He follows Gina to a spot by the corn dog stand and they sit beside a giant fake palm thing. Roger’s curious to know if there’s fake dirt in the pot. He tries to peer in and see.
Gina opens her notebook on the table and digs in her bag for a pen. She seems stressed. “My son Toby is a very bright boy, but he has trouble focusing and he really needs help with his math. We’ve found that a tutor has helped in the past.” She tosses her hair over her shoulder and studies the notebook. If Roger were to shoot her portrait he’d ask her to hang upside down from the jungle gym bars at the playground by his house. Her hair would fall straight down, maybe grazing the tan sand below, and more of her belly would show. She’d probably laugh, and a vein in her forehead would come to the surface.
“Okay.” He hoped they’d get coffee so he could at least have a scone or something to soak up the acid in his stomach.
“So.” Gina looks at her notes. “You’ve never tutored before?” She sounds confused, verging on suspicious.
“No, but it’s something I want to start doing.” Why the hell is he saying this? Why isn’t he home working on his portfolio and grad school application essay? He did student-teach elementary school art in college, and considered being a teacher. He liked the kids, but you had to take so many classes to get certified and it seemed like the pay would always be junk. There were easier ways to make money while he built his portfolio.
“Oh, okay.” Gina nods. “I work at a fitness club. Three afternoons a week I’d like somebody to tutor Toby. You’d meet him at the Barnes and Noble café, help him get a snack, and work with him for about an hour and a half. Then I’ll pick him up. Would that be okay?” She raises her voice over the mall’s din. It’s weird: The place is really noisy, with people talking, lame pseudo-jazz Muzak playing, spatulas clanging on grills, ATM machines beeping, but all the noises kind of cancel each other out, making a hum in your brain. Roger could probably sleep here.
“What’s he working on in math class now?” Roger asks. Who knows, maybe he could start a tutoring business. Clean houses in the mornings and tutor kids in the afternoons. That would break up the monotony of scrubbing toilets and mopping floors. His ex-girlfriend Elissa said he doesn’t strive for things to happen, he waits for things to happen. So what? But now he’s going to get his shit together. Start tutoring, continue cleaning, finish his portfolio, and finally apply to graduate school. Suddenly he realizes why he hasn’t done this yet: What if he doesn’t get in? Then what? He’ll choose a few crappy programs, that’s all.
“. . . Fractions and long division,” Gina is saying. “It’s starting to get hard. All that pre-algebra stuff.” She waves a hand in the air. “I was a terrible math student. It gave me ulcers.”
“Don’t worry,” Roger tells her. “Algebra’s a pain, but it’s not so bad if you break it down.” He feels the need to reassure Gina, who seems totally worried.
“Do you have references?” Gina asks. “I’d like to call three people.”
“Okay.” This is like a real job application! He can give her the number of his adviser from school and a couple of his clients. Maybe Mrs. Mackey.
“Great.” Gina smiles for the first time.
She’s not so bad, this lady. She seems sweet. Hopefully the kid isn’t a nightmare. He’s lucky to have a hot mom.
“I think my son would like to have a young, hip tutor.”
People are always telling Roger he’s hip. He’s not sure why. He doesn’t feel hip.
“When would you be able to start? If the references check out?”
“Soon, I guess.”
Roger looks around. With its marble floors, brass railings, and towering walls, the inside of the mall feels like a temple. The Church of Capitalism. Maybe before grad school he should travel to Tibet or Bali. Hike in the Himalayas. Find himself. Except he doesn’t want to find himself. He wants to find someone else. He did: Mrs. Mackey. But she’s married, and now she’s going to have a baby.
The cloying smell of cookies baking overpowers him. It feels like there’s eggy dough stuck in the back of his throat. He gazes out at the glass case of cookies. The disks are way too big and underdone looking, like all the patrons at this mall. He gags and nearly dry-heaves, as though he’s hung over. Out of the corners of his eyes he sees fuzzy white stars. Shit, is he going to pass out? He puts his head down for a minute. Maybe he’s diabetic. He doesn’t even have health insurance! What kind of loser doesn’t have health insurance? What the hell is he doing with his life?
“Are you okay?” Gina stands and bends toward Roger. Some of her hair falls onto his shirt.
