The Last Descent

by Jeff Soloway

  “She’s injecting the serum,” said Magda. “She’ll find out everything he knows about Gus Greenbaum by the end of the night.”

  “That’s not all she wants,” I said. “She likes him.”

  “She’s drunk.”

  Victoria had noticed them too. She had drifted away from the pack of drinkers toward their private party. Her face wavered between neutral and dismayed, as though she was trying unsuccessfully not to care. Grant had as yet committed no definable crime; he was just being a dick. And, after all, he was a dick, so how could she complain? Her rectangular glasses contrasted strikingly with her delicate features, her snub nose and thin cheeks. Unusual eyewear often accompanies an air of pretentious intellectuality, but on Victoria the glasses looked more like armor than fashion, as if the rims were there to intimidate anyone hoping to slip past them into her soul. I imagined how dramatic it must have been for Grant when she removed them for the first time.

  She moved closer to them and I silently willed her on. I had seen how tenderly Grant had touched her, even more tenderly than he was touching Jewel now. What a jerk. He leaned forward to whisper something to Jewel, lips hovering drunkenly around her ear, like a bee around a flower. Jewel stepped back from him, and Grant stumbled and almost fell to the drink-smeared carpet. Victoria, who had been drifting closer, stopped, perhaps hoping Jewel was insulted and the danger passed. But Jewel and Grant closed in again, like tired boxers who know the clinch is the safest place.

  Victoria took one last step forward, called out to Grant, and then wrapped her arm around his elbow, the one that wasn’t brushing against Jewel’s left breast.

  Grant glanced at her, annoyed, the guy on the subway who’s caught you reading over his shoulder. Victoria, smiling, said something to both of them.

  “We’re talking business,” he insisted, loud enough for all of us to hear.

  “Asshole,” I said to Magda.

  “Let’s get her out of here.” Magda absorbed her friends’ shame the way better writers absorb their friends’ secrets. I always loved that about her. Good writers make bad friends. I started moving.

  Victoria grabbed Grant’s upper arm. Grant swung his elbow to free it, but he swung too hard, smacking her in the shoulder. The blow knocked her completely off balance.

  But I was there. I caught Victoria from behind and fixed her on her feet. She turned and glared at me, as if I’d groped her. When she recognized me her face changed, but the outrage remained. Toward me or toward Grant?

  “You’re not talking business,” she said. “You’re talking about Freddie Bridgewater. Among other things.” Toward Grant.

  He smacked his hands together. “Don’t say that name.”

  “Then leave with me now.”

  Grant saw me and clenched both hands into fists, choking two invisible throats. His eyes started at my shoes and ran up my body like roaches.

  “Why are you still here?” he said. “I only invited you because Magda begged me. You come drink my wine, and now you look at me like I’m some kind of jackass?”

  “We’re all looking at you like you’re a jackass,” I said. “Come on. We can all leave together.”

  “Better be careful.” His grabbed a nearby wine bottle by the neck and sloppily filled a glass. He grinned at me.

  “Grant, no,” said his wife.

  “Watch me.” He jiggled the glass in his hand like a player shaking the dice. A few drops sloshed out. I stood my ground. He took a quick breath.

  Just as Victoria lunged forward to stop him, Grant flung the drink.

  Victoria was now in front of me. The flying red blob slapped her right in the face. She stepped back but said nothing. Dark liquid smeared the lenses of her glasses and dripped from the frames.

  While everyone, including Grant, was looking at Victoria, I grabbed his upper arm, spun him around, and drove him toward the nearest table. The breath burst from his lungs as he doubled over. I tightened my hammerlock and shoved his face down into a brownie plate. These kinds of moves are a lot easier to accomplish when your opponent is stumbling drunk. The side of his nose stuck out over a puddle of melted ice cream shot through with veins of chocolate sauce.

  “Let go,” Grant commanded, but it’s hard to speak authoritatively with just half your mouth. “Vee, tell him to get off!”

