Before You Go

by Tommy Butler

  “Why, Elliot Chance,” says Esther. “You aren’t a leprechaun after all.”

  I laugh. “What finally convinced you?”

  “The pitch of your voice,” she says. “Everybody knows that leprechauns never grow up. Oh, they may grow beards and smoke pipes, but they’re still juvenile. You, on the other hand, have clearly become a man. Not that I’m surprised. I always thought you’d make a fine one.”

  For some reason I’ve never really thought of myself as a grown-up. I suppose the hallmarks are all there—twenty-seven years old, college degree, job, girlfriend, apartment. Yet somehow I don’t think this is what Esther means.

  “I don’t know,” I say. “I guess if wearing a tie and sitting at a desk in midtown Manhattan makes you an adult, then I qualify.”

  “Oh, the Big Apple,” says Esther. “How exciting. I haven’t been in years.”

  “Are you far?”

  “It’s just a train ride, really. Though I fear I’m becoming an insufferable homebody.”

  “Let’s fix that!” I say, suddenly excited by the prospect of seeing her. “How about lunch at my favorite Italian place? Best lasagna in the city. I can meet you at Grand Central—”

  “Oh, there’s no need for that,” says Esther. “I’m sure you’re busy. Just give me the name of this favorite Italian place of yours. I’d be very happy to meet you there.”

  “You would?”

  “Of course,” she says, a smile in her voice. “Am I not also a traveler?”

  The week leading up to my lunch with Esther is an unexpected blend of apprehension and tranquility. Though Esther isn’t the type to pass judgment, I can’t help but worry whether I’ve become the man she thought I would be. Yet my nervous energy is balanced by a new composure at work, as if my distracted thoughts afford some distance between me and the unrelenting sense of urgency that pervades our office. Though my commute home grows later each night—and darker now, as autumn ages—I don’t mind. The long hours seem less so, and the dancing shade haunts my route so merrily that I begin to seek it out. While the eyes of most New Yorkers gravitate to neon and the glow of restaurant windows, mine are drawn to the black mouths of subway tunnels and the hollows beneath brownstone staircases, where the shade pantomimes in playful abstraction.

  The morning of my reunion with Esther offers no exception to the general tumult. The office is a bewildering muddle of milling bodies engulfed by a flurry of emails, faxes, phone calls, and memoranda. I sit serenely at my desk, pleasantly occupied with my bagel and paperwork, bestriding the chaos like a mountain of calm. I’m wearing my best suit and most whimsical tie—full of colored spirals—which Jennifer thinks is “childish,” but which I know Esther will appreciate. My anxiety about seeing Esther is gone, leaving just a simple eagerness to talk to her about all that’s happened since last I saw her, and to hear what she has to say about it.

  At midday I promptly rise from my desk, tuck my shirt in more snugly, and brush the last stubborn bagel crumbs from my lap. I retrieve my coat from the back of the door, and even manage to get it halfway on before Dean rushes in.

  “Whoa, cowboy,” he says. “Put a hitch in that giddyup. I need a redo.”

  He hands me a file with an audit I recently put together for one of his clients. I recognize it by the profusion of small, colored stickies jutting from its side, each one indicating a potential problem with the client’s financial statements.

  “What’s wrong with it?” I ask.

  “Too many flags.”

  I nod. This is not an unusual request. In any audit, there’s room for discretion when calling out possible issues. I tend to be conservative, flagging anything that could conceivably cause trouble. But stickies frighten clients, particularly start-ups, so I’m never surprised when asked to loosen up a bit and let the more innocuous stuff slide. “Sure, I’ll take a look this afternoon.”

  Dean shakes his head. “I need it stat. Client’s going to be here in an hour.”

  “Sorry, I have a lunch.” I refrain from pointing out that I gave him the file over a week ago, and that he didn’t have to wait until the last minute to actually look at it.

  “So cancel it.” Dean says this nonchalantly, as if he’s telling me to tie my shoe.

  “I can’t just cancel it.”

  “Why not? Is it with a client?”

  A shimmer appears in the corner of my vision. It is the sparkling crescent monster from my childhood, flashing as if in warning. “No, but—”

  “It’ll take you ten minutes,” says Dean.

