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The Last Descent

Page 4

by Jeff Soloway


  I didn’t have such fears. As Jewel had guessed, even before I had, I was already in love—and I hadn’t even touched her. Up until then I would have considered such a statement a logical impossibility. Love without sex was a fairy tale told these days only in sermons and after-school specials. We twenty-first-century grown-ups understood that our emotions were subordinate to evolutionary impulses. This knowledge was not demeaning. We could accept the tyranny of the body as an unavoidable fact and still devote our lives to finding meaning despite it. Since adolescence, I had accepted without question the reign of the hormonal over the emotional.

  But now my entire philosophy of love was overturned. I finally understood all those Victorian novels I’d had to read in college. I didn’t deny that romantic love was bound up with physical desire—I wasn’t insane—but I now knew that romantic love could soar to unimagined heights even without the aid of physical gratification.

  Why did she have this effect on me? I was not inexperienced in love. Objectively speaking, and my mind was still capable of objectivity, I knew that Victoria, while certainly attractive and funny, was not extraordinarily so. It didn’t matter. Her touch of beauty was, to me, overpowering; her flashes of wit were blazes of genius. I could imagine no one superior to her. Even the weirdness of her devotion to her dickish husband appealed to me. Like the women in those nineteenth-century novels, Victoria was trapped by an obsolete but powerful notion of morality. She had, apparently, once loved him, and to deny her love now would be to betray her past self. I could almost understand it. To fall out of love is to reject your youthful faith in your ideals.

  Victoria mentioned once that she believed her husband would be miserable without her. I wished she would understand that her well-being was a hundred times more valuable than his. For her own sake, for the sake of increasing the sum of human happiness, I had to persuade her to leave him, whether or not she could accept me.

  I decided to bring the situation to its crisis.

  —

  Our next meeting was on Thursday night at Screwshi in Bushwick, yet another Brooklyn hotspot aiming to please the gentrifying masses by creatively fusing various fashionable Asian cuisines. These places tended to disguise high prices with ratty decor. Screwshi had one enormous table at which twenty diners ate together like fifth-graders at lunch.

  Victoria and I were hemmed in between a pair of yakking young bankers in suits, their elbows practically planted on our napkins, and a murmuring young Japanese couple. I found myself leaning toward the couple’s side, like an eavesdropper, when I was simply trying to avoid the boom of finance jargon in my other ear. “You’ll want the omakase tasting menu,” said Rocky, the owner, meaning that he would bring us whatever he felt like. I agreed. I wasn’t paying.

  Victoria’s long dark hair flowed off her left shoulder and sparkled in the room’s dim light like a starlit cascade down a rocky slope. The unobstructed view of her neck curving into her other shoulder intimidated me. She was too beautiful for me. Her skin would be cool and smooth, like marble, and just as unaffected by my touch. This wasn’t the place to talk, stuck here between two deafening blowhards and two quiet sweethearts probably already whispering snark about us in their native language.

  If only she had let me kiss her! I would no longer have to doubt. Why should I doubt? She had no kids, her husband was a cheater, she’d practically admitted she was falling in love with me. She had already begun to tell me her secrets—of the confusions and humiliations of growing up brown in suburban New Hampshire, of her parents’ brutally impolite lovelessness, of the closest she’d ever come, in the pre-Grant days, to having sex.

  It was as if we’d already slept together. But instead every night she slept alongside her husband—that is, every night he was at home.

  She picked up her water glass and swirled it until the ice cubes chased one another like aquarium fish. What was going through her mind? I looked down at the drinks menu and counted fifteen cocktails; I was too nervous to read their names, let alone the lists of their weird and clever ingredients. How long had I been silent? I wasn’t just in danger of screwing things up, I was smack in the middle of screwing things up. No, Victoria wasn’t spiteful or silly; she would forgive my anxiety. But what if she didn’t love me? Or did but could never admit it? She said she was afraid not of being in love but of falling in love, as if the procedure were a kind of terrifying tumble.

