by David Ellis
“No, Laz, I’ll happily leave the ass-kissing to you,” I said to him.
“Unless I’m mistaken”—Jerry smirked—“aren’t I talking to a guy who spends his days with one hand jerking off some fat-cat investor, and the other hand reaching for his wallet?”
“That’s different. At least it’s honest. I’m not pretending to be performing some charitable function.”
Jerry’s eyes narrowed slightly, the same look he always got when he thought he had me beat in an argument—a not uncommon situation. “Yeah, I see that difference,” he said. He took a gulp of his scotch. “Don’t be so cynical. It’s a worthy cause. Who cares how the money gets there?”
“You’re falling behind,” I said, showing Jerry my empty glass and patting him on the shoulder as I walked to the bar. A typical move for me, retreat before defeat.
I wiggled through some tuxedos to the bar. The bartender was dressed as a Vegas showgirl. I almost couldn’t look at her without laughing. I ordered an Absolut with a twist.
I sensed someone behind me but didn’t turn around. “I don’t believe we’ve met,” said a woman’s voice, and I turned to face her. It was her eyes, I think—somewhere between amber and green, almond-shaped, with long eyelashes—that made me step back and utter something guttural. But it was only a split second before I had taken in the whole package. Her thick, even eyebrows arched slightly, the narrow nose, the full lips, the etched cheekbones completed an oval face and strands of black hair fell just past her slender shoulders. She smiled faintly, confidently, without parting her full lips. I realized it right then, without knowing why or how. I realized how desperately I had been waiting for her.
“Marty Kalish, Mrs. Reinardt.” I extended a hand. “New guy.”
“Rachel.” She smiled. Her lips still did not part. “I didn’t think I’d seen you here before.” She looked me over. I couldn’t think of anything clever to say.
“Are you enjoying yourself, Mr. Kalish?” Nice touch. Waiting for permission to address me informally.
“I am, as a matter of fact,” I said, and this was more true now than it had been all night. I cast my hand over the room. “Quite a turnout.”
“Yes, indeed. You wouldn’t think even a room this big could fit all these egos.”
I laughed. The bartender handed me my drink. Rachel considered me for a moment. “You have to be the youngest person in this room, Mr. Kalish.” Probably not true, but I no doubt looked it, a curse from my father’s side.
“Good to learn the game nice and early,” I said.
“The game,” she repeated.
“The contacts game. Meeting people, getting your name in their heads. Maybe the next time they’re looking to put together a deal, they’ll remember that eager young gentleman from the foundation.”
She sipped her drink, then appraised me again. “I’m sure they will.” She smiled. “Will you excuse me, Mr. Kalish?”
“Of course, Rachel.”
The rest of the evening was not nearly as interesting as that brief encounter. I lost some money on blackjack, traded some stories with some bankers about deals that were put together only by the sheer brilliance of whoever was telling the story. But what I did after I met her felt like autopilot—the truth is, her face did not leave my mind for one second.
At around ten o’clock, someone tapped a glass. Dr. Reinardt, microphone in hand in the middle of the room, apologized and said that he had been called away to surgery. He asked us to go on and have a good time. And keep those pledges coming!
The party was set to break up right about that time anyway. I’m sure if it hadn’t been, the doctor never would have left. What’s one guy with a failing heart, compared to a ballroom full of power brokers?
A good number of the guests began to filter out. The foundation members, at least the junior members like me, were supposed to stick around until the end.
By eleven o’clock, only about twenty of us were left. I was going through some pledge cards that had been dropped into a coffer that looked like a slot machine. I saw Rachel walking toward me. I tried to think of something witty to say.
“Any luck?” she asked.
I waved a pledge card. “A guy named Samms contributed a thousand dollars.”
“That’s not what I meant. Did you make any contacts tonight?”
A good socialite remembers every conversation. I shook my head. “The bartender seemed pretty impressed with me.”
She laughed. “That’s a start.”
“I’m sorry your husband had to leave.”
