Shining City

by Seth Greenland

  “He’s a real pimp.”

  “What are we?”

  “Not that.”

  “Neither is he, really. Kostya sees himself as a guy with adaptable business skills.”

  “Well, he’s more of a pimp than you or I.”

  “Look, this is semantic. I’m not saying he doesn’t contribute, but come on, we can do it without him.” Marcus buttoned his shirt, a new linen one. He had never worn linen before and liked the way it felt.

  “It makes me uncomfortable.”

  “I tried to talk him into staying.” He was debating whether to tell her what had happened at the office, and about the sit-down with Malvina, but decided this was not the best time.

  “I like having him around,” Jan said. She was brushing her hair now. “I trust him, and he’ll know what to do if anything bad happens. Should I talk to him?”

  “I don’t think that’ll do any good.”

  “It’s not like you and I are cut out for this business. Why’s he quitting?”

  “He’s opening a rib place.”

  “We should be doing that.”

  “Opening a rib restaurant?”

  “No, but we have to get into something legitimate. I don’t know how much longer I can take this.”

  Marcus nodded but did not respond.

  That night they had dinner at a new Provençal restaurant in Beverly Hills with Corinne and Dewey Vandeveer. Jan had been trying to arrange it for months, but the Vandeveers both had busy schedules and had cancelled several times, once only an hour before their date. Marcus had no desire to go out to dinner this evening, but he knew Jan had been looking forward to it and didn’t want to disappoint her. The couples talked about Winthrop Hall, and real estate, and Corinne’s latest attempts to bring Buddhism into the California prison system. Corinne was transported by her vision of incarcerated Crips and Bloods chanting sutras with orange-robed monks and went on about it for half an hour. The woman loved to talk about her life, and Marcus was relieved at not having to carry any of the conversational weight. He ate his bouillabaisse and stole glances at Dewey, who reflexively eyed his BlackBerry every few minutes to check on the progress of a deal in Dubai. Marcus could have been checking his BlackBerry, too, but Jan had specifically asked him not to. It must be nice, he thought, to wear jeans, and loafers with no socks, earn unimaginable amounts of money, and never have to worry about someone shooting your windows out. He wished he could live that kind of life, desperately wanted to provide it for Jan, but didn’t see how it was possible.

  Jan appeared to be enjoying herself, at ease in Corinne’s company. She had been working out four times a week for the last several months (she had purchased a gym membership after joining Smart Tarts) and had hired a trainer. Now, luminous with good health, she looked better than she had in years.

  “We need people on the decorations committee,” Corinne was saying to Jan. Abandoning his ruminations, Marcus quickly surmised that they were talking about a school function.

  “I’d love to do it,” Jan said.

  “We always have a great time,” Corinne said. “Marcus, maybe you want to get involved. We love to have the dads!”

  Marcus smiled and begged off. “I’m pretty busy,” he said.

  “What’s new in the gold market?” Dewey asked. Marcus couldn’t believe he remembered their dinner-party conversation.

  “The usual, you know. Up, then down,” Marcus said, faking beautifully. “But I like it for the long term.”

  “You can’t beat gold,” Dewey said, checking his BlackBerry again.

  Marcus and Jan were driving north on Benedict Canyon later that night when Jan said “You’re awful quiet.”

  “Something kind of weird has been going on,” he said, looking straight ahead. After the dinner with the Vandeveers, Marcus thought Jan needed to be reminded that they were leading an entirely different life. Recent events were weighing on him, and he had decided it was best to come clean. So he informed her about the gunshots. Jan listened, horrified. Marcus tried to reassure her. The situation was under control, he said, and they couldn’t allow themselves to be driven out of business by what he believed were empty threats.

  “The only reason they’re empty is because the bullets didn’t hit you,” she said, her voice tight with fresh anxiety.

  “This person is a business woman. She doesn’t want to kill anyone.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me this sooner?”

  “Because I knew this was how you’d react.”

  “Marcus, we’re partners. You have to tell me these things.”

  The lights of Los Angeles were behind them now as they reached the apex of the canyon and began their descent toward the Valley.

