“No, no. That’s alright. I was just leaving.” He regretted his impulse to snap off a shot and almost wished his finger hadn’t slipped. He apologized to Myrian, but she had turned away by then and resumed her work. “I’m going,” he said, though he took no more than a half step from the wall. “I only stopped by to say hello,” he placed the camera in its case, rezipped his blue parka, moved slightly toward the door, then all the way out.
Sad, sad, sad. (“What bullshit!” Martin Kulpepper thought to himself and very nearly howled in disgust.) After a year and still she insisted on playing this game. He drove back to work, and later that night stopped at Edelbee Camera where he purchased a half gallon of ChemSeal, six roles of new film, and a photo sponge. His plan was to unwind a bit, have a drink and something to eat, and then head out toward First Avenue, Mandinger Park, and the Mission to see what sort of mischief there was for him to shoot. (If nothing significant caught his eye, he’d drive back to the Embassy Club and ask if any of the girls wanted to spend an hour posing at the Red Sky Motel.) Coming up the stairs to his apartment, he was still thinking about Myrian, annoyed by her resistance that afternoon, yet convinced from how she acted when he was around—her composure faltering, her eyes darting deliriously back and forth, all her false display of rage a tease—that the idea of being with him excited her a good deal. He took encouragement from this, the promise of her eventually giving in and what would happen then between them, and despite how exhausted he was by the repetition of their little dance, he knew there were still ways to win her over, whether she appreciated his resourcefulness or not.
I slept soundly for the first time in weeks, and following a breakfast of eggs and toast, went back to Janus’s clinic where I remained until mid-evening. Dozens of patients arrived, each in their turn clamoring for help: mothers with sick children; boys and men with every sort of serious sore, wounds, and bumps and cuts; bouts of influenza and salmonella; girls complaining of discomfort in their bellies, with rashes and raw aches between their legs; others with varying degrees of injury, illness, and addiction, burns and bruises, dislocations and infections, one broken ankle, and a shattered nose.
By noon the waiting room began to overflow. I found a clipboard in the storage area and recorded names and assigned numbers to people, taking down symptoms and degrees of emergency which I reported back to Janus. I explored the storage area and brought up salves and wraps, medicines and ointments, crutches and splints, and whatever else was requested of me. Such work was arduous and once the last patient was seen, I returned to my apartment exhausted and well spent.
I woke again rested and restored, and after a warm shower and breakfast, went out and bought several of the day’s newspapers and magazines that I read—the business sections only—bringing myself up to speed on current deals, facts and figures, and market trends I knew so well before my collapse. I took copious notes, cross-referenced information, and made a list of sources to survey and double check. Late that afternoon, I went back to the clinic, and the following morning I bused across town to the main library where I reviewed the most recent analyses while printing out information from the Internet on three separate corporations.
On my way home I stopped at Circuit World and bought a computer and printer which I paid extra to have delivered and set up the next day. My holdings at the time consisted of $80,000 in cash, a five percent interest in two small software companies, and a three percent share in a fiber-optics firm Jack Gorne took public last year. Although my broker’s license was suspended and I was prohibited from handling any client’s accounts, I was not barred from trading in the market, and such resources, while a minor percentage of what I once had, afforded me sufficient funds to start rebuilding a financial base. I had the computer set up on my writing table, and for another $100 fee paid a technician to load up my machine, connect me to the Internet, and show me how to open an account with Marketrac as a day trader. By noon, I’d put $10,000 into my Marketrac account and began trading on-line.
In a vacuum then, inside my tiny room, I purchased 300 shares of the textbook publisher Harcourt General, operating on a series of educated hunches strung together from my research. (I’d reason to believe Richard Smith, chairman of Harcourt whose family controlled seventy-eight percent of the company through Class B shares, was about to put the business up for sale despite its wave of recent growth.) My investment beat Smith’s announcement by two days. The value of Harcourt stock soared thirty and one-half percent to over $54 a share.
