Trouble

by Jesse Kellerman

  “You are.”

  “It’s bad enough having to sneak around my own house.”

  “Then don’t.”

  “You say that like I can do whatever I want, when you know full well that—”

  “Because of Hannah?”

  “No because of Lee Harvey Oswald.”

  Jonah swallowed a retort. “She might like having a woman around.”

  “She can’t handle that. Either of them.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because she’s my daughter and I can gauge what she can and can’t handle.”

  “I don’t think you’re giving her enough—”

  “Don’t start this, don’t, don’t, don’t.”

  “What about Louise? If you need a reason to introduce them, that’s a good one. She can help you out.”

  “Her life’s been hard enough, I think I can spare her.”

  “So what, you’re going to lie to Hannah indefinitely?”

  George crushed the newpaper into a ball. “What the hell do you think you know about it. You’re here twice a month. What about the other twenty-nine days a month. Monday through Friday. Where’re you then?”

  Stunned, but recovering fast, he said, “I don’t have to be here at all.”

  “Then don’t do me any favors, if you’re going to make my life harder. I don’t care what you do. You can come if you want or stay home if you want. But you think you can start lecturing me about how I spend my private time, you can go to hell.”

  A silence.

  Jonah went to the sofa and began jamming books into his bag.

  “Where are you going?”

  The zipper stuck and he yanked, breaking it entirely and leaving the bag uncloseable. He threw it gaping over his shoulder. “Find someone else for Christmas.”

  At that, George—who had been sulking placidly—leapt up. “We had a deal.”

  “Not anymore.”

  He made it halfway down the block before George pulled up alongside him in his Acura. “You promised me.”

  He wanted to break into a run, but it wasn’t as though George couldn’t keep up. Not to mention the shedding of dignity that running entailed. He kept walking, looking straight ahead.

  “It’s not me you’re hurting. You know that. It’s her. She asked for you to stay.”

  “You can tell her it’s your fault that I’m not.”

  “Jonah. Get in the car.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “I’m going to ignore that.”

  “Then I’ll say it again. Fuck y—”

  George zoomed ahead, pulled over, and got out, leaving the motor running. Jonah clenched the strap of his bag. He was bigger than George, and presently he felt three times normal size.

  “Why are you doing this to me?”

  “What am I doing to you, George.”

  “I’m a human being. You understand that? I need to get away. I need help. What I don’t need is you prying.”

  “You won’t have it,” Jonah said. “You won’t have me doing anything. You won’t have me to worry about, or to pick up from the train station—not that you ever remember, every fucking time—and you won’t have me to babysit. You can pay someone. You want someone, you can fend for yourself. Hire a service. Hire a Jewish nurse. Who do you think works on Christmas Eve?”

  For the first time, George looked genuinely frightened. “I didn’t mean t—”

  As Jonah brushed past he felt a hand on his arm, and his immediate instinct was to lash out. But he shook himself free, reshouldered his bag, and headed up the block alone.

  • 11 •

  THAT NIGHT EVE did not come over. Jonah, hepped up on adrenaline, was exasperated; he wanted to tell her what had happened and to share with her the decision he’d made on the train home.

  As angry as he was, he admitted that Hannah, not her father, stood to suffer most from an abrupt end. But done gradually, like tapering a medication:

  Through Christmas he would come regularly; it was three and a half months away, and already he had tolerated twenty months of nonsense. Three and a half months was fourteen weeks, which at his current rate amounted to five or six visits. That much he could stomach; he would do it for Hannah; in her honor; in memoriam.

  And he owed her the first week of vacation. Reneging didn’t bother him, but he got sick thinking about what George would tell her if he didn’t show. He doesn’t want to see you anymore. Even if Jonah let him dangle for a bit, even if he wrung an apology out of him, in the end, he had to go.

  The threat to duck out had been ninety percent bluff, anyway, designed to elicit a reaction both from George and from himself. He needed to see how it felt to say no. And now he knew: it felt okay. Not good, but he would adjust. He’d adjusted to the opposite extreme.

