Shining City

by Seth Greenland

  He purchased a copy of Tax Preparation for Dummies at a local Staples store and taught himself how to set up 401(k) retirement accounts. He sent a group e-mail in which he reiterated his offer to the workers, and many of them availed themselves of the proffered financial services, making weekly contributions into the accounts he set up for them.

  Rising every morning, Marcus would discharge his familial duties and then go to the dry cleaner, where he would field calls and book appointments. He joined an upscale gym where he would ride a stationary bike, play pickup basketball, and then relax in the sauna. Twice a week he would play golf at the Woodley Lakes course. They hired several drivers, so in the evenings he would go home, his cell phone and BlackBerry on vibrate, and deal with calls and messages as they came in until ten o’clock, always making an excuse to go to his home office, where he would contact the provider and arrange the “date.” To allay whatever suspicions Jan might have, he told her he was dealing with a group of investors he had found with whom he intended to expand the dry cleaning business into a chain. Jan was able to bring her mother to a Beverly Hills eye surgeon, who attended to her condition with optimal results. Lenore expressed deep gratitude, and Marcus drew great satisfaction from being able to help her.

  Although everything was going smoothly, his new existence brought on an inchoate sense of dread that waxed and waned but would not abate. Marcus had a preternatural early warning system in his lower back. Often, during moments of great stress, he would experience excruciating back spasms, which were preceded by a heightened sensitivity in his lumbar region. He had felt some twinges down there, which gave him pause, but he would do stretches a chiropractor had prescribed for him years earlier, and he was able to stave off an attack.

  Marcus leased a Mercedes sedan, thinking the leather seats, superb climate control, and easy ride might help him relax. He explained the indulgence to Jan by telling her that business was going exceedingly well.

  But the secrecy began to exact a toll. Marcus attended one of Nathan’s basketball games on a weekday afternoon. His cell phone rang as he slid into the seat beside Jan. The phone rang three more times in the next fifteen minutes, and when he excused himself to return the calls at halftime, she said “You are a popular dry cleaner.” He wasn’t sure how to interpret the remark, but the fifteen points Nathan scored in his team’s victory seemed to interest Jan more than whatever Marcus was doing.

  Early in the afternoon on a clear winter day, he was at Shining City going over the accounts with Kostya. They’d been running the business for several months, and it had been going smoothly. The radio was playing a Van Halen song Marcus had liked in high school, but his mind was on the sixteenth hole at Woodley Lakes.

  “Mink only worked three nights last week,” Kostya said.

  “Is that significant?”

  “I think she’s maybe making dates independent-like.”

  “Should I talk to her?”

  “Talk to her? For why?”

  “To get her to stop.”

  “You want her to stop … other ways to make her stop.” Kostya looked at him in a manner intended to convey that even if this was not the kind of business Marcus was accustomed to, it was now the one he was in.

  This was more than Marcus had bargained for, and he had to set boundaries. Smacking the girls around was not something he would condone.

  “I’m not comfortable…”

  “Other girls hear what’s going on, they do same thing. Business kaput. You hit with open hand, she will understand.”

  Marcus gave Kostya a pained look. “I can’t hit anyone.”

  “You know what your problem is, Breeze? You want everyone to like you. Does not matter if anyone likes you. What matters is you have gas in car, food on table. Don’t forget—you are helping with 401(k)s. You want me do it for you?” Marcus sipped his coffee. This was certainly a more palatable option. After all, his business was at risk, according to Kostya, who knew a lot more about it than Marcus did. What was he being so squeamish for? Kostya looked at him, awaiting a response. “Breeze, you want me to do it?”

  “Yes … no! I want you to talk to her, but no hitting. We’re not running that kind of operation.” Like a carnivore who could not abide the abattoir, Marcus was happy to pass the responsibility to someone less uncomfortable than he. “Kostya, I’m not kidding. Look at me.”

  “I’m looking, okay?”

  “No violence.”

  Kostya shook his head and gave him a patronizing glance. Marcus didn’t care. There were things he wouldn’t do.

  “Anybody back there? Hello!”

  It was Jan. Marcus briefly considered running out the back, but the thought flitted away as soon as it arrived.

