Fire in the Firefly

by Scott Gardiner

  It’s 12:05 PM.

  He can afford to be a little late. But not too late. So he takes out his crisp, new hundred-dollar bills, making sure they’re visible, waves them like the high roller he is and asks the cabbie kindly to speed it up. Roebuck is on a roll. Oh what a roll he’s on. Should he stop first at a bank?

  No.

  Another key decision firmly made.

  He has his credit cards, in case of emergency, his chequebook. Ophelia the Blessed. Like those bits of broken cellphone. Motherboard he thinks. Oh, ha ha. One funny thing after another this morning.

  But it isn’t morning any longer. It is 12:37 when the cab drops him at the curb. Roebuck is certifiably late.

  It’s an eighty-story glass cathedral, and he takes the wrong elevator. This wasn’t a decision; this was an honest mistake. He has boarded the one that goes only as far as the fortieth floor; he has to get off, go back to ground, and change over. The elevator’s walls are mirrored on all sides. Roebuck’s image is reflected back upon itself into eternity. It’s confusing.

  It is nearly 12:45 when Yasmin’s lawyer finally shakes his hand, utterly unsmiling. At four hundred an hour, she’s already a C-note ahead so why not crack a grin? Roebuck has been imagining some kind of troll-like creature with a hump and sharp teeth; something like a cross between a fire hydrant and an English bull terrier. Instead, Yasmin’s lawyer is elegant; beautiful, even. In fact, she reminds him of Yasmin.

  “I am truly, very sorry I am late,” he tells her as she leads him down the plush and silent carpet to her office, walking like Yasmin, too. Roebuck is aware that he’s aware of the comparison.

  Yasmin has arranged herself like a puma on a couch beside the lawyer’s desk. “You’re fucking late!”

  “I am truly, very sorry.”

  He is offered perfunctory refreshment and humbly declines. There’s a cup and saucer on a low table beside Yasmin’s couch; quality china. A nice bowl of biscotti. Roebuck is directed to a chair that has been situated so as to face his accusers in the manner of a plaintiff set before his judge and jury. He meekly takes his seat.

  Because he is late, because he has, by his lateness, more than sufficiently demonstrated his contempt for these proceedings, his contempt for her client, and her client’s condition—which assuredly entails meaningful and incontestable obligation on his part—in light of Mr. Roebuck’s clear and thoughtless disregard for the situation in which he has placed himself and her client, Yasmin’s lawyer will waste no further time today in preamble. A net of legal jargon descends upon his head, statutes quoted, disclosures demanded, contracts proffered, interlocutory remedies particularized and figures—a welter of figures past, present, and most significantly future—bind him to his chair. Anne’s name crops up parenthetically.

  Roebuck nods, tries to look worried, and thinks about Tchaikovsky. Although he has tried his best, his very best, he really cannot bring himself to like ballet. Every year around Christmas, he takes the girls to see The Nutcracker. But Roebuck is a plot man. He prefers the subtleties of dialogue, the real and human tensions of script without the clutter of costume and the crutch of orchestration. Tchaikovsky is an improvement on most of those Italians, sure—and then of course there’s Wagner—but always, always, by the middle of Act II he finds himself addressing the question of which of the Marzipan Shepherdesses likely has the largest breasts. It’s like that now with Yasmin and her attorney. He ponders what these women would say if they could read his thoughts. Perhaps they can. Probably they can. Of course they can, and that’s why he is here. Roebuck enjoys a sudden, spontaneous image of Yasmin’s leopard-spotted bra. They’ll be even larger, what with pregnancy; rounder. Enough. He removes the neatly folded sheets of paper from the inside pocket of his dark-blue suit—the same one he wore yesterday, for luck—smoothes them on his leg, and slips them silently across the gleaming surface of the lawyer’s desk.

  “What the fuck is that?” asks Yasmin, stroking her prehensile hips.

  The attorney, having a better feel for the relationship of time to money, accepts the documents and silently reads. Roebuck watches her eyes move from top to bottom, pause, blink—lovely eyes, also—and blink again before shifting the page.

  “These of course could be forgeries.”

