Exhausted from the flight, she lay down on her side of the bed for a short recharge. Removing her sweater and socks, she slipped under the covers. As she tossed and turned trying to get comfortable, her foot became entangled with something in the bed. It felt silky. Maybe it was one of the pocket squares Jonathan sometimes sported in his breast pocket. When was the last time these sheets had even been changed? Cass looped her big toe around it and shimmied it out from under the blanket.
She gasped.
Hanging off her foot was a lace thong. One that was definitely not hers. It had to be a size XS—with scalloped edges in the front and a strand of spaghetti in the back.
“Jesus,” she said, flinging them off of her. She staggered out of bed. What else had she missed? She swept the apartment a second time, collecting evidence. In the bathroom, she uncovered a cherry-flavored lip balm she couldn’t remember buying and a Venus razor. Years ago, Cass had lasered off every hair on her body other than the ones on her head and, until recently, a well-tended triangle below. In the kitchen, on second glance, she noticed an out-of-place container of soymilk. She and Jonathan were a strictly dairy couple. The hallway closet had a floral Vera Bradley bag tucked in a corner. Who was this lactose-intolerant, chapped-lip slut Jonathan was screwing in their bed?
She needed to sit down or she’d faint. The nearest landing spot was the chair tucked under their desk. She flopped onto it, noticing that their wedding photo had been nudged behind a stack of magazines. She shook the mouse to bring their computer to life. Minka or Brie could probably get her a flight back to L.A. for this evening, or maybe she’d nudge Marty and he’d send the company plane for her. With jittery fingers, she clicked open Gmail. As she went to log out of Jonathan’s account and into her own, she gasped again. On the screen she read the words: Are you sure you want to sign out of BrettGEddison @gmail.com?
Fuck him.
Fuck her.
Fuck everybody.
24. JONATHAN
THE SHITSTORM STARTED a week earlier when he went to bring Puddles to California. News of the investigation had reached Winstar’s shore. It turned out Laurel had been dead right. The SEC was probing their fund after an unidentified whistle-blower contacted them with alleged evidence of wrongdoing.
Jerry called in all his top guys, which included Jonathan, Russell, Nate, Jeff and Liz—the head of investor relations, whose phone was ringing off the hook—for a meeting with a team of lawyers from one of the city’s premier white-collar firms. Jonathan knew not to assume that hiring legal representation was an admission of guilt, but he couldn’t help feeling otherwise when he saw eight men in suits looking grim, armed with legal pads and surrounded by towers of brown boxes stuffed with file folders.
Jerry swore up and down the firm had done nothing wrong, that everyone should stay calm and continue to work, that clients calling should be put at ease. Liz chortled and the boss shot her a menacing look. He asked if anyone had any questions and slowly the hands shot up. Jonathan looked at his watch nervously—he had only one hour to get to LaGuardia for his flight. The dog walker was already downstairs with Puddles in his airport bag. He briefly thought about asking Gloria to go in his place, but dismissed it. When the dust settled and the investigation proved fruitless (he still believed the SEC was on a vindictive fishing expedition—he, Jerry and his colleagues all operated aboveboard), the only thing that would have an impact on his life was Cass remembering that he couldn’t be bothered to meet her at the airport, for one of their, give or take, six meet-ups. This absurd dog exchange had always felt pretextual. Yes, they adored Puddles beyond measure, but the blueprint for their handoffs was so convoluted and expensive it could only be interpreted as a calculated excuse to see each other.
Hours later, he stepped off the escalator leading to baggage claim at LAX and did a double take when he saw a striking, dark-skinned woman holding a sign with his last name. She smiled at him and he approached cautiously, assuming there had to be another Coyne in the airport.
“Jonathan?” she said. “I’m Minka. I’m here to collect Muddles. Cass got tied up in a meeting. I believe she texted you.”
“It’s Puddles.”
“Sorry,” she said, eyeing the doggy cage like its handle would scorch her hand.
