by Alon Preiss
“You’re not sure if I may ask?”
He shook his head. “My age, I’m just not ....” His voice trailed off.
“How can you not be sure of your age?” Her tone was so incredulous that he was shamed into disclosure.
“Forty-one,” Daniel said.
“You see!” Janet exclaimed. “That’s not so bad. Forty-one. That’s relatively young.”
Daniel laughed. “Relatively.”
Janet laughed again. They laughed together. “Are you going to open the present?” she asked.
“Sure.” Smiling, he unwrapped his gift, opened up the box – it made a little whoomp! noise – and he smiled even more. As a present, as a gift from a secretary to the lawyer for whom she worked, it was completely appropriate. “Thank you, Janet, so much. It’s really terrific.”
“Do you really like it?”
He assured her that he did. Then she left his office, and he resumed his work.
At three in the afternoon, his e-mail blinked. Benjamin, the summer associate to whom he still owed theater tickets – the nervous little guy with the twinge in his voice – had been shot in the head and killed during lunch, in the little park near South Ferry, where he had wandered by himself to eat a sandwich. No witnesses had stepped forward. His body was slumped on the pavement, and no one had called for an ambulance for several hours. Daniel felt a sudden attack of guilt. I should have been with him, he thought, I should have been taking him out to lunch, telling him about life in New York city, selling him on this fucking firm. Something in this firm bred evil, it was just a bad feeling, a bad smell that stuck to them all, and a bad end was just inevitable. Daniel had so much as predicted all of this.
Daniel got up from his desk, left his jacket hanging over the back of his chair, left his desk lamp on, took the elevator to the ground floor, walked out by the East River, staring at the water and the inexplicable sailboats. He tried to feel sad, to mourn, because he felt that he should – it was a terrible thing, Daniel knew that, a sad thing for Benjamin, with so much living to do, marriage, children, career, money (blah blah blah), and for Benjamin’s sad parents, who would hurl themselves at the coffin, crying and moaning, wailing about their poor little baby and his broken skull, thinking about his beautiful brain, the beautiful brain that had brought him so far, to the Number One Law Firm in New York City, now rat food on the grass in some dirty New York park hundreds of miles from home – but still Daniel could no more feel sad on hearing the surprising news of poor Benjamin’s death than happy upon receiving an unexpected birthday present he didn’t need on a day not his birthday. So finally he abandoned hope, walked back to his office building, took the elevator up, up, up! into a tower in the clouds – sat down at his desk and finished his third cup of coffee.
Two hours later, upset at his inability to care about this young man he barely knew, he called Natalie, said he needed to let off some steam. “Let’s stay out,” he said insistently. “Let’s go to dinner someplace expensive, let’s go hear some jazz afterwards, let’s talk into the hours of the night as the city closes down around us. Let’s go back home, turn out all the lamps and light a candle. Make sure I’m up far too late and go in to work tired and happy and insane the next day.” Natalie said OK, and Daniel couldn’t tell if she were smiling.
That night at eight, he left work, took a cab to Natalie’s studio where she was mixing paints, listening to music on her tape deck – some kind of music that was too young for him, far too young. Lying back on her couch, he looked out the window at the orange glow of sunset peering up above the buildings. “It’s weird, Natalie, you know, I think I’m really going to make partner.”
She turned to him, unhappy.
He backtracked. “Well, anyway. We’ll see. I’ll be disappointed either way.”
“Anything new today at work?” she asked.
“Why?”
“Nothing.”
“Why did you ask?”
She laughed. “Making conversation.”
Daniel didn’t mention the fate of young Benjamin, because that would just add too much weight to the conversation. It was a pleasant, very pleasant evening, with a nice little cool breeze blowing through the studio. He thought that maybe he and Natalie could laugh a little about life, and even though he should have told his wife about such a thing, a thing that should have been such a shock, he just didn’t want to, and so he didn’t, and that was that.
“I haven’t been here for such a long time,” he said. “Could I see what you’ve been up to?”
