Something for Nothing

by David Anthony

  But he was confused. Why hadn’t Linda written anything? And then he was a little pissed off. Or a lot pissed off. What the hell? A guy gets home from a big day—a really big day, actually—and no one’s home? And there’s no note from his wife?

  He knew something was up, that Linda was angry at him. Yes, she sometimes took the kids to see her friend Sharon and her kids out in Oakland. Sharon’s kids were about the same age as Sarah and Peter, and they got along pretty well (though Peter made it difficult sometimes). Sharon wasn’t a real aunt, they just called her that. “Hi, Aunt Sharon,” Martin would say, enjoying the irony.

  So okay, an overnight at Sharon’s wasn’t so unusual. But this was too sudden. Something had happened. Maybe Linda had gotten a bill that scared her (though there was no mail on the Fourth). Or a phone call from someone about money. Or maybe Slater had come by and scared her somehow. No, he thought, she wouldn’t bolt out of the house and not write a note because of that. And that was the term—she’d bolted. Write the note, Sarah, we’re in a hurry. Make it fast, Peter, just say good-bye.

  Martin muttered his way down the hallway. He suddenly felt a little drunker than he’d realized.

  When he walked into his bedroom he saw it almost right away. A quick scan of the room—something wasn’t right, he felt more than thought—and then it caught his eye. It was perched right there on his bureau, where he always put his wallet and change and whatever else he might have in his pockets. It was Miriam’s jewelry box. In his confusion, Martin thought for a second that he saw it blink, as if it had fallen asleep while waiting for him, but was awake now and eager to see what he was going to do, or say.

  “You had me in the closet,” it seemed to say, “but now I’m out here.”

  Martin reached out to pick it up, but then he stopped short. He sat on the bed—looked at it, looked at his reflection in the bathroom mirror, which he could just see from his sitting position on the bed, and then looked at it again.

  Fuck, he thought. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

  He lay back and looked at the ceiling. He felt a little like he had while lying on Miriam’s bedroom floor. Like he was trapped, and like he wanted to disappear, and not be there. Or be invisible, anyway. Here, of course, there was no one to hide from (except himself). But that’s how he felt.

  What he really wanted, and what he was really concentrating on, was how to make this moment go away. He wanted to rewind the film—that’s what it was. He wanted someone (the one who was in charge) to reach down and grab the two big reels that were playing out the film of his life and wind them backward. Not super far—he wasn’t greedy. Not back to a point at which he wasn’t yet in debt and desperate (though that would be nice). Just back to the moment after the parade when he’d said okay to Linda about skipping the horse race. Why hadn’t he made her come with him, told her he really wanted her there with him to see the race, be a part of it all? He watched the moment play out on the ceiling, and tried to get it to adjust to this different version of events. Because then, of course, she wouldn’t have been snooping. And if she hadn’t been snooping, she wouldn’t have found the jewelry box. And if that hadn’t happened, then she wouldn’t have driven out to Sharon’s and left him here to shit his pants and try to figure out how to get himself out of this jam. He’d even trade in Temperature’s Rising’s win—anything to make her discovery of the jewelry box go away.

  But the film kept playing out in the same exact way. He watched four or five times as he gave Linda a quick peck on the cheek, said so long to the kids, and then scurried off toward the track. He watched himself pay his money at the little booth and then disappear into the crowd. He didn’t watch long enough to see himself run into Ted Reasoner, or walk up to his little crew in the owner’s box, or run into Hal and Miriam, but he didn’t need to—didn’t want to, at this point.

  He sat up, finally, took a big breath, and stood up. The jewelry box was still there, waiting patiently for him to acknowledge it. “I’m still here,” it was saying. “Aren’t you going to open me up?”

  Martin stepped toward it and opened it. Everything was still there. The rings, the locket. The earrings. The coins. He reached in and touched the locket. Jesus, he thought. He was glad he hadn’t followed through on his impulse—one he’d thought of as a kind of joke with himself—to place a picture of himself in the locket. That, he knew, would have been utter disaster.