  After Christmas all bets were off. Starting in January he would scale back to—say, once a month. Then every two months, every three. Her birthday was in April; he would make an exception. Beyond that he made no promises.

  He wanted to tell Eve, because although she couldn’t claim credit for putting these ideas in his head—they had been gestating longer than he cared to admit—he did owe her a debt of gratitude for jump-starting him. And telling her would go a long way toward demonstrating that she was important to him, even if he wasn’t exactly—or at all—ready to say that he loved her. You showed me the light he would say. A good way to satisfy everybody, at least in the short run.

  He waited up. At midnight Lance came home and went straight to the PlayStation.

  “You’re still awake?”

  Jonah, grateful for the distraction, put his books aside. “Insomnia.”

  “Bummer.”

  For a half-hour he watched Lance fend off zombies.

  “What’s this game called again?”

  “Dude, I’m glad you have me to fill in the steel-meltingly huge blanks in your map of contemporary cultural literacy. This is a classic: Resident Evil.”

  “Is there a character named Benderking?”

  “What what?”

  “Never mind.”

  After biting the dust several times, Lance switched off the TV, and stood solemnly looking at the dark screen. “I don’t know if I’ve accomplished anything today.”

  “You honed your hand-eye coordination.”

  “The definitive parental rationalization of the late eighties and early nineties,” Lance said. “Is there any medical evidence for that?”

  “Not as far as I know.”

  “I take it back, I did achieve a lot today. Footage galore. My Citizen Kane.”

  “You’ll have to show it to me sometime.”

  “You got it, kemosabe.” He rushed from the room.

  “No, not n—I have—Lance. Not—”

  “It’s a digest of the most recent work.” Lance returned, waving a DVD. “Groundbreaking shit.”

  Jonah endured four minutes of Lance reading a German film magazine, using a pocket dictionary while his lips moved; two minutes of Lance doing sit-ups; six minutes of Lance styling his hair; nine minutes of Lance smoking and watching the ceiling.

  “I feel like it really gives a sense of who I am.”

  After thirty seconds of Lance brushing his teeth, Jonah had had it. He was about to say as much when the screen went to a low-lit shot of the living room.

  Jonah Stem.

  “This is one of my all-time personal favorites,” Lance said.

  On the screen, Eve walked across the living room. Barefoot, a gray pencil skirt, her usual woolly sweater. Jonah recognized the outfit as one she’d worn a week prior.

  He said, “Oh God.”

  “It’s hard to make out what you’re saying unless you turn it way up. During the talking part I mean. Once the action starts it’s plenty loud.”

  Jonah didn’t reply; he was absorbed by the arm at the bottom left of the screen. His own arm. That put the camera—where? He tried to extrapolate, but it was like reading the laparoscopy monitor.

  “I�
�m shocked, shocked, that you haven’t had the cops called on you. You guys are feral; it sounds like someone’s dying.”

  Jonah watched Eve climb on top of him. They fell halfway out of the shot as she pulled him to the floor. He tried to remember if this was the night she’d thrown his tie out the window. Oh yes, there it went.

  He’d liked that tie.

  “You never told me about your exhibitionist tendencies, dude. That’s the beauty of good friends: you’re always learning something new.”

  Eve exuded patience: a ballerina partnered with a hippopotamus. He, on the other hand…that’s what he looked like? Strained, pixelated, clownish; like the portraits theme parks offer after you toddle, addled, off a rollercoaster. He decided that if more people could see themselves in the throes of lust, they’d enter the priesthood. In her limpness as he struggled to get her sideways he inferred a certain…passivity? She spun into the frame, on top of him, and the camera’s vantage showed him something new: although Eve was grunting, and bucking her hips, and thrashing around, her expression was flat. Passive, he saw, wasn’t the right word. The right word was bored.

  He grabbed for the remote and Lance danced back. “Wait, this is the good part.”

  “Turn it off.”

  “Are you kidding?”

  “I don’t need to see this.”

  “Why?”

  “I was there.” Jonah tried to get at him, and Lance took up a defensive position behind the easy chair.

  “Whoa,” he said. He held up Buddha palms. “Chill.”