  “We just have to ride it out,” he said, taking his foot off the brake and letting the car glide down the curving road, picking up speed.

  “You’re driving too fast. I don’t want to get pulled over.” Marcus tapped the brake pedal. “Is this why Kostya quit?”

  “He was going to quit anyway.”

  As they got ready to go to sleep, Jan said they needed to begin to think about a schedule for closing down the business. He told her they would talk about it soon.

  “Marcus, I’m not kidding,” she said, settling into bed next to him.

  “I know. We have to get out. But we have to do it the right way.”

  “Which is…?”

  “Maximal profit, minimal risk.”

  “But what does that mean?”

  “You have to trust me, okay?”

  Affecting confidence and brio, he kissed her on the mouth. He hoped she couldn’t sense his nervousness. He was wearing the silk pajamas he had purchased on impulse the previous weekend. Was that perspiration he felt in his armpits? Marcus nestled into his pillow and tried to fall asleep.

  Nate, You’re a special boy. You are very even-keeled. You play basketball and the clarinet. I wouldn’t know how to work my computer or my cell phone if it were not for you. I remember the time at the beach when you were around five. A big wave knocked you over, but you got right up. You were laughing. You are a great son. We’re very proud of you today. We love you.

  Marcus placed his pen on the kitchen table and looked at the legal pad on which he’d been writing. It was after midnight and he couldn’t sleep. He read the speech out loud, timing himself. Bertrand Russell looked up from his bed in the corner of the kitchen, wondering if Marcus was addressing him. It took thirty seconds to read, which made it too short. Nathan had worked hard, and if Marcus wanted to honor his son’s accomplishment, he would need something that would take longer to declaim than directions to the post office. He shifted his gaze from the notes he’d made to the new Sub-Zero refrigerator. After laboring on the speech for over an hour, it was time for a break.

  He opened the silver behemoth and surveyed the contents through tired eyes: vegetables, lowfat cheese, five-day-old sliced turkey, condiments, whole-wheat bread, green grapes. None of it looked terribly inviting, but sitting at the table and staring into space was not producing anything worthwhile. Perhaps he needed to raise his blood sugar. Grabbing a handful of the grapes, Marcus returned to the pad and reread his notes. While everything he’d written was true, he reflected that it did not constitute a speech. Marcus chewed on the end of the pencil and considered this. How does someone put his most private thoughts and memories down on paper, deeply personal ideas intended to be shared between a parent and child, and then read it in front of an audience? Roon had engaged a professional to draft his remarks at his son’s bar mitzvah. Even though Marcus could now afford to do the same, he knew it missed the point by a wide margin. So he continued to struggle with the unwieldly process of refining what he would say.

  Marcus had been nibbling grapes and doodling for ten minutes when he heard footsteps on the stairs. Jan entered, sleepy-eyed.

  “Couldn’t sleep?”

  “I was thinking about the bar mitzvah,” she said. He told her he was too, smiling at her as if every
thing was normal. “How many people should we invite to the out-of-towner brunch on Sunday morning? Besides relatives, I mean.” The out-of-towner Sunday brunch was a bar mitzvah tradition that, while appearing nowhere in the Torah, had become very popular in southern California. It was a way of thanking those who had traveled to attend the ceremony in the currency of lox, bagels, and whitefish. Occasionally, particularly good friends were invited as well. Right now, the guest list was limited to Jan’s sisters and some cousins of Marcus’s, who were coming in from Seattle.

  Marcus said to invite whomever she liked. Turning his attention back to the speech, he tapped the pad with the sharpened point of the pencil. “Have you written your speech yet?” he asked.

  “Did you hear that?”

  “What?”

  “I thought I heard a sound outside.” She moved toward the kitchen window and peered into the darkness.

  “There’s nothing there.”

  “Would you look?”

  “For what?”

  “I told you. I heard something.” She opened a drawer and took out a foot-long kitchen knife, holding it out to him.

  “Am I going out there to carve a turkey?”

  “Just take it, please.”

