The Wisdom of Perversity

by Rafael Yglesias

  She studied him solemnly for a moment, then asked, “What’s wrong?”

  “Well, lots of things are wrong with me, as you know, but mostly at the moment what’s going on? You’re married. And not to me.”

  “I was just holding your hand.” She thrust her strong chin forward, black eyes flashing.

  “You’re acting like we’re lovers,” he said.

  She stared. The beauty marks under each of her shining eyes were clearly visible today. He had told her what they meant to him, requested she not pancake them away. “We are lovers,” she said finally. “If you don’t want to be, say so.”

  “Lovers? It was just . . .” He hesitated, ashamed of his cruelty. He gestured helplessly.

  “It was just what?”

  “An encounter. That doesn’t make us lovers. It certainly doesn’t merit threatening your marriage.”

  “Why do you keep bringing up my marriage?”

  “You have a family. You can’t throw it away because of kinky sex.”

  “It wasn’t just sex!” she complained so loudly they both looked through the smudged plastic partition to check whether their Sikh driver was eavesdropping. His lips were moving, mumbling into a Bluetooth device that was almost thoroughly hidden beneath his headdress. Julie resumed, “You were happy. Last night and this morning you were really happy.”

  Her observation startled him. His eyes burned, his throat tightened. She was terrifyingly accurate about his happiness: all last night he had felt an easing throughout his taut, anxious soul because of Julie. Even with a female intruder in his bed, he managed a few hours of deep, restful sleep. And this morning his complete relaxation lingered during breakfast with his foolish father. In a peculiar fashion, they had achieved the intimate lovemaking of people who care for each other, something he had never experienced, he had to admit, now that he knew the real thing. It was appalling to understand that she was right to push him about their relationship. He had lost his virginity at fifty, the cherry that had never burst—Brian was in love.

  HE’S SCARED, Julie thought. Give him a break. Let’s get through this first. They rode the rest of the way in silence to the Four Seasons. Brian relaxed physically, resting his hand next to hers on the taxi seat. She restrained her desire to take hold of it, although it would be a comfort on this chilly, anxious day.

  Thinking about their status fell away once she entered Jeff’s astonishing suite. Its one-hundred-degree sweep of midtown and Central Park from the fifty-second floor was dizzying. She dropped onto a black leather couch to settle her wobbly legs, mesmerized by the aviator’s view of Manhattan until Jeff, pacing anxiously into and out of it, related his plan for how they should confront Klein and Rydel. Fear, blissfully absent from her system since last night’s surprise with Brian, hummed back to life.

  Jeff gave orders as if they were his crew, that what he wanted would be done without question. “I’ll greet them. You two should wait in the second bedroom off that hall—they won’t even know it’s there. Let me relax them a little. Now Rydel said he has to bring Cousin—” He caught himself. “Klein in a wheelchair. And he also claims—check this out—that he really is gaga—”

  “You spoke to Rydel?” Brian interrupted, his voice loaded with suspicion.

  “Yeah. How do you think I arranged for the meeting?”

  Brian moaned. “By calling your fucking cousin, that’s who. I thought you didn’t know Rydel, that you hadn’t—”

  “I don’t! I got my assistant to get a private number for Rydel. I called it, told his secretary my name, and he took the fucking call.”

  “Why didn’t you call Klein?” Brian asked, his tone steeped in skepticism.

  Brian’s suspicions seemed to Julie to be exaggerated, but she was glad he had them anyway. Jeff’s answer made sense: “I did. I kept getting nurses who wouldn’t put him on, and one of them finally said he wouldn’t know who I was. That he doesn’t know who anybody is. They’re playing this Alzheimer’s crap for all it’s worth.” He sighed and threw a bone of confession to satisfy Brian’s paranoia. “Before I met you guys for lunch the other day I had found out that was their cover story. That’s how I got the idea for that made up report.”

  “You’re forgiven,” Brian said angrily.

  “I didn’t apologize.”

  “No shit!”

  “I’m sorry,” Jeff said. He lowered his eyes. “I was panicking.”

  To Julie’s surprise, Brian relented. “You’re forgiven,” he said softly.

  “What if he is senile?” Julie said, worried it might be true.