I bought Oracle Corporation stock, and Nabisco—the target of takeover suitors—as well as Lycos, Inc.—one of the nation’s biggest Internet portals—just before it was purchased by Telefonica of Spain, and Unilever Co., before it was bought by George Weston Inc., and rode the tide to a series of impressive gains. I acquired Apache Corporation as it prepared to buy up the gas production assets of Collins & Ware, and blocks of Kodak—the company’s decision to escalate its stock repurchase program led values to rise more than nine percent—as well as TiVo Inc., a week before it announced its venture deal with AOL. Nortel Networks, Epicon, and ADC Tele-Communications stocks all earned a profit, and delighted by my initial success, I phoned my attorney in order to discuss the next stage of my plan.
Myrian applauded my new enterprise. Although I’d yet to tell her exactly what I was doing—“A few investments to pay the rent,” I said whenever she asked—she was happy for me just the same. (Two weeks into my project, she chimed, “You look like a new man, Walter Brimm!”) She was working then on her new canvas and we developed a routine of spending part of our day together. Instead of a single composition, Myrian now envisioned a series of eight—each five by six feet—with the position of the male figure altered slightly from one canvas to the next; his slumping form with its distinct mix of promise and gloom, at once writhing and turning in order to reach for the woman, gaining on her by degrees. She set up her easel in the center of my apartment, and arranging her paints, her palette, and brushes, took up her art. I offered to pay for the eight blank canvases she needed to complete her vision but she was hesitant. “Why would I let you do that?”
“As a friend.”
“It isn’t necessary.”
“All the same,” I persisted until she agreed in part. “Two canvases.”
“And some brushes and paints.”
“We’ll see.”
Our fraternity delighted me. My affection—faultless—was altogether platonic (though I envied Janus) and enabled me to discover in the clarity of my emotions a depth of unconditional joy and innocence otherwise reserved for Rea. (My daughter’s presence was missed with the acuteness of flesh torn from bone.) However much I still suffered moments of dark regret, when Gee and Rea were all I could think of and the rest of the world vanished into a hoary abyss, I was encouraged by my progress, the hours of unflappability which came more frequently now and prompted me that March to confide my intentions.
Myrian had just finished a long stretch in front of her canvas in which I noticed her adding only a slight shadow to the image of the man, yet somehow the shading brought the figure to life. I waited until she went to the window—it was still morning and the sun glowed soft across her face—and asked if she was working that night and would she be walking with me to the clinic. (As part of my routine, I went each evening to assist Janus in whatever way I could.) “I’m scheduled for five,” she said.
“Five it is.”
Myrian smiled. I shifted around in my chair, and—without further preamble—told her how I recently transferred fifty percent of my interest in both Beletone Fiberoptics and Miveral Software, along with all the stock and profits made while trading on-line, plus an additional $30,000 cash into a Charitable Trust created in the name of the clinic. I explained how the papers were drafted, detailed the current status of the stocks and bonds, what cash was ready to be drawn upon, and how exactly a Charitable Trust operated, until Myrian interrupted, disbelieving, and asked, “What are you saying?”
“But?”
“I realize money’s a crude way to express my appreciation for all the kindness you and Janus have shown me. I also know the clinic’s current financial situation is weak and certain creditors are again beating a path to the door. Under the circumstances, this ’is the best I could come up with.”
Myrian looked at me, stunned, and bringing her hands to her mouth, stood for several seconds without moving. When finally she said my name, her voice was elated. “Walter!” (Walter Brimm!) and reaching for me, she exclaimed, “So this is what you’ve been up to! Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I’m telling you now.”
“But you’ve been working for weeks! And you haven’t told Janus?”
“Not yet. I wanted to keep things a secret until all the pieces were in place.”
“It’s too much money. It’s all you have.”
“It isn’t, really. I’ve quite enough otherwise.”
“But you shouldn’t. You can’t.”
