The Locals

by Jonathan Dee

  So what would he do, if he ran into this guy again today? “Did you steal my credit card out of my wallet?” “No.” “Then I suppose you didn’t also take the photo of my wife and daughter I showed you?” “No, why the hell would I do that? I thought you were a decent guy, I thought we had a special moment together, like a connection, but I guess I was wrong, huh?” And then where were they? The only move remaining would be to try to beat a confession out of him, or at least threaten to; that wasn’t really the kind of thing Mark could pull off, and anyway the truth was that he could never be completely sure, there was no way to prove any of it, not even to himself. The little guy would probably just laugh at him.

  Still, the fantasy consumed Mark as the train cut through the suburbs, slowed down in the Bronx, slipped into the tunnel: the fantasy of scaring the guy, menacing him, which gave way to the image of actually doing it, laying hands on him, hitting him, until he confessed his wrongs. Mark got confused exiting Grand Central and had to walk all the way around the station once before he was confident he was headed west toward the law firm. The city was a grid but he could never get oriented in it unless the sun was almost down. The streets were so crowded. It wasn’t even rush hour. People got irritated with you just for standing still. He’d carried with him his last memory of the city, stunned into suspension, seemingly empty; so the ordinary landscape of a workday, the endless blaring horns and the wave of pedestrians bearing down on you without seeing you, undermined him. He’d always disliked it here, really, all the more so for the feeling it gave him of being surrounded by people who knew something he didn’t.

  The grand Rice and Powers office looked just the same as it had three years ago, though the faces at the security desk and the receptionist’s station were all different. Mark’s own business had always been synonymous with him, but then there were businesses like this one, greater than the sum of the people who occupied the desks and chairs: institutions more than businesses, people-proof, so substantial they didn’t really depend on you at all. It was a relief to see Towles and to be escorted back to his burnished private office. “You’re looking great!” Towles said. “All that country air! So isn’t this amazing news? The arc of the moral universe is long, or however that goes. But I told you from the start we just needed to be patient, and now here we are.”

  “How much was recovered total?”

  “Well, it’s ongoing. We’re finding new little holes in the baseboard all the time. New victims too, actually, which means all the percentages have to be recalculated. But that’s the Special Master’s job, thank God, not mine. So once I have your signature here, the whole process can get started.”

  Get started! Mark’s face reddened. He thought he’d be carrying a check home, a check to hold up in front of Karen and produce a capitulatory smile. “So you’re not actually handing me any money today,” he said, trying to keep it light, trying to keep any anguish out of his voice.

  Towles laughed. “Not today, but it’s coming. Restitution is a long road. Not for the faint of heart. You and the other plaintiffs have been extremely patient.”

  Mark sighed. “Hey, speaking of the other plaintiffs,” he said, “I’m curious about the guy I met when I was in here the first time. You remember?”

  Towles cleared his throat. “Well, I wasn’t actually present that day, so—”

  “Oh, right. I don’t remember his name. Funny little guy, lived here in the city, worked in some kind of lab at Columbia, I think?”

  “Doesn’t ring a bell,” Towles said. “Oh no, wait, I know who you’re talking about! Because we were all just talking about him. You wouldn’t know how to get ahold of him, would you?”

  “Me? No, no idea. We didn’t exchange numbers or anything. It was just that day.”

  “Yeah. We can’t find him. It’s weird. None of his old contact info is good. We’re trying to get him in here to sign off on the agreement. But no worries, he’ll turn up, you can’t just disappear these days. Even if he’s dead, God forbid, we’ll find him. My best paralegal is on it right now. Why do you ask, do you want to get a message to him or something?”

  “No,” Mark said. This was it. He was going to have to let it go, forever—even though it would never let go of him: the credit agency people had told him that at this point, short of changing his own identity, there was nothing definitive Mark could do—and that was because the story itself was too humiliating to tell. Taking the pen Towles had been patiently holding out to him, he said, “I was just curious. We met that day, that’s all. It was a pretty strange day. I actually think he might have stolen something from me.”

  MINUTES OF MEETING OF

  BOARD OF SELECTMEN

  Oct. 28, 2004, 4:00 P.M.

  Present: Mr. Allerton, Mr. Waltz, Ms. Burrows (sec.)

  Absent: Mr. Hadi

  Meeting began with recitation of Pledge of Allegiance. Mr. Waltz asked for summary of revenue collection. Mr. Allerton presented data demonstrating that collection for water and land revenue was at 72%, with two months still to go before official arrears declared. Mr. Waltz asked if list of those in arrears was likely to remain the same as in past years. Mr. Allerton conjectured yes, but that the list was likely to grow somewhat, owing to the general increase in “anti-tax sentiment.” He went on to say that even with no such increase in delinquency, direct town revenue was likely to be down between 12-15% owing to cuts in the tax rates as “decreed” by the First Selectman. Mr. Waltz corrected Mr. Allerton on use of the term “decreed,” and Mr. Allerton said he “[stood] corrected.”

  Mr. Waltz reported that the town’s reserves for paying its snowplow and road salt contractors were the same as in 2003, even though those contractors’ prices had increased. Mr. Waltz said that forecasts for the coming winter were mild. Mr. Allerton said he had spoken to Mr. Hadi and had received assurance that any emergency shortfalls would be covered.