  Jeff released a Bronx cheer before saying, “Bullshit. Brian’s right. I checked. He was lucid in that interview a year ago. And I saw a video of him speaking at a Huck Finn fund-raiser two years ago. That’s one thing we can get done. We can get him talking coherently and blow that Alzheimer’s story out of the water. So listen—I’ll make them think I’m open to some kind of deal, then I’ll say I have to take a leak and come get you. Don’t say anything. I’ll make the introductions.” He snapped his fingers at Julie while keeping his eyes focused on a middle distance, seeing only his scheme, “Then you say it, what you’re planning to do, tell the press what Klein did to you with Rydel watching.” Jeff snapped his finger at Brian. “Then you say you’ll confirm you saw him molest her and, you know, your whole I’m-writing-this-for-the-New-Yorker-slash-Vanity-Fair bit. It’s a great one-two punch. And then I’ll hit him with the knockout, that I’ll tell the world about the deal he made with my mother.”

  Julie was taken aback. She asked, “What about your mother?” She saw Brian drop his head and nod slowly. He knew. He knew something he hadn’t told her. “What deal?” she asked Brian.

  “You didn’t tell her?” Jeff asked, also surprised.

  Julie felt a surge of anger at Brian, feeling betrayed the way she was supposed to have felt when she caught Gary having an affair. “What didn’t you tell me?” she asked loudly, barely able to stop herself from yelling.

  “Sorry, but it’s not my secret,” Brian said meekly. “Jeff said he was going to tell the world everything so”—he gestured at his friend—“I was leaving it to him to tell you.”

  She turned away from Brian, still angry with him but not wanting to be. “What about Aunt Harriet?” she demanded of her cousin. Jeff buried his face in his hands and scrubbed hard. “Jeff?” she said to prompt him.

  He uncovered. His eyes were bloodshot. He explained in an exhausted voice, “That’s why he paid for everything. That’s how Dad repaid your dad for the store loan. That’s how we moved out of Queens to the Upper East Side. That’s how my parents retired to Boca Raton. And film school. He paid for all that because Mom found out that Klein had raped me. She made a deal to keep quiet.” Jeff bit his lip. He looked off, to the breathtaking view of Central Park.

  “Harriet knew,” Julie said aloud because she couldn’t believe the fact in her head if it wasn’t spoken aloud. “Aunt Harriet knew. She knew what he was doing to me?”

  “I don’t know!” Jeff said, at once pleading and complaining. “But not that day at my apartment,” Jeff said. “She didn’t know a thing that day. Later. A month? I can’t remember exactly when.”

  All the air went out of her, like taking a blow to the stomach. Her head raced to catch up with the information: Aunt Harriet knew. She knew that Klein was a patient of Dad’s, knew he was invited to our house for the holidays. She had to know what he would do to me. She knew. All right, a crazy woman, selfish and mean. But a mother. He had raped her son. She was a mother and she knew.

  Brian put a hand on Julie’s arm and added, as if he had been listening to her thoughts, “She knew about me. I mean, she didn’t know know. All she had to do was look the other way. Stay in her bed. Not ask any questions. That’s why this is so hard for Jeff,” he whispered.

  She felt nauseated. The panorama of Manhattan wobbled against the depthless blue sky. “I have to sit down.” Brian steered her to an enormous leather couch. She
shut her eyes and leaned back, trying to think of nothing. Brian sat beside her. He took her hand. His was warm. Entwined with his fingers, hers felt chilled, bloodless.

  “Jeff,” Brian asked, “could you please explain why you’re springing us on them? Why do we need to hide in the bedroom? What are you going to say to him before you have us come in?”

  “You know,” he said. Julie opened her eyes and saw that Jeff had perched on the edge of a leather wing chair. It looked like he was about to take a dive onto Central Park’s leafless gray limbs. Still nauseated, she looked at the carpet.

  Getting no answer, Brian elaborated his question: “Are you going to pretend they’ve got nothing to fear from you until we come out? Are you going for shock?”

  Jeff scrubbed his face with his palms, pressing hard on his eyes as he groaned. “I don’t know, I guess so. I was going to . . .” He uncovered, blinked. “I didn’t get any sleep,” he said as an explanation.

  “You were going to . . . ?” Brian prompted.

