The Grift

by Debra Ginsberg

  As he peeled out of the parking lot, Cooper felt the force of revelation as if it were a punch in the stomach. He’d literally had the wind knocked out of him and it wasn’t just from running down four flights of stairs in his weakened condition. If he’d been asked, even right before going into Max’s office, whether Max was capable of pulling such a sadistic stunt, Cooper would have denied it was possible. His relationship with Max had devolved into a badly written melodrama full of recrimination, anger and, perhaps worst of all, indifference over the last few months. But even wallowing in the emotional silt that had settled out of what had once been love, Cooper never expected to find cruelty and viciousness. What hit Cooper with the greatest force now was not that he’d lost Max (yet again!), but that there was a very strong possibility he didn’t know—had never known—Max at all.

  Max thinking he could be happy with a woman—even be with a woman once the novelty wore off—was totally insane as far as Cooper was concerned. And that sad, that desperate woman was probably ministering to Max this very second with whatever soothing monosyllables she’d learned from running reception downstairs. How had he even asked her for that first date? Cooper couldn’t imagine. Nor could he quite believe she was actually carrying Max’s baby. If—ugh—she was, she couldn’t be more than five minutes pregnant. When had he found the time with his unbelievably important schedule? And then, good Lord, the confession he must have made about Cooper! How had that gone over? Cooper tried to picture it, tried to hear the words Max might have used. He knew the tone well enough, anyway—that excruciatingly patient, slow shrink-speak:

  It’s perfectly normal for a man to experience a time when he is attracted to members of the same sex. The literature shows…

  No, it wouldn’t have been that stupid. Maybe something like I understand if what I’m about to tell you makes you uncomfortable and I think we should talk about that. Yes, that was it. He could hear it as if Max were whispering in his ear.

  Cooper was so caught up in his mental scenario that he drove past the freeway entrance and started cruising down Del Mar Heights Road. The big hill dipped, then crested, and the ocean, a sparkling blanket of blue diamonds, came into view below. Cooper remembered the first time he’d come into Del Mar with Max on a Sunday date. They’d done the whole touristy thing: walked on Fifteenth Street Beach, then up to the Plaza for lunch. Max had wanted to eat at Pacifica, but Cooper said there were cuter waiters at Epazote across the way. Max had blushed, demurred. They’d each had a three-cheese quesadilla with tomatillo salsa. Neither one of them finished his food. But Max hadn’t wanted to split a plate—didn’t want to look gay, even though they stood out as if they’d been dressed in fucking pink triangles. That was the thing Max never got. He only called more attention to the fact that he was gay by trying so hard not to. It came off him like a rainbow-colored vapor; he just couldn’t see it. Cooper had always thought it a mark of vulnerability, since Max was so smart in so many other ways. But maybe it wasn’t sweet or vulnerable after all. Maybe it was cold and calculated, just like that horrible setup in his office.

  “Goddamn him!” Cooper said out loud, and he banged the steering wheel hard with his hand, causing the horn to blare and the driver in the next lane to flip him the bird. “Fuck you, too!” Cooper shouted, pushing the accelerator hard. The driver sped up in turn, trying to start some sort of macho drag race, but Cooper let him go, already uninterested, his mind still catching and turning in endless repetition. Now that the initial shock was starting to spread and settle, individual elements of the scene in Max’s office were starting to press in like nettles under his skin.

  What was all that bullshit about Madeline’s party, for example? Since when had Max become such a party animal? He’d practically had to drag Max to Madeline and Andrew’s last party and then he’d spent the whole evening skulking around like some kind of fugitive. Max didn’t even like Madeline. He’d told Cooper more than once that Andrew had made a mistake by marrying her. Such wisdom coming from him!

  But of course, now that he thought about it, it all made sense. Max finally had a legitimate date (oh, he’d been quick to explain that Andrew didn’t know anything about Max’s orientation and wasn’t really the kind of guy who could handle something like that, so please, you’re just a pal, okay, Cooper?), so why wouldn’t he want to parade evidence of his triumphant heterosexuality to the overprivileged denizens of Rancho Santa Fe, half of whom, Cooper thought, were probably banging each other out of boredom anyway? What better place for Max to show off his new bride-to-be, complete with her big, lovely engagement ring?

  Cooper swerved and screeched to a halt, just missing a skinny gray cat that was darting across the narrow road. That ring. He had seen it before, and not just in his imagination but on a chain resting against smooth skin.

  “Hey! Hey! What the fuck is wrong with you!”

  Marina. The name came to him first, the syllables running through his brain like water, then the image of her face, neck and chest, where the ring lay half buried between her breasts. He’d seen it only once, when he’d reached over a slow-burning candle to hook his finger into the dangling chain and pull it free. But there was no question: It was the same ring that now encircled the fat finger of Max’s fiancée.

  “Did you hear me? You almost killed my cat!”

  Cooper looked up and saw a short, curly-haired woman in a spandex halter top and too-tight shorts running over to him, her little face scrunched up with outrage. Cooper ignored her. What was Marina’s ring doing on that woman’s finger? The question wound itself like a noose around Cooper’s brain even as the small, angry woman reached his car and started banging on the driver’s-side window. “You can’t drive like that here! What’s wrong with you? Are you drunk?”