  “I can’t fucking believe you.”

  “You guys did all the work, you get all the credit.”

  “I told you not to put a camera in here. Where is it.”

  “Dude—”

  “Where.”

  Lance pointed: atop the fridge, nestled between two half-empty boxes of Frosted Flakes. Right where he’d been forbidden to put it in the first place. He rushed to whisk it away. “I moved it a couple of weeks ago to film myself, and I forgot to take it down. Then it happened to snag nuggets of your amorous dalliance. You were so in the moment, dude, I couldn’t stop once you got rolling.”

  “Yes you fucking could.”

  “You’ve quadrupled my audience. You’re one of the more popular segments—”

  “I am not a segment, you shitty shithead.”

  “Look, I can’t help it if you want to do it all over the apar—hey.” Lance ducked a flying mandarin orange that left a Rorschach on the wall. “You’re gonna injure me. Please listen to reason, dude, I—put that down.”

  Dangling the PlayStation out the window, Jonah said, “Gimme the camera.”

  “The camera is a vessel, man, you the artist fill it with—please put the gaming console down.”

  “I’m on the Internet.”

  “No, no, no, I deleted you off the server. This is the only copy.”

  “Somebody might have saved it.”

  “No, dude, no w—uh.” Lance pursed his lips. “Correct.”

  “Yeah, correct.”

  “Web video has a short shelf life, dude. You’ll be forgotten in a week, I promise. It’s not like you’re a celebrity or anything.”

  “No more broadcasting.”

  “At all? Come on—”

  “Not in here. No more cameras in here.”

  “Fine. Fine. You got it. Set her down gently.”

  “The camera.”

  With a sigh, Lance handed it over, and Jonah repatriated the PlayStation to its dust-free rectangular patch atop the television. Then he ejected the DVD and snapped it.

  “Dude, that wasn’t necess—whoooaaaokay chill, chill. I just think it’s tragic that you can’t appreciate your own work. When can I get my camera back?”

  Jonah threw the disc in the trash.

  “My mom e-mailed me,” Lance said. “She thinks your chick is faking it. She said it doesn’t sound real. The guy from Kuala Lumpur wants to see a money shot.”

  Jonah wound up and pitched the webcam into the street five stories below. It shattered on the opposite sidewalk, causing a pair of girls sipping from a brown paper bag to shriek. Lance joined him at the window and slipped a fraternal arm across Jonah’s shoulders. “I’m sorry I upset you, dude. Really. I love you.”

  “I love you too, Lance.”

  “Listen, I have a great idea. You and me should take a trip to Atlantic City. Or maybe we could drive to Graceland. We’ll shoot the whole thing. Think about it: you’re stressed, I could use a vacation—aww don’t walk out while I’m talking, it’s uncivil.”

  • 12 •

  TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 2004.

  BLUE TEAM, WEEK TWO.

  ANY RESEMBLANCE Simón Iniguez bore to his brother had been effaced by good grooming. Thickset, with a black moustache and a cleft chin, he wore a leather jacket and sunglasses.

  “Scarface wannabe. Meet his attack dog.” Belzer opened another file, full of Xeroxed letters, motions, decisions, a bar certification. He liked to have photos of everyone he was dealing with; it helped him keep people straight and—he claimed—identify their weaknesses. Roberto Medina wore a trim gray three-piece suit and a gold watch chain. With the exception of titanic eyebrows, he had dainty features: a smug pretty-boy smile and cheekbones like a Latin pop star.

  “Class-A prick,” said Belzer. “He comes in here, makes a point of walking around the room, checking everything out. ‘Wonderful view,’ he tells me. ‘Must be nice to have a nice big office. My office is real small, you know, up in Da Bronx.’ Like that’s supposed to impress me, or else gimme a guilt trip, I don’t know what. He starts telling me about putting himself through law school at night. ‘I was a busboy.’ Then he looks at that”—Belzer indicated a lithograph on the far wall—“and he goes, ‘What’s that, how nice.’ He reads the fucking placard. You believe that? ‘Ellsworth Kelly, is he famous?’ I’m sitting here, waiting for this guy, he’s reading the placards on my art. ‘Just like in a museum,’ he goes. ‘I didn’t have much art education. Public school.’ Prick. I swear, kiddo, canning this guy’s going to be more fun for me than it is for you.”