  “That’s my wife,” he whispered. “Be cool—she has no idea what’s going on.” As Kostya looked at him incredulously, Marcus called out, “We’re in the office!” Jan stuck her head in the door a moment later.

  “Nice place,” she said.

  Marcus introduced Jan to Kostya and they nodded to each other.

  “Where is everyone? I thought there would be more bustle.”

  “Slow time of day. What are you doing here?”

  “I just dropped my mother off at her pole-dancing class and I have some time before I have to pick her up. I thought you might want to get lunch.”

  Marcus heard the front door open, and another voice rang out: “Breeze, I gotta tell you what happened with that guy at the Peninsula last night.” It was Cassie, a girl they had hired the previous week. The place was starting to feel like Union Station. When Jan looked in the direction of the sound, Marcus and Kostya exchanged a glance.

  “Right here, yo!” Kostya called out. He bounded from the chair, squeezed past Jan, and loped in Cassie’s direction.

  “Let’s eat,” Marcus said. When they left, Kostya and Cassie were nowhere in sight.

  “Who was that?” Jan asked as they walked toward his car. Marcus told her it was Kostya’s girlfriend.

  They went out for Indian food and ordered a bottle of wine with lunch, something that would never have happened at any other time in their lives together. Jan did not ask any questions about the business. Freed from the money woes that had dogged them for so long, they took slow pleasure in each other’s company. They even talked about where they might go for a getaway. Jan liked the idea of Ojai. She chased the last piece of saag paneer with a sip of Chardonnay and smiled at Marcus. She was wearing jeans and a white sweater with horizontal blue stripes. Her chestnut hair was swept back and her face was clear and open.

  “Let’s go to a hotel,” he said.

  “Now?”

  “I have a light afternoon.”

  “My mother needs to be picked up.”

  “She can take a cab. Nate has basketball practice until six. That gives us nearly …”—he checked his watch—“four hours.”

  “Marcus …” She said his name in a voice that indicated that the unexpected lunch had unlocked a hidden chamber, dimly lit, richly upholstered. She was drunk, but in an agreeable way. He paid the bill, and they headed for the Mondrian Hotel on Sunset Boulevard because he knew they gave a discount to AAA members.

  In their room on the tenth floor overlooking the Hollywood Hills, a nearly empty bottle of pinot grigio rested in a silver bucket. The blinds were only partially closed, so while half the room was lit with the afternoon klieg of the sun, the two of them lay beneath the covers, luxuriating in the shadows. The wine had tucked in their inhibitions, kissing them good night, and Marcus sensed the timing was propitious. He produced a gleaming silver egg. Jan regarded it curiously.

  “What’s this?”

  “It’s an egg.”

  “I can see that it’s an egg, Marcus. What does it do?”

  “You’re supposed to put it … you know.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Down there.”

  “No!”

  “Um-hmm.”

  “And then …?”

  “It vibr
ates.”

  “Really?”

  “That’s what the instructions say.”

  “Where’d you get it?”

  “I bought it on the Internet.” Amstel had given it to him a week earlier, but he didn’t think one small lie mattered, given the major ones he’d been telling lately. Jan held the object in her fingertips, examining it in the light. She eyed it with drunken concentration. Before Marcus had to launch into a sales pitch, it vanished into her nether region like a magic trick.

  “What happens now?” she said brightly, game. Thrilled by her willingness to play, Marcus showed her what looked like a television remote control. “What’s that?”

  He pressed a button on the device. Jan nearly swooned.

  “Oh, god … Marcus … Oh …” She breathed evenly as the hidden egg pulsed, sending powerful vibrations coursing through her body. “This is … oohh.”

  “It’s got ten settings,” he said helpfully.

  “Which one is it on?” Her voice was shaky, a passenger on a heaving ship.

  “The first.”

  “You’re … oh … kidding.” Marcus pressed the button again. “Oh, Marcus … oh, God!”

  “That’s three.” Her orgasm approached like a drunk trying to beat last call, barreling, arms waving. Her eyes were closed, her head thrown back, the dam breaking, a torrent gushing. Then it passed, but the electronic pulsations that conjured the wild river did not cease.