  He rolled his window down all the way and gave her his best fake smile. “I’m sorry,” he said, “but I didn’t hit your cat. I swerved to avoid hitting your cat.”

  “Do you know what the speed limit is here? You’re crazy—it could have been a kid!”

  “They have nine lives, you know,” Cooper said, rolling up his window and gunning the engine. “What’s one less?” He hit the gas, leaving the woman with her mouth hanging open. As he raced down the twisting road into Del Mar, Cooper felt suddenly invigorated and full of purpose. Those few minutes in Max’s office had been some of the worst in his life, and that included the hell he’d gone through in high school and every heartbreak he’d had since. In Cooper’s universe, the vision of Max and Kiki (God, that name even!) was not possible; it was science fiction and he had been transported to some alien planet. But there, in the middle of it, was Marina, his known quantity. Somehow she held the key that would unlock all of this. As he drove north, he wondered if he’d imagined the ring he’d seen on Kiki’s finger. Perhaps his brain—or Marina!—had projected the image there to guide him to her. Either way, fantasy or reality, it didn’t matter. He was going to find her, something he probably should have done much sooner. But no, Cooper told himself, everything was happening at exactly the right time, exactly the way it should. He made one stop, at a little flower stand in Del Mar that always had the freshest blooms, for a slim but elegant bouquet of roses. Then he made his way to Cardiff—to her house.

  Cooper hadn’t expected to be as nervous as he was when he marched up the three little steps to Marina’s front door and knocked. Her shades were drawn and the house was very still. He knocked again, a little louder this time, and waited a few beats. The third time he knocked it was out of sheer nerves, a Pavlovian response to standing at a closed door with a bunch of roses in his hand. It was, Cooper thought, one of the most anticlimactic moments he’d ever experienced. He stood there for a few more moments and then turned around and sat down on her front stairs. After a minute or two of that, he realized the neighbors might notice something off and he went over to his car, got in, turned on the radio and waited. Three songs later, he started shifting around, restless and uncomfortable. He turned off the radio and lowere
d his seat back until he was at a comfortable forty-five-degree angle. He turned his head, the better to keep an eye on Marina’s house, and promptly passed out cold with the roses resting on his chest.

  He was dreaming of rain, the sound of drops falling on glass, when he woke up to find Marina tapping on his car window. He bolted upright, disoriented but hyper-alert. It was late. The sky was suffused with gold-pink light and the shadows were long. He must have been sleeping for hours. He opened his door and climbed out of his car.

  “Cooper? What’s happened?”

  “Hi, Marina.” She looked so different that Cooper thought she’d had some kind of plastic surgery. But it only took a moment to realize that there wasn’t any kind of surgery that could effect the kinds of changes he saw in her. She looked both softer and harder than when he’d last seen her. Her body was rounder, plusher, but underneath something had turned to stone. Her eyes seemed to have grown larger and somehow darker. Her face looked not so much thinner as sharply defined—her cheekbones in high relief against her long, wildly curling hair. She was wearing the kind of clothing he’d never seen her in before: stretchy black yoga pants and a baby-doll-style green top that tied in the back. It took another second for Cooper to understand the why of her outfit. She was pregnant. He was stunned and discomfited, as if he were a kindergartner seeing his teacher in the grocery store. It just didn’t fit with his image of her. At a loss for the eloquent words he’d planned, he held the roses out and said, “I got these for you,” as if he was taking her out on a date or something.

  Marina backed up and looked almost frightened when she looked at the flowers. It was the weirdest reaction to a beautiful bouquet he’d ever seen. “Please,” she said, “I can’t stand to see another rose. Can you put them away, take them home?” Cooper knew he looked totally crestfallen because she added, “Don’t take it personally, Cooper, okay?” He tossed the flowers in the passenger seat of his car and turned back to her.

  “Marina, I’m sorry.”

  “You’re sorry?”

  “For what happened—the fire and everything. I never called you.” Cooper bit his lip, remembering the calls he had made. “I should have…I don’t know. I haven’t really been myself lately.”

  Then Marina did the strangest thing. She got up very close to him and lay her hand, palm down, in the middle of his chest as if she were feeling for his heartbeat. He couldn’t remember her ever touching him before. She’d always been so weird about anyone getting close to her. “It’s okay,” she said. “I know.”

  A dam burst inside Cooper’s rib cage. His whole body felt flooded with a tidal wave of emotion—warm, cold, quiet and rushing all at once—and when the water reached his eyes he just started to bawl like a huge baby. Everything he’d felt for the last two years—maybe longer, like since the beginning of his life—came pouring out of him in an unstoppable rush.

  “You’re going to meet him when you get out of the hospital,” Marina said. “He has blue eyes and a buzz cut. He works as a landscaper. There are koi ponds…”

  “When I get out of the hospital?”

  “But aren’t you going in today?” Marina asked, genuinely baffled. “For your liver?”

  “My liver?”

  “I’m sorry,” Marina said. “Now I’ve gotten ahead of myself.”

