When the car dropped me off, I walked to the back door and tried to open and close it as silently as I could, but I could hear Deanna stirring from our upstairs bedroom.
I made one more foray to the bathroom — this bathroom a lot cheerier than the previous one. Cleaner, too. Nice fluffy yellow towels hanging from the wall and a Degas print over the toilet — Woman Bathing?
This time I undressed down to my boxers and used a towel generously soaked in soap to rinse myself down. That was more like it — I smelled almost bearable. I took the gun out of my pants and put it into my briefcase.
Then I went upstairs to the bedroom, where I maneuvered my way through the pitch black — one stumble over a high-heeled shoe — and into bed.
Deanna said: “You washed up.” Not as a question, either.
Of course; she smelled the soap, she’d heard the faucet, too. Now, why would a working-late husband wash himself before climbing into bed? That’s what she was asking herself — and I was having trouble coming up with an answer.
Don’t be silly, Deanna, I could say. I haven’t been with another woman. (See: Lucinda.) I've been busy burying a body. This hit man and friend I hired to get rid of someone who was blackmailing me because I was with another woman before. Got it?
“I worked out today,” I said, “and I never took a shower.”
Not a great excuse when you thought about it — not at this hour of the night. I mean, why couldn’t I have just waited till morning? But maybe it would do.
Because Deanna said: “Uh-huh.” Maybe she was suspicious about it, maybe she was suspicious about a lot of my recent behavior, but maybe she was too tired to hash it out. Not at two in the morning. Not when she’d stayed up all night waiting for me to come home.
“Good night, sweetheart,” I said, and leaned over to kiss her. Milky and warm: home.
I had a dream that night, though — when I woke in the morning I could remember several details.
I’d been visiting someone in the hospital. I had flowers with me, a box of candy, and I was in the reception room waiting to be called up to the sick person’s room. What sick person, though? Well, the patient’s identity changed several times in the dream, which is what happens in dreams—first they’re one person and then they’re someone else. At first I was visiting Deanna’s mom, but when I finally got up to the room it was Anna lying there. She was plugged into a spider’s web of IVs, and she barely acknowledged me, and I demanded to see the doctor. But when I turned to look at her again, it was Deanna who was lying there in just this side of a coma. Deanna. I remembered the next part of the dream clearly: shouting in the hall for the doctor to come see me, even though there was a doctor there — Dr. Baron, in fact, who kept explaining that they couldn’t get hold of the doctor, not possible, but I was having none of it.
Finally my shouting seemed to do the trick; the doctor did come to see me. But he changed identities, too — first Eliot, my boss, then someone who might’ve been my next-door neighbor Joe, and finally and last, Vasquez. Yes, I woke up remembering Vasquez’s face there in the hall with me. By turns impassive and malevolent and snide, but consistently deaf to my pleas. Deanna was dying in there and he was doing nothing to help her. Nothing.
In the morning, after Deanna left for work and Anna for school, I made another trip into the file cabinet, another furtive visit into Anna’s Fund.
TWENTY-SIX
On the train in the morning, I did not read the sports page first. Did not read about the Giants’ last lamentable defeat, about the Yankees signing yet another platinum-priced free agent, about the Knicks’ eternal search for a point guard.
For one day, at least, my Hebraic reading of the daily newspaper (that is, back to front) was put aside, and I read the paper like a concerned citizen. Concerned about the festering situation in the Middle East, the ongoing congressional gridlock, the roller-coaster tendencies of the Nasdaq. And, of course, the recent upswing in urban crime. Murder, for instance.
I had listened to the 1010 on your dial morning news flash in the shower and been pleased to hear nothing of the sort. Someone was murdered all right — someone was always getting murdered in New York City. But this someone was female, twenty-one, and French. Or Italian. A tourist, anyway.
The Times “Metro” section yielded no male victims. Likewise the local Long Island paper. Of course, even if someone had been discovered, it would’ve been too late to make it to print.
But these were modern times. The first thing I did when I arrived at the office, after saying hello to my secretary, was to get on the Net.
I searched the on-line editions of two newspapers. There was nothing about a male murder victim in New York City.
Good.
I spent the rest of the morning trying not to think about Winston’s body. Trying not to think about the hundred thousand dollars of Anna’s Fund that was no longer Anna’s. About how I was giving up — finally and futilely giving up.
It was easier said than done — at lunchtime I made another visit to David Lerner Brokerage on 48th Street.
It helped that I had to go to an editing house to look over the nearly finished aspirin commercial with David Frankel. He had the editor play it several times for me. It wasn’t the best testimonial commercial ever done. It wasn’t the worst, either. I took particular notice of the music bed, which sounded like something borrowed from a stock music house—or thrown out by one. It probably was stock, of course — something purchased for three thousand dollars, then billed at forty-five.
David, the D of T&D Music House, seemed much more personable today. As though I were a true partner in this endeavor now. Maybe because we were partners now. Partners in bilking the agency and client out of their dubiously earned cash.