She looked back absently. “I don’t think he’s sorry. He likes grand exits. How many other people here were noticed when they left?”
“Are you going to get home all right?” A little forward of me to ask.
This amused her, I think, or maybe she was expecting it. Her eyebrows rose and the faint smile returned. “Why, Mr. Kalish, are you offering me a ride home?”
A little forward of her, but hey, what the hell? I laughed. I felt a stirring in the part of my body that typically got me into trouble. “Call me Marty. And yes.”
She accepted with the slightest of blushes, conveying embarrassment, I suppose, but her eyes never left mine, even fixed on me a split second longer than necessary before she walked away.
There was still work left to be done, and I completed it with surprising energy and haste. I saw Rachel talking to some of the other junior members, and I moved into her peripheral vision. I didn’t walk all the way up to her; I wasn’t sure if she wanted anyone to know I would be driving her home. That gives you an idea of what was going through my mind.
She noticed me and broke away from the others. “All set?” she said to me casually, as she looked into her purse. I was hoping she would have whispered it. Our little secret.
We made small talk on the ride home. We kept it pretty superficial, harmless. But there was something in the way she spoke to me in the car. It wasn’t light banter; there was no humor. She spoke slowly, almost seductively (as if I needed to be prodded), using my name in almost every sentence. Innocuous as it was, it was the most titillating fifteen minutes of my life, full of fantasies and expectations and insecurities.
Finally, I pulled into the driveway, hoping that she would speak next.
“Have you ever been to our house, Marty?” The Reinardts often held meetings and little get-togethers at their home. I had been there a month earlier, just when I joined the foundation. But Rachel wasn’t there that night.
“No, I haven’t.”
“Would you like a tour?”
“Love one.” I killed the engine and found myself wondering how long a doctor takes to perform heart surgery.
She took my coat. I followed her past the living room into the den.
“Can I fix you a drink?”
“Please.” I sat on the couch. The doorway to the den was all the tour I needed.
She was over at the bar, her back to me. “Absolut with a twist?” she asked, as she plunked ice cubes into a highball glass.
“I know you probably think those fund-raisers are ridiculous,” she said as she poured our drinks. “But they are so important to the work we do. If I could get that money going door to door, I would. But this is how it’s done. If I have to snuggle up to some wealthy people to fund these programs for the kids, it’s worth it.” She handed me the drink. A good conversation starter, but I would have preferred something with explicit sexual overtones.
“I understand that. I guess I’m just a little idealistic about these things.”
She sat down next to me, folding one leg under herself and turned toward me. “We could all use a little more idealism.” She clinked her glass to mine. I took a drink, fully aware that she was watching me as she drank. The vodka eased the increasing nerves I was feeling.
Rachel, on the other hand, was completely calm. She didn’t seem conflicted by what was happening at all. Or maybe nothing was happening. Maybe, as the adrenaline rushed to my heart, as my
mind danced with images of writhing bodies and soft, luscious moans, Rachel was simply enjoying a peaceful drink to cap off a successful evening.
I brought the glass down clumsily. A little vodka spilled on my tuxedo pants. “Let me get you a napkin,” she said, and she got up to go to the bar. Once again, her back was to me.
Something made me stand up. To this day, I can’t place the moment where the impulses released from my brain to my legs. It just happened. I was trying to interpret signals here, something she was giving off, the extra moment she held the stare, the coy half smiles, like we’ve-got-a-secret. I’m not sure if I was initiating it, but I had certainly encouraged it. I almost sat right back down, feeling my usual doubts about my ability to read between the lines. I was either right on target or headed for a slap in the face.
Surely this wasn’t how these things happened! There was more give-and-take, subtle suggestion topped by a slightly more overt one, slowly closing the gap until the leap was so small that it was practically agreed upon. Surely this was not the way to proceed!
And then I walked to her, suddenly losing any ability or desire to think this through, with an air of detachment, like I was someone else doing this while Marty looked on. “Rachel,” I said quietly, hoping to conceal the tremor in my voice, “I have a confession. I didn’t come here for a tour.” I was delirious, my heart pounding. This would be the defining moment.
