Like most guys with genetically superior shoulders, Wade was an asshole, an alpha male who asserted his presence physically, through viselike handshakes and powerful backslaps, the kind of guy who needed to win at everything. His tone now was carefully apologetic, conciliatory even, but still, his expression radiated the smug satisfaction of having asserted his sexual dominance. I fucked your woman, his eyes said. Better than you ever could.
“Are you going to keep fucking her?” I said.
“What?”
“Are you going to keep fucking my wife?”
Wade looked over to Stuart Kaplan, who sat unobtrusively behind us on the couch. Stuart was the station manager and default head of human resources. It was something of a workplace irony that they couldn’t seem to hire the right person to run H.R., and after the last woman quit, Stuart had simply absorbed the department. Wade made fun of him ceaselessly on the air, called him Stuart the Suit. They had clearly met in anticipation of this meeting, to discuss the hairy legal ramifications of the marquee radio host sleeping with the wife of one of his staff. And now Stuart was sitting in to serve as a witness that I wasn’t being dismissed or subtly urged to resign in any way.
“Listen,” Stuart interjected. “I don’t think that’s a constructive approach to take here—”
“You said you feel terrible about it,” I said, staring at the small patch of stubble between Wade’s eyes where he shaved his unibrow. “So, that being the case, do you think you’re going to stop? I think it’s a fair question, and not at all irrelevant to this discussion.”
“I think we should confine this talk to our professional relationship.”
“So you’re going to keep fucking her.”
Wade looked to Stuart for some help.
“I know this is hard,” Stuart said.
“How do you know that, Stuart the Suit? Did he fuck your wife too?” Stuart was sixty years old, had a closet full of identical pin-striped suits and a rattling chest full of phlegm from years of chain-smoking. His moods swung to whatever extent they did on the basis of his increasingly erratic bowel function. If he even had a wife, the odds of Wade or even Stuart himself wanting to sleep with her were probably quite low.
“Judd,” Stuart said resignedly, which was how he said pretty much everything.
“Stuart,” I said.
He slid a document in front of me. It was a contract, acknowledging a significant raise, provided that I would indemnify Man Up with Wade Boulanger and WIRX from any future legal proceedings.
“How are your testicles, Wade?”
“They’re fine.”
I hoped they were blistered and peeling, or at least caked in A&D Ointment and sticking uncomfortably to his underwear.
“Listen, Judd,” Wade said, returning to his prepared script. “You’re a fantastic producer. You’re integral to the show. Regardless of how things shake out personally, we don’t want to lose you.”
I was being offered a consolation prize. Numbers had been crunched, risks assessed, and they had estimated the value of my broken marriage at another thirty thousand dollars a year before taxes. My life had just become inordinately expensive. I was going to have to pay alimony and keep up the mortgage on the house while renting my own apartment. Even with this raise, things would be tight, but it would certainly help. The only smart choice was to accept the offer and soldier on while I looked for another opportunity. The idea of working for Wade sickened me, but this was not a time to be unemployed on top of everything else.
I looked up at Wade, at his furrowed brow, his pursed lips, those goddamn shoulders. He met my gaze as he exhaled, long and slow. And then he said, “I love her, Judd.”
“Wade!” Stuart shouted, making us both jump.
I jumped to my feet. “Fuck you.”
“Judd,” Stuart said.
“Stuart!” I shouted back, startling all three of us. And then I tore up the document. And then I grabbed my chair and hurled it across the desk at Wade, who jumped up and fell back in his own chair, knocking over magazines, souvenir beer mugs from sponsors, and the glass rectangle filled with neon blue liquid that, when turned on, created the soothing impression of waves. “You’ll be hearing from my lawyers,” I said, even though I didn’t have a single lawyer, let alone lawyers, even though I had no idea where to get a lawyer or what kind of lawyer you needed when your boss climbed into bed with your wife. The good ones were probably not listed in the Yellow Pages. But I had just torn up a contract and hurled a chair across the room, and that sort of violence required punctuation with a coherent statement of some kind, and “You’ll be hearing from my lawyers” is what came to mind.
I stepped out of Wade’s office, into the large common area. Assistants and interns sat frozen at their desks, staring; ad sales executives hovered in cubicles, awakened from their corporate stupor by the commotion. I saw the truth in their averted gazes. They all knew. Everybody knew. Under their scrutiny, my rage dissolved almost instantly, replaced with the hot shame of public emasculation. My wife had slept with another man, so what did that make me? A limp, flaccid, inadequate lover, possibly a premature ejaculator, or maybe even gay. The array of possibilities was breathtaking.
“His balls caught fire,” I announced in the quivering voice of a very small man. Then I walked down the corridor to the elevators as slowly and proudly as possible, which wasn’t terribly slow or proud, when you got right down to it.
Chapter 15
7:00 p.m.