“Why not? What else am I to do with myself?”
We laughed together then, and in my happiness I accepted a kiss. Myrian insisted I tell Janus, “This minute!” and pulled me from my chair. Two patients were remaining from the morning rush as we entered the clinic: a large woman in an ill-fitted jumpsuit, a plaster cast covering her left forearm, and an older man suffering from serious bouts of angina; the beat of his heart wheezy and weathered by age, convulsing in painful spasms which Janus treated with distilled doses of Quinaglute. We waited back in the storage area until he was through. The room was cramped, with wooden shelves and a series of dark grey file cabinets. A bare light in the center of the ceiling shined down on the old desk Janus used to record his patients’ notes. (During my first few nightly visits to the clinic, I organized the room by putting labels on the shelves, cross-filing patient records in chronological and alphabetical sequence, preparing an inventory of the supplies, and making a list of items ready to be reordered.) Janus came down the hall, concerned something was wrong—for what else could have drawn Myrian away from her paints?—and asked, “What’s the matter?”
“Nothing,” she grabbed hold of his arm.
I stood by the first shelf and removed the clipboard from its hook, reading the list from the night before. “You’re low on Zithromax, hydrocortisone, and hydrochlorothiazide. You could also use more gauze, silicone dioxide, and Neosporin.”
Janus went and leaned against his desk. “I’ll see what I can do.”
“If it’s a matter of money,” I couldn’t resist, excited now about delivering my news.
Janus waved me off. “Medway’s waiting on a check to clear.”
“Perhaps I could help.”
“It’s alright. Someone’s always waiting.”
“You should let Walter finish,” Myrian sat beside Janus on the desk. He turned and looked at her for a moment, then stared back at me.
I described again the whole of my plan, explained the details of the Trust, how the money would be used, and the way I’d oversee the statutory requirements and day-to-day maintenance of the funds. “From now on you only have to worry about running the clinic. The financial end will be taken care of.”
Janus shifted his good eye against the light and continued to stare at me, obviously surprised by my offer. He took several seconds to weigh his response, and instead of gratitude, asked, “Why do you want to give the clinic all this money?”
“Because I respect what you’re doing. Because you need the capital and making cash is the only thing I do well. Because it would please me a great deal if you’d accept. Someone should have done this for you a long time ago,” I stopped then and offered no further explanation, tried not to think of Gee and what I hoped she would say when she learned of my philanthropy; how delighted she’d be to know I’d at last recovered my health, and eager then to invite me back home—oh yes!—she’d rejoice in the proof of my becoming a truly repentant and altogether enlightened fellow. “That’s all,” I said. “That’s the only reason.”
Janus looked around the room, at the narrowness of the space and the half-empty shelves. He folded his arms across his chest, his bad hand set atop his right wrist—the fingers bent at permanent curves, two of the knuckles crushed flat, the tips of the middle three digits drawn in as if ready to pierce the center of his palm—and staring at me, said, “It’s too much.”
“It isn’t, really. You accept donations from public and private sources all the time.”
“Nickels and dimes.”
“Money nonetheless.”
“This is different.”
“In what way?”
“In every way,” Janus referred then to the current principal of the Trust as an absurdly excessive sum.
“But it’s already done,” I made clear. “All you have to do is accept.”
“And why are you doing this?”
“He already told you,” Myrian came around to the front of the desk. “He wants to help. Isn’t that a good enough reason? Isn’t it possible someone else might want to offer up a bit of charity without expecting anything in return? If Walter wants to do this, and the clinic needs the money, who cares about anything else?”
The question proved a knotty point, exactly the sort of challenge Janus faced when people first attacked his decision to open the clinic. (“Why are you doing this?” They ignored his answers, convinced there had to be some underlying ambition weighted with personal gain.) Such a large sum of money was, of course, hard to turn down, and it was possible to argue he had no right to reject Walter’s charity as the bequest belonged to the clinic and wasn’t his to refuse. Still—the irony of his suspicion notwithstanding—there was the question of reciprocal obligations, his duty to make certain Walter’s incentive wasn’t ground in ulterior motives, for if Janus accepted the funds while Walter was thinking in terms of redemption and winning back his wife, what responsibility was he under then to take Walter aside and tell him the truth? He folded his arms tighter across his chest, paused a moment, then answered, “I don’t know.”