He looked down at his phone. It was still powered off from the flight, but when he booted it up he saw Cass’s message. Stressed, and feeling rather the fool for crossing three thousand miles in the wake of a crisis, he texted her back: Really appreciate you making the effort.
She wrote back right away. Marty wouldn’t let me get away. Big deadline looming. I’ll be there next time. Wish it had been a different day. He reread what she wrote, feeling heat creep up the back of his neck.
The response was so Cass. She’d type a million extra words just to avoid saying the simple one needed: sorry. Over the years they’d had their share of spats and in the beginning he’d go at her until he heard the magic word he was seeking. It became obvious after a few years of marriage it wasn’t going to come easily. When Cass was angry at him, he’d blurt out an apology before internalizing what she was even upset about—sometimes while she was still midsentence. Like when he forgot to cancel the mail before a vacation (which, honestly, was not a capital offense), he’d heard the first beat of her rant and said sorry a dozen times just to put a muzzle on the forthcoming lecture. By contrast, when Cass wasn’t friendly enough to Ginny Winston at the company holiday party, he’d pressed until she was flattened like a pancake in order to extract an apology, when all along she’d been giving him one, albeit in her special Cass way. “I had a terrible headache . . . Work was so stressful today . . . I’m getting my period.” These were all variations on a theme, and the theme was I’m sorry. He had thought it was childish of her to be so parsimonious with her apologies, but had come to consider that his pursuit of them made him the juvenile one. Or maybe they were both complete babies.
Jonathan slipped his phone back into his pocket.
Boy, was he happy now that Brett was coming for a visit the next day. When he was with her, his shoulders could actually relax into their proper alignment, muscle memory from a simpler time in his life kicking in. He used to think that Cass brought out the best in him, a figurative good posture, but maybe it was Brett, with her straightforward nature. If they couldn’t decide where to eat after having sex, Brett would say it was up to him and actually mean it. It wasn’t a trick or a trap or a test. There was no “right” answer.
The publisher Brett worked for had its main office in Tribeca and she was able to go into work when she visited him. She could even work there full-time, if that was in the cards. Lars was only seven, pliable still, and his father had moved back to Germany. The only hitch was that Brett’s family was in Boston and they, particularly her mother, looked after Lars frequently when Brett had to work. It was hard to believe he was actually noodling logistics with another woman when Cass was still sticking to the script—in the fall, they would reconvene and make a decision. Unless he were to call off the intermission early, tell Cass that while she was figuring shit out he had found someone else. It was premature to do anything like that now. He and Brett were just barely reacquainted. But it was nice to think that he might be the one to pull the plug on Cass and not the other way around.
Before his return flight even took off, the flight attendant brought him a scotch and soda. He tried with each sip to regain his calm. Even if there was some malfeasance at his company, it had to be at a lower level, some junior analyst cutting corners to get ahead. The investigation would be stressful, and it was unfortunate that the media would pounce on the story when the SEC went public in a few days, but it wouldn’t amount to anything. And Cass, well, she was a pain in the ass. As he got a little drunker, he toyed with the rhyme. Cass—Ass. Cass—Ass. Cass—Ass.
* * *
♦ ♦ ♦
HE MAY HAVE been right about Cass, but he
was way off the mark on the work front.
Jerry was indicted on charges of embezzlement, insider trading and market manipulation two days later. The SEC had been collaborating with the attorney general’s office, and what at first seemed like a probe that would amount to nothing more than some fines and a public spanking turned into something far graver. The idea of Jerry being carted out in handcuffs went from a ridiculous notion to something that could happen at any second. Jonathan literally jumped every time the receptionist buzzed him. He imagined a scenario where he’d have to create a diversion while Jerry did a perp walk.
And he, Jonathan, was chosen to go on CNBC and Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal’s streaming web channel to represent Winstar the next morning. Why him and not slick Bugatti Jeff or silver-tongued Russell was a mystery.