Rachel did not share my nervousness. She turned to face me, very slowly, not at all surprised at what I had just told her. Did she know what I was feeling? Did she know the moment she saw me? Was that smile she gave me when she introduced herself more than just social etiquette, more than a flirtation? She couldn’t have, of course, but at that moment, as she turned to me, anything was possible.
She raised her hand to my tuxedo button and placed a finger on one of the studs. Then she ran that finger up and down the pleat on my shirt, taking in my reaction.
“You had something else in mind, Mr. Kalish?”
The phone, which rests against my chest now, blares out a dial tone.
Mr. Kalish. Mr. Kalish. She said it then, months ago, with a sexy formality, the naughty wife who was about to fuck a complete stranger.
But on the phone just now, the formality was real. Mr. Kalish. Mrs. Reinardt. For the rest of our lives?
6
SEVEN O’CLOCK, FRIDAY NIGHT. OUR MONTHLY poker game. I considered bailing but finally decided to go, to do everything I would normally do on a Friday night. Besides, it’ll take my mind off things, and I wasn’t doing myself any good bouncing off the walls of my house.
So it is that I find myself sitting with Jerry Lazarus, Nate Hornsby, Scott Bryant, and Bill Littman in Scott’s musty basement at a ratchety old circular card table, alone with our buckets of coins, six-packs of beer, and cigars that it was Nate’s turn to provide.
Littman shuffles the cards while Nate passes out the stogies—“Hyde Parks,” he informs us. Nate’s the self-appointed cigar connoisseur of our tribe. “Not like that candy last time.” He means the Avo Uvezians I brought last month. Nate bitched and moaned all night, they were too sweet. Like chewing on a Tootsie Roll, he said.
“Five-card draw,” Littman announces. “Nothing wild. Nice and simple.” Bill went to law school with Jerry and me—unlike me, both of them finished—and did the law-firm life for a couple years before moving in-house to work in risk management. He tells us his stress level dropped several notches with the move, which means he’s only a pain in the ass about three quarters of the time now.
I take a swig of the beer and feel that initial little buzz. This is going to be good for me, tonight is.
Scott picks up his cards and groans. He always does that.
“You always do that, Bryant,” Nate complains, placing the cigar in his mouth. “You always bitch about your cards and then go home the fucking grand-prize winner.” I went to college with Nate. He works for one of the Big Six accounting firms, a senior manager now. His hair has receded painfully, leaving very little on top now, just a few strands of blond, his sides shaved mercilessly. His forehead is prominent and his cheeks are always a shade rosier than normal, so that in his finer moments he could be described as jolly, and at other times a hothead. And he always wears the same brown and yellow flannel to these poker games—his lucky shirt, he tells us.
“You gonna look at your cards, Kalish,” Bill Littman says to me, “or you just gonna guess what’s under?” You gotta have one Littman at every poker game, the guy who’d play till the sun rises. Hesitate more than five seconds in this game and Littman starts wailing like you stole his firstborn.
“How many cards, Scooter?” Littman barks. He likes calling Scott Bryant “Scooter.” It’s either that or “pretty boy,” because Scott likes to slick his hair back and wear Italian suits. Scott asks for two cards.
I signal for three. I’ve got a pair of sixes that’ll need help. I’m feeling pretty good now. This was a good idea, to come tonight.
“Three.” Jerry Lazarus, placing three cards on the table.
“Nice hand.” Littman, dishing out the cards with a flick of the wrist.
“Now, this is a cigar,” Nate Hornsby moans, taking a long draw before removing the stogie to admire it. He holds up two fingers.
This was a good idea to come tonight.
“Who didn’t ante?” Littman asks, eyeing only four nickels in the pot. He’s got his coins arranged neatly in front of him in little piles.
“Hey.” Jerry touches my arm. “What about Dr. Reinardt?” Jerry called me today after reading about it in the paper. I didn’t return the call. My fingers tighten on the cards. Yeah, I heard something about it. No. Oh, yeah, can you believe it?