“Sure.” Once her paintings were dry, Natalie always turned them towards the wall, out of sight. She peered behind a few of the canvases, then looked back at him mischievously. She averted her eyes, grinning down at the floor. “I’ve been working on an idea,” she said, and bit her lower lip.
“What is it?”
“I’m a little bit embarrassed,” she said.
“Don’t be. Why would you be embarrassed? Is it bad?”
She shook her head, turning the canvas around, blushing a bit. The painting was mid-size, and it made Daniel a little dizzy. A young couple was copulating, in clinical close-up: the boy above, head thrown back, teeth clenched, wind blowing through his shoulder-length hair, between thrusts, painted in loving detail to the last bulging vein; the girl, eyes shut on her pure, paradoxically virginal young face, black hair flowing across the floor, one pale-white thigh extended toward the viewer. Surrounding them, a swirl of angry red clouds, mixed with familiar commercial images, appliances, cartoon characters, television advertisements. In spite of the beauty of the couple – enhanced, probably, by the painter – the work was strikingly unpleasant, anti-erotic. The only thing sensual about the painting was being in the same room with its creator, standing so close.
He looked over her work, his throat dry.
“Very. Peculiar. I like it. I think. As your husband, though, I should be insulted.” He had nothing more to say, and it dismayed him. After the initial shock of the painting, he took nothing more than a voyeuristic interest, and maybe that was all right, the secret of its success. “When Hitchcock made Psycho, the men in the audience were too ashamed to admit that while Janet Leigh was getting stabbed in the shower, they were trying to catch a glimpse of her breasts.” And they were right to be ashamed. Hitchcock had turned the men of America into criminals. Daniel smiled uncomfortably, standing, looking more closely. “Did you work from live models?” he asked finally. And how did they hold the position? was the unstated question.
“Photographs,” she said softly. “But I took the photographs, here in the studio. So the answer, I guess, to your question is that this couple had sex here in my studio, while I watched, for money.” She stood, an arm slung casually around him, both of them staring intently at her work. “They’re over eighteen, in case you’re wondering.”
Daniel nodded, cracked a smile. “And I gave up Art for Law.” He shook his head. “The silliest choices, you know.”
She sat down on the couch, looked down at her sneakers. She wore a big white shirt, flecked with paint. “I wish you still painted, Daniel. You taught me everything, so all this is a part of you.”
“Sometimes I think you’re painting what I would be painting, if I hadn’t gotten ... blocked.” He shook his head when he said “blocked,” as though the word itself were stuck in his brain.
“I think so too,” Natalie said gently. “At least I like to think so. And your noticing is the biggest compliment you could pay me.”
Daniel sat down on the couch, took one hand in his and looked at the painting, the burning swirls of red that surrounded the fiercely copulating young couple. “Maybe so,” he said.
“Don’t you really like it?”
“I like it, sure,” he said. “But I wonder if you mean it. You can’t paint what you think I would paint. You have to mean it yourself.”
She shook her head. “I want to carry on what you would have said,” she insisted. “If they’ve put a muzzle on yo
u, then you’ve been muzzled. But I need your anger, Daniel.”
He smiled. “Anger’s not so good.”
She nodded, looked over at her latest painting, then at the one before it, an old woman screaming as an ocean of soldiers washed over a small town. “I like it, though. You taught me so much, I can’t just let that go.”
“I was a good teacher? Was I?”
She nodded, still lost in her paintings.
“You already knew that.”
“What did the other students think?”
She turned to him now. “Have you wondered for all these years?”
“No,” he said. “I just wondered now. I never thought about it before.”
“I don’t remember,” she said. “I don’t remember what anyone else thought.”
“I know what that means.”
She nodded. “They thought you were an asshole.” She kissed him on the cheek, then whispered gently in his ear, “Give everything up. Please, Daniel, come back to art. I know you want to.”
“I don’t think that way anymore,” he said. “I think different.”