It was Brett who was tasked with the uphill battle of keeping him calm. In high school, the age difference between him and Brett had seemed monumental. Jonathan had felt light-years ahead in everything: she was a virgin when they had sex; she had no idea that the cafeteria pantry was unlocked every night and students could stockpile snacks for their rooms, or that there was a group of seniors doing mushrooms regularly. Now she was older in every way but age. Being a parent and having been through a divorce, she outpaced him by a mile. She talked him through the worst-case scenario and then listed the dozens of reasons why it would never happen.
That night he woke with a start at 3:00 a.m., filmed in a cold sweat. There was all this talk of a cover-up at Winstar: false filings, fraudulent investor reports, payoffs to lower-level SEC employees. This was rapidly turning into yet another disastrous episode in his life, a moment in time when he could feel the floor beneath him turning to quicksand. What if, in some twist of fate uniting the worst times in his life, Daniel came forward to the press and shared what had happened in high school? That story going public could set him up as the perfect fall guy—the privileged prep school kid who’d known scandal before and had used his family’s wealth and influence to cover it up. The heartless jerk who beat up a scholarship student surely wasn’t above perpetrating white-collar crime, depleting pension funds of teachers and firefighters in the name of self-enrichment. He couldn’t go on national television and put his face in front of Daniel.
“What’s wrong?” Brett asked him, sitting up in bed. “You’re panting.”
He awkwardly reached for the water glass on Cass’s night table. Brett was sleeping on his side of the bed. It would be too strange to see her in Cass’s spot, so he’d done a swap of the night table sundries. Whenever Brett slept over, he moved clumsily about his makeshift side. It was like retraining himself to be a leftie after a lifetime of right-handedness.
“I’ve been thinking about Daniel.” He turned to Brett, but her face gave nothing away. “I know this is probably irrational, but I’m worried he’s going to see me on the news and use this to get back at me somehow.”
“Jon, that’s insane. He doesn’t want revenge. It was a high school prank. He knows that.”
“Brett, I beat the shit out of him. All these years I’ve tried to make sense of it. I was drunk. I was scared about going off to college. Peer pressure. But I honestly don’t know how I could have done it.”
“This is crazy talk, Jon. You beat him up because he wasn’t playing along with the prank, and you were wasted. It wouldn’t have mattered who was in the bed that night. And none of that is relevant to Winstar in the slightest.”
But there was also the locker room talk, which Jonathan remembered more of than he cared to admit. He wasn’t the instigator of it, but he didn’t shut it down either. Tom Lazarus called Daniel a “spic” once and everyone had laughed. Jonathan may have cracked a joke of his own. He didn’t think so, but who could remember so many years back, especially since that would have occurred before the incident. Afterward, he didn’t mutter a sentence without thinking it through twice.
“I realize Cass is the elephant in the room at all times when we’re together, but what does she have to say about what happened with Daniel? I’m sure she agrees with me.”
“She does,” Jonathan mumbled. “Agree with you.” He didn’t express what he thought next. Had he married Cass to prove something to himself? To his family? No, not possible. Who wouldn’t have wanted Cass? She was gorgeous and brilliant and could be witty as all hell, not to mention that she fucked like a porn star, at least in the beginning. And then Leon, as the nine-year-old boy he was when they first met, came into his head. Why had he lunged at the chance to join the Big Brother program after getting some holiday mailing from them that everyone else probably just tossed in the trash? Cass once asked him what got him started in the program and he remembered feeling on the defensive for some reason. He’d said that he knew his job wasn’t exactly focused on helping people, and this was a way to give back. But was that really the whole story?
He handed Brett her cell phone, which was charging on the nightstand. His nightstand.
“Will you friend Daniel or whatever it’s called so that you can see his pictures?”
“What? Why?”
“I just want to know where he is. How he’s doing.”
Brett looked at him askance but played along, opening Instagram and typing.
“Actually, he and I are already following each other. I didn’t even realize because I don’t go on so much anymore.”
Jonathan recalled Brett’s profile, sanitized of her marriage and maybe more.
“Here he is,” she said, handing over the phone.