  Jonah wasn’t listening. He was thinking about what Benderking had said to his request for two hours off.

  I’m not your mommy. If you don’t want to make the commitment to being here, that’s up to you. Your actions have consequences, and you’ll have to deal with them.

  The last thing he needed was to flunk surgery. It was far from impossible: two or three HUMmers who’d been forced to repeat during fourth year could be seen skulking around the floor, cadaverous and daunted, like Sisyphus at breakfast. His grade took into account other evaluations, not to mention the upcoming Shelf exam; but if Benderking made it his sole mission to destroy Jonah, he had the power to do so.

  Belzer took his time explaining the nature of the Iniguez family’s claim, enumerating technicalities that, he promised, hamstrung the case.

  Jonah said, “Racism?”

  “That’s what he’s saying. He says that the guy was acting in self-defense.”

  “She was crawling. And—and—how do they know? They weren’t there; I was.”

  “Hey, kiddo, don’t need to convince me. I’m telling you what Medina said. His claim is, you arrive on the scene and assume that when a man of color—that’s what he called him, a ‘man of color’—and a white woman are having a fight, the man of color is automatically the attacker. Don’t look at me like that, kiddo, I’m not saying it. He is. Listen to what he wrote: ‘Mr. Iniguez matched your client’s bigoted stereotype, and your client took it upon himself to use excessive force. He should pay for that mistake.’” Belzer looked up. “‘Bigoted stereotype.’ How’s that for concision. Look, these guys, they’re all talk. Medina’s not dumb. He’ll lose; he knows it. They just wanna give the white man a good scare.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  Belzer said, “I said, ‘Fine, Bob. We can call Ms. Jones to the stand and ask whether she felt her life was in danger, given
the three stab wounds in her back and the one in her hand. I think people will see it our way when I tell them about Raymond’s extensive history of violence, including the charges filed in 1992 when he assaulted a co-worker with a baseball bat. Or the fact that he was almost expelled from his halfway house for brawling with staff. Or, if you want to go a different route, we can hear from the ADA who spoke to my client, who’s gone on record calling him, quote, one of the bravest people she’s ever encountered, unquote. I bet they’ll find it interesting that Raymond—whose death you claim has caused your client, quote, significant financial hardship, unquote—has not paid any income tax in over a decade, not cause he was avoiding it but because he had no income to report. I bet people will find it interesting that, according to his bank, your client was sending his brother five hundred dollars a month in spending money. I’m scratching my head at that one, Bob, cause it takes some pretty advanced math to make the loss of a six-thousand-dollar-a-year liability into a significant financial hardship. I bet people will find it interesting that you sent a process server to harass my client at the hospital, distracting him from work on critically ill patients, recklessly interrupting vital medical procedures, and damaging his reputation. And I’ll bet that they’ll find it interesting that my client has experienced extreme mental anguish warranting its own suit for punitive damages. I bet they’ll find it interesting enough that any jury—white or black or whatever color you please—will give my client a truckload of money on behalf of the estate of Raymond Iniguez, which is the responsibility of your client.’” Belzer paused for breath. “Something like that. Maybe not verbatim, but close enough.”

  Jonah said, “And what did he say?”

  Belzer shrugged. “He said, ‘We’ll see you in court.’”

  BY TUESDAY NIGHT Eve had not shown up for four days, and Jonah began to worry. He kept getting up from his studying to look out the window for her. He sent her e-mails. He wished she would get a goddamned cell phone; he’d pay for it.

  Without her around he felt his resolve weakening. On Wednesday he called George and mumblingly agreed to a truce. Nobody apologized but both of them seemed to imply that they would act differently, given the chance to redo the afternoon. Jonah said he would still come for the week, adding that he was doing it for Hannah’s sake. To which George replied I’m having you for her sake. There was a pause. They hung up, and that was the end of that. Not the definitive result he’d hoped for.