  “Victoria.” The syllables were a series of stumbles from my mouth. Maybe she wouldn’t notice.

  “Are you all right?”

  “Hold on.” I tried the water and felt a few of the smaller cubes slide down my throat. What kind of pretentious Asian place puts ice in the water?

  “Thank you for bringing me here.” She gestured overheard at the grid of obviously superfluous metal pipes. “This place is absurd, I love it.”

  Rocky swooped by to announce the “prelude” course of rainbow sushi, two small pieces of rainbow trout topped with thin strips of sriracha, hollandaise, green tomatillo salsa, blue cheese, and purple mustard sauce. Each condiment must have been applied with an eyedropper. “To get the flavors on the center of your tongue you want to roll the fish from right to left as you eat.” Rocky snapped his wrist like he was throwing a curve.

  “Like this?” Victoria asked, throwing a curveball in slow motion, so he could analyze her mechanics. She glanced at me, lips squished together in what I now knew was suppressed amusement, and then back at Rocky. He approved. She just wanted me to know she was enjoying herself. I felt like a champion.

  “Will this place make the book?” She screwed the fish into her mouth.

  “We’ve got a dozen places in Brooklyn already.” Did she actually care about how I would rank this place? She couldn’t possibly. At least I hoped not. If she did, I’d have to think of some criteria by which to judge such a bizarre restaurant and explain it to her. No, she was letting a hint of a smile show through her chewing. For once in my life things were going to plan.

  “Victoria,” I said again. I was pleased to hear her name now emerge smoothly and naturally from my mouth, a Nutcracker girl gliding onstage to start the performance. I was ready.

  “I’m worried about Grant,” she said.

  The little ballerina, shoulders hunched, shuffled off the stage. “Why?”

  “Gus Greenbaum flew in to New York two days ago. The Times had a story about protests at the Grand Chalet. Greenbaum was furious. You should have seen Grant after he came home late that night. Pale and shaking and drunk.”

  “I doubt it was Greenbaum he was drinking with.”

  “I know you’re jealous of my husband, but can’t you sympathize at all? I assume you don’t want him to die.”

  “I do. Of old age, all alone, having been divorced from you for many years. You told me he was good at his job. Greenbaum will come to his senses. He needs him.”

  “I’m starting to wonder. Everything’s getting worse. Why can’t Jewel find somebody else’s husband!” Both members of the Japanese couple glanced at her. “She called him again this morning! She says she’s learned something new about the Grand Chalet. She wants him to confirm it.”

  We hadn’t talked about Jewel in the last couple of meetings. I was hoping Jewel didn’t matter to her anymore, though I knew Jewel still mattered very much to Grant. Jewel and I had been exchanging updates by text. She’d had dinner with him just last night.

  “How do you know all that?” I asked.

  “He told me.”

  “Has she found Freddie Bridgewater?”

  “I don’t know. Whatever she’s found, she says it could destroy the Grand Chalet. Maybe she’s lying, but if she goes and posts some nasty exposé based on anonymous gossip, then Greenbaum will investigate her. And that’s when he’ll find out she’s been sleeping with Grant. You think regular people hate sexual betrayal? Wait’ll you see Greenbaum.”

  “Wasn’t I supposed to find Freddie Bridgewater first? You wanted me to save your marriage; maybe I�
�ll save your husband’s life too.” I tried to say this with no more than a twist of bitterness—I couldn’t let her think I really did want Grant dead.

  “I don’t want you to write the story.” It was hard to hear her over Screwshi’s din, but my senses, as always, were at their most acute when I was with her. “That’s over. I don’t need you to break them up. I’m sorry, Jacob. Let’s talk about something else. I want to concentrate. I never eat like this. This place is wonderful. These people are daredevils. It’s like they’re trying to cook up their courage and serve it to us.”

  “Keep eating.” We both needed her to consume more courage.