  I relaxed the pressure enough so that he could lift his face from the dessert. He jerked his head around to stare at me. No, past me. I kept my grip but glanced behind as well, suddenly afraid that his wife was about to jump me in his defense.

  Victoria was there, but she wasn’t jumping. Her arms were crossed, her face still dripping with wine, her neck muscles as rigid as suspension-bridge cables.

  “What should I do?” I asked her.

  “Make him leave.”

  Grant tried to lift his head farther. I wouldn’t let him.

  “Are you leaving on your own,” I asked, “or should I help?”

  “I’m leaving. Why would I want to stay?”

  I backed away and watched Grant straighten up slowly, vanilla ice cream streaking his cheek like clown tears. I tensed for his rush.

  “Victoria,” he said. “Come with me.”

  “No.”

  “You got to stay cool. It’s not safe to spout off. The Greenies might come back.”

  “As long as you don’t.” She wiped her glasses.

  Jewel was already gone. Grant began the long walk out of the room, head up but eyes downcast to watch for all the detritus that might disastrously disrupt a drunk’s journey.

  The writers who remained drifted away to gather their coats.

  “He never used to do it.” Victoria was at my shoulder. From my sidelong angle, I could see her eyes behind the shield of her glasses, tracking Grant’s course out of the conference room. It felt like I was peeking under a curtain into someone’s home. “But now it’s all the time. Imagine what it’s like when I’m not around. The woman doesn’t even have to be beautiful. This time she was. They said she’s your girlfriend.”

  “Used to be. What’s he so afraid of?”

  “Gus Greenbaum. She’s right about him. He’s killed people.” We both glanced around the room. The Greenbaums remained gone.

  “Do you have proof?”

  “Grant does. And Jewel knows it. But he won’t tell her. She’s not worth the risk. None of them are worth it. I’m worth it. What am I supposed to do now?”

  “Divorce him.”

  “But I still love him.”

  That was unfortunate. “So make him apologize. Then make him pay.”

  “I want to. I will. Can you take me home?”

  “Sure. Where do you live?”

  “Not my home. Yours.”

  Her voice was suddenly demanding, her face persuasively alluring. But mixing revenge and romance has never worked out for me.

  “Leave him first,” I said. “Then call me.” I gave her my card.

  Chapter 2

  The next week Victoria texted that she wanted to see me. In preparation, I put on a baby-blue sweater over an Oxford shirt. This had been my uniform for reassuring women since junior year in high school, when I had to convince Tiffany Timlinson’s mother that she could trust me to take Tiffany to the prom without getting her killed or pregnant. (Tiffany, however, proved more daring than her mom or I had expected. She repaid my efforts by blackmailing her brother into buying us a twelve-pack of Rolling Rock and showing me, without condescension, how to unroll a condom.)

  I suggested meeting at the café in the Union Square Barnes & Noble, the dead center of literary New York, equidistant from Brownstone Brooklyn and Columbia University, and near enough to my own gentrifying-but-slummy neighborhood, not that literary New York had heard of it. I arrived early and wandered into the travel-guide section. As usual, no one was browsing the South America shelf, but a hedge-haired youth in an I TOKE UP THIS WAY T-shirt was studying a beautifully illustrated, pitifully out-of-date Raconteur Guide to Amsterdam. (Rac updates every th
ree years at best.) He glanced over his shoulder, as if a B&N cop might be watching for information theft, and started snapping pictures of key pages with his cellphone. To my surprise, I noticed that one of the pages he was capturing described a side trip to Keukenhof garden; but then, for a multitasking tourist, smoking up goes nicely with tulip gazing, not so much with visiting the Anne Frank Museum.

  These are my favorite nonpaying readers: young travelers desperate for advice but too poor to shell out for it (though not too poor for monthly smartphone contracts). They know that the best tips are found not online but right here, where you have to pay for them or steal them. I once saw a woman take down my Caravan Guide to Bolivia and Ecuador, open a page, and read it softly into her phone. I felt like I was whispering into her brain.