  “Put it on two!” she ordered. “Put it on two!” Marcus obliged and punched #2 in. Jan settled down slightly. Her eyes were half open, her head to the side.

  “It does more stuff,” he said, but Jan didn’t appear to be listening. She was lazing in the swirls and eddies now, savoring the slow ride. Marcus kissed her, and she flicked her tongue along his lips and teeth, then toward his throat, something she had not done in a long time. After she came again, she took him in her mouth, sucking and stroking, as he played with the remote control, alternating between #1 and #2. He thought about the tension he carried and the tightness in his lumbar region. He worried about the long-term health effects of leading a double life. Shifting his weight to relieve the pressure on his back, he watched his wife as she concentrated on pleasing him. She was unburdened now, relaxed enough to have hotel sex on a weekday afternoon with her loving husband and a vibrating egg. Emboldened, Marcus again pressed the remote control and suddenly there was another human sound in the room, soft and feminine. Jan stopped what she was doing and looked at Marcus.

  “What is that?”

  “The egg has a chip in it.”

  The smoky croon of a well-known pop diva was emanating from Jan’s interior. The expression on her face, wonder entwined with delight, all coated in a gossamer membrane of the purest sensuality, was one with which Marcus was unfamiliar. It was good she was drunk, he reflected, given that her vagina had started to sing.

  As Marcus gazed at his wife, he forgot the passage of the years, how they had gone by in a wash of pregnancy, diapers, sleep deprivation, weekly carpools, shopping, cooking, cleaning, endless ever-regenerating bills, the ongoing responsibilities of adulthood. All that faded away in the soft afternoon light of the hotel room.

  They listened to the singer’s breathy voice for a moment and then both began to laugh, freely, without inhibition or anxiety, the most innocent, happiest sound either of them had made in years. When she kissed him, he knew he had witnessed the dawning of the second phase of their marriage.

  Jan had not discovered what was going on that day, but Marcus believed it would be impossible to keep news of his activities from her forever. Although their hotel encounter temporarily relaxed him, the close call at the dry cleaner exacerbated the general level of tension he was feeling. He needed to talk, to unburden himself to someone he knew would not pass judgment. Atlas would be willing to listen and could be relied upon to be discreet. The two of them were scheduled to play nine holes at noon the next day. He was waiting at the starter’s window at Woodley Lakes when his phone rang. It was Kostya.

  He did not bother with a greeting: “Mink will not be causing more troubles.”

  “You didn’t …” Marcus said.

  “You tell me not to,” Kostya said, “so I don’t.” Marcus did not want to know what had transpired. What mattered was that the issue would no longer be a problem.

  Atlas appeared as the conversation ended, and he greeted Marcus desultorily, not looking him in the eye when they shook hands. Marcus said there was something he wanted to talk about, but he’d get into it later. Atlas didn’t seem to be listening.

  It was a warm day and Marcus started to perspire after his third practice swing. He played the first couple of holes well, relieved that he would finally be able to tell someone what his life had become and discuss a means of coping.

  Atlas was four shots over par by the time they were on the third hole, and his mood seemed to have gotten worse. After a bad tee shot on the second hole, followed by an equally ugly mulligan, he threw his club, something Marcus had never seen him do. He tried to laugh about it a moment later, but Marcus could tell he was upset. Still, there was the need to talk, to describe what was happening in his life to someone who knew him well, if only to concretize it, make it slightly less hallucinatory. While Atlas lined up his tee shot on the fifth hole, Marcus made a pact with himself. He would tell him by the end of the round. Atlas swung, and the shot faded to the right. Marcus squinted as he followed the flight of the ball.

  “I’m not going to be able to play for the next month,” Atlas said as the ball dribbled into a grove of old-growth trees.

  “Going somewhere?”

  “Rehab.”

  Marcus wasn’t sure if this was a joke. “For what?”

  “I lost ninety thou at the sports book in Vegas over the last month, and it’s gotta stop. My life’s gone completely to shit.”

  Marcus was stunned. “Oh, man, I’m sorry.”

  “I was ordering a double cappuccino this morning and I wanted to know the over/under on the guy making my drink in thirty seconds. Can you believe that? I wanted to bet on the fucking coffee guy.”

