Fearless (22 page)

These were dangerous ideas and he didn’t want to have them.

“No, I can’t face those reporters,” Max told the phone. “They’re asking me crazy stuff. I stand there saying I didn’t do it, I didn’t do it, like I’m a criminal.”

“It’s disgusting. I’ll call the police and they’ll get rid of them.”

Max laughed. Well, she was trying to help him, anyway, even if she wanted to turn the job over to others. That tilted his head back and he caught sight of the West Side Highway and beyond it, the edge of park on the river. He could get near to the water there. He thought he remembered there was a wall or a low fence or something that would bar him from actually touching it, but he could get very close. “I’ll call you later,” he said.

“Max!” her voice caught him from escaping.

“What? ”

“I want you to come home.”

“Not now.” This wasn’t a conversation with his wife; he was arguing with his widowed mom, expecting him to leave the stickball game early to relieve her loneliness.

“Fine. You don’t want to see me, that’s—” she made some sort of noise and then resumed with studied calm: “I want you to call Dr. Mayer.”

She referred to his shrink in so formal a way because she didn’t know him and they rarely discussed him. Bill Mayer was quite old now, semi-retired. Max was thirteen when his mother first made an appointment with the psychiatrist, concerned about the effect on Max of his father’s sudden death. Throughout his adolescence, whenever Max failed to be the A-student, the compassionate son, the loving brother, his mother would call Dr. Mayer. In fact, for several years Max’s therapy was largely consumed by discussions with Dr. Mayer about his mother’s use of it as a kind of punishment. Eventually Mayer went so far as to talk directly to his mother, suggesting that she leave it up to Max whether he continued therapy. Didn’t do a bit of good; one sulking look from Max and Mom would ask if she should schedule an extra session.

Debby had never invoked the good doctor, however. Threatening Max with mental health was a first for his wife.

“Fuck you,” Max said mildly and hung up. That was the end of that relationship. Who needs marriage anyway? Max decided. What was it but a way to personify life’s inadequacies?

He crossed Riverside Drive. Something honked at him. A jogger brushed past and cursed. The West Side Highway hummed with traffic. Burning meat blew down the avenue from some restaurant or vendor. He was going to the river no matter what.

“Hey—you got change, man?”

That was a teenager. A dark-skinned, sluggish, threatening teenager, with a slight Spanish accent. His hand was slung at his side, the palm up, but close to his hip and easily made into a fist.

“No,” Max said and kept on, going for the wall that separated Riverside Park from the highway.

“Where the fuck you going?” the teenager called after him.

Max hopped the wall, a car buzzed past, and he landed in the warm air of its wake. A white van in the middle lane honked and swung to the other lane nervously.

A blue Chevy was heading at Max now, slowing, but still on the move and honking at him.

The van passed in the center. Max stepped there. A yellow truck was next. It didn’t honk or slow. The driver kept coming.

Max let a black BMW go by and got out of the truck’s way, running to the divider just ahead of another black car. He got up on the low wall and perched, three lanes of northbound traffic behind, three lanes of southbound ahead. Some cars swerved into the other lane at the sight of him. There was confusion and worry in the movements of some drivers; others ignored him and sped inches from his position. He was nearly blown back onto the other road by the passing blast of air. One driver threw a cigarette at him and yelled: “Get the fuck off there, asshole!”

There was power in his legs, although they trembled on the divider. He could see details with magnified clarity. There were dried drops of black tar on the near lane, in a long dribble on the bleached concrete. There was a safety pin two lanes over, the top half smashed flat into the pavement. There was a fanned and blackened copy of
TV Guide
squashed at the far curb, inches from the small strip of grass between the highway and the Hudson, the mighty Hudson, a flowing gray mass slinking beside the bucking cars with a snake’s menace.

The traffic was dense southbound. He had to wait for a break; when it came he had only a few seconds to clear the road. A trio of cars was coming fast: a brown van in the slow lane, a taxi with its hood loose in the middle, and a baby-blue Mercedes in the far lane. Max jumped onto the road and ran across their bows. He knew if he stumbled he was dead. He knew the Mercedes in the far lane might be going too fast for him. He would soon reach the water or be killed.

He dived and rolled onto the patch of grass. He heard another curse from a passing car. He felt a breeze of gritty exhaust. A beer can crumpled under his right knee. He smelled the river. Max got up. The grass grew unevenly down to the low cement breaker. Masses of cigarette butts were lined against it as if they had died trying to make the ascent.