  “Nothing takes ten minutes,” I shoot back. “I’ll be late.”

  “So be late, Elliot.” Dean’s voice hardens. “I can’t show this to the client. They’ll lose their shit. Then they’ll question whether we know what the hell we’re doing, which is going to make them unhappy. And keeping clients happy is the only reason we’re here. If that’s not a priority for you, we’ve got other auditors.”

  Dean’s not-so-veiled threat shakes my newfound equanimity. I wouldn’t expect him to pull me off one of his clients over this, let alone all of them. But I honestly don’t know, and Dean’s clients represent the vast majority of my work. He’s not wrong when he says that without them, I wouldn’t have much reason to be here.

  “Fine.” I grab the file and rush back to my desk, not even pausing to take my jacket off. Thirty minutes later, I’ve scrubbed the audit down to a level of alarm that Dean deems acceptable. I race down to the street, forgoing the subway for a cab in the hope of getting to the restaurant faster, but I’m already late. Not that I think Esther will have left. On the contrary, what upsets me is the conviction that she is no doubt waiting patiently for me, and I’ve left her hanging.

  As the taxi makes the final turn toward the restaurant, it’s abruptly halted by a line of stopped traffic, which seems odd until I see a flash of blue and red lights ahead. I get out and walk. Nearing the far corner, I see the source of the lights—a police motorcycle parked in front of the restaurant. A crowd simmers at the edges of a cordoned-off patch of sidewalk, where yellow police tape stretches between the motorcycle, a garbage can, and a dented lamppost tilted askew. I scan the crowd and the windows of the restaurant for Esther’s face, but don’t see her. It occurs to me that I might look right at her and not recognize her, but the thought is quickly pushed aside by a sick, twisted feeling in my gut as I look past the crowd.

  Lying on the sidewalk, isolated within the cordon of police tape, is a body. Heeled shoes and long skirt identify it as a woman, and fine wrinkles along the skin of her hands and forearms indicate that she was no longer very young. Her head and shoulders are hidden—shrouded respectfully, if hastily, by the policeman’s jacket.

  The twisted feeling blooms into a cold fear, corroding my insides. I approach the policeman slowly, almost feebly. He holds a police radio and a driver’s license. The rest of him is an indistinct blot in my vision.

  “I was . . .” I struggle to finish the thought. “I was supposed to . . .”

  The blot shifts. I think it’s looking at me. “Did you know her, sir?”

  “Did I know?”

  “She’s dead. Hit-and-run.”

  Dead? Not Esther, then. Not dead. But the words that emerge from my mouth betray me. “She was my—”

  The blot shifts again. “Grayston?” it asks. “Esther Grayston?”

  I nod. I don’t actually believe it, though. There is something unreal about the universe. One way or another everything is a dream.

  The policeman is speaking. “I’m sorry, sir. Is there someone you can call? Ambulance is on its way.” A pause that seems infinite. His voice sharpens. “We’ll catch the driver. Don’t worry about that. Witnesses say she was just standing here, and the car jumped the curb. Didn’t even slow down. Bounced off the lamppost and just kept going.”

  Sirens in the distance. Angry shouts closer by. A fight. The policeman leaves to attend to it. The faces in the crowd turn away. I slip under the police tape and kneel b
eside the body. I remove the policeman’s jacket.

  She is older. Her hair is grayer. Yet I tell myself I would have recognized her. She looks thin, and frail. I don’t know if this is due to age or death. Mostly she seems alone, separated from the world by a cordon of yellow tape—a world full of people who have turned their backs, who are already moving on to the next item on their agenda, who are too busy to keep their promise to arrive on time.

  I suddenly find it intolerable that Esther’s grandmother never hugged her. I think Esther would be exactly the kind of granddaughter you’d want to hug. I lean down and press my chest to hers, resting my arms on her shoulders, embracing her as best I can.

  “I’m sorry, Esther.”

  But she’s gone. The shadows cast by the surrounding crowd seem to grow deeper, yet somehow I know that the dancing shade also won’t be coming back—the world too stark, too literal, too harshly lit, for its presence. Color drains from the scene, leaving behind the dull gray stain of existence. Though I can hear Gareth’s voice exhorting me to grab my brush, I’m getting tired of painting over it.

