a friend in need and being a good guy? No way. He’s a fraud. He’s a movie set of a western town.
“The Everglades Club is sort of stuck-up, isn’t it?”
“Oh, well, we always have a nice time there. Oliver has made some very nice new friends.”
I know she knows. We each know everything the other knows and I’m sick of this game. “Sometimes people can have more fun with new friends than with old friends. Don’t you think?”
At this point it would be reasonable for her to tell me I�
�m rude and ask me to leave, but she acts dumb. I’m sure she’d like to kick me out, but she’s not comfortable doing it. I feel a little like a bully, but I’m just trying to shake some sense into her.
“I don’t know. I love new friends and old friends.”
“What about Oliver?”
“What about him?” This isn’t a challenge. It’s asked timidly, hoping I won’t answer in a cruel way.
“Has he found new friends to love?”
“Nick, I don’t know what you’re insinuating, but you sound awful.”
“You don’t know what I’m insinuating. Not at all?”
“I do not.”
I pause and shake my head, piling on as much judgment as I can. “You two have the perfect codependent dysfunction. You pretend to like the same things and dislike the same things and you accept each other’s lies and wear it around thinking nobody’s going to notice. Even worse, you recycle his crap and expect to be congratulated for it. But you know it’s lies, don’t you? He hands it to you and you know it and you don’t care. It’s not real.”
She’s at a loss for words. Then she finds one. “Asshole.”
“Asshole? Oliver tries on new personalities like a change of clothes. I’m the one helping you and I’m the asshole?”
“You like being ironic?”
“I can’t stand it.”
“I’d like you to leave.”
“Of course.” The door is still cracked and I’m through it. I wonder if she’ll tell Oliver about our little chat. Probably not. Probably I just made her more alone and unhappy.
PART IV
In theory, there’s no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is.
—YOGI BERRA
20 | JUST A THOUGHT
Ghosts of Manhattan Page 17