  Displaying a cool he did not feel, he took the knife and stepped outside. The backyard was empty. The silver moon lit a cloudless sky, illuminating the small yard. He listened. Nothing. Then suddenly he heard someone behind him and, gripping the knife, he wheeled around with a jagged intake of breath. The kitchen light caught his face and there was Jan watching him with an unsettled look. He knew he had heard something. At least he thought he had. So he strained to listen, blood pulsing through his veins. But all he could hear was the quiet hum of the freeway, a rumor in the faint distance. Feeling a strange amalgam of primal and ridiculous, he returned to the house.

  “There’s no one there,” he said.

  “Thanks for checking.” He nodded, the calm protector. “Are you coming back to bed soon?” Marcus told her he’d be up in a few minutes and returned to his pen and pad.

  Thirty minutes later, Marcus was lying in bed, trying to remember amusing anecdotes about Nathan, when he heard a noise downstairs. He thought he might have imagined it, but Jan had unsettled him earlier, so he got out of bed, careful not to wake her. He checked Nathan’s room and found him sleeping soundly. It must be Lenore who was banging around. But when he looked in her room, she was on the bed passed out, Laura Nyro playing quietly on her CD player. Marcus cocked his ear. Barely audible beneath the singer’s mournful tone was the sound of footsteps. His heart began to thud in his chest, pounding against his ribcage as if it was about to leap from his body and bounce off a wall. He padded warily down the steps, carrying Nathan’s baseball bat. Why hadn’t he taken the carving knife upstairs with him? He peeked into the living room, where he saw Tommy the Samoan parked on the love seat with Bertrand Russell in his lap. He was stroking the dog’s neck, pinching the skin between fingers the size of bratwursts. Bertrand Russell seemed to be enjoying it.

  “Don’t go crazy, brah.”

  Marcus stared at the colossal Polynesian and calculated his options. Obviously, he couldn’t take him physically. The baseball bat in his hand, a lethal weapon to a garden-variety human, would be like a toothpick wielded against this massive form. He could cry out to Jan, alerting her to the alien presence, but Marcus hoped to get Tommy to leave as quietly as he’d come.

  “I’m going to call the cops.” Given how terrified Marcus was, he was thrilled that words actually came out of his mouth. He reached for the phone on an end table and picked it up.

  “And tell them what? You a criminal. Put the phone down.” Marcus hesitated a moment. The man did not seem like he was going to cause imminent harm. He placed the phone back on the cradle.

  “What do you want?”

  “What Malvina say about not killing you? She lying. Told me if you not gone in two weeks, man, that’s it. Hasta la vista and shit.”

  “Why are you telling me?”

  “I Googled you, brah. I see you got a bar mitzvah coming up.” Marcus shook his head in amazement. “I ain’t gonna help her kill no lantzman.”

  Marcus recognized the Yiddish. “You’re not Jewish…?”

  “My girlfriend, she is. I’m taking conversion classes with Rabbi Dunleavy. He a convert too. You hearda him?”

  “No.”

  “Tough-ass ex-Marine can es’plain the mishnah like a mother-fucker.”

  Marcus did not think it was a good time to mention that in fact he was not Jewish, since this seemed, ironically, to be what was saving his skin at the moment.

  “I love this girl, okay? Guy I work with, his name Memo. He with Malvina, too. Memo come to my girl last week, say he give her money, diamonds, all she gotta do is sleep with him one time. But she no listen.”

  “That’s love,” Marcus offered.

  “You damn right. She make me better person. So, I’m gonna tell you one more time—Malvina serious. You cutting a slice outta her cake and she ready to cap you. Move to Fresno or something before they say kaddish for you, brah.”

  That Bertrand Russell was licking Tommy the Samoan’s huge face did not mitigate this thought: A man who could kill him a hundred different ways had crept undetected into his house and was now planted in his living room like a tree trunk. It occurred to Marcus that perhaps things had gone too far. Still, he didn’t want to just shut down and walk away tomorrow.

  “Would Malvina be willing to negotiate? I do financial planning for the women and maybe…”

  Tommy interrupted him: “You not understand what I’m telling you. She ready to wax you, see?”