  Part III

  If you wish to drown, do not torture yourself with shallow water.

  —Bulgarian proverb

  Elliot

  (2000)

  This is a day.

  7:00 a.m. My alarm goes off with a grating drone, like a damaged lawn mower, though as far as I can tell they paved the last of New York City years ago, and there isn’t a blade of grass for miles. I hit the snooze button. Nine minutes later, I hit it again. This scrimmage continues until I have to piss, at which point I stop the clock, conceding the losing battle against wakefulness and resenting this biological need to rise. Jennifer stays in bed, neither the alarm nor the time giving her just cause to awaken. Young lawyers in New York work ungodly hours. When they sleep at all, they sleep in, and prefer not to be disturbed. At rest, Jennifer’s normally tireless demeanor becomes almost serene—inviting, it would seem to me, a good-morning kiss. I refrain, however, knowing it would be less than welcome.

  The air conditioner in our apartment is broken. It’s August, and hot as hell, but I start the coffeemaker anyway. Because caffeine. I’m up to 720 milligrams a day and there’s no going back. The first sip still conveys a whiff of chemical cheer, but it’s soon lost in the swill of the remaining ounces. I open my closet and stare at the same three suits and two pairs of shoes I’ve been wearing for years. My eleven ties hang listlessly, their machine-wrought patterns exposed as a somewhat pathetic attempt at self-expression. I pick one at random and close the closet, leaving behind my father’s old overcoat. It’s far too hot for it, which is just as well, since it now hangs loosely over my thin frame, calling attention to the fact that I’m losing weight.

  8:00 a.m. I step into the street and join the rest of the daily commuters scurrying down Lexington. We are not rats, exactly, nor are we racing. Rats are assertive, resourceful. We are more like hamsters—passive, compliant, scampering back and forth along paths laid out for us like a prearranged network of vivarium tubes, each to his own cylinder, wholly isolated from each other despite our physical proximity.

  The subway is merely a more conspicuous segment of the tunnels we inhabit. We crowd together in the artificial light, striving not to touch one another, apologizing when we do. The faces surrounding me are dour, as if we are being sent off to a war we can’t win and from which we won’t be coming back. Most of the troops stare blankly ahead, the anticipated stress of the workday already in their eyes. Others pore over the newspaper, seeking distraction but only exacerbating their unease. In any event, it’s rare to meet the eyes of my fellow travelers. But then, we’re not really travelers. You can’t be a traveler if you never go anywhere.

  8:30 a.m. The office elevator is decidedly more social. The high of caffeine and the imminence of the daily grind combine to fill the car with a contagious anxiety, a barely contained panic in the face of the new day’s potential pitfalls, spewing forth in the tiresome drivel of my coworkers, repeated almost verbatim, week after week, month after month.

  “—the club last night,” Dennis is saying. “I’ve never been so hungover in my life.” Dennis is a drunk. I don’t know how he’s managed to avoid getting fired.

  “Whatever,” says Nicole. She smiles awkwardly, trying to hide her discomfort. She hates Dennis. “You were so home last night. By yourself, as usual—unless you count your television.”

  “You should come out with us.”

  Nicole forces another smile. “You wish.”

  “Ah, youth,” says Jeff, whose children’s fingerprints can still be discerned in paint above his left eye. He huddles in the corner of the elevator as if trying to hide from someone, and he shakes his head as if to say that he would give anything to once again go to a club. “Just wait until you settle down,” he says. “Then you’ll see.” Misery wants company. The others laugh at him.

  “Does anyone else think it’s weird that we all turn to face the door?” I ask. I don’t know why I feel the need to pose this question, except that I do think it’s weird, and I do want to know if anyone else thinks so, too. By the looks on their faces, I probably should have known better.

  “Not really,” says Dennis.

  “I think it would be weird if we didn’t face the door,” says Nicole. “I mean, what are we supposed to do, turn around and stare at each other?”