  Mr. Allerton asked for further business. Mr. Waltz brought up the proposed Railroad Days celebration, and said that the Chamber of Commerce had requested the dates September 16-18. Mr. Allerton asked why the proposed date was after Labor Day, when obviously many fewer out-of-towners would be present. Mr. Waltz said that the local merchants had specifically wanted a boost during a traditionally down time for town commerce, and that the Railroad Days celebration was more a local matter anyway, as it celebrated the Town of Howland’s history and had little to do with tourism per se. Mr. Allerton asked what the Chamber was specifically requesting from the Town. Mr. Waltz said it would require only a waiver of parking regulations, overtime for Trooper Constable, and approval of signage. Mr. Waltz added that the dates had already been approved by Mr. Hadi directly, in conversation. Mr. Allerton said that in that case, discussion of the matter might as well be brought to a close.

  The meeting concluded with an official resolution of support for our troops overseas.

  Respectfully submitted,

  Anne Marie Burrows

  10/29/2004

  —

  On a rainy, raw day in November, the kind of day that in retrospect seemed to explain and excuse everybody’s bad mood, Candace lost her composure and said something she shouldn’t have to a student. It was all very well to say they were just kids and you shouldn’t let them get to you. But Candace wasn’t arrogant enough to expect perfection in herself; when she slipped up and made one of the girls in her eighth-grade human-bio class cry, she apologized at the first opportunity, admitted that the fault was entirely hers, and suggested that they just put it behind them and move forward. Which of course the girl refused to do. She was so intoxicated by the rush of victimhood that she kept coming up with ways to prolong it.

  That the student was Bayley Kimball was not Candace’s doing. The whole incident was sparked, indisputably, by the girl, who should have and certainly could have said nothing when she noticed that Ms. Firth had her shirt on inside out. When she called attention to it, the class laughed, which was evidently something Bayley enjoyed, because she then
called attention to it three more times. Candace smiled and tried to laugh along; that seemed like the only choice, since she wasn’t about to take her shirt off and put it back on again in front of a room full of eighth graders. Bayley, in order to get the laugh again, had to keep upping the ante, because others were tiring of the joke too; so she said—to her teacher—“You oughta live with your mom or something so she can check you out before you leave the house looking like that,” and Candace turned around and said, “At least my mom wouldn’t let me out of the house with the word ‘Juicy’ across my ass,” and the whole class made a sound like “Ohhhh” and Candace knew she’d stepped in it. Bayley, to her credit Candace supposed, held her tears in until the bell rang.

  It wasn’t even that bad, Candace thought but couldn’t say, except maybe for her injudicious use of the word “ass.” Her own teachers had said meaner things to her; the fact that she couldn’t recall specific instances just went to prove that a little smackdown from your teacher wasn’t such a big, life-ruining deal. But Bayley’s mother went to the principal; the principal met with her, then with Candace, then with her and Candace and Patrick, and, as the principal later took pains to remind her, that was a total of three extra meetings he shouldn’t have needed to have. The principal had always shown flashes of being a decent guy, Candace thought—he probably even had a sense of humor, outside of work—but in his professional life he was interested only in whether you were the type of person who made his life harder or the type who made his life easier.

  Bayley’s mother wanted Candace fired. The principal said he couldn’t do that. The mother asked if that was some union thing, and the principal said no, it was more a thing of there being literally no one to replace her, this deep into the school year. The whole time, Patrick just sat there beside his wife, looking miserable and weak. No one seemed interested in his opinion. I could alter the lives of everyone in this room, Candace kept thinking, with one word, one fact. It sickened her to imagine what might await her when she went home that night and got drunk enough to check her Hotmail account. In the end Bayley’s mother settled for a vague promise that Candace would be formally disciplined, and a written apology to the girl.

  It was all resolved, but now Candace was the one who found herself unable to let it go, and so she went unwisely into the principal’s office without an appointment, at lunchtime.

  “Bill,” she said, “I’ve been thinking. I was a good soldier about going back into the classroom when Jo Whalen—when that whole thing happened. But it was supposed to be temporary and I want to ask formally for my old position back.”

  Bill was eating cafeteria food, off a cafeteria tray, in his office. He wiped his mouth. “You don’t like teaching?” he said.

  She wanted to try opening up to him, to someone—to say no, not really, not anymore, which is probably why I’m not very good at it—but she reminded herself where they were, and what their relationship was. “I like it fine,” she said. “That’s not the point. It’s a demotion, which I took temporarily to help the school out in a crisis. I don’t want it to become permanent. I have every right to ask for that.”

  “Yes, you do,” he said. “I’ll put in the request with the district. You’ll have to ride out the rest of the semester, though. You understand that, right?”

