Derailed

by Siegel, James

  “It’s okay,” I said. “Forget it.”

  “Take it,” she said as if she were trying to pay for the Milk Duds and soda and I was insisting on being old-fashioned about it and covering the entire date.

  “No. I’ll take care of it.”

  “Here,” she said, and forced ten hundred-dollar bills into my hand. After a brief tug-of-war, I gave up. I put the money into my pocket.

  Then she said: “Do you think it’s going to stop here?”

  Which was the real question, of course. Would it stop here, or would it not?

  “I don’t know, Lucinda.”

  She nodded and sighed. “What if it doesn't? What if he asks for more money? Then what?”

  “Then I still don’t know." Then we’re doomed, Lucinda.

  “How did it happen, Charles?” she said, so softly that at first I wasn’t sure I’d heard her.

  “What?”

  “How did it happen? How? Sometimes I think I dreamed it. It seems impossible, doesn’t it? That it actually happened to us? Us? Sometimes . . .”

  She dabbed at her eyes—they’d turned liquid, and I thought how her eyes were the second thing I’d noticed that morning on the train. First her thighs, maybe, then her eyes. I’d seen a tenderness in them, and I’d said: Yes, I could use that. I need that now.

  “Maybe that’s the way you should think of it,” I said. “A bad dream.”

  “But it wasn’t. So that’s stupid.”

  “Yes. That’s stupid.”

  “If he found out, it would kill him,” she said.

  Her husband — she was talking about her husband again.

  “If he found out, he’d kill me. ”

  “He won’t find out.” We were in this together, I was assuring her. We may have cheated on our spouses, but we wouldn’t on each other.

  “What did you say to your wife?” she asked me. “About your nose?”

  “I fell.”

  “Yes,” she said, as if that were what she’d have thought of, too.

  “Look, I wanted to tell you . . .” Tell her what, exactly? That I’d failed her, I suppose, that I’d failed her, but I wouldn’t fail her again.

  “Yes?”

  “I should’ve . . . you know, stopped him.”

  “Yes.”

  “I tried. Not hard enough.”

  “He had a gun,” she said.

  Yes, he had a gun. He had a gun he sometimes pointed at me and sometimes didn’t. While he was raping her — he didn’t. The gun was there on the floor, three feet from me, maybe, that’s all.

  “Forget about it,” she said. But I could tell she didn’t mean it—that she did think I should’ve tried harder, that I should’ve saved her. And I remembered how I’d defended her in the bar that night and how she’d kissed me afterward for it. Bar bullies are one thing, of course, and armed rapists are another.

  “I don’t think we should talk to each other again, Charles,” she said. “Good-bye.”

  “Happy so far?” David Frankel was asking me.

  “What?”

  “Happy so far? With the commercial?”

  We were finally shooting the aspirin commercial. Stage ten at Silvercup Studios in Astoria.

  “Yes. It’s fine.”

  “Yeah. Corinth’s an old pro.”

  Well, he was old, I felt like saying. Robert Corinth was the director of the aspirin commercial. He was short and balding, with a silly-looking ponytail beneath a half-moon of sun-burnished skin. The ponytail said: I may be succumbing to the indignities of aging, but I am still cool, I am still with it. We were on take twenty-two.

  “Who’s doing the music for the spot?” I asked him.

  “Music?”

  “Yes, the track. Who’s doing it?”

  “T and D Music House.”

  “I never heard of them.”

  “Oh, yeah. They’re good.”

  “Okay.”

  “They do all the tracks for my stuff.”

  “Okay. Fine.”

  “You’ll like them. They always give us a good price.”

  I was going to ask him why he was smiling at me like that. But I was interrupted by Mary Widger whispering in my ear.

  “Charles,” she whispered, “can I have a word with you?”

  “Sure.”

  “Mr. Duben thinks the aspirin bottle should be higher.”

  “Higher?” Mr. Duben was my new client. He’d greeted me by saying, So you’re the new blood.

  Yes. Type O, I'd answered him, and he’d laughed and said, Great, that’s just what we need.

