New York Echoes 2

by Warren Adler

  A large salad was placed before the man and he picked at it without appetite, sometimes spilling the contents on his shirt, again to the chagrin of the caretaker who had ordered a hamburger and a large order of French fries, which she proceeded to dip into a large pool of ketchup and eat with greedy relish while the old man suffered through his meal with difficulty.

  Gordon had barely finished his omelet when his memory kicked in. Sitting across from him was the wreck of a man who had once been his nemesis. Thomas J. Phelan, the bastard who had ruined, no, revolutionized, his life; the demon that had made his last days at the company after twenty-five years a living hell; the son of a bitch who had helped break up his marriage, contributed to his bankruptcy, helped alienate his only son. Invective crowded into his mind. His stomach knotted and he could feel the backwash of the omelet in his throat. He tamped down the urge to vomit.

  How many times had he imagined confronting this monster, this evil sadist? How many times had he wished for the man’s slow and painful demise? Now, at last, here was his chance to confront him, curse him out, tell him how happy he was to see him in this condition, getting his just deserts. He fantasized the speech he would make, bending low over the table, whispering his tale of vengeance into the man’s ear, gloating over his condition, salivating over this rare opportunity for payback.

  Picking up his check, he rose and approached the table. He hovered over it for a moment, watching the man pick at his food, while the black lady was absorbed in dipping her French fries in the ketchup. She looked up as he came forward. Phelan, his head bent over his salad, attempted without success to get a bit of tomato on his fork. As Gordon watched him, he felt his words congeal on his tongue and suddenly he sensed a vast inner deflation, as if, in one big spurt, he was being sapped of some poisonous venom.

  What a sad prick, he told himself, this once-evil man who was the principal motivator of his bad patch. Everything ends, he thought suddenly, the bad, the good, the indifferent, hate, love, anger, despair, every human condition. Life flows, ebbs and ends. Even for this miserable bastard. And here I am, he screamed within himself. Still standing.

  “Sorry,” he said to the caretaker, smiling broadly. “He reminded me of someone.”

  Phelan paid no attention, remaining bent over his salad, barely able to maneuver any part of it to his mouth.

  The caretaker poked at the man’s arm and he looked up at Gordon with rheumy eyes, then turned downward toward his salad.

  “Not one of his good days,” the caretaker said, shrugging, then returning to the process of dipping the fries into the ketchup.

  Gordon paid the check and walked away. He felt neither exhilaration or pity or any sense of vindication, but he knew that, once and for all, this motivator of his bad patch was no longer of consequence to him. He felt energized as he walked quickly to his apartment and called Sylvia on her cell phone.

  “What is it?” she said with a degree of concern since his call was unexpected.

  “I need your ministrations. I am badly in need of manly validation.”

  “Why, Gordy, I never thought you’d ask.”

  He hung up, took a deep breath and popped a Viagra.

  A String Of Pearls

  Planning a mad act was a lot easier than its execution. This was Helen’s third attempt and no amount of reasonable self-argument could dissuade her.

  The maître d’, greeting the known female patrons of his establishment with double kisses, offered her discreet welcoming smiles and nods now that she was recognizable, although as merely a bar fly.

  “I just love the way Larry makes martinis,” she told him, loud enough for Larry the bartender to hear as he stood in front of his display of shiny bottles. She sat down on one of the stools, crossed her legs, put down the pocketbook in which she carried, as she had dubbed it, the swag, her ill-gotten gains, and waited for the right moment. Peripherally, she could see him at his regular Wednesday table holding court. They owned tables at Le Cirque, and Jock apparently owned this one, left of the entrance, once removed, visible, status blessed.

  The martini came, straight up Bombay Sapphire gin with a twist, ice cold and she sipped, slyly observing him in full charming mode. At the very least, she would need two this time, she had determined. One had not, on two previous occasions, been enough to provide the Dutch courage required for her to perform this marvelously conceived and deliciously creative act of vengeance.