  “Say that I was going to go public unless they made a deal with the prosecution and a financial settlement with all of the victims.”

  “That’s not what we want,” Julie stood. She took a moment to adjust to the vertigo of the sky yawning at her feet. “That’s still a cover-up.”

  “I know!” Jeff said, his voice squeaking like a prepubescent boy. “That’s the hook, that’s what Rydel’s expecting me to say, that’s how I got him to agree to come. He didn’t even want to bring Richard because he thinks we made a deal over the phone and we’re just working out the details. But I insisted no deal without Klein.”

  “But what are you trying to achieve by springing us on them?” Brian asked, still doubtful. “We don’t have anything new to add.”

  “That I can’t make a deal ’cause you guys will out me anyway. Richard will never believe I’m going to tell on my mother. Even with her gone. That’s what he thinks protects him from what I know. But you guys prove I have no choice. You’re the enforcers.”

  Brian let go of her hand. He leaned forward to address Jeff in a low, insinuating tone. “Are we here to convince Klein that our going public will ruin him? Or have you brought us here to strike a better deal with him than you could get without us?”

  “A better deal for all of us!” Jeff said. “Look, with any luck, once they know I have no choice, maybe they’ll agree to confess without any of us having to go public. You guys don’t want everything to come out. Come on. Do you?”

  “Jesus,” Brian mumbled. “You’re still protecting her. Why?” he asked loudly and incredulously, shifting to the far edge of the couch to be near Jeff. “Your mother’s dead. Your father’s dead. No one’s really gonna care. Oh, everyone will tsk-tsk over their horror that a mother could be so evil, and there’ll be loads of sympathy for poor you having such a mother, but nobody knows or cares about her. You’re not ruining the reputation of Mahatma Gandhi, for God’s sake.”

  That’s when Julie’s nerves unstrung. She turned her back on the dizzying view, heading for the suite’s long hallway to the door. Why hadn’t she seen the danger in meeting Klein? He was going to shove his cock in her mouth again—this time with Jeff’s help. And Brian? She stopped, turning to stare her rage at Brian. He wasn’t telling her everything. He had kept this vital fact from her about her life! She wasn’t Klein’s whore, she was Harriet’s whore. She had been used to help Jeff become rich and famous and now Jeff was using her again! “I’m leaving,” Julie said but didn’t move an inch. She was too angry.

  “Don’t go, Julie,” Jeff said. “I’m trying to trap him. Rydel would’ve hung up if I told him on the phone what we’re going to do, or he’d talk to his lawyers and they’d talk him out of a meeting. This way, here, we’ve got him, but better than that we’ve Cousin Rich—damn it!” He caught himself. “We’ve got Klein, not faking being demented, totally coherent.”

  “How?” Brian asked. “Whatever happens in this room, they can deny it all as soon as they talk to their lawyers.”

  Jeff pointed to the coffee table. It was enormous, a six-inch thick slab of thick smoky glass, covered with what looked like Jeff’s work on a new film. There were two piles of black-and-white drawings Julie recognized as production design sketches and four models of a prop: medium-sized statues of blackbirds, each different in one key feature. Jeff leaned forward, tapping the one closest to him.

  “The Maltese Falcon remake?” Brian said. “What? Bogie’s gonna come into the room and scare the crap out of him?”

  Jeff made a disgusted face. “Miniature high-def digital video camera. We’ll get Richard talking sense, admitting what he did to us, and then he’s got no choice but to plea bargain and settle and he’ll take Rydel down with him.”

  “There’s a camera in that one?” Julie asked.

  “There’s a camera in all of them,” Jeff said, grinning. He pointed behind her. “And there are two more in those prototypes of Greek urns over there. We’ve got full coverage. No matter where they walk or how low they talk, we’ll get it.”

  “You were right,” Julie said to Brian. “He really does think this is a Law & Order episode. Let’s go,” she said, then pleaded, “please.”

  “This could work, Julie,” Brian said.

  “No!” she said. “I’m not doing this stupid stunt. I’m going to tell the world. I don’t just want to see Klein punished, I want people to understand they should talk about these experiences, I want people to understand it isn’t just priests and a couple loner weirdos, this happens all the time and it’s gonna keep happening unless people like us stop keeping it secret.”