  “That’s pretty bad.” Marcus tried to be sympathetic, but it was a strain. He was the one who needed peace, love, and understanding.

  “Anyway, I’m checking in tomorrow. Would you mind looking in on my house once a week? I already suspended the mail delivery.”

  Marcus told him he’d be happy to, hiding the annoyance he felt. His problem was indisputably greater, but far less socially acceptable. At least Atlas could stand in a circle with a bunch of other out-of-control gamblers and talk about his situation. What was Marcus supposed to do? Now he didn’t even want to finish the round of golf.

  Chapter 13

  Jan sipped her lemonade, hoping Plum wouldn’t begin to cry at the table. It was just after one in the afternoon, and they were seated in the dining room of the Sportsman’s Lodge, a popular venue on Ventura Boulevard that was both a restaurant and a hotel. Since the expansion of Marcus’s earning capacity, Jan had gotten Plum to agree to work on alternate days. Today was Jan’s day to not work. They were having lunch because Plum had insisted.

  After the waitress took their order, Plum told Jan about a date she had gone on the previous evening with someone she’d met on the Internet.

  “He had a great voice on the phone, but I think the picture he posted was, like, ten years old and he had about a week’s worth of stubble on his face which is fine if you’re twenty-three but this guy looked like Charles Bukowski, and not in a good way, you know, like he’s written some great poems and books. He looked more like he was sleeping in his car. I actually thought about having sex, but I didn’t see the point. Then I felt so lousy about the whole thing this morning, I went to get a manicure and pedicure at the Vietnamese place in the mini-mall near my house where I always think they’re talking about me.” Jan knew that Plum desperately felt the desire for someone to touch her fingers, and, more intimately, her toes, even if it was only a
Vietnamese woman wielding an emery board as if she was in a Hong Kong chopsocky film. Now Plum examined the results on her right hand, stretching it in front of her.

  “Did we sell anything today?” Jan asked.

  “Nearly five hundred dollars’ worth of stuff,” Plum informed her. It had actually been a rare good morning at the store, which pleased Jan, since it would allow her to encourage Plum to buy her out with a slightly clearer conscience. “A woman came in and bought three pair of those French jeans with the rips and the piping.” The conversation had been proceeding in fits and starts for five minutes now, and Jan was trying to figure out how to touch upon the subject of selling out in a way that would not make her soon-to-be erstwhile partner overly emotional.

  This is when Plum said: “I have to get my hands on fifteen thousand dollars.”

  Jan was not going to give her an opening, having told herself on the ride over that she would not let Plum rope her into any more craziness. So she waited, pretending to read the menu. Jan had been thinking about asking what Plum was going to have for lunch, but now she was angry—Plum dropped that conversational bomb and then held back, as if Jan would just jump in and begin helping her figure out how to get the money. The truth was, Jan had reached her limit. If Plum wanted to talk about another ridiculous idea, treating time as a renewable resource, let her do the work. “Would you like to know why?” Plum asked.

  Since she had phrased it as a direct question, Jan could no longer ignore the gambit without appearing as self-involved as Plum. So she finally gave in, audibly sighing, hoping this would let Plum know where things stood. “Sure. Why?” She said the words with no emotion, since she didn’t want Plum to think she was actually interested.

  “I started spotting this morning, and because I went to a cut-rate clinic, they only give you one shot and that was my…”

  “You were pregnant? How?”

  “I told you I found an egg donor on the Internet. You don’t listen.” Jan stared in disbelief. The word egg had a new association for her now, and she had to fight to maintain her concentration on Plum. There was a stirring in her loins but she willed it away. “I’ve already shot five hours of footage for the video piece, and if I can’t get pregnant …” and here Plum’s words dissolved into guttural sounds accompanied by barely muffled sobbing. Jan’s eyes darted around the dining room, looking for a way to escape, some tear in the San Fernando Valley time-space continuum she could slip through. Plum foraged in her purse and produced a packet of tissues from which she removed one and blew her nose. Taking another, she daubed her eyes. “I won’t get a dime out of Atlas any time soon.”