“Trust me,” David said after the editor — Chuck Willis, his name was — had played the spot another three or four times, “the client will love it.”
And I thought how on the accounts I used to work on, it didn’t matter if the client was going to love it. That was always secondary to whether or not we loved it. But it was hard to love a spot where a housewife basically read the product’s attributes off an aspirin bottle.
Still, I had to look it over and act like I cared. Like it was worth looking over and making helpful hints about, suggestions for improvement.
I pointed out places where I thought the film could be trimmed. I asked them to look for a better voice-over. I would’ve mentioned doing something about that saccharine music bed, but then someone might’ve discovered we’d illegally made over forty thousand dollars off of it.
When I got back to the office around two, someone I’d never seen before was placing my mail onto Darlene’s desk. Of course — my new mailroom guy.
I asked him where Winston was. I would’ve been expected to ask him that.
The man smiled and shrugged. “He didna come in,” having trouble pronouncing each word correctly. I wondered if this was one of the disadvantaged people Winston had told me about.
“Oh,” I said, acting surprised. “I see.”
Darlene smiled at the new mail deliverer and said: “You’re better looking than him, anyway." Than Winston.
The man blushed and said: “Tank you. . . .”
I watched him walk away with a sickening feeling. Life goes on, people say when someone dies, it goes on. And there was the proof right in front of me. Winston had been gone just one day, and his replacement was making the rounds already. It both belittled and magnified what had transpired last night — it did both. It made me sick.
Later that afternoon, I held a creative briefing.
Just the thing to get my mind somewhere else, I hoped. The meeting took place at three-thirty in a conference room dutifully reserved by Mary Widger.
My band of unhappy creatives dutifully listened to me—with pads and pencils, too, no less, managing to look halfway interested in what I was saying. They were unhappy because it was another assignment for their new account—a combination cold
and headache pill—instead of an assignment for their old account, which might’ve meant a commercial worth doing and putting on their reels. And they were also unhappy because I was more or less reading verbatim from a strategy statement prepared by Mary Widger. Strategy statements much like Foucault’s theorem — obtuse, complex, and understood by no one. In my bygone halcyon days, I’d simply ignored them; we’d write the commercial, fall all over ourselves laughing, and write the strategy statement from that.
Not anymore; now I read words like target audience, like comfort level and saturation, without once turning red. A dutiful drone doing what drones do — droning on interminably, or until the said strategy was read down to the last period.
I went back to my office and closed the door. I called Deanna.
“Hello,” I said. I wasn’t sure why I was calling her, but I remembered the days when I used to call her daily from work, and more than once, too.
When we’d stopped talking to each other, really talking, when we’d started talking about inconsequential things only — I’d stopped calling her three times a day. And there were days I didn’t call her at all, entire twelve-hour periods when not a single word passed between us.
And now there were so many things I couldn’t talk to her about, too — things I was ashamed of, things I could barely bear to think of.
But I called her anyway.
“Hello yourself,” Deanna said. “Everything okay?”
“Yes, fine.”
“You sure, Charles?”
I wouldn’t realize till later that Deanna wasn’t merely making small talk here. That she knew things weren’t okay with me — not the details, but enough.
But I didn’t take advantage of the opportunity — not yet. I couldn’t.
“Yes, everything’s fine, Deanna,” I said. “I just wanted to say . . . hi. I just wanted to see how you’re doing today. That’s all.”
“I’m doing okay, Charles. I am. I’m worrying about you, though.”
“Me? I’m fine. Really.”
“Charles . . . ?”
“Yes?”
“I don’t want you to think . . . well . . .”
“Yes?”
“I don’t want you to think you can't talk to me.” There was something heartbreaking about that statement, I thought. Talking—surely the easiest thing two people can do with each other. Unless they can’t. And then it’s the hardest thing two people can do with each other. The most impossible thing on earth.
“I . . . really, Deanna. There’s nothing. I was just going to say hi. To say . . . I love you. That’s all.”
Silence from the other end of the line. “I love you, too.”
“Deanna, do you remember . . . ?”
“Remember what?”
“When I played the magician at Anna’s party? I bought those tricks from the magic store. Remember?”
“Yes. I remember.”
“I was good, too. The kids loved it.”
“Yes. Me too.”
“When I turned over the hat, remember? And they thought they were going to get soaked with milk. Confetti came out. Oohs and aahs.” I’d been thinking about that for some reason today, maybe because I was searching for another kind of magic now.
“Yes, David Copperfield has nothing on you.”
“Except a few million dollars.”
“But who’s counting.”
“Not me.”
“Thinking of changing careers?”
“I don’t know. It’s never too late, is it?”
“Yeah. Probably.”
“That’s what I thought.”
“Charles?”
“Yes?”
“I meant what I said. About talking to me. Okay?”
“Sure.”
“Be home normal time?”
“Yes. Normal time.”
“See you then.”
When I hung up the phone, I thought it might actually be possible to make everything turn out okay. Not everything, but the important things. I knew what the important things were, too — they were staring at me from the ten-by-twelve picture frame on my desk.