“Yeah. I think I just need to eat.”
“Let me get you something.” The maternal tone of Gina’s voice soothes him. “I’ll be right back.”
Roger keeps his head lowered, flinching at the screech of her chair moving across the floor. He focuses on the sound of her feet—flip-flop, flip-flop—glad to be alone for a minute.
Ted hasn’t been to the mall since it’s been refurbished. It used to be seedy—with B-grade stores and too-dark parking lots and little to offer in the way of restaurants. Now there’s a whole new wing with a giant food court and movie marquee.
Toby said to meet Stan, this tutor fellow, near the ticket counter. Ted takes a seat on a long Naugahyde booth that runs behind a row of tables. From here he can keep a lookout. It’s only a little after two, but already people are lining up for the movies, buying the less expensive matinee tickets. He and Elinor should escape to a matinee for an afternoon. Or maybe for a couple of months, until after the holidays. This morning he dreamed that Elinor was waking him up with good news. “There’s a baby for us,” she was saying as she shook him. “Get dressed! We can go pick her up now. But we have to get there first or somebody else might get her!” In the dream, Ted felt a rush of excitement. He was glad. He had no doubt or fear. “Oh, great!” he said, waking himself up from the dream.
“What’s great?” Elinor asked. She was already awake, with the covers pulled up to her chin, a cup of tea in one hand and a novel balanced on her chest. He didn’t have the heart to tell her about the dream.
Ted watches people funnel through the food court, many of them young mothers pushing strollers loaded with diaper and shopping bags. Now he sees why Elinor jokes about stealing a baby from the mall. Most of the young women are heavy, with tattoos, and rolls of flesh that ooze over their low-waisted pants. He should have brought something to read. But then he couldn’t keep an eye out for Stan. Toby said he didn’t know what Stan looked like, but the guy would be by himself, somewhere around the theaters.
Maybe Ted should look on the other side of the ticket booth. Once, he and Elinor met after work at a restaurant downtown with outdoor seating. There was a round bar with a big tropical fish tank in the center and it turned out that he was sitting at a table on one side of the bar while El sat on the other side, both of them growing irritated. Finally, Elinor strolled around and saw Ted. They laughed when they found each other. Back then, they thought a snafu in the day was funny and random, rather than another confirmation that everything in their lives was going wrong.
Now Ted circles to the other side of the ticket booth, systematically scanning the seating area table by table for anyone who’s alone. All he sees is an elderly woman in a white raincoat working a crossword. He looks out to the horseshoe row of restaurants beyond. His heart leaps when he sees Gina paying for a tray of food at a Chinese joint. He’s surprised by how quickly he knows it’s her—her fan of golden-brown hair across her back, her perfectly round ass, her long, straight boy’s legs. He ducks behind a planter. She glides between the tables, carrying the tray of food, which also has a carton of milk. Maybe it’s lunch for Toby. But why would they be here the same time as Stan? She slides the tray onto a table and pushes it in front of a kid who’s considerably older than Toby. The guy bows with appreciation, lifts a fork, and digs in. Gina sits, smiling. It makes her happy to feed people. Ted’s always been charmed by t
hat. Gina finds pleasure in cooking, pleasure in sex, pleasure in loving her child, pleasure in helping people. This is what Ted loves about her. Loves? Yes, he still loves Gina. And right now he is hiding behind a potted palm at the mall, officially stalking her. After breaking her heart, no less. Or maybe he didn’t, really. Maybe she’s doing fine. She seems to be on a date right now. The guy eating the Chinese food turns to look at something and Ted gets a better view of his face. He certainly isn’t Barry, the concert promoter. Yet Ted recognizes him from somewhere. The strawberry-blond hair and the goatee. It’s the kid who cleans their house! What the hell? What are these two doing together? Where’s Toby? And where’s Stan? And why the hell is Gina buying the housecleaner kid lunch?