  While her two earlier attempts had ended in cowardice and inaction, she did discover how much irony goes on in these pricey dining palaces where the charmed circle of what passes for New York elite goes to be seen and reassured that they reside within its circumference. The very name of the restaurant, “Le Cirque,” implied it was at the very center of moneyed opulence and social cachet.

  It was, after all, the splashy golden wallpaper of Jock Frazer’s real world. There he sat, her dashing, much adored and worshipped former lover, over whom the sun had once rose and set. She defined him now as her liar lover, the great pretender, the master betrayer who had gifted her with everything but his future.

  In the pocketbook that lay on the floor beside the barstool was a string of pearls in its velvet purse, one orb for every time they had made love, he told her. Times six, she had countered. It would have taken bushels of oysters piled as high as Jack’s beanstalk, he had quipped. There were actually sixty-three in the string, enough for twice around. She had had it appraised for north of a hundred thousand. It astounded her. She thought it was paste and enamel. The affair had lasted eleven months.

  At the table for six, spouses separated and placed by gender, Jock’s wife, the frigid clotheshorse, the selfish, status-obsessed, social hustling, mean-minded bitch, as he had characterized her again and again, played hostess with what seemed like great charm and animation. She was definitely not recognizable as the character in Jock’s repetitively embellished portrayal. But then he had needed to make her the heavy to embroider the fantasy and keep Helen going for the carrot.

  Throughout it all, she had been a true believer. The yarn he spun was so incredibly real, complete with tangible evidence of his zeal, the lavish gifts, the lease on the west side apartment and the promised divorce from the harridan. Poor man, she had once thought. So abused. So badly treated. So unloved.

  Then, after their eleven-month affair, he had made his retreat unscathed or so he thought. He had let her keep the pearls and the other jewelry he had given her, enough to carry the lease of her west side apartment for another year, and ready cash of twenty-five thousand that he had managed to find in his own piggy bank non-joint account that he kept for emergencies like this one. All in all, a good haul, he led her to believe.

  Her investment in his promise was yet another form of madness. She had given up her financial research job in the hedge firm in which Jock was a partner, taking a less lucrative independent contractor assignment for another firm so that she would be available to him on his secret schedule. They would see each other a few times a week in her apartment, mornings usually, or late afternoons.

  On occasional evenings they would have dinner in neighborhood restaurants off the beaten path of his regular life. Once he had let slip that Wednesday was Le Cirque night for entertaining clients.

  They were in love, head over heels, as they say. There was no denying her part in it. She hadn’t suspected that his commitment had been transient, believing hers to be permanent. It had all the elements; the overwhelming sexual frenzy, the deeply transparent conversational transparency, an avalanche of inner thoughts, secrets, feelings, the hidden fears and, inevitably, the promises of eternal fealty. She really, really believed that “this was it,” the girl’s romantic dream come true, the soul mate found.

  And the promises, the plans glibly spun, usually in post-coital intimacy. Of course, he would leave his wife. She was a frigid shrew, a gossipmonger, a superficial, empty-headed, one-dimensional fo
ol. She was spoiled rotten, threw temper tantrums, was an indifferent mother to his only child who spent most of her time in boarding school. He hated her. He could not stand any proximity to her flesh. They hadn’t made love for years. She was physically revolting, a slob, cruel, deceitful, mean-minded, grotesque, shallow, selfish. He needed to escape her and Helen was his designated escape hatch. She believed it implicitly. Not a doubt intruded.

  Grudgingly, she would later acknowledge the creativity of his spousal descriptions. She supposed he needed the vituperation to keep the fire going. Apparently, it turned him on. And her. She put extra effort in making the pain disappear. Seeing his wife for the first time during her initial revenge attempt was a shock. She looked quite lovely, beautiful, self-assured, even regal. Even in his physical description he was a liar. Worse, seeing them at the table, the manner in which they interacted seemed respectful, even loving.