“You still think poetry,” she said. “Deep down you do. I can hear it in your voice, no matter what you’re talking about.” She looked around the room at the canvases leaning against the wall, smelled the paint, the charcoal. She knew she could save him, if he would just jump, and never look back .... “You’re being ruined, Daniel,” she insisted steadily, raising her voice slightly. “You’re rusting away. Don’t you understand that no one at your firm is looking for meaning?”
Walking to dinner, Natalie said, “A few days ago, I bumped into Charlie, your cousin.”
Daniel didn’t even pause. “The son-of-a-bitch.”
“I think you should forgive him. He’s not a bad guy. Family feuds are terrible, Daniel, especially in a small family like yours.”
Charlie was 42 years old, curly-haired with a twinkle in his eyes. On the street in Soho, he was looking older than when she’d last seen him, his hairline receding a little, looking more tired now. He called out to her, and grabbed her in a big bear-hug.
“Sorry,” he said when he finally let go. “That was half for Daniel, my favorite cousin who hates me.”
Natalie tried to smile. “I haven’t seen you since the wedding,” she said. “I wish I had.” They started walking together, slowly, talking above the din of a Saturday afternoon.
“Where’s Daniel?”
“At work. He’s finishing some brief that needs to be filed on Monday. You know.”
They engaged in a little small talk, then went to a coffee shop and split a milk shake. After his parents had died in the train wreck, Daniel had lived for a year with Charlie’s family, on his father’s side. Then he’d been sent to live with his mother’s sister, the unmarried spinster who had always wanted a child of her own, to whom Daniel no longer spoke at all. Natalie had always liked Charlie very much, back when he’d been Daniel’s buddy and had visited Daniel in New York a couple of times a year. She remembered suddenly that back then, she had occasionally daydreamed about Charlie, about what might happen if she and Daniel ever split up. Now, after so many years, her recollection of these feelings made her feel embarrassed and ashamed, and she wondered why she had ever allowed herself to entertain such a notion.
Charlie talked about his job – she was only half-listening – and said a few halfheartedly kind things about his ex-wife. After a while, Natalie said, “You know, Charlie, Daniel won’t tell me what happened between the two of you. Why you two hate each other now.”
Charlie paused, staring deeply at Natalie.
“I don’t hate him,” he said at last, his face darkening. “And I don’t know what happened between us. I have no idea.”
“You’re kidding.”
“I’m not saying nothing happened to make him so angry. I’m just saying I didn’t notice anything.”
“Daniel has never said anything, never explained anything.” She half-smiled. They were both very quiet. She leaned forward. “I’m sorry. I suppose there’s nothing more to say about this.”
Charlie nodded. “If I ever come up in conversation, and Daniel seems amenable ... you might tell him that if he wants to speak with me, just say the word. Daniel’s not one for reconciling, so we could just pretend that all those years of silence never happened, and I won’t ever try to discuss it with him.”
“When Daniel’s ready, I’m sure that will make him feel relieved.” They were both making so many allowances for her husband, their conversation had become embarrassing. She paused a moment, a question on her lips, reconsidered, then spoke. “I’m a little bit obsessed by something, Charlie, and there’s no one in Daniel’s family I can talk to. Because they would tell Daniel. And because, anyway, he hates most everyone in his family and I don’t blame him.”
Charlie nodded.
“I hope I can ask you something, and you’ll be discrete ....” She sat back in her chair, as though changing her mind.
“Go ahead, Natalie.”
“Well,” she sighed, “I‘ve been trying to research this train wreck. It happened when Daniel was eleven, so it would have been either 1966 or 1967. I can’t really ask him about it, since he just shuts up. So I’ve been researching train wrecks. There really haven’t been that many, and I can’t find anything for either of those years. So that’s where I am. You must know how to put your hands on some newspaper article, or something.” She laughed sadly. “Pretty ghoulish, you must think. I’ve been spending time on and off in the main branch of the library trying to dig up anything I can about train wrecks. I sometimes have the reference people help me, and God only knows what they must think of it. But he’s my husband and I’ve been feeling as though I don’t know enough about him. So I have to snoop around.” Charlie was very quiet – recriminating? She reached out and touched his hand. “I don’t have any choice, don’t you see? Please don’t tell anyone, OK? I don’t want it to get back to Daniel.”