  He closed the box (though he sensed that it wanted to stay open, maybe to show itself off to him) and sat down again.

  He thought for a second that he could maybe blame it on Peter.

  “He stole it while he was over there playing with the Weaver kids one day,” he’d tell Linda. “And then I found it. I didn’t know what to do, so I just hid it. It’s horrible, I know. The kid is a little screwed up. First with the notes, and now this. Let me handle it, though, okay?”

  He thought this over, but knew it wouldn’t fly. Peter might be willing to lie for him, but it was too complex, too intense. Plus, Linda would be relentless: she’d circle around Peter, probing his story, looking for contradictions, weaknesses. Not a chance. She was too smart and too skeptical—he’d cave in immediately.

  But, Martin thought. How about a version of the truth?

  He ran it through, trying it out for himself. Yes, he’d say. I took it. I know—I’m an asshole, you don’t have to tell me. But it’s not like it seems.

  Martin rehearsed the story for himself, went through it again and again. He watched himself do it in the bathroom mirror, adjusting his expression at key moments. Emotional, but not overly so. Just embarrassed—abashed. That was it. Abashed. He did this for ten minutes. Maybe fifteen. And finally he pretty much believed it—which, he knew, was the key to lying, to getting someone to believe you. It didn’t matter if you were talking to the cops, your teachers, your parents, your priest, or your wife. The important thing was that you believe what you were saying.

  He picked up the phone and called Sharon’s and asked for Linda. He could tell from the way Sharon sounded that she knew what was going on. Good for you, Sharon. Just put her on the phone. Then Linda came on the line.

  “Martin,” she said. It wasn’t a greeting, and she wasn’t using his name as the start of a sentence. It was just a word—flat, toneless.

  He thought about hanging up right there. Why bother? But he knew he couldn’t deal with the consequences of hanging up once he put the receiver back down. He’d be cut off from her, and he didn’t want that. He had to get her to believe him.

  And so he started in. He watched himself in the bathroom mirror as he talked to her. He found it more useful than he would have thought—it helped him feel and sound the way he wanted.

  “Look, Linda,” he said. “Just let me talk, okay? Just listen, and when I’m done talking, you can decide what to do. Or what to think. Okay?”

  He heard her breathing on the other end of the line.

  “Martin . . .” she said, and he could hear her trailing off, trying to figure out what to say next. But this time his name sounded a little different when she said it, as if it had some actual texture. As if he existed again.

  But she didn’t let him talk, or not at first. At first she really wasn’t listening at all. Instead she ripped into him, called him a freak, cried.

  “Why do you have that thing, Martin?” she asked, first plaintively, but pretty quickly with a sharp, biting tone—tearing into him. “Are you obsessed with her? Are you in love with her? I mean, Jesus, Martin, did you really break into their fucking house, for Christ’s sake?”

  He waited out this first assault, counseling himself to be patient—to be quiet. Then, when he sensed she was running out of steam, he plunged in.

  “We were at a party at their house,” he said. “You know, one of those patio things. The things they don’t invite us to anymore. I don’t know what that’s about. I mean, what did we do wrong? I—”

  “Jesus Christ, Martin—”

  “Okay, okay,” he said. “I
know.” He paused, and pinched the bridge of his nose, watched himself do it in the mirror. He felt a headache coming on.

  “Okay,” he said again. “So we were there, and I went back to use the bathroom.”

  “You know, Martin,” Linda said, interrupting him. “I really don’t think I’m ready for this. If you want to go off and be a freak in someone else’s house, that’s your business. How about if—”

  “And so, yes, I was snooping,” Martin said. He said it quickly, emphasizing the “yes,” making sure to cut her off. He had the feeling that if he just kept talking, she’d listen.

  “Okay?” he said. “So I admit it. I was there, I admit. I did it. But listen, okay?”

  He paused for a half second or so, and when she didn’t jump in or hang up, he knew he had a chance. She was listening.