  “Exactly.” Brian pulled himself up out of the couch and walked over to her. “I don’t mean we keep quiet. But if Jeff gets it all on video, then we really have something to show the world.”

  “I don’t trust him. Let’s go. We’ll tell what we know and trust the world instead,” Julie said all that in a whisper, not because she didn’t want or expect Jeff to hear but to emphasize that the two of them were all that mattered. She had found her soul mate: the only question was whether he had the courage to abide by their love.

  But he was a man and he wanted to win. Brian said to Jeff, “Here’s what we’re willing to do: all three of us greet Klein and Rydel simultaneously; we tell them what we’re planning to do unless they confess to the cops and make a deal. The trick is for us to act like we’re not interested in hearing a confession ourselves, couldn’t care less, interrupt him if he starts to confess, then grudgingly let him continue. We get Klein coherent on tape, then we turn it over to the DA—”

  “No!” Julie cried in agony.

  Brian took her hand and pledged, “And we still go public.” He turned to Jeff. “All of us tell our story to the press. Whether we get Klein and Rydel confessing on tape or not. That’s the deal, Jeff. Take it or leave it.”

  Jeff rubbed his face. “Okay,” he said, and rubbed again, harder. When he dropped his hands, he begged her, “Please, Julie. Let’s not humiliate ourselves for nothing. Let’s get him on film. Right, Bri? Let’s at least make sure we totally fuck him.” He smirked bitterly. “You should excuse the expression.”

  One Second of Remorse

  February 2008

  THE EVIL MAN arrived in a wheelchair propelled by his adopted son, Sam Rydel. Rydel was dressed not to be recognized, wearing a New York Yankees cap pulled low, sunglasses, a windbreaker, jeans, sneakers. Richard Klein was also hard to find in his clothes. His bald skull, forehead, and both eyebrows were covered by a ribbed black beanie and his puffy down coat was pushed up to his chin. Only a stripe of the old man’s face was visible and most of that was covered by the oversized frames of his eyeglasses, whose thick lenses made his eyes loom large and dwarfed his nose. He seemed deliberately dressed to send the message: dementia.

  “Follow me,” Jeff said, without a greeting. He turned and led them through through his hotel suite’s hallway and into the vast living room, its panoramic view of a snow-covered Ce
ntral Park glistening in the bright sun on the clear, cold winter’s day. Rydel’s head was lowered to watch where he was going while he pushed the wheelchair. Once in the main room he removed his hat and sunglasses, squinting eyes drawn first to its sweeping view, then opening wide at the surprise of two strangers.

  “Who are they?” he asked. Rydel looked puffier, older in person than in the photographs. He wasn’t over six feet as Julie had come to imagine; he was no taller than Gary, maybe shorter. And the cold, remorseless eyes—they were full of fear.

  “You don’t remember? Ask Cousin Richard,” Jeff said, pointing at Klein.

  Rydel blinked twice, very rapidly as if he were toting up sums on a calculator. Then his face went blank; he shrugged, turned his back to them, bending over the wheelchair. That blocked their view of its occupant while he removed the beanie, unzipped the down coat without removing Klein’s arms, and untied what turned out to be a gray scarf.

  Waiting for this unveiling, Julie couldn’t breathe normally. She could only take sips of air before her throat would close up, as if oxygen had become poisonous. The harder she tried to force the air down into her lungs, the quicker she choked on it. Am I hyperventilating? she wondered.

  Brian had to pee. Waiting for Klein and Rydel, he had drunk an entire carafe of the Four Seasons’ strong coffee. In the previous hour, he had gone to the bathroom three times, the last just ten minutes ago. It couldn’t be that there was more in his bladder to expel, but waiting to talk to Klein for the first time in forty years, he had to tighten his pelvic muscle to squash the urge to go.

  At last Rydel finished and stepped to the right of the wheelchair, revealing a frail old man in a beige cardigan sweater worn over a white shirt buttoned to the collar without a tie, and baggy blue corduroy pants with what looked like food stains on the broad lap it formed. Julie’s eyes dropped to his thick-soled orthopedic brown shoes. She was momentarily fascinated by Klein’s thin ankles in white compression socks. They appeared to be too skinny to stay in the shoes should he try to walk. If he ever walked. He didn’t look as if he could.