The house is filled again, thirty or forty visitors, sitting in the plastic chairs, crammed around the buffet in the dining room, spilling over into the front hall and kitchen. The smell of perfume and instant coffee fills the air. Random fragments of conversation fly back and forth across the room like shuttlecocks. Our shiva is quite the scene for the over-sixty set. Outside on the cul-de-sac, two men back out of opposing parking spots and lightly crash into each other. A small crowd gathers outside and everyone looks out the window as hands are wrung and fingers pointed, and a short while later the red swirl of police lights dances across the living room walls as reports are filed. And the visitors keep coming, old friends and distant relatives, the new seamlessly replacing the old, walking in somber and unsure, walking out satisfied and well fed. By now, we see them not as individuals, but as a single coffee-swilling, bagel-chomping, tearfully smiling mass of well-wishers and rubberneckers. We can all nod and smile and carry on our end of the conversation in an endless loop while our minds float somewhere outside our bodies. We are thinking about our kids, our lack of kids, about finances and fiancées and soon-to-be ex-wives, about the sex we’re not having, the sex our soon-to-be ex-wives are having, about loneliness and love and death and Dad, and this constant crowd is like a fog on a dark road; you just keep driving and watch it dissipate in your low beams.
The energy changes a little when some girls show up to visit Phillip. There are three of them, in their early twenties, and they breeze into the room in a whirling miasma of bronzed legs and bouncing asses, trailing sexuality like fairy dust as they make their way to Phillip’s chair. They instantly become the center of attention, and while other conversations are still going on, these girls, as they flex their smooth calves to go up on the tips of their high espadrilles to kiss Phillip’s cheek, seem to be followed by their own spotlight. After the kisses, the hugs, the dramatic expressions of condolence punctuated by the flipping of hair and batting of lashes, three empty chairs magically materialize in front of Phillip’s shiva chair, and the girls sit down. They are accustomed to seats appearing for them wherever they go; they assume it’s probably like that for everyone. I recognize these girls, old high school friends of Phillip’s, all of whom he slept with repeatedly, two of whom, it was rumored, he slept with together on more than one occasion.
“Oh my God, Phillip,” Chelsea says. She is a long-legged redhead in a skirt that would be appropriate for tennis. She and Phillip were on and off for years. “I haven’t seen you since that boat party, y
ou remember? That Russian kid with the yacht? Oh my God, we got so messed up that night.”
“I remember,” Phillip says.
“I’m so sorry about your father,” Janelle says. She has a pretty face underneath her spray-on tan and is slightly chunky, but in that way men like.
“Thank you.”
“He was such a nice man,” Kelly says. Kelly has a platinum pixie cut and a come-hither smile, and you can just picture her drinking too much and dancing on the pool table in the frat house.
“So, Philly,” Chelsea says. “What have you been up to?”
“I’ve been doing A&R work for a record label.”
“That’s so cool!”
“It’s a small, independent label, a boutique,” Phillip says modestly. “Nothing too exciting. You guys remember my brother Judd?”
They turn to me as one and say hi. I say hi back and try to decide which one I would most want to sleep with. The answer is, all of them. Line them up and I’ll knock them down. They are pretty and sexy and friendly and easy and exactly the kind of girls I never had a chance with back in the day. But now . . . now I’m divorced and damaged, and aren’t these the kind of girls who like damaged men?
“So what have you all been up to?” Phillip says, and what follows is ten minutes of giggles and banter, repeatedly tossed hair, and some really bad grammar. They laugh at pretty much everything Phillip says, and Chelsea, in particular, seems to hang on his every word, her chair gradually inching closer until her ankles rest easily against his. And then Tracy comes back, having spent the afternoon out of the house after her argument with Phillip. I watch her enter the room, see her register these hot young things surrounding her man as she makes her way through the chairs to Phillip’s side. “Hey, babe,” she says, smiling first at him and then at the girls. I have never heard her say “babe,” and it rolls clumsily off her tongue like a hasty lie. “How’s it going?”
“Great,” he says. “These are some old friends of mine from high school.”
“And college,” Chelsea reminds him with a smile.
“That’s right. Chelsea and I were also in college together.”
“I love the name Chelsea,” Tracy says.
“Thanks.”
“This is Tracy,” Phillip says. He doesn’t say “my fiancée,” or any other designation, and the omission lands with a resounding thud in our midst. But Tracy clings admirably to her gracious smile, and for the first time since I’ve met her, I feel bad for her. She’s a smart woman, and on some level, she has to know that this thing with Phillip will never work. Still, she leans forward to graciously shake hands and repeat each girl’s name as she’s introduced, like she’s at a business meeting. The girls flash their whitened teeth and extend their hands, their French-manicured nails catching the light and slicing the air like razor blades.
8:15 p.m.
“LONG DAY, HUH?” Linda says to me. She’s sitting on a stool at the center island in the kitchen, peering down through her bifocals at the Times crossword puzzle.
“I thought I might go pick up Horry again.”
“I thought you might, too,” she says, sliding her car keys across the marble countertop. “You’re blocked in again.”