He scrolled through the pictures. Things didn’t look too shabby. Quite the opposite, really. Daniel lived in Silicon Valley, worked for Google, and had a pretty wife (redheaded, smiley) and three young children, including a newborn. In various pictures Daniel was on beaches with his family, fishing with friends, thumbs-upping at a Giants game. He didn’t have the look of someone with an ax to grind. Life had been good to him, at least the social media version of it, and Jonathan had no reason to suspect otherwise. The knowledge that Daniel was thriving calmed him somewhat, enough to where he slipped his hand into the waistband of Brett’s thong, gave the string in back a tug. She wore the sexiest underwear to bed. Tonight’s were black, just a series of strings and a patch of lace.
“I know my situation is a mess. With Cass, I mean. You are just incredible. It was so lucky that you were at Michael and Jordyn’s party that night.”
He expected more from her, but she just responded, “Mmm,” before turning on her stomach to go back to sleep. In the morning, she rushed out the door, fretting about missing her 6:00 a.m. train. It was visiting day at Lars’s day camp and she couldn’t be late. When she was gone, he went to make himself coffee and noticed Brett hadn’t thrown out the used filter. He pinched it and carried it to the trash, musing that cohabitation meant putting up with other people’s shit no matter what.
* * *
♦ ♦ ♦
HE CHECKED HIS cell phone for the twentieth time that day and it was only 1:00 p.m. Back in the office after his series of television interviews, Jonathan couldn’t concentrate on anything at all. Investors, who were supposed to call Liz first, were bypassing her and calling him directly. He let most of the calls go to voicemail. Truthfully he had nothing to say to them other than reassuring platitudes, which, if they were savvy at all, they wouldn’t buy. Jeff, Nate, Russell and the other senior guys felt the same way and together they congregated in the kitchen to bite their nails collectively.
As the minutes ticked on, it was becoming harder and harder to come to terms with the fact that Cass hadn’t called, emailed or texted him. News of the investigation of Winstar and Jerry’s indictment had to have landed on the West Coast. His father was already combing his gigantic Rolodex and putting out feelers to his business cronies in New York to land him a new job. His brothers texted a few times—Wallace emailed him some dirty jokes—and his little sister messengered a box o
f cupcakes, a flavor called Chill-Out, peppermint icing piped onto a dark chocolate base. He tried to eat one of them but was too nauseated.
Then it was 4:00 p.m., then 7:00 p.m., and still no word from Cass. Where was she? If she wasn’t reaching out to him, then their separation was nothing more than a precursor to a divorce, not a trial separation at all. It was down to principle at this point. He was owed a modicum of respect on account of their shared history. The woman texted him about trying kickboxing and drinking kombucha, but nothing when his longtime boss and friend was facing jail time and the financial blogs were suggesting he or one of his colleagues might become the sacrificial lamb. She knew how much his job meant to him. She knew Jerry was his Percy. So why was she radio silent?
* * *
♦ ♦ ♦
AFTER A RESTLESS night, Jonathan arrived at work feeling the need to be proactive. Cass would talk about something called agency when she would criticize a play. “That character was so passive,” she’d moan. “He had no agency for anything that happened to him.” Well, Jonathan was going to have agency. So he did something he hadn’t done in at least five years: he sent flowers to a woman. When he was dating Cass, he had flowers delivered to her office regularly—cool moon cacti he knew would impress the creatives at her office, orchids in rare breeds, even quirky Venus flytraps because the juxtaposition of smoothness and spikes reminded him of her. Once they got married and their finances comingled, Cass told him, in one of her sweeter tones, that it was truly unnecessary for him to continue sending them. “They just die so quickly,” she explained, looking pained at the thought of a withering blossom. In hindsight, maybe it was another test of hers. He had assumed it was because she didn’t want to be wasteful when the money was coming from their shared pot, but now he thought maybe she was seeing if he’d still continue to woo her after she said, “I do.” By telling him not to send flowers, she’d upped the ante. Would he send them despite her insistence not to because he just couldn’t help himself?
The Intermission Page 28