  Marcus did a quick calculation. It was October. The approaching holiday season was a national pageant of familial dysfunction and loneliness and thus a potential bonanza for Smart Tarts. Surely, Malvina could live with his being in business a little longer. “Tell her I’ll shut down after New Year’s.”

  Tommy the Samoan’s watermelon-sized head slowly shook in rueful disappointment. “Might not be Happy Hannukah, brah.” Then he gently placed Bertrand Russell on the floor and rose from the chair. It was like watching the Goodyear blimp leave the launch pad. He lumbered to the front door and hesitated for a moment, as if deciding whether to say anything else. Marcus watched him intently. Then he opened the door, filled the frame for a brief instant, and was gone.

  Marcus poured himself a whiskey and sat at the kitchen table. He still thought Malvina was bluffing. And even if that analysis proved wrong, he had recently purchased a two-million-dollar life insurance policy. If she had him taken out, his family would be handsomely provided for. His intimate familiarity with the great philosophical texts left him with what he believed to be scant fear of death. He wouldn’t seek it, but he’d be ready when it came. In the meantime, precautions could be taken.

  Marcus was disconcerted by Tommy the Samoan’s midnight ramble and did not sleep well. When he awoke in the morning, he stood in the hallway and listened keenly before going downstairs. He looked in the kitchen, where Bertrand Russell was resting peacefully. Useless, he thought, shaking his head. He looked through the kitchen window into the backyard—nothing unusual there. Then he opened the front door and hesitated a moment, peering around. It wasn’t quite seven yet and the neighborhood was quiet. Seeing no one in the street, he retrieved the morning paper. When Jan came down for breakfast, Marcus said nothing about the home invasion—why ramp up the domestic anxiety level even further?—but casually mentioned that he wanted to install a burglar alarm. She agreed it was probably a good idea.

  That day, Marcus looked in his rearview mirror far more often than usual when he drove, and glanced up at every noise in the office. Even when he had lunch at an Italian place he liked on La Cienega, he made sure to sit facing the door.

  The Smart Tarts book group met for the first time at six o clock that night, early enough to accommodate people’s work schedules. It turned out that Anna Karenina had not been a ju
dicious choice of reading material. The meeting had already been postponed several times due to the novel’s length, five-hundred-plus pages, which stretched before the ambitious readers like the Russian steppe, draining their initial enthusiasm. It was too dense, people said, had too many big words, and what was that chapter from the dog’s perspective? Jan had listened to these and other complaints about her choice over the past months, but reiterated the claim that it would be good to start with a book none of them would try on their own. If everyone wanted to read something by John Grisham next, that was fine, but she requested that they all make at least one attempt to be high-toned. Was that not, after all, the purpose of their entire endeavor? Were they not Smart Tarts? Finally, Jan had decreed that the book club either meet or disband.

  Eight working girls plus Marcus, Jan, and Lenore attended the session at the Ripps home. The unseasonably warm weather was congruent with the Tex-Mex culinary theme (no one wanted Russian food), and everyone brought a covered dish. The assembled literati settled into their seats around the patio table, and the sangria-fueled conversation was lively. But it turned out that the only ones who had actually read the entire book were Plum and Marcus. Jan had only made it two thirds of the way through. No one else had even finished the Cliff Notes. What was all that stuff about Levin, everyone wanted to know. Why was he in the story? Anna and Vronksy, there was meat, the soap opera, the stuff! They liked that, all the lust and the drama. But the women were outraged when Plum told them that Anna threw herself under a train.

  “For a guy?” Mink asked, as she bit into an empanada. “What a loser!”

  “The options for a woman back then were limited,” Marcus explained. “It was a feudal society, and you were either a serf or a noble, or…”

  “Surf’s up,” Alicia said. She was a former tennis teacher from Santa Barbara, beloved by Japanese businessmen. She smiled, pleased at her joke.

  “It’s spelled S-E-R-F,” Plum said, with a hint of condescension.

  “Excuse me,” Alicia said, draining her sangria and refilling her glass.

  “Or you were a tradesman,” Marcus continued. “If you were a woman like Anna and you left your home, the only option…”