  “Higher. In the frame.”

  “Sure. Can you tell Robert to put the bottle higher in the frame, David?”

  “No problem,” David said. “I live for stuff like that.”

  Later in the afternoon, somewhere between takes forty-eight and forty-nine, Tom Mooney cornered me by the craft service table.

  “Hey, buddy,” he said.

  Tom wasn’t my buddy. He was the rep for Headquarters Productions, and his modus operandi was to make himself annoying enough to cause clients to give him work in an effort to make him go away. He’d been fairly successful at it, too.

  “How are you, Tom?”

  “Me, I’m fine. The question is how are you?” He was looking at my face.

  “I fell,” I said. For the hundredth time.

  “I meant workwise.”

  Tom knew exactly how I was, workwise. He knew, for instance, that up till just a few weeks ago, I’d been in charge of a showcase credit card account but now was solely in charge of this aspirin account. He knew this because advertising was a small community, and as in most small communities, news traveled fast, and bad news faster.

  “Great,” I answered him.

  He asked me if I’d gotten his Christmas card.

  “No.”

  “I sent you a card.”

  “I didn’t get it.”

  “No?”

  “No.”

  “Well, Merry Christmas. Christmas gift to follow,” he said.

  “No gifts necessary, Tom.”

  “Don’t be silly. Uncle Tommy never forgets a client.”

  “If it’s a Headquarters hat — I’ve got one,” I said.

  “Who’s talking hats?” Tom said. “Did I say anything about hats?”

  “I’ve got a Headquarters T-shirt, too.”

  “Hey, you’re a Headquarters client now.”

  “Yes, that’s me.”

  “So think of me as Santa Claus.”

  “That’s funny. You don’t look like Santa Claus.” With his slicked-back hair and hyperkinetic mannerisms, Tom resembled Pat Riley on amphetamines.

  “How do you know? Did you ever see Santa Claus?”

  When Anna was small, five and a half, maybe, she’d asked me how Santa shopped at Toys R Us if he lived in the North Pole. I’d inadvertently left the store sticker on a My Little Pony.

  “Nice to meet you, Santa.”

  “And what does little Charley want for Christmas?”

  If Tom had all day, I could’ve told him.

  “Nothing, Tom. I’m fine.”

  “Hey, you’re shooting with me, right?”

  “Right.”

  “You’re working with Frankel, right?”

  “Frankel? Yes, sure.”

  “Okay. Ask him what he gets for Christmas.”

  What did that mean?

  “All I want for Christmas is a good spot, Tom.”

  “Then why’d you use us? ” he said.

  But when I didn’t laugh, he said: “Just kidding.”

  That night, Vasquez called my house and told me to meet him in Alphabet City at the corner of 8th Street and Avenue C.

  FIFTEEN

  They called it Alphabet City because it stretched from Avenue A to D in lower Manhattan. It used to be the stomping ground for Hispanic gangs, till it was invaded by an artsy crowd and became both dangerous and hip. Bodegas and galleries coexisted side by side, serving empana
das and op art.

  I hadn’t been down here since I was in my early twenties. I vaguely remembered a cab ride to no particular destination that had ended here — seven of us stuffed in one cab looking for a good time. I couldn’t remember how the night ended.

  Today I wasn’t looking for a good time.

  I was looking for Vasquez.

  Deanna had picked up the phone when he called. How are you, Mrs. Schine? he’d said to her. She’d looked just a little puzzled when she’d handed it over to me.

  Business call, I'd told her later.

  Vasquez had asked me if I had the money: yes. He’d asked me if I was still being a good boy (translation — no police): yes. He’d told me to meet him here in Alphabet City.

  When Deanna left the room, I told him it was ten thousand and no more, did he understand? This was it.

  Vasquez said sure thing, bro.

  The corner of Avenue C and 8th at eleven in the morning was an accurate reflection of the neighborhood. Five Latino kids were killing time on the hood of a high-rider while a street artist was putting up a sign offering henna tattoos. No Vasquez yet.