PART III
“My only fear is that I will not be worthy of my sufferings.”
FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY
CHAPTER 19
“So, what do you think?”
“About the house?”
“Yes.”
“Do you want to sell?”
“I do.”
“Then I think you should.”
“What about your place?”
“I still want to keep it and rent it out. I’ve looked into transferring the title to the Review and writing off the costs.”
“Can you?”
“I hope so, once we move.”
“We don’t need a big place.”
“No, we don’t.”
“Just enough for the three of us.”
“It’s true.”
Gee came around and got into bed as Tod slipped off his jeans and set them across the arm of the chair. The room was cool as they closed off the vent and liked to sleep wrapped together warm beneath the heavy beige comforter. Standing there, with his feet arched against the hardwood, bare-legged and unbuttoning his shirt, Tod stared at Geni under the covers. Being with her now, steadily so these last few months, still caught him by surprise at times; their affair both complicated and remarkable, promoting specific confusions as to whether their relationship was a plot hatched long ago or came about only after Walter’s collapse. (“What can I possibly say when, after everything, here I am just as Walter predicted?”) He looked at the empty space beside Gee on the bed and tried to imagine how often Walter stood in the same spot and stared down with equal wonder.
Leaving the bedroom, he walked across the hall to check on Rea. The gesture appealed to him, was something he enjoyed in the nights he slept over. The faint light from the hall entered the room, the soft sound of Rea’s breathing as he stepped closer to the bed and brought the edge of her blue blanket up over her shoulder. On the dresser
was a photograph of Walter. Unlike the master bedroom, in which Gee had shed every last physical reminder, there was something appropriate Tod believed in Rea having a photo of her father. He stood for a moment and tried to remember the last time he looked at a picture of his own father, Alfie Marcum, all querulous and thick-browed, with fat hands, a bulldog’s face, and a drinker’s unsteady distemper. Despite his homely mask, Alfie always seemed to have a girlfriend on the side, married women mostly, taken from the pool of coworkers in the many odd jobs he had over the years.
Tod closed Rea’s door and walked back up the hall where he tried to forget about his father, but the memory of Alfie’s infidelities and how his running around put Tod’s mother in an early grave, led to a correlative recollection of the night Walter broke down and collapsed on the floor of the Imperial Hotel. Such a blurring of the two caused Tod to try and draw a distinction between his father’s indiscretions and the consequence of his own affair with Gee, but somehow the difference was hard for him to define just then, and frustrated, he slipped into bed.
Propped up on three pillows, Gee lay reading a copy of Lyn Mikel Brown’s Raising Their Voices, and as Tod got in beside her, she asked about Rea. (“Sound asleep?” “Deeply, yes.”) She closed her book and turning toward him then, said, “Maybe it’s too soon.”
“What?”
“This weekend.”
“She needs to see her father.”
“At some point.”
“It’s been almost four months.”
Gee sighed. No matter how committed she was to finalizing their divorce, the idea of seeing Walter again unnerved her. “Best case scenario, he comes and goes and we’re cordial. And worst case,” but she stopped, and forced herself to admit, “Rea is looking forward to seeing him.” In the time since Walter’s collapse she’d spoken honestly to Rea about what happened, had told her as much as she needed to know, was respectful of Walter’s position as her father, but made perfectly clear that no, Daddy would not be moving back home. Last week, as they discussed the prospect of selling the house and buying a new place with Tod, Rea seemed receptive, though certain questions came up. “Do you promise to tell Daddy where we move?” she was concerned. “Will you let him know where I live?”
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