  What did Victoria want from me? I didn’t expect that she had left her husband so soon, but maybe she was getting up the nerve. She had to be wearying of his associations with gangsters and other women. Magda had told me that Victoria and Grant had been married for five years (and that she taught ESL at night at one of the uptown CUNYs). Five years was long enough that single life must seem like the tangled, steaming jungle she had once comfortably viewed from her airplane window and now was about to crash-land into. She would want encouragement. No problem. She was young, employed, good-looking, and childless. She had as good a chance of making it to safety as anyone. That is, as me.

  She was already in the café when I got there.

  “I didn’t tell Grant I was going to see you,” she said as I sat down. “I never lie to him—but here we are.”

  “I’ve been worried about you.”

  “Four days ago you didn’t know I existed.”

  “I’m a superstar worrier. Did you make him pay?”

  “More or less. I waited up for him that night and hit him in the face with a mini Cuisinart.”

  “You did not.”

  “Don’t worry; it wasn’t on.”

  She leaned forward, her arms laid on the table between us. They were slender but not spindly. I tried to imagine them heaving an appliance.

  “Did he bleed?”

  “Just a little. Have you seen him since? Look for my mark over the left eyebrow. It’s the first really savage thing I’ve ever done. But it’s not enough! People say violent revenge is unsatisfying. I never believed them until now. I need your help.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Breaking up Grant and Jewel. They’ve been screwing all week.”

  I had suspected it. I had even thought of asking Magda to warn Jewel away, but then I couldn’t imagine Grant bullying someone as ferocious as Jewel.

  “Maybe it’s not what you think. Jewel’s convinced he has the goods on Gus Greenbaum and the Grand Chalet. She’s like a tick when it comes to information.” It seemed honorable to point out comforting possibilities to her, however unlikely.

  “Sure, but I know they’ve screwed. He told me.”

  “Really?”

  “I asked. He can’t lie to my face. I want to forgive him. I don’t like throwing Cuisinarts. But first I have to separate him from temptation. It’s like flushing your dad’s cigarettes down the toilet. That’s why I need you. You have to write up the story Jewel’s after. Then she’ll lose interest in him.”

  “Why would I do that?”

  “It could make your career. It’s a hell of a story. Gus Greenbaum is worse than anyone knows. And he’s just getting started.”

  “Worse in what way? For a story like that, you need more than rumors. You need specifics—documents, photos, and on-the-record statements.”

  “Exactly! You need Freddie Bridgewater.” Her black eyes seemed to expand, like the heart seems to swell in moments of excitement. It must be an immense pleasure to be so often in the presence of her enthusiasm. Grant was a fool to risk it. “He’s got the evidence, and Jewel knows it. But she won’t find him. No one knows where he is, not even his friends. Not me either. But I know how to contact him. I could put you in touch. Then you can write the story, and she’ll have to find some other scandal and some other guy to suck information from. She’s a beautiful tick. I just want her off my husband.”

  “Sorry, I don’t steal stories from friends.”

  “You’ll be doing her a favor. Maybe she’s not afraid of Greenbaum, but she should be. Freddie Bridgewater is. You’ll have to be careful too. We’ll get you a pseudonym.”

  I wasn’t sure if the warning was meant to unnerve me or test me.

  “This isn’t the revenge you want,” I said. “What you want is a divorce.”

  “I told you. I love him.”

  “Has he ever hit you?”

  “Never. Well, just with that drink.”

  “Not even after the Cuisinart?”

  “He cried. He apologized. He loves me too. I yelled at him till my throat hurt and then got him some ice.”

  I looked for his marks on her face. Her cheeks were rosy with makeup. Had she put it on for me or to hide something? The only blemishes I detected were faint gray under-eye smudges below the lower rims of her glasses. Perhaps she’d been losing sleep. I wondered again where she was from. Now that I had license to examine her face uncreepily, she didn’t look particularly Hawaiian or Tahitian, or anything else I had guessed. Then again, people often fail to look as they’re supposed to.