  After he was divorced, he promised, they would live in Manhattan, become West Siders, first-class culture consumers, enjoy the opera, plays, concerts, lectures, live life to the fullest in the greatest city on earth. Together. Forever. He would wipe away his foolish past.

  What he told her, finally, with that sad frat boy expression of remorse, was that he couldn’t see her any more. That was after they had sex twice in her apartment one morning in the eleventh month of their affair made in heaven.

  She was stunned, unbelieving, searching his face for some sign of satire, a big joke.

  “It’s a long story,” he said.

  “A long story?” She could barely find words.

  “I’m trapped. She would crucify me financially, take away my kid. I’d be finished.” He rolled over on his side and looked at her face. “God, I love you.”

  “You promised…” Her heart was beating so fast she could barely breathe. “What am I?”

  “Somebody very special,” he whispered. “Somebody who brought joy into my life.”

  Inexplicably, he reached out and traced his finger from her nipple to the inner crease between her legs.

  “I don’t believe this,” she cried.

  “There are ways to say goodbye.”

  “A farewell fuck. How gross.”

  She had jumped out of bed, staggered by the revelation, the humiliation. She went into the bathroom and studied her blotched face in the mirror, her features scrunched into a silent cry. The tears rolled down her cheeks.

  “You’ve been screwed,” she bleated to her ugly image in the mirror, shaking her head in disbelief. Then she washed her face and came back in her robe. He was already dressed.

  “I don’t want to give you one moment of hardship or pain.”

  “You’re kidding,” she sneered. By then she had recovered and was determined to retrieve her dignity. “I won’t take this sitting down,” she whispered, watching as the blood drained out of his face.

  “What does that mean?” he asked, suddenly needing to clear his throat.

  “You figure it out.”

  “I wouldn’t do anything crazy,” he warned.

  “I would.”

  Ideas of vengeance filled her mind. She would confront the terrible wife, reveal the terrible truth, tell his partners how he had seduced her in on the firm’s premises, how their first fuck was on the desk in his office, how they had carried on together until she finally left the firm. She would bring charges.

  “Look, baby, I’m so sorry. I so much wanted this to work out.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “But wasn’t it great between us?”

  “All I was…” she fumed, “…was a mistress. I was never anything more. A damned mistress.”

  “You knew I was married,” he said, his cheekbones reddening. “You knew the score.”

  “I was a naïve fool,” she whispered. “You said things. You made promises, commitments.”

  “And wanted to keep them. Really,” he said.

  “Really?”

  “This is painful for me, Helen.”

  “Painful for you?”

  “Believe me. I wanted to find a way. She has me nailed. Maybe some day,” he sighed.

  “Some day?”

  She felt herself reduced to repetition, unable to find words.

  “Nothing is forever,” he said. “Not even life. Most people never have what we had.”

  “I believed you,” she said. It came out as a whine, a pitiful bleat. Anger had paralyzed her.

  “And I believed it was possible.”

  A wave of nausea seized her. She ran again to the bathroom and hunched over the toilet, producing dry heaves. Then he was knocking on the door, which she had locked.

  “Don’t do anything foolish, Helen,” she heard him say.

  “Go away,” she cried.

  “Open up, Helen, please,” he begged.

  “Go away, you shit.”

  There was a long silence. Finally he said, “Can you hear me through the door?”

  “Go fuck yourself,” she cried.

  “I’ve made arrangements,” he said, telling her about the lease, the check for twenty-five thousand. And the pearls. “The pearls alone…”

  It crossed her mind that they could be fakes like everything else.

  “Just don’t do anything foolish,” he said again.

  She put fingers in her ears, shutting him out.

  “Go away,” she screamed, falling on her knees, shoulders shaking with hysterical sobs, which she stilled with a fist. She did not want him to hear.

  After a long silence, she heard the door to the apartment close.

  For three weeks, she moped around the apartment, lying in bed, crying. What did he mean by something foolish? Suicide perhaps? Or what? It took her awhile to figure out the “or what.” Now that she was on to it, she felt about to be redeemed.