Charlie was pale now. After a long pause, he asked hoarsely, “What train wreck ... exactly ... I mean ....” He cleared his throat. “What train wreck is it that you would be ... interested in?”
She left the diner dazed, dizzy. At first she thought she would confront Daniel; then her natural sympathy crept in. Daniel had witnessed something terrible as a young boy. He had not told her; he had lied to her, had said that his parents had died somewhere else, far away, that it had been an accident. What a terrible thing, she finally thought to herself, what a horrible sight for such a small boy. She could not confront him over that.
By the time she reached the subway, her admiration for her husband and for his bravery had increased five-fold, and she loved him even more.
Daniel looked down at his feet, at the street-lamps glowing in the polished glint of his deep-black shoes as he and his wife walked across the darkening street. He seemed to be considering in great detail Natalie’s heartfelt plea for family reconciliation.
“Never mind,” he said at last, not looking at Natalie’s disappointed face. “Anyway. Did you and Charlie talk long?”
“No,” she lied. She looked over at Daniel, at the hardness on his face. “He told me an interesting thing about your family. Something I’d never known.”
Daniel didn’t respond. And so Natalie didn’t continue.
The front page of that day’s New York Post fluttered down the street, sections strewn everywhere. The paper slapped against Daniel’s leg and stuck for just a moment, with its bold headline of the latest sex scandal out of D.C. Daniel glanced down, shook his leg, and the newspaper flew across the street and into the gutter.
A couple of hours earlier, a few hundred miles to the southwest, a young woman named Joyce, swept up in her first and only sex scandal, was trying to deal with a fairly hostile press corps. She didn’t seem to match the part of gold-digging adulterer. She was over thirty, soft-spoken, clearly intelligent and embarrassed at the attention. The media would analyze her physical appeal ove
r the next few days and come to a universal conclusion: not unattractive, but not worth destroying a career. She was no Fawn Hall, not even a Donna Rice. (Fawn Hall, of course, had not been part of a sex scandal, but now, nearly ten years after the devoted secretary had helped destroy evidence implicating her boss in a wide-ranging government conspiracy and happily described her actions as not exactly against the law but sort of “above the law” – now, ten years after all that, people could remember only her beauty, and beautiful women mixed with politics meant only one thing.) Joyce, on the other hand, did not even quite measure up to photographs of Gennifer Flowers from the early 1970s. But twenty years later, Joyce’s reputation would be enhanced by her absence from the newspapers, by her refusal to write a book or to make even one penny from her experiences. Occasionally, some reporter would phone her to find out what she’d been up to. Living quietly with her husband, she would say, and once again she would explain that she had subjected herself to the spotlight only to save lives on the other side of the world. It had been a sacrifice, she would say. Ten years into the millennium, to her surprise, she would finally find herself believed and quietly revered across the political spectrum.
Her initial entrance into the world of fame, two days earlier, had not been handled well, had snow-balled into a disaster, until the coup-de-grace: that morning’s New York Daily News had quoted, in a bold headline on its front page, the contemptuous put-down of a friend of the senator’s wife: SOLLY’S LITTLE WHORE!, next to a photograph of Joyce testifying before a Congressional subcommittee. Now she sat beside her father’s lawyer in the spacious yard behind the house in suburban Maryland in which she had grown up – a house whose very appearance spoke of financial aspirations now denied her – and listened to faux sympathetic questions from one of those women television reporters who specialize in interviewing attractive women involved in sex scandals. Joyce had never felt as uncomfortable, and she had never disliked anyone quite so much as she disliked this reporter, whose name was Calliope-Luu.