Whatever’s going on, certainly Toby wouldn’t have told his mom that Ted is going to meet Toby’s new tutor. She wouldn’t have allowed him to finagle that. Ted steps away from the leafy palm. From behind him, he hears an odd clamber of squish-slap, squish-slap as someone approaches. He turns to see a guy on crutches hobbling across the food court. The fellow takes long strides and big hops, his shaggy black hair bouncing above his head, his broken foot or leg dragging behind like an unwilling companion. His face is dark with anger and determination. As he passes Ted, his open flannel shirt flaps at his sides. While the mall has been refurbished, it seems that no amount of fancy marble can get rid of the shopping-center subculture of shady characters. Ted is surprised to see that this guy is making a straight line for Gina’s table. Gina talks and writes in a notebook as she watches the cleaner kid eat. But as soon as she sees the character on crutches approaching, her jaw drops. She stands and pushes back her chair, balling up a napkin or something in her fist. The cleaner kid—his name is Roger, Ted remembers now—whirls around to look. He stops chewing.
Ted can’t hear what Gina says to the guy on crutches. But she looks stern, shaking her head with disapproval. Crutches Guy laughs. No one else is amused. Roger’s eyebrows shoot up with concern. The intruder swats Roger’s leg with one crutch. Roger raises his hands in the air above his food tray as if to say Whoa.
It seems as though the guy has been drinking. Shane. This must be Shane, Gina’s rock-star boyfriend. Of course, he’s not a rock star, but from the moment Gina mentioned him Ted romanticized the fact that he played in a band for a living. Now this Shane just looks like a scary mall rat.
Roger stands, unsteady on his feet. He wipes his mouth with a napkin, tosses it on his tray, and nods at Gina, as if to say good-bye. Meanwhile Shane leans on his good leg and one crutch and swings the other crutch in the air, the arc of it crashing into Roger’s chest.
“Jesus, dude!” Ted hears Roger yell. Shane hisses something. Ted doesn’t catch the words, but he hears petulance. People at nearby tables freeze. Their expressions say: Altercation. Wait and see.
“That’s enough!” Ted hears himself shout over the food court’s monotonous din. Then he is charging through the rows of tables, bumping chairs and knocking drinks, propelled by an anger that seems larger than he is.
Roger spins around. “Dr. Mackey!” He looks hopeful.
“Ted?” Gina backs away from the table. She clutches her stomach and Ted knows that her stomach pains are setting in.
“It’s okay,” he tells her. He looks around the food court. Jesus, usually these places are crawling with cops. Where are they now? He looks at Shane squarely.
Gina shakes her head at Ted. A subtle warning: No.
“So you’re the doc-tor,” Shane says in a haughty, mocking tone. He is good looking in a rock-star sort of way. Startling blue eyes and a youthful face framed by shaggy black hair that shines in the light. Yet he reeks of whiskey and cigarettes.
“I’m a doctor. And you, my friend, are way out of line here. You need to leave these folks alone or we’ll get the police over here in about ten seconds.”
“My friend?” Shane laughs. “We don’t even know each other. What do we have in common? Except that you fucked my girlfriend?”
“Oh, nice, Shane.” Gina looks disgusted.
“I gotta go,” Roger says.
“Okay, but . . .” Gina sounds disappointed. It was probably only their first date. Roger looks too young for her, anyway.
“Wait a second,” Ted says to Roger. “We need to get the police before you leave and get this on the record.”
“Nah, no problem, man.” Roger looks at Ted, then Shane. “Just a misunderstanding.” He holds up his hands and shuffles backward, as though afraid to turn his back on the group.
Shane takes a bounding hop toward Roger, swinging his crutch at him. When he misses, he whirls around and flails the crutch at Gina. She steps aside and it clatters to the floor. Ted lunges between them.
“Don’t you touch her.” His statement is low and guttural and comes from somewhere deep within him. He pivots to face Shane, his arms outstretched, blocking Gina.
“You’re married and you fucked my girlfriend, you asshole. Now move.”
Ted does not move. Shane jerks his arm toward him, as if to throw a punch. His hand is hidden by a curtain of flannel shirt. A burning slice of pain sears Ted’s abdomen. It is small in diameter at first—a bee sting. Then the burning blossoms, as though he’s been splashed with boiling water. Something is warm and sticky against his shirt. He presses a hand above his hip.
“Knife,” he hears Roger say.