“Unbe-fucking-lievable,” Nate answers. Then he points to the cigar lying next to Jerry. “You gonna light that?”
“Who the fuck didn’t ante?”
“That’s the guy in the paper today,” Scott Bryant informs us.
Jerry nods. “He was kidnapped.”
“He’s lucky if he was kidnapped,” says Nate. “I say he’s ten feet under.”
More like five or six. I swallow hard, then say, “I don’t know who would do something like that.” I place the cigar in my mouth, unlit, rotating it. A nice casual thing to do. Something a guy who didn’t just commit a crime would do.
“That’s a nice town ya got there, Kalish.” Nate. “Move outta the big city ’cause ya don’t want some lowlife prying open the bars on your window at three A.M., instead ya move into an upper-crust suburb where they just come right through the patio door.”
“Was it you, Kalish?” asks Littman.
I turn to him, frozen. Was it me? Was it—he couldn’t possibly couldn’t possibly—
Littman nods at the center of the table. “The ante, shithead. Someone didn’t ante.”
“Oh.” Relief sweeping over me. I take a deep breath. “No. I anted.”
“Was it you, Lazarus?”
Scooter tosses in the missing nickel. “You happy now?”
Littman has given me my third six, so I raise Nate to a quarter. Littman takes note of this with a blank expression. His poker face. He really takes this so seriously. After a moment’s hesitation, he throws in.
“So last week,” Scott says. “You gotta hear about this girl.”
“Fuckin’-A, Scooter.” Nate gives us his exasperated tone. “We’re trying to have a serious conversation about someone who Laz, Kalish, and I work with”—this really isn’t true, of course, we had pretty much moved off the topic; but sometime over the last couple of years Nate has chosen Scooter to be the primary object of his sarcasm/cruelty—“and all you can do is think about this junior-high-schooler you cornholed.”
Jerry: “I for one am offended.”
I remove the cigar and hold up my hand, happy to keep things moving away from the latest news about the good doctor. “Realizing as I do that a very rare sexual encounter is about the only thing that Scooter has in his life, I suggest
we let him tell us about the sixth-grader.” A nice little segue into the story Scott is dying to tell, although it isn’t really accurate; Scooter’s got that teen-idol look, long thick brown hair, chiseled face, and square shoulders that gets him ten times as many women as the rest of us combined.
“Yeah, okay, Don Juan,” Hornsby says to me. “You got the next story. Tap that memory bank, kid, ’cause last I looked there weren’t any notches on your headboard.”
“You wound me, Nate.” I raise a hand to my heart. This is going well.
“Are we gonna play cards?” Littman. With a groan.
“So my boss has a temp fill in for his secretary last week, right?”
“Oh, Christ,” says Nate. “Scooter, if you tell me some hot little bombshell led you into the ladies’ bathroom and gave you the ride of yer life in a stall, I’m leavin’. I’m gone. That shit happens to me never.”
Good, this is good. We’ve fallen into our familiar give-and-take, four bachelors creeping up on middle age, listening to our gorgeous pal Scooter give us the skinny on sexual encounters that happen to us, like Nate said, never. We’ll come through as always, expressing our doubts about the veracity of the story, probing for the sordid details, but in reality not caring about their truth, just happy to be hearing about them, touching them in some way. And not talking about my favorite deceased heart surgeon.
“So, I mean, every guy in the firm is inventing excuses to stop by the boss’s office and get a look, right?”
“Just tell me ya got video,” says Nate. “Give me that much.”
I bite off the tip of my cigar and light up. My pulse is under control now. I had to expect that someone would bring up Rachel at some point. But we’ve moved on. This will be good, coming here tonight.
“So, listen,” Bryant goes on. “So we’re talking, right? Small talk. Where do you live, where do you hang out?”
“And there’s your story.” Littman sighs. “GQ got a hot blonde to talk to him. Can we finish the game now?”
“Brunette. So last Friday I casually mention a bunch of us are going to Flanagan’s.”