  One was supposed to learn lessons from such abortive adventures, from failure. She had misread all the signals, mistaken hope for reality. Every element of the affair became like digital chapters in her mind, played back and forth, again and again, mining for signs. Was it desperation? She had just turned thirty when she and Jock began. Was that some sort of dividing line, self-confidence turning into vulnerability, optimism becoming fear?

  Perhaps she was living in some time warp. Marriage was not the Holy Grail it was for her mother’s generation, except for gays and lesbians who wanted legal protection. She might have been quite content, over time, to live as a mistress. Hell, it wasn’t such a bad life. Longing and expectation could be exhilarating. Had she been too needy, too pushy? Yet she hadn’t pressed him.

  In her digital memory, he was the one who concocted their future. Like that Second Life website in which you could reinvent a parallel life. For her, the problem was that he had never told her that he was living this parallel life, never hinted at it. She had consorted with an invented character, an avatar.

  What was galling was that she was not an invented character, not by a long shot. She was real, flesh and blood, and Jock had slipped across the line to play his little game, then slipped back to his own reality. That was what it had boiled down to. Now it was her turn to confront his world, enter it and make him pay the price for the use of her flesh and emotions.

  She upended the second martini and felt the flattening effect on her inhibitions. She uncrossed her legs, looked toward his table, then turned to Larry. Not quite ready, she told herself.

  “Just a smidgeon more,” she told him, holding up a finger and thumb to designate the size. He made it quickly, about half the usual, which she downed in one gulp.

  She was fearless now, slightly unsteady, but certain she was in control. This was the moment she had rehearsed again and again in her mind. She took a deep breath, smiled coyly at Larry, then lifted her pocketbook from the floor and opening it on the bar, she removed the large soft pouch containing the pearls, sm
iled at Larry who was watching her, and holding the velvet purse, started toward the dining room.

  Jock turned his eyes from his table companions as she approached. She was holding the velvet purse by its neck. Then her head began to spin and she found she had lost control of her legs. She opened her mouth to speak, but could not get the words out.

  Whatever words she had rehearsed disappeared from memory and she staggered against a chair, falling. The velvet purse banged hard against the floor, opening at its neck, breaking the string. The pearls rolled out. She heard ticking sounds as the white orbs unraveled, rolling under tables, chairs, under feet.

  Strong hands lifted her to her feet. People seemed to saunter everywhere searching for the pearls. She heard astonished voices. Finally upright, she struggled with her handlers, forcing them to halt in front of Jock’s table. Through the glazed drunken haze, she saw his face, their eyes met, and she tried to say his name, but couldn’t get it out.

  She had carefully rehearsed her speech, garbled in her mind now.

  “You can keep…” she began, but nothing followed.

  “You know her, Jock?” she heard the harridan say.

  “I don’t think so,” she heard him say, just as she was hustled away. “Poor thing.”

  A cab had been called. Someone helped her into the cab and got in beside her.

  “Help her get home,” she heard the maître d’ say. “We’ll send her what we find.”

  After she had gone, a man at Jock’s table bent over, picked up a pearl, and held it to the light.

  “Probably a fake,” he said.

  “Probably,” Jock said.

  How Can I Possibly Make You Understand?

  “Guilt,” Anne’s husband said.

  “In a way,” Anne agreed. “But he has been our neighbor for how long?”

  “Ten years at least.”

  “We do share a landing.”

  What she meant was that there were two apartments on their floor, the twelfth on Madison and 75th. Such proximity did not mean that there was any requirement to be neighborly. In Manhattan apartments, people might live next door for a lifetime and never socialize, other than to offer a polite greeting or confer on the décor of their joint landing. The Sanborns had supplied a pleasant painting of a sea scene and the Bentons had contributed a copy of an antique table and a vase that was filled with flowers when a social occasion arose, like now for the Bentons’ dinner party.