  “You can’t stay with him,” I said. “There were a dozen people around, including his mafia clients, and he still couldn’t control himself. If Greenbaum’s that dangerous, Grant could’ve gotten himself killed. Could have gotten you killed too. Your husband’s a narcissist by nature.”

  “Narcissist! You know all about him, don’t you? You know everything. You figured out girls when you were in sixth grade. You had human nature down cold by the time you finished backpacking through Bolivia.”

  At least she knew my travel-guide subject.

  “Here’s what you don’t know,” she went on. “Human nature is bullshit. Everybody’s different. We’re all insane in our own special way. If I could slip into your head for a day, access all your weird thoughts, I’d find some lock-you-up stuff, wouldn’t I? Think of your most shameful desire. I bet it’s a doozy. I’m imagining it right now. Wow. And whatever I’m imagining, the real thing is worse, isn’t it? But maybe I just assume so because I have a few of my own. Grant loves me too. I can’t leave him. I’ve never known anyone else. I’ve never slept with anyone else.”

  This was taking honesty further than I’d expected. At the table behind us a young man was scribbling in a notebook. He had no book or magazine before him; he was disgorging information, not taking it in. Write this conversation down, I thought. Somebody’s telling the truth about sex.

  Or was she? “You wanted me to take you home,” I pointed out.

  “I panicked, I think. Have you ever been in love?”

  “Lots of times.”

  “That means never. Ever lived with a girlfriend?”

  “A few times. The one I was in love with worked in PR, like Grant. She lived in Florida. We met on junkets and press events or just in airport hotels.”

  “That’s not love. That’s recreation. When you see your husband every day, when you sleep and eat and read with him, you start to think like him. It’s not that you always anticipate what he says, because how can you love someone who never surprises you? It’s that in any situation you know the first and simplest thoughts he has, and he knows yours. So your conversations—your real conversations, not the ones about logistics—can leap past the daily debris to your newest or trickiest ideas. It’s like you’re holding hands on a trampoline and your thoughts go higher and higher. Try that on a first date.”

  “I am trying.”

  “This isn’t a date. Oh, Jacob, you really don’t know anything. If we could combine our stupidities, we’d be the dumbest person who ever lived.”

  “I’ve never been in love like that,” I said.

  “Like what?”

  “Like I didn’t always secretly sus
pect it was going to collapse.”

  “Ah. I was always so secure. Now I wish I’d been more suspicious. The problem is, I have so little experience. I don’t just mean with suspicion. I had boyfriends in high school, but I was saving myself. What an idiot! If I’d been an ordinary reckless teenager I would have had a lot more satisfaction. Instead I decided to live for the future. I grew up in suburban New Hampshire, which is about as much fun as it sounds. My mother’s a native Mainer, but my dad’s from Pakistan. He teaches at UNH. You know what they taught me? That the future is a shining palace full of funny, smart, tough, deserving people just like me, but you have to cross a frozen lake to get there. So you move slowly and test the ice with every step. You take no chances. I believed them.”

  I thought of nervous Mrs. Timlinson. Good thing she didn’t know, back then, that Tiffany’s idea of a shining future was one where Mike’s Hard Lemonade was free. I’d heard Tiffany had survived her student years and was married now. I hoped it was to a better man than Grant.

  “Then I found out there’s no palace,” Victoria said. “Just dead little islands and always more ice to cross. So what’s the point of being careful? Believe you me, I left behind a lot of frustrated guys in their cars parked on the dead-end road next to Lake Minniprick.”

  “You made up Lake Minniprick.”

  “Okay, but not the frustrated guys. And when I got to college, practically while I was unpacking my clothes, I met Grant. We fell in love. And that’s all there’s been.”

  I felt momentarily tempted to confess that I was a virgin, or a prostitute, or something else that would amaze and impress her. But amorous lies, however immediately effective, blow up on you eventually (well, mine do). I had to match her ruthless honesty. I tried to think of some embarrassing truth I could confess.

  The few that came quickly to mind were much too shameful even to contemplate for long, let alone speak. Yes, I also had some doozies.