  It was starting to get a bit too strange, even for Cooper. Marina had just become so spooky, it was difficult to know how to deal with it. “Um…” And then he remembered why he’d come here.

  “What is it, Cooper? You came here to ask me a question. What is it?”

  Cooper turned his eyes to the collar of her loose top. No chain that he could see. “Do you still have that ring you used to wear around your neck, Marina? The ruby?”

  Her hand flew to her neck, clutching at something that wasn’t there. “What about the ring?” she demanded. “What do you know about that?”

  “I know where it is,” Cooper said. “And I know who’s wearing it.”

  Chapter 34

  It was never Eddie’s intention to show up unannounced at Madeline’s house and start growling at her like a wounded bear. For one thing, it was just bad form. Eddie had always prided himself on being cool about this kind of thing. It was a woman’s job to melt down, lose it and get all emotional. Men were supposed to keep it together, shine it on, walk it off—whatever. Those were the rules as Eddie knew them. But it seemed these days that nobody else was playing by any kind of rule book.

  Yes, shit happened. Things changed. You got older and your body started to give out. You got high cholesterol and your back started to hurt. The price of gas went up and it got more expensive to live. You argued with your wife. The kids were a pain in the ass. Everything that tasted or felt good wound up being bad for you in some way. Eddie understood these things, even if he wasn’t at all okay with them, as basic truths of life. But some things were not supposed to change and some rules were meant to stay unbroken. Yet none of Eddie’s usual strategies for keeping his life in order was working.

  Start with Tina. It had taken only one phone call for Eddie to bridge the gap between penitent and pissed off. He’d called her a couple of days after he went to see Marina, when he was still turning the scene around and around in his head, trying to get it to make sense. There was just something so not normal about the way Marina looked, the things she’d said and the strange tone in her voice. It had thrown Eddie off so badly that he didn’t know how to get himself right. What he really wanted to do was talk to his wife and share his feelings; not about Marina necessarily, but about life in general—hell, just to share, period—because that was what married people did. He’d called Tina with this in mind, but when he finally got her on the phone, it was not at all the conversation he had been planning.

  Two kids and how many years of marriage and suddenly it was fuck you, pack it all in and get divorced? It turned out Jake hadn’t pulled the divorce question out of his ass when he’d last spoken to Eddie. Tina had already started discussing divorce with his kids before she’d even brought it up to him. And this he got from Kyle, his younger son, because Jake, “the man of the house,” had since shifted all the way over to his mother’s side and wouldn’t even talk to his father.

  “I don’t think it’s right to tell the boys we’re divorcing when we haven’t even tried to work this out, Tina,” he’d told his wife when Kyle got her to come to the phone.

  “I don’t believe in keeping secrets from them, Eddie. That’s your style, not mine.”

  “What secrets?” he said, ignoring her pointed dig at him. “There’s nothing to hide. We aren’t getting a divorce.”

  There was a small tight silence on the other end of the line. “Yes, we are, Eddie,” she said. “I’ve hired a lawyer.”

  “Jesus, Tina.”

  “I can’t do it anymore, Eddie, I just can’t. I still have a chance at some kind of life now, but if I wait much longer it’s going to be too late.”

  “What the fuck are you talking about?”

  “Are you going to get hostile again, Eddie? Because if you are there’s no point in continuing this conversation. I’m going to try very hard to keep…”

  Eddie stopped listening to her words, hearing only the grating sound of her voice with its long-suffering tone as she laid out the new parameters of their rapidly dissolving relationship. Hurt and angry was one thing, Eddie thought, but this was something else. It occurred to him that maybe she’d been plotting this shit for years, waiting for the right moment. Maybe she’d known about the other women all along and was just letting him dig a hole deep enough to bury himself but good. All the better to make sure she got everything he had once the divorce lawyers started taking a look around. And maybe nobody had called her after all. Maybe that was just one big fat fucking lie to get him to admit he’d had an affair. The more she talked, the less he heard and the more furious he became.

  And Tina was just the beginning.

  With all her talk about broken plates and ba
bies, Eddie had barely listened to what Marina was saying about his job, but it came back to him very quickly when he was called into a meeting with the owner of the store and a suited CEO-type sent down from corporate headquarters. A female employee, and, of course, they wouldn’t say who it was, had complained of Eddie’s “unwanted advances and lewd behavior.” Whoever it was had also asserted that she was “punished” for “rejecting” his “sexual overtures.”

  In a panic, Eddie ran through every woman who worked at the store and came up completely blank as to who would think up something like this, never mind file a complaint. But maybe no one had, he thought. Maybe this was some sort of frame-up.

  “Has this got something to do with my staying in my office?” Eddie blurted. “Because it’s only temporary. My wife and I are having a little trouble….”

  There was some foot shuffling and throat clearing after that comment, and then they informed him that they really had no other option but to ask him to please remove his belongings from his office and leave as quickly and quietly as possible.

  It had been thirty years since Eddie had done his time in prison, but he still looked into the shadows every so often, half expecting the law to jump out and grab him. This vague anxiety spurred him out the door more quickly and quietly than they’d asked, even though he vowed to find himself a lawyer as soon as he was able.