  “And I, of course, am willing to verify them in person at any medical facility of your choosing.” He practised bouncing that one off his multiple reflections on the way up in the elevator.

  The lawyer sighs. She is a real professional. “If so, this alters … the circumstances.”

  “What alters the circumstances?” Yasmin is sitting up a little straighter.

  Her lawyer gives her a lawyerly look; some would swear it was almost a motherly look. “It would appear that Mr. Roebuck is … infertile.”

  “What!”

  “Shooting blanks,” he offers sweetly.

  “But …”

  Roebuck has no desire to be cruel. He has no wish to see his former procreative partner flounder upward through the necessary stages of cognition. Besides which, this is Yasmin. “I had a vasectomy,” he says cutting to the chase.

  Years of legal education pounce on that one. “When?” Roebuck has to admire the tenacity. “When do you purport this procedure took place?”

  “Before. Well before. Which means,” he says, returning to Yasmin and her nascent expectations, “the father can’t be me.”

  “You … asshole!”

  The lawyer clears her throat, a warning her client chooses to ignore.

  “Do you mean to tell me, you fucking asshole, after all this …?”

  Roebuck nods. “I’m definitely not your guy.”

  “I would like us to return to this presumed vasectomy …” The attorney isn’t willing to let up. He can see the wheels turning: perhaps there is some new action possible, some parallel line of attack. False representation? “The timing of this procedure is suspiciously …”

  “So if it’s not me …” Roebuck is still eye-to-eye with Yasmin. “That means …?” He wants to hear it said out loud, that she can have no claim on him.

  “Fucking Daniel!”

  “Sorry. What?”

  But Yasmin is now deep in the thickets of her own considerations.

  “Did you say Daniel ?”

  “I should say the alleged vasectomy, because this presumed procedure has in no way been established …”

  “Daniel Greenwood?” Roebuck massages his scalp. His head feels itchy. “Daniel Greenwood’s in Australia.”

  “I know that, Dipshit.”

  “And, even in the event it is established, notwithstanding …”

  Roebuck’s fertile mind, which has until moments ago been relaxing with pleasant images of sugar plum fairies and leopard-spotted breasts, of habeas corpus and the etymology of tort, now presents him with a brand new sequence of connected thoughts at the end of which arrives a seismic, though achingly practical, conclusion. He understands. He does understand. At last. Roebuck smiles; he actually smiles, a real smile—it all makes so much sense now—and withdraws his chequebook. One thing at a time. He asks politely if it might be possible to borrow a pen. The lawyer courteously hands him hers.

  “You and I have wronged each other,” he says addressing Yasmin. He has always had a talent for the talk, has Roebuck. “That is clear to me now. Perhaps in some small way this will … ameliorate.” He turns again toward the attorney. “Is that the proper word?”

  “Prick!” shouts Yasmin. “That’s the proper word!”

  Roebuck clicks the lawyer’s pen and writes a cheque for fifty thousand dollars. Then another in the same amount—so much nicer being rich—payable to Yasmin’s lawyer. He hesitates. “Should this be made out to you or to your firm?”

  “That would depend on what service it is intended to retain.”

  Roebuck nods and smiles. It’s a serene
smile, he can tell. He has floated to another plane, hovering in a spot just below the ceiling, watching himself and these two women in this glass-walled office like a fish tank high, high above the city. Is this what closure turns out to be? He truly does admire this attorney. “As a start,” he says, “with your permission, let me enquire: do we have reciprocal enforcement agreements with Australia, do you know?”

  “That is not my area of expertise. But yes, I believe so. Yes.”

  “So it would be possible then to launch, hmm, similar … proceedings there … with respect to Mr. Daniel Greenwood, in Australia?”

  “Presupposing Mr. Greenwood has indeed …” The lawyer interrupts herself. “Yes,” she says simply. “Definitely.”

  “Then please accept this”—Roebuck slides the cheque across the desk—“as a retainer intended to further your client’s pursuit of justice in that jurisdiction. I assume your firm has correspondents on the ground there? Good. I will also require you to provide assistance in winding up your client’s business connections here in this country as rapidly as possible. Before the end of next week, shall we say?” He places the other cheque on the fabric next to Yasmin’s twitching thigh. She doesn’t touch it, but he knows she’s counting zeros.