  “So I was standing there, looking at the pictures in the hallway—you know, the stuff on the walls, the pictures of them and the kids.” He pictured her picturing this, and he knew that, so far at least, everything he was saying sounded plausible. Just keep going, he thought.

  “And then before I knew it,” he said, “I was peeking into their bedroom. You know . . . just to see.” He paused again. For effect. Again he had the feeling that she was seeing it as he was describing it—that she was a little bit curious, even. What does that bedroom look like, anyway?

  “And I saw the jewelry box sitting there,” he said. “The one you found. But it was open. And, I don’t know, I saw that there were some gold coins inside it, and I picked it up. I was just checking them out. They’re old . . . But then someone came back into the house, toward the bathroom or maybe the bedroom, and I freaked out. I mean there I was, looking at shit in their bedroom. What the fuck was I doing? It was like I’d been drugged or something, and I’d just woken up and found myself there.”

  He paused again, looking at himself in the mirror. What would Linda say if she could see him standing there, looking at himself and talking? Did he look believable? Not really. He looked wiped out—wiped out and desperate. Fortunately, he still had his toupee on. Lately he disliked seeing himself without it, even in the privacy of his own bathroom.

  “Jesus, Martin,” Linda said. He could hear her shaking her head—or he could tell that her tone was the one she used when she shook her head. Not the tone she used with the kids. No, this was the one she used with him—the one that said I don’t really believe you, and I don’t really like you. It was particularly awful, because most of the time her tone was the exact opposite; it was one that conveyed her love for him. She didn’t have to tell him she loved him, because he could hear it in her voice—even when she wasn’t talking to him or about him. But then there was this tone, the one that said that it wasn’t quite possible for her love to be absolute or unconditional. Because he’d disappointed her too many times. This was the tone that popped up every so often, in moments like this. Like when he’d bought the Viking. Or when he told her he’d fired Ron Beaton and hired Radkovitch. Or (of course) when he’d told her twenty years ago that he didn’t really live in that fancy house in the nicer part of Berkeley, and that the guy who’d gotten her pregnant wasn’t quite who she’d thought he was.

  And now . . . now was one of the times when he heard that tone.

  “Linda,” he said. “Please. Just let me finish, okay? Please. Just listen. Just for another minute or two. Okay? Please.”

  He heard her breathe, and then sigh. “Oh my God,” she said—muttered. He could tell that she was talking more to herself than to him. He wasn’t sure, but he thought he heard her laugh. Not at him, he knew. At herself. This was bad, but he saw the opening: She was going to let him finish. Or she was going to listen a little more, anyway.

  “So I hurried back into the hallway,” he said. “And it was Miriam who was coming down the hallway, for Christ’s sake. And then it was too late—I had the box in my hand. What was I supposed to do? I couldn’t exactly say, ‘Oh, here, this is yours. I grabbed it off your bureau when I was snooping around in your room.’”

  He heard her chuckle again. And though he knew it wasn’t an appreciative laugh, it was a step in that direction. No, she didn’t see him as a victim (his overall goal). But she was starting to see how crazy his situation had been (or his version of his situation, that is).

  “And so then I stuck the case in my jacket pocket,” he said. “I mean, thank God I was wearing a sports coat. You were right about that—about what to wear and everything. Anyway, and then the next thing I knew we were at home, and I was shitting my pants. Seriously. Really. I didn’t know how to get it back to them. I mean, what should I have done, break into their house when no one was around so that I could give it back to them?”

  He let out a little tiny laugh—allowed himself the risk, and saw in the mirror that it was a good laugh. He was smiling as he laughed. And he heard her chuckle again, too.

  “To tell you the truth,” he said, “I actually thought about it, about breaking in, I mean. But what if I got caught? I mean, imagine that. Talk about fucked! So I just stuck it up in the closet. And then when you said that Miriam had come by the house and was talking about a break-in, I knew it was too late. Too late to tell you, I mean. Or to do anything, actually.” He sighed. “Maybe I should have just thrown the thing away. Or put it in the mail, sent it to them. Jesus, Linda, I don’t know. I don’t know what the fuck I’m talking about, in fact.”