  She did. There was no further issue with Bayley but Candace found herself counting the days anyway. Junior high was mostly a time of suffering, and it was a terrible thing to admit but she didn’t want to be around it, it depressed her. They were so compulsively mean to each other. You could see them learning everything they would need in order to be insincere, selfish, status-conscious adults, and there was nothing you could do about it, you might as well try to keep them from getting taller. She tried to feel sorry for them, but mostly she just didn’t like them. She was seeing some guy—they went out for drinks or dinner and then back to her place once or twice a week—but she couldn’t talk to him about any of this. When she tried, she could see that he thought she was just joking.

  It was helpful, at least, to have sex on the regular: she couldn’t imagine how pissy her mood in general might have been if it weren’t for that. Andrew, second-generation owner of the sporting goods store in Howland where Candace bought running shoes and the like, was a classic local type. He thought he knew everything: he was overconfident and condescending and maybe two-thirds as good-looking as he thought he was and he had always gotten what he wanted because he was too dumb to understand how much else there was to want, outside of the life he was living, the life he’d always lived. The less he knew about something, or someone, the more superior he felt. She longed to undo him. She teased and provoked him to the point of cruelty—sometimes past that point, for sure, though not on purpose. The politics of her own arousal were complicated. Her goal, always, was to make him lose it, make his composure crack, make him try to overwhelm her, try to shut her up. It was like child’s play, to get him to do that. She felt in control of him and, at the same time, doomed to him.

  It was warm for December but they had to keep the windows closed because of the neighbors. She climbed off of him and lay with her head and one hand on his stomach, while they caught their breath. She didn’t like to look at his face after she came, at least not right away. It was good of him, she reflected, to keep that stomach as flat as it was. She knew it was about vanity more than any desire to please her, but still. You didn’t have to make much of a tour of Howland to appreciate that masculine vanity of that sort wasn’t to be taken for granted.

  “That was amazing,” he said unimaginatively.

  She opened her eyes and looked up close at his cock, which was kind of perfect, though she gave him no credit for that, it was just serendipity. He had a whole elaborate workout routine, but it’s not like that was part of it.

  There was the sound, in the sealed room, of a vibrating phone. “Yours or mine?” Andrew said. “If it’s mine, fuck it.”

  Candace lifted her gaze and saw her phone skittering across the laminated surface of the dresser. “I’d better get it,” she said as sincerely as she could. It was her mother. “Hi, honey,” she said. “Haven’t seen you in a while.”

  “I was there three days ago,” Candace said.

  “You were? Well, there are a few things around here we could use a hand with.”

  “I’m a little jammed up today,” Candace said. She looked at Andrew on the bed, willing him to move, to swing his legs onto the floor and head for the shower. “Can I call you later?” She hung up. Andrew smiled at her and laced his fingers behind his head. “So this morning I had this guy come in, from New York City,” he said. He always said those words—“New York City”—in a mocking, pseudo-intimidated voice that Candace had stopped finding funny a long time ago. “Tells me he’s very up on carbon-fiber downhill skis, because he’s done a lot of internet research.”

  Her heart sank. There was only one direction in which a story like this could go. This was the essence of the males in her life: They were always the smartest character in their own stories. They always came out on top. Self-deprecation was a quality unknown to them.

  Her phone vibrated again. The screen said Mom.

  “Hi, honey!” Mom said.

  “Mom,” Candace said. “You just called me.”

  “What?”

  “Five minutes ago. How can you not remember that?”

  “Well, whatever you say,” her mother said indulgently, as one would to a child. Andrew swung his legs onto the floor and lumbered off to her shower. “Anyway, I just wanted to say that there are a few things around here we could use a hand with.”

  She waited until Andrew was out of the bathroom, said goodbye to him, showered him off of her, and got in the car to head to Pittsfield. It was unseasonably warm and mud was everywhere. She took the back roads as far as she could, to avoid the rat’s nest that Route 7 would be until New Year’s. At the rare stop signs, with her windows down, she could hear the bare trees creak in the wind, before
her engine drowned them out again.

  Nobody wanted to admit what was wrong with Mom, not because they were emotional or scared or in denial, but simply because admitting it would oblige them to do something about it. “Hi, honey!” her mother said when she walked in the kitchen door. “What a pleasant surprise!” Though she was overweight, she’d aged well physically. Her face was largely unlined, and its penumbra of neat white hair had become a sort of accent to its perpetual expression of gentle, resigned, good-humored passivity, an expression not startlingly different from what it had been twenty or thirty years ago.

  “I told you I was coming, Mom,” Candace said, not irritably, but coolly. “We spoke about ninety minutes ago. And about two minutes before that.”

  This notion brushed across her mother’s face like a headlight from a passing car, then she said, “Have you had any dinner?”

  Dinner was a broad aluminum pan of chicken marsala; it finally drew her father from within the depths of the house, even though he must have known that Candace had been there for some time. Anyone who didn’t know them would have assumed, just from their appearance, that he was the one who needed taking care of. He seemed to assume this too. His sullen, martyred affect suggested that he was being chronically neglected, that his wife, along with pretty much everyone else in the world, had abandoned her post. He could have taken care of her—he could have done for her nearly everything that Candace did—but he wouldn’t. He saw his own home, as he saw the wider world, as fallen, irredeemable.

  “So, Mom,” Candace said, “you mentioned there were some things you needed some help with around here?” Her father looked up sharply from his plate.