  After two more tiny but painstakingly glooped pieces of fish, Rocky finally brought something caloric, the Otoro Supreme Frites. The chef had taken morsels of some small but much-coveted part of a tuna’s body, dipped them in panko, deep-fried them, arranged them in a teepee formation, and accompanied them with pink foam in a stone cup. Rocky told us not to dunk but to paint the fish with the foam, using the baby spoons he provided. We started painting. Because of the frites’ roughness, it was like painting on sand.

  I tried again. “Victoria.” My voice sounded better. Every repetition of her name made me stronger. I had the right to say it. It didn’t matter that she was worried about her husband. Nothing mattered except what she felt for me. “Why don’t you leave Grant and come live with me?” As if the idea had just struck me.

  I added: “I love you.” In case she hadn’t figured it out.

  She said nothing. As the seconds went by and she remained silent, I felt my hopes abandoning me, one by one, like a failure’s friends.

  “Do you love me?” I asked. If you had to ask the question you were sunk, but I was already sunk. Flailing underwater was all I could do.

  “I started to. I would have, if I had met you first.”

  I had confronted her too soon. If only I had waited, had taken more time to convince her.

  She picked up a fish finger, bit off a half-inch, and inspected the flesh beneath the panko. “Too much ginger,” she murmured. Everything was going to hell.

  “Leave him,” I said. “Even if you never see me again.”

  “He’s going to be faithful. He told me.”

  “Jewel didn’t call Grant to talk about the Grand Chalet. He was lying to you. She had dinner with him last night.”

  “I know he did. He was ending it with her. He promised to do it before he flew out to Arizona this weekend. And he did. In return, he asked me to end it with you. But I don’t have to end it, because we never started.”

  I let my chopsticks slip out of my hand so I could take a minute to bend down and fumble for them under the long, stupid, uncomfortable bench ten other Brooklynites had paid so much to sit on. When I resurfaced, I asked, “Did Jewel tell him about you and me?” She had promised not to.

  “I told him.”

  She dunked the rest of her fish finger in the foam bowl, stirred it around to pick up all the precious foam. “I’m going to give him a chance to keep his promise. Not because I owe him. Because I love him.”

  “How many chances have you given him already?”

  “I’m sorry. What would it be like, you and me? Neither of us knows.”

  “I know,” I said.

  “You always know.”

  “Maybe I’m wrong. I was tonight.”

  “I think about you every day. That’s why we have to stop.”

  She popped the fish morsel in her mouth. Her fingertips were dotted with little panko crumbs. I was sure that the barest touch from her was all it would take to connect us for good. But I wouldn’t get it.

  “This is the last time we can see each other,” she said. “I wanted to wait till the end of the meal to tell you.”

  And we still had four courses left.

  Chapter 5

  For the rest of the week, I didn’t speak to her. Like all rejected lovers, I hoped for a stay of execution and eventually a new trial, but I refused to present my case to her. I didn’t want to badger her. I wanted her to be happy. I considered but couldn’t believe that she would really be better off with Grant than with me. Maybe she thought she was poisonous to men and feared that someday I too would become flippant, unfaithful, and reckless. Or maybe she thought guilt for abandoning her endangered husband would torment her forever. I had to accept her right to choose her manner of misery. And mine.

  I accepted a one-day assignment in Boston and dispatched it with more efficiency than usual. I write well when I’m unhappy—or at least I take fewer breaks, to give myself fewer chances to brood. I finished the assignment, formatted the document with unusual care, and proofread the email I’d attached it to twice. Then there was nothing to do but send it.

  And then there was nothing to do at all. I could plan my next South America trip, but that wasn’t for another two months, and besides, mindlessly typing up lists of hotels, restaurants, and attractions to re-review would leave lots of mental energy for agonizing, and even some for feeling like an idiot for typing up pointless lists. Just the day before I was telling Yertle all about her. Now I felt like an idiot in front of my turtle. I knew I should do something, go to a museum or an art gallery—no, the movies, to see whatever apocalyptic superhero extravaganza was currently showing, something that would not just distract my mind but assault it.