But that’s when everything began to go wrong.
TWENTY-SEVEN
The phone call came maybe two minutes later.
Two minutes after I’d hung up with Deanna, after I’d stared at the picture of my family and thought that maybe I could make it all work out in the end.
The phone rang. And rang again. Darlene was probably down the hall swapping boy stories with her fellow executive assistants — which is what secretaries liked being called now in lieu of decent salaries.
So I picked it up.
There were over one hundred people who could have logically been on the line—much later, I counted them as an excuse for something to do. Everyone I knew, basically—maybe a hundred people, all in all, who could reasonably be expected to pick up a phone and call me. Not that I wasn’t expecting this call, of course. In many ways, it was the only call I was expecting. But I imagined it very differently. I imagined it was going to be Vasquez on the line.
But it wasn’t Vasquez.
It was her.
Only her voice was strangely reminiscent of another time, another place. That little-girl voice again. Terribly cute when it’s coming from a little girl, but nauseating when it’s not.
“Please, Charles," the voice pleaded. "You have to come here. Now.”
I was thinking several things at once. For instance, where here was. Her home, her office? Where? For another, I was wondering what it was that was causing her to sound like a frightened child again. Even though I knew what it was. I knew.
“Youhave to . . .Oh God . . . please, ” she whispered.
“Whereare you?” I asked her. A good logical question, one of the four Ws they teach in journalism. What, When, Why, Where? Even if I was asking it in a voice that sounded as panicked as hers. Even then.
“Please . . . he followed me . . . he’s going to . . .”
“What’s going on, Lucinda? What’s wrong?” Which, after all, was the real question here.
“He’s going to hurt me, Charles. . . . He . . . he wants his money . . . he . . .” And then her words got muffled and I could picture what was happening. I saw the phone being yanked out of Lucinda’s hand, the receiver covered by a large black fist. I pictured the room, which looked like the room in Alphabet City even if it wasn’t. And I imagined her face — even as I tried to avert my eyes, I did. Don’t look . . . don’t . . .
And then someone was speaking again. But not her. Not this time.
“Listen to me, motherfucker. ” Vasquez. But not the one I was used to. That phony ingratiating tone was gone, the carefully controlled fury. Fury had been let out for a stroll, and it was kicking up its heels and break-dancing on whoever got in its way.
“You thought you could fuck with me. You thought you’re gonna set me up? You miserable piece of shit. Me? You put some pansy in a car, and he’s gonna what? Kick my ass? You fucking crazy? I got your girl here, understand? I got your whore right here. Tell me you understand, motherfucker.”
“I understand.”
“You understand shit. You think you’re some kind of gangsta or something? You send some clown to fuck me over? Me? ”
“Look . . . I understand. I — ”
“You understand? You get your ass over here with the hundred grand or I will fucking kill this stupid whore. You understand that, Charles?”
“Yes.” After all, who couldn’t understand that? Was there anyone on earth who couldn’t grasp the gravity of that statement?
Now we were down to Where again. I asked for an address.
This time it was uptown — Spanish Harlem. A place I’d never been to except in passing while on my way to somewhere else — Yankee Stadium or the Cross Bronx Expressway.
I called Vital for a car. I opened my locked drawer and stuffed the money into my briefcase—I had it sitting there, waiting for the moment to arrive. I saw somethi
ng else sitting there, too: Winston’s gun. For a second I thought about taking it with me, but then I decided against it. What, after all, would I do with it?
On the way downstairs I passed Mary Widger, who asked me if anything was wrong.
Family emergency, I explained.
In fifteen minutes I was traveling up Third Avenue. The car slithered, it squeezed, it maneuvered its way excruciatingly through an obstacle course of stationary refrigeration trucks, FedEx vehicles, moving vans, commuter buses, taxis, and gypsy cabs.
But maybe we weren’t moving as slowly as I thought — maybe I was simply picturing what Vasquez was going to do to Lucinda and thinking that I couldn’t let it happen again, not twice in one lifetime. It seemed that I’d look up at a street sign — 64th Street, for instance — and five minutes later I’d still be looking at the same sign.
Halfway through the ride, I realized the hand that was holding my briefcase had gone numb. I was gripping the handle so tightly, my knuckles had taken on the color of burnt wood — ash white. And I remembered a game Anna used to play with me, a kind of parlor trick — asking me to hold her forefinger in my fist and squeeze for five minutes, not a second less, and then release, always giggling as I tried to open my now paralyzed fingers. That was the way I felt now — not just my hands, but all of me: paralyzed. The way I’d felt back in that chair in the Fairfax Hotel. The woman I’d fallen in love with being raped not five feet from me, and I like a victim of sleeping sickness, able to perform all the functions of life save one. To act.
Eventually, the tonier sections of the East Side fell away. Boutiques, handbag stores, and food emporiums turned into thrift shops and bodegas as more and more Spanish words began showing up on passing storefronts.
The apartment building was on 121st Street between First and Second Avenues.
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