  A black man bumped into me.

  “Why the fuck you don’t look where you going?” he said.

  I hadn’t been going anywhere, of course; I’d been pretty much just standing there. “Sorry,” I said anyway.

  “Sorry, huh?” The man was bigger than me, approximately the size of a typical SUV.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “What if sorry ain’t good enough?”

  “Look, I didn’t see you. . . .”

  The man laughed.

  “That’s okay,” he said. “That’s fine. Charles, huh?”

  He knew my name — the man who’d accused me of not looking where I was going knew my name.

  “Charles,” he said again. “Right?”

  “Who are you?”

  “Didn’t I just ask you a question? You Charles or not Charles?”

  “Yes, I’m Charles.”

  “They call you Chuck? If you were my crimey, that’s what we’d call you.”

  “No.”Chuck, Chuck, bo buck, banana fana fo fuck . . . A song other kids in the neighborhood used to have a lot of fun with when I was eight. “Where’s Vasquez?” I asked him.

  “I’m gonna bring you to him. What the fuck you think I’m here for?”

  I didn’t want to be brought to him.

  “Why don’t I give you the money and — ”

  “You ain’t givin’ me nothin’, understand? We’re gonna take a little walk.”

  “How far?”

  “How far?" imitating me. “Just up the street.”

  He started walking, looking back to make sure I was following him, and I remembered how I used to do the same thing when Anna was small, walking with her but not with her, making sure she wouldn’t wander off in a dangerous direction. Only I was already going in a dangerous direction.

  When we passed an alley between two renovated tenements, the man stopped and waited for me, then began steering me into the narrow passageway. I tried to stand my ground, until the man’s grip threatened to crush my arm and I gave up.

  He threw me up against the wall. This is what happens in alleys, isn’t it, I thought: beatings and stabbings and robberies. Sometimes in hotel rooms, but mostly in alleys. I waited for the inevitable, which was going to be swift and brutal and complete.

  Only the beating never came.

  “Let’s see here,” the man said. And he groped me instead, running his hands up and down my legs, chest, and back. He was patting me down.

  “No fuckin’ wire on you, Charles, that’s good. . . .”

  “I told him I didn’t go to the police.”

  “Yeah. And he believes you.”

  “Look, I really need to get back,” I said, hearing the panic in my own voice and trying to inch away from the wall.

  “Come on,” he said, “just over here. . . .”

  I’d gone just over here when I first sat down next to Lucinda, and then just over a little more when I took her to the Fairfax Hotel, and now I was being asked to go just over here again, when all I really wanted to do was go back to that place called yesterday.

  I followed the man out the other side of the alley and down a block that smelled of sauerkraut and pomade. We passed a hair salon specializing in dreadlocks and hair tattoos. The man took a left into the vestibule of a partially renovated tenement.

  He buzzed a name and was buzzed back.

  “Come on,” he said, holding the scratched glass door open for me. Come on again. I was taking orders these days, a new recruit in the army of the morally dispossessed. Aware that I was treading deeper into enemy territory with each and every step, but not at liberty to refuse. In this army, deserters were subject to possible execution.

  Vasquez was in an apartment on the first floor. He was there, just behind the door when it opened and let us in.

  I flinched when Vasquez put out his hand. I’d seen that hand do other things — to Lucinda and me. But Vasquez wasn’t looking for a handshake.

  “Money,” he said.

  He was dressed in do-rag chic — low-slung pants with a hint of Calvin Klein peeking out of the waistband — a ratty green sweater hanging off his shoulders. I was getting my first good look at him. And I was surprised how different he appeared from what I’d remembered, at least in the overall impression. He seemed less physically imposing, thinner and distinctly bonier. And I wondered how many criminals had gone to the chair on erroneous eyewitness testimony — plenty, probably, it being hard to get a fix on someone when he’s beating your brains in or raping your girlfriend.