  8:35 a.m. I enter my office, take off my suit jacket, and hang it on the back of the door. Matt is already at his desk, eyes down, ensconced behind a partition of file boxes. The poster of Bora Bora above his head is, quite literally, the very picture of paradise. I’ve always told myself I’ll travel someday. Apparently Matt has, too. Maybe we have more in common than spreadsheets and financial statements.

  “Have you been to Bora Bora?”

  Matt glances up from his computer. He seems vaguely confused by the fact that I’m speaking to him. “No,” he says, turning back to his screen.

  “So it’s more aspirational.”

  “What is?”

  “Your poster.”

  Matt’s confusion shifts to mild annoyance when he realizes I’m still talking. It takes him a moment to realize I’m referring to the poster. “Oh,” he says. “That’s not mine. It was here when I started. I think it’s covering up a hole in the wall.”

  He returns to his monitor, apparently concluding that our dialogue has been sufficiently resolved. Which I guess it has. I sit down at my desk and turn my attention to the boxes full of paper, the string of new emails on my computer screen. It is a struggle, this turning of attention. I don’t know why. None of this is any different from when I started. If anything, after several years, it should be easier. It’s not. What used to take me an hour now takes two. Complex spreadsheet formulas that I used to enjoy crafting now disorient me until the corners of my vision begin to narrow.

  The truth is, I just don’t care whether the financial statements of some start-up company burning through millions of other people’s dollars have been prepared “in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles” or are otherwise perfect enough for rich investors or richer banks. But, as my father says, that’s my problem. He says this whole idea that work is something you need to be passionate about is misguided. When I protest that it feels like I’m just working for a paycheck, he frowns. “Someone has to pay the rent,” he says. I can’t argue with him, but then I wasn’t looking for an argument.

  12:30 p.m. I eat lunch at my desk—a sandwich and some kind of sugar water. Rumor has it that in ages past, people used to go out for their midday meal. They would sit in restaurants or public parks, eating slowly and talking to each other. Now, if you’re away from the office for longer than it takes to pick up a bag of food, you start to feel guilty about it, and vaguely fearful that someone is going to call you out.

  The Vade Mecum stays in its drawer. I have no wisdom to add to its pages. Its title now feels pretentious to me, and its contents—as much as I can reme
mber them—naive and ineffectual. Not to mention unmarketable. It seems that somewhere along the way, my firm’s clients all became internet companies, whose primary objective is to drive “eyeballs” to their websites so that they can sell the company to the highest bidder and get rich quick. Never mind that the company isn’t profitable, that it is in fact hemorrhaging cash. Advice on how to build a better business? Gleaned from years of careful research and analysis? How quaint.

  Sasha’s latest advertisement has been out for a while now—a full-page display about how an obscenely expensive car will make you sexier and therefore happier. I make a half-hearted attempt at solving Sasha’s puzzle, knowing she couldn’t resist such easy bait, but I struggle. I look for “greed” and “avarice” and “gross materialism,” but the letters jumble on the page and I can’t find a solution. I keep ending up with “gratitude,” and I know that can’t be right.

  I give up and take a nap instead. I do this discreetly, in such a way that it could appear to anyone else that I’m actually reading something on the desk in front of me. I turn away from the door and rest one elbow on the desk, then put my head in my hand and close my eyes. I don’t have a name for this particular style of nap—or series of naps, really, since I’m not under for more than a few minutes at a time before my elbow slips or my head nods or some noise from the hallway makes me think I’ve been caught. Still, though nameless, it is perhaps my favorite part of the day, this tiptoeing at the edge of dream, this peaceful carelessness, this nearly slipping away.

  3:00 p.m. Dean executes his flyby. Though more anxious than usual these days, Dean hasn’t fundamentally changed since before he was old enough to ogle. He continues to attack life in the same breathless way he approached leaf-catching—all bustle and bluster, inefficient and combative. What’s worse, I realize that we are all beginning to emulate him. Dean’s mindless hustle is becoming business “best practice,” and to behave otherwise—to work just eight hours a day, for example, or go out for an hour at lunchtime—is viewed as not being “all in,” not being a team player, not valuing your job enough to keep it. So we put our heads down and charge. We are like sailboats without captains—empty vessels crashing into one another as we trace the circumference of a yawning maelstrom of panic.