“Thanks.”
She takes off her reading glasses. “How does he seem to you?”
“Horry? I don’t know. Fine I guess.”
“He does not seem fine, Judd. Don’t be diplomatic with me.”
I nod and think about it. “He seems angry, maybe. Frustrated.”
“He hates me.”
“I’m sure he doesn’t hate you. But he’s a thirty-six-year-old man living with his mother. That can’t be healthy.”
“He’s not healthy.”
“He seems fine.”
“He has seizures. He wets his bed. He forgets things, important things, like locking the door or turning off the oven or putting out his cigarette before he falls asleep, or, once in a while, putting on his pants before he goes out. Sometimes he goes into these trances where he just stands there staring at the wall. I can’t bear the thought of him living alone and staring at the walls for hours on end, with no one there to snap him out of it.”
“On the other hand, he might need some independence.”
“What he needs is to get laid,” Linda says sharply. “That boy always had a girlfriend, remember? I lived in fear that he’d call me from college to tell me he’d knocked up some twit.” She leans forward and lowers her voice. “It’s never easy for him, seeing Wendy like this.”
“I hadn’t thought of that.”
“You think you’re lonely now, Judd, but you’ve got nothing on that boy.”
“No. I guess I don’t.”
“Which reminds me, you should go into the store when you pick him up and say hello to that Penelope Moore.”
I stare at her, nonplussed. “You’re just full of surprises, aren’t you?”
She puts her glasses on and turns back to her puzzle, a small smile playing across her lips. “You have no idea,” she says.
Chapter 16
8:42 p.m.
There was always something of a little girl about Penny Moore, with her pale skin and wide eyes, and that hasn’t changed in the years since I last saw her. When she sees me, her face lights up, and she leaps athletically over the counter to hug me. She’s dressed in jeans and a button-down oxford, her long dark hair tied loosely behind her head. From twenty feet away, she could pass for a college student. Only as she draws closer do you see the slightly looser flesh beneath her eyes, the soft commas at the corners of her mouth.
“Hey, Judd Foxman.” She feels thin in my arms, less substantial than I remember.
“Hi, Penny.”
She kisses my cheek and then steps back so we can look at each other. “I’m so sorry about Mort,” she says.
“Thanks.”
“I saw you at the funeral.”
“Really? I didn’t see you.”
“I avoided you. I never know what to say at funerals.”
“Fair enough.”
Penny’s honesty has always been like nudity in an action movie: gratuitous, but no less welcome for it.
“So, how long has it been?” she says. “Seven, eight years?”
“Something like that.”
She gives me the once-over. “You look like hell.”
“Thanks. You look great.”
“Don’t I, though?” she says, smiling.
What I’m thinking is that she looks fine, pretty even, but nothing like the ripe prom queen she was back in high school. I wanted her so badly then; everybody did. But she was out of my league so I settled for becoming her best friend, a form of masochism unique to underconfident teenage boys, our time together spent with her telling me about all the assholes she chose to have sex with instead of me. Time and troubles have sharpened her softer edges, and now her face is a knife, her breasts like two clenched fists under her tight blouse. She’s a sexy street-fight of a woman, and I have been alone and untouched for a while now, and just watching her lips slide against her teeth as she smiles is enough to get me going.
“So, I heard about your wife,” she says. “Or lack thereof.”
“Good news travels fast.”
“Well, your brother is my boss.”
“And how’s that working out for you?”
She shrugs. “He flirts a little, but he keeps his hands to himself.”
Penny’s plan was to get married and move to Connecticut when she grew up, have four kids and a golden retriever, and write children’s books for a living. Now she’s thirty-five, still living in Elmsbrook, and considers the fact that she doesn’t get groped in the workplace a perk worth mentioning.
“You’re feeling sorry for me,” Penny says.
“No.”
“You never were any good at covering up.”
“I’m feeling much too sorry for me these days to worry about anyone else.”
“Your wife left you, Judd. It happen
s every day.”
“Jesus, Penny.”
“I’m sorry. That was harsh, and totally uncalled for.”
“And what’s your story?”
She shrugs. “I don’t have one. No great traumatic event to blame my small life on. No catastrophes, no divorce. Plenty of bad men, but plenty of good ones too, that simply didn’t want me in the end. I tried to make something of myself and I failed. That happens every day too.”
“Horry says you’re still skating.”
She nods. “I teach over at Kelton’s.”
“I used to love watching you skate.”
“Yes, you did. Do you remember our pact?”
“I do.”
We look at each other and then away. An awkward silence descends between us, which Penny fills by saying, “Awkward silence.”
“Yeah.”
“So, you’re sitting shiva.”
“Yes.”
“I’ll have to make it over there one of these days.”
“You’ve got five left.”
“You’re really doing all seven days? That’s hard-core.”
“Tell me about it.”
“Well, I still skate every morning at eleven, if you want to come by.”
“They’re open that early?”
This Is Where I Leave You: A Novel Page 10