  I handed over the ten thousand dollars in crisp hundred-dollar bills. Feeling as if I were making another domestic purchase — a washing machine, a big-screen TV for the den, patio furniture — only this domestic purchase, of course, purchasing domesticity itself. Five thousand for Anna and five thousand for Deanna. No money-back guarantee, either. A strictly good-faith purchase when there wasn’t any.

  “Nine thousand nine hundred. . .” Vasquez diligently counted to the last bill, then looked up at me with that awful smile, the one I remembered from the hotel room.

  “Almost forgot,” he said, and punched me in the stomach.

  I went down.

  I couldn’t breathe; I began to claw the air for breath.

  “That’s for canceling your cards, Charles. It was kind of inconvenient for me, seeing as how I was in the middle of buying something.”

  The other man thought the whole thing was funny — he started laughing.

  Then Vasquez said: “We’ll be leaving now, Charles.”

  It took me five minutes to breathe normally again, then another five minutes to actually get up, using the wall as support. The five minutes I spent on the floor trying to breathe was spent crying, too, partially from the punch to my solar plexus and partially from the realization of where I was.

  Down on the floor next to a roach-infested container of two-day-old Chinese takeout.

  SIXTEEN

  I stayed late at the office the next day.

  I was feeling kind of jumpy and ashamed at home these days — not in any particular order. Every time I looked at Anna, I’d think about the ten thousand dollars I’d robbed from her fund; and every time the phone rang, I suffered through that interminable pause before someone actually answered it — imagining actual dialogue that always ended with Deanna tromping into the bedroom or den or basement to accuse me of ruining her life and killing our daughter.

  I preferred that moment happen over the phone — seeing that I couldn’t imagine actually having to look her in the eyes as she recited my litany of crimes. In the office I could shut the door and turn off the lights and stare at my reflection in the computer screen, which was stuck in perpetual sleep state — which was the state I wished I could somehow place myself. I could think about ridding myself of this awful thing that threatened to derail my life. At home I could only suffer it
s consequences.

  At the moment, I was trying to look up the T&D Music House.

  I wanted to call them tomorrow about the track for the aspirin spot. Something emotional without being maudlin. Something that might disguise the banal dialogue and wooden delivery of the actors.

  I couldn’t find a listing for them, though. T&D — wasn’t that what Frankel had said? Or was it some other letters? No — I was pretty sure it was T&D.

  Maybe the postproduction guide I was using was out-of-date. Maybe —

  I heard a loud bump.

  It was past eight, and the custodial staff had already finished their rounds. I was fairly certain nobody was burning the midnight oil but me.

  I heard it again.

  A kind of scraping now, a few clinks, a thud. Someone next door — Tim Ward’s office, and I’d seen Tim with my very own eyes sprinting off for the 6:38 to Westchester.

  Then something else.

  Someone was whistling “My Girl.” Temptations, 1965.

  Maybe it was a member of the custodial staff after all — some piece of unfinished cleaning up that needed to be taken care of while the office slept — custodians, like a shoemaker’s elves, appearing mostly at night to magically leave behind the fruits of their labor. A new carpet, freshly painted walls, a renovated air-conditioning system. Sure, it was just one of the elves.

  Clink. Thud. Boom.

  I stood up from my chair and walked across my paper-strewn carpet to see. When I opened the door, the noise stopped. So did the whistling. I thought I heard a sharp intake of breath.

  There was a light on in Tim Ward’s office—the desk light, I guessed; a cool yellow was radiating through the glazed glass like sunlight caught behind morning fog. For a moment, I was unsure what to do. You don't have to do anything when you hear someone whistling late at night from the office next door. You can, but you don’t have to.

  I opened the door to Tim’s office anyway.

  Someone was doing something to Tim’s computer — an Apple G4, same as mine.

  “Hello,” said Winston Boyko. “I’m fixing it.”

  Only Winston didn’t seem to be fixing it.

  He seemed to be stealing it.

  “Tim said it was flickering on and off,” he said, but he looked flushed and his voice was unsteady. The computer was connected to the wall with a thin steel cable Winston must’ve been in the process of cutting. I figured this out because Winston had what looked like a wire cutter in his hand.