  But I just lay on my futon, facing away from Yertle. I’d been dumped before. I knew I’d get over it. But I’d never been plunged so deep in misery. When I finally emerged, I’d be encrusted with it. I’d be someone different.

  My phone rang. The caller identified herself as Investigator Florence Doby from Grand Canyon National Park. I could hear street noises in the background, a siren, grumbling pedestrians.

  “Are you home? I got to come by and talk to you.”

  “Now?”

  “After I get a taco. This guy here,” Doby explained, “he parked his grill on the sidewalk and he’s making tacos. He says it’s legal. What do you think?”

  It was my fate always to provide touristic advice. “Beats a hot dog.”

  “That’s what I thought. You still live at the same place?” She named my address. I was both impressed and concerned. What was a Grand Canyon investigator doing in New York?

  “How do I get to you?” she asked.

  “Where are you?”

  “Manhattan.”

  “Where in Manhattan?”

  “On the sidewalk.”

  “I mean what street?”

  “How can I tell?”

  “Go to the corner, look at the green street signs, and tell me what you see.”

  “Hold on.” I heard a burst of honking and a few apologies before she spoke again. “Avenue of the Americas. And…Father Mychal Judge Way.”

  I sighed. Sounded like Herald Square. I gave her subway directions. I figured I had at least forty minutes, depending on the taco.

  When I put down my phone, I saw that I had a text from Victoria. She wanted to come over immediately.

  I tried to call Doby back to cancel, but she didn’t answer. So I told Victoria to come. I wasn’t going to risk having her change her mind.

  —

  For the next half hour I swept the floor clean of crumbs and dust-bunnies, relocated laundry, scrubbed down the tabletop, Windexed the turtle tank, and imagined potential disasters. Grant had instructed Greenbaum to bump me off, and Victoria felt obligated to warn me. Or she had actually been taping our conversations and laughing about them with Grant and her friends, and now she wanted to ask my forgiveness for belittling me so hilariously. I refused to let myself imagine the most hopeful—and surely the likeliest—scenario: She had changed her mind; she loved me.

  After I let her in, she stepped back against the closed door to take in my apartment. Her nostrils seemed to flare as wide as her eyes, as if she couldn’t control her breathing. I became as nervous as she obviously was.

  “Sit down,” I said.

  She glanced down at Yertle. “Your
turtle. Like you told me.” As if she had never quite believed in him.

  “What is it?”

  She couldn’t speak. Was she in danger? Was she dying?

  The intercom buzzed.

  “Tell me what’s wrong,” I said.

  “Aren’t you going to answer it?”

  “Not until you talk to me.”

  The buzz sounded again. “Jacob, who is that?”

  “Someone from the Grand Canyon. I’ve never met her.”

  “Is it Flo Doby?”

  “How did you know?”

  “She came to see Grant this morning.”

  “You’re trembling. I won’t answer it.”

  A third buzz. And a fourth.

  “Let her in,” she said with surprising conviction.

  “Why?” I meant, What’s happening?

  “Please, Jacob!”

  Her tone overpowered me. I pressed the button to unlock the downstairs door. “Why did you come here?” I asked.

  Victoria sighed. “She’ll tell you.”

  —

  Florence Doby was a squat, tan acorn of a woman, her brown hair tied up in a bun on top of her head. The lines on her plump face stretched and multiplied as she frowned, first at my apartment and then at Victoria. She opened a shoulder bag and pulled out a badge identifying her as a special agent of the National Park Service, based in the Grand Canyon. Instead of a business card, she gave me a Post-it with her name, email, and phone number on it. Was I supposed to stick it on the fridge?

  “I was hoping to find you alone.” Her eyes wandered around the room like a restless three-year-old, touching everything.

  Victoria extended her hand without having to step forward. Three people and a turtle was more than my apartment could comfortably fit. “I’m Victoria Flanders. You spoke to my husband at his office. I came to tell Jacob what happened.”

  “And what did you tell him?”

  “Nothing,” Victoria said. “I just got here.”

  “So I have to tell?”

 

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