  “Yasmin,” he says. “You’ll want to get yourself to Sydney right away. I would advise next week. Why don’t we say next week at the latest?”

  “Shut up. I’m thinking.”

  “It’s never too soon to start planning.”

  “I said shut up …”

  “The sooner you finalize your support mechanisms, the smoother things will go. You could have a difficult pregnancy, Yasmin. What if you’re confined to bed?”

  “You are one incredible prick.”

  “That’s me. Additionally, I will arrange with your attorney to provide you with a living allowance of, say, five thousand dollars per month for a period of …”

  “Ten thousand,” corrects the lawyer.

  Roebuck nods. “I will arrange with your attorney to provide you with a living allowance of seventy-five hundred dollars monthly, for a period of nine calendar months. After which point I believe we can assume you will have achieved full financial independence.”

  Yasmin has taken on a posture he hasn’t seen before. She looks … thoughtful.

  Even now he knows he’d like to … “Listen,” he says, “Daniel’s the Creative Director. That’s almost top of the heap. It may well be a partnership arrangement. He’ll be pulling down a very substantial salary.”

  Yasmin strokes her thighs and consults her counsel. “Can you garnishee wages there, too?”

  “That would be a start,” Roebuck says.

  That odd, unsettling gaze shifts back now to him. Yasmin’s eyes are probing, studying. The nagging doubt that he has all this while been fending off comes back and settles like a cooing bird on Roebuck’s shoulder. “… Daniel Greenwood?” he mutters, shaking his head. “I always pegged him for the quiet type.” Could there have been a shade of admiration, there, he let creep into his voice?

  Yasmin’s hands have come to rest. He notices in passing the shadowed, dimpled skin around each fingertip, the unctuous swelter of thigh. Otherwise she’s silent, breasts rising and falling in a cadence that feels almost like music. “I take it back,” she says. “You’re not a prick. You’re an idiot.”

  And suddenly, Yasmin has dropped into the couch, throwing out her arms, splaying her legs, kicking her feet.

  She is laughing.

  Roebuck ducks as a shoe sails past his head.

  “You didn’t know!” The second shoe clatters against the bottom of the desk. Yasmin is banging her heels on the floor. He has never seen her like this. “You really didn’t know?”

  Roebuck’s tongue comes to rest at the bottom of his throat. The lawyer is studying him with a look he can’t bring himself to interpret. Yasmin is by now so caught up in the moment she’s physically shaking the couch, bouncing—hands on her belly, heaving. This he has seen. The lawyer is staring.

  “Your Daniel had his fingers in all kinds of pies,” Yasmin says, gasping. “And you didn’t know?”

  Roebuck sits quietly in his chair in the centre of the room.

  “But it wasn’t just Daniel! That’s the best part! She wasn’t joking!”

  “Who wasn’t joking?” It’s the lawyer who has put the question, but Roebuck is grateful.

  “Anne.” Yasmin is smacking her thighs; he can see the outline of her palms against both legs.

  “Anne?”

  “Anne! Oh Anne, I always thought Anne was the idiot …”

  “Yasmin, what are you talking about?” Again it’s the lawyer. Roebuck is incapable.

  “But she really wasn’t joking. I always thought she was joking. His wife outsmarted all of us.”

  “What? Joking about what?”

  “Don’t you get it? He really is shooting blanks. That’s what Anne knows, and we didn’t. Always was. Always. It wasn’t just Daniel. It was before! All those little hints. I never put them all together. That’s why she let it happen. It didn’t matter anyway!”

  Yasmin sighs and slowly rises to her feet, rebuttoning her blouse, smoothing her skirt, collecting herself. “And then you … then me … Oh, Julius! It’s all so perfect!” Yasmin is glistening, giggling. “The joke’s on us!”

  She straightens her shoulders and draws a long, slow breath, the kind they teach at yoga. Yasmin teeters unsteadily, groggily collecting shoes. When she has found them both, she puts a hand on Roebuck’s shoulder, steadying herself. “Don’t worry,” she tells the lawyer, sighing. “He’ll honour them. The cheques I mean. He’s reliable that way.” Yasmin touches Roebuck’s face.