  He was quiet for a second—for ten or fifteen seconds, and she was quiet on the other end, listening.

  “I don’t know what else to say,” he said, finally. “I feel terrible. I feel like an idiot, actually. I know you think this is really weird—and it is, I guess. But I just did something stupid, that’s all.”

  They talked for a while after that—half an hour, at least. But by the end of the call (he kept at it, was persistent—calm and persistent), he was pretty sure she believed him. Probably not because she found the story so convincing (though it was pretty good, Martin thought, especially given the tight spot he was in). No, she believed him because she really didn’t have a choice. What was she supposed to do, admit to herself that her husband was the type of person who broke into people’s houses, stole little keepsakes, and then stashed them away in his closet? That behind his husband mask was some other person? Or (worse and far more disturbing) that behind the mask of almost normalcy was a person with a variety of faces, no single one of which was the real one, the one that matched up with the actual, authentic Martin Anderson?

  No, he knew she wasn’t going to do this. And so although he knew he was in the doghouse for a long time, he also knew he was going to make it. In fact, as the conversation wound down he could tell that her feelings had shifted, and that instead of being mad at him, what she actually felt was pity. She didn’t say so, of course, but Martin knew that she felt a little bit sorry for him. It was, he thought, kind of the way they’d both felt for Peter when he wrote those notes to the other kids at school. (And he had written them—Martin had no doubt about that. In fact, he realized with a sudden and uncomfortable mixture of alarm and pride, Peter had probably gotten his skills as a liar from him. Either the genes Martin had handed down to him were coded for lying, or he’d simply spent enough weeks and months and years around Martin, listening to him bullshit and prevaricate and just generally treat the truth like a problem to be avoided, that he’d begun to operate the same way. Jesus, Martin thought; it was so obvious it hadn’t even occurred to him.)

  Finally, Linda asked about the horse race. He knew this was a concession, a bone tossed his way—and he appreciated it.

  “It was amazing,” he told her, genuine in his response. “I really wish you could have seen it.”

  Then she wrapped up the call. “I don’t know when we’ll be home,” she said. “Maybe in a day or two. I haven’t been over here in a while, in Oakland. We might take the kids over to the City. Maybe we’ll even go up to the cabin. I don’t know. I just don’t feel like being at home right now.”


  “Okay,” Martin said. “Fine. Whatever you want.” But he was pretty sure that she’d be home tomorrow. And if not tomorrow, then the next day. For sure.

  By the time he hung up it was late, and he was exhausted. He was actually glad to have the house to himself. He got into bed with all his clothes on—kicked off his shoes, but that was it. Sweat, dust, alcohol. He didn’t care. He’d had a narrow escape—narrower, if possible, than his escape from Miriam’s bedroom. But in the moments before fading off to sleep, he thought about the big purse that Temperature’s Rising had won, and about the money that would be coming in from the run he was going to do for Val in a few days.

  Maybe, he thought, I’m turning the corner. Maybe things are going to work out, after all.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  When Martin finally found the guy, he was sitting in the first place he’d looked. At the café in Ensenada, the aqua-colored one with the big open window—the place where he and Hano had sat and drunk and met the two girls. Lucille and Maria. He’d given the cab driver bad directions in his halting, broken Spanish, and gotten lost for a while. For some reason he thought he’d see the guy and his metal teeth the minute he got out of the cab, but of course that didn’t happen. Why had he thought he’d be standing around at just the moment he needed him?

  So when he wasn’t there, standing around with some girl (it was about nine or ten, the time when they’d be out, he’d thought), Martin had started walking. It all looked pretty much the same—cantinas, brightly painted buildings, lights strung up, lots of cars in the street—and pretty soon he was lost. Although since he was looking for a person rather than a place, it wasn’t necessarily true that he was lost, exactly. He was just wandering. He tried to ask some people if they had seen the man with the metal teeth, but he didn’t know how to say it properly. “The man with the dentistas?” he said, pointing to his teeth and giving a grimacing smile. “Hombre?” “Dentistas?”