Tiles from the marble floor swim up toward Ted’s hands, which are suddenly groping the air before him. As Shane moves closer, the black pupils of his marble-blue eyes dilate. Behind him the blurry image of Gina lifts a metal chair and brings it crashing down on Shane. Like in a cartoon! How did she lift it over her head? Despite her litheness, she is so strong. Ted tries to take a step. A giant poster of a woman in the window at Victoria’s Secret smiles down at him—red lips shimmering. Then Ted is sinking. How can he be sinking and floating at the same time? The sensation seems to defy the laws of physics and gravity. Then it’s too dark to think about any of this.
A patch of bright sky overhead burns Ted’s eyes as they load him into a hearse. He gurgles the word “shoes,” because he feels a distinct lack of them on his feet. A person in white—an angel of some sort in a crisp uniform—speaks to him soothingly. Ted feels his lips purse, grasping for the letter W. What? But he knows what. He has bled to death, repeated stab wounds gutting him like a fish, but somehow failing to extract the guilty parts.
Now he’s dead and they’re going to bury him in a cemetery. Where’s Elinor? She knows he wishes to be cremated! He wants his ashes sprinkled at the top of Mount Katahdin in Maine, where he used to hike with his father every Labor Day. They’re to be sprinkled over the Knife’s-Edge Trail. Ha. And Elinor says he’s slow to get irony.
Ted sees a long cord running from his arm into the air above, like the string on a balloon. A face floats over him. “You’re going to be all right,” a voice whispers. Gina. He imagines his hand moving up to touch her hair but he can’t lift his arm, which has been hammered into this bed or whatever it is he’s lying on. Gina kisses his forehead. Warm, moist breath against his skin. Hair tickling his arm. Ted broke Gina’s heart. He betrayed his wife and broke this beautiful woman’s heart. Shane was right to stab him to death. But Shane shouldn’t have killed Gina, too. Now here they are—two dead lovers. Like Romeo and Juliet in the crypt. Only in that play there’s no afterlife. Ted has never believed in such a thing as an afterlife but apparently there is one, because here he is. He shouldn’t have been so skeptical. Someone tells Gina she has to leave. She has to get out. She can’t stay in the afterlife with Ted. Please, ma’am. Thank you. A siren pierces the air. Of course: Ted is in an ambulance.
“Don’t . . .” He pushes the word out, hoping it reaches Gina. Don’t leave me, he wants to say. I love you. I’m sorry. Don’t leave me. Where’s Elinor? Someone tell her I love her, too. And I’m sorry, too. Don’t . . .
Ted feels the lurch and speed of the ambulance. But it cannot outrun the pain, which races alongside,
catching up and overtaking him. He looks up at the swinging IV cord and searches the young face of a paramedic. Where is the morphine? For some reason he can’t have morphine? Maybe because he’s hurt so many others. Now it’s his turn.
20
By the time Elinor gets to the hospital, Ted has been taken from the emergency room upstairs for an MRI. She’d been at the office when Roger called—breathless and flustered and talking too fast, The fear in his voice made Elinor’s heart stop. Gina, then this maniac out of nowhere, then Ted out of nowhere, stabbed, ambulance. When she got to the ER, a doctor explained that Ted’s stab wound was superficial—it required only a few stitches—but the blow to his head from falling is of some concern.
Now Elinor sits in a hallway in the ER, waiting for the neurologist, who will talk with her after he’s read the MRI results. It worries her that a neurologist is needed. Of some concern. What’s that supposed to mean? Usually she relies on Ted to interpret these vague medical explanations. To her, it’s like trying to figure out the difference between a partly cloudy and mostly sunny forecast.
Roger appears from an examining room. A large Band-Aid covers one of his elbows. He looks frazzled: His eyes are bloodshot, and his reddish hair sticks up in all directions. He takes a seat beside Elinor. As he smooths his palms over his knees, his hands shake.
“How’s Dr. Mackey?” he asks.
“I wish I knew. Nobody’s told me anything yet. Are you okay?”
Roger touches his bandaged elbow gingerly. “Yeah. I want to leave but the cops say I have to wait until the police detective comes to interview me.”
“But you didn’t do anything,” Elinor says.
Roger glares at her. “No kidding. To get the story about the other guy.”
“The man who stabbed Ted? Do they know who he is?”
“Some boyfriend of Gina’s. Jesus, how many boyfriends does that chick have?”
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