  “All’s well that ends well,” she says, fingers hot against his cheek.

  Epilogue

  December 2010

  It’s snowing, and Roebuck is tired. It has been coming down like

  this for days. Cursing drivers rock their chassis deeper into drifts; spinning tires drone like brumal cicadas even through the walls of this café. There seems to be a business meeting underway two tables over—young men in goatees and horn-rims who rammed to the door a few minutes ago in a tangerine Hummer. The management has strung up decorations, strings of winking bulbs, which only reinforce that jolly, festive atmosphere that happens every time the snow dumps down like this. The guys with the show truck might as well have swapped their lattés for shots of tequila. One of them looks vaguely like a junior copywriter he interviewed back when. They could be quieter.

  Roebuck is not festive. His feet are soaked and frozen. He should have worn boots. He is an idiot for not having worn boots. But standing at the podium in snow boots would have looked even more ridiculous, apparently, than he sounded. Though no fault of his, half the audience stayed home. He should be grateful, realistically, that as many as did showed up. Even baby biz-heads love a snow day.

  He’s wondering if he should have hailed a cab. But of course the taxis today are buried like everyone else. Roebuck wipes the condensation from his watch; he has plenty of time to relax and get himself another cup with double sugar. The subways are still running; he’ll make it in under an hour.

  Lily doesn’t qualify for mat leave. Roebuck has persuaded her to let him help, but she says she wants to keep working. She says she needs to get out. The truth is, though, that when she gets tired, she gets a bit bad-tempered. Roebuck double-checks the time. He is happy for this little break, however numb his toes. He will put his shoes against the radiator once he gets to her place.

  On the way back from the counter, one of the young bucks leans back in his chair, the better to display whatever’s dancing on his tablet, and nearly upends Roebuck’s cup. They have not even registered his passing.

  It’s always a pleasure spending time with Maya, but her mother is definitely a challenge. He was expecting this. Fully
.

  It happened with Anne. It happens universally, as far as he can tell. They should teach this in grade school, load it into the curriculum—that when a baby comes, the man involved should expect to go from being someone important to someone not at all important, except in his capacity to render aid, which in itself is a minefield of misplaced best intentions. But even so the change has rocked him. Mostly Lily naps now, when he comes over; hands him Maya and shuts the bedroom door.

  Maybe she’s in there composing. He really wouldn’t know.

  Of course he wonders if there’s someone else.

  But it’s absolutely to her credit that Maya is such a lovely child; content to ride in the carrier strapped to his chest while he tidies up. He has discovered that the sound of the vacuum puts her straight to sleep. Her mother, too, evidently. Roebuck stirs his coffee.

  Gabriella, regrettably, is not so placid. They haven’t come out and admitted it, not yet, that it’s colic, but she is definitely a fussy child. On the plus side, Anne has racked up quite a lot of motherhood experience by this stage—him, too, naturally—so the two of them are well equipped to deal with it. It was tough there for a while, right after Yasmin’s decampment when the workload so abruptly spiked, but now that Anne has wound down the business, all the stress has wonderfully diminished. She and the baby have moved into his room. When Gabby cries, they’re both at hand to answer.

  Roebuck yawns and mainlines his caffeine. Monday night he nodded off again. No. Tuesday. Tuesday is Katie’s taekwondo, so it had to be Tuesday. Story time, that much he remembers. Diapers needed changing. Thus the reprimands. But by and large, they each know their roles and responsibilities and execute them according to a system laid down years ago, tried and true.

  He still lives in dread of calling one of the babies by the other’s name, but so far that hasn’t happened.

  Lily, he is certain, is convinced that he is Maya’s father. It’s as if Greenwood had never been. Anne’s a little harder to interpret. They haven’t talked about it, naturally—any of it—and in the way of married people he is fairly sure they never will. It works. It works for him and it works for them and with a little luck it all will keep on working: babies get older, workloads grow lighter. Snow falls and smoothes away irregularities.