He looked across the water and was happy again. He had forgotten this freedom in his breathing, this strength in his legs, the openness in his head, welcoming the world without any unhappy thoughts to bar the way. He had forgotten this freedom since coming home last night; once again his sinuses were clear of the fear of death. He would dive in the Hudson and swim away from the city. Why not?

“Okay, man,” said the teenager from behind him. “How about now? You got change now?”

Max turned back toward the city. The skinny teenager had followed him across the highway. They were together on the narrow strip of grass, segregated by the road from Riverside Park. The hand was out, away from his body this time, again open to receive money, not begging, but demanding.

Max was disgusted. “Aren’t you going to tell me what you need it for?”

The hand retreated, moving to the pocket of his sagging dungarees. The teenager looked hot and unhealthy, dressed in long pants on a summer day, skinny ribs showing below a tight tank top. “What?” he said, squinting past Max.

Was there an accomplice behind him? Max wondered. Teenagers did their evil in groups: rape or mugging, they needed support from like spirits. Grown-ups killed alone. Max looked back. There was nothing but a lane of patchy grass curving with the river. Max turned to the kid. Sweat streaked down the teenager’s sideburns, flattening the kinky hairs. “I don’t have any,” Max said honestly. “I just came downstairs to—”

The hand came out of the pocket holding a long brown-handled knife, with no blade showing. There was a short silver metal cross at the end facing Max. The teenager angled his body so that the handle was hidden from the passing traffic. There was a sliding noise and a blade appeared, flashing into view. “Give me your fucking money or I’ll cut you bad,” he talked fast and flicked the blade at Max’s stomach, only a foot away. “Hurry up, man. I don’t want to fuck around. Just give me the fucking money.”

Max had left the apartment without his wallet or change. To call home he had had to use his phone credit card number. He wasn’t going to plead that, however. “Go ahead. Cut me. I don’t have any money to give you.”

“Come on,” the kid stepped closer and flicked the blade at Max. “Don’t fuck around.”

It was hopeless. The world was a hopeless and stupid place. Max felt the heat of its selfishness and looked away toward the Hudson. He would die in sight of it. That at least had dignity.

Max shook his head no at the mugger, his mouth in a regretful pout.

The teenager lunged at Max’s chest with the blade. Instinctively, Max moved one step to his right. He didn’t shift far enough. The knife sank into him. Max lowered his head and watched as the metal disappeared into his arm and chest. He felt nothing. With the blade all the way in, the teenager’s face was only inches from Max’s; he stared at the point of entry, stunned, his mouth sagging open. The mugger’s eyes were small and frightened. Max didn’t like him. He put his hand on the kid’s chest and pushed him away. He didn’t want to die looking into scared eyes.

The mugger stumbled back, tripped over his feet and fell on his ass. Max felt the point of the blade in his armpit. He realized he wasn’t cut. The stupid kid had stuck the knife in the space below Max’s armpit, the gap between his arm and chest. He had torn Max’s polo shirt, but missed everything else. For a moment the knife hung there, caught by the fabric. Max raised his arm and the switchblade fell to the ground.

The teenager jumped to his feet and ran away, heading uptown. Bewildered, Max peered into the jagged hole in his shirt. No cut, no scrape, no wound of any kind.

“They can’t kill me,” he said aloud, the traffic drowning his mild tone. “They want to kill me,” he admitted and he smiled affectionately at the West Side skyline, at the architecture of the city of his birth, “but they can’t.”

14

Max walked the fifty blocks to his office. The city was exposed to a bright sun, heating up the closely packed corridors between the tall buildings. New Yorkers walking in the oven were smoked by fumes of car exhaust and street cooking. Max watched their faces, fascinated. The midtown blocks were jammed with people of color and clothing of color and there were lots of glistening skin and bold hairdos. Max enjoyed their company, striding hard through the unbreathable air. He couldn’t hear their conversation. It was too hot to hear: the city’s noise was dampened into a continuous background roar. The only sound Max could distinguish was his own panting. He arrived soaked through from perspiration. His hair was dripping wet, his polo shirt stuck to his body. At the chilling touch of the office’s air-conditioning his skin crawled. He walked in pulling at his shirt.

They surrounded him in seconds: Gladys the bookkeeper, Scott and Warren, the two draftsmen, and Betty the secretary. Their eyes all looked puffy; Max was pleased they had cried for Jeff; pleased and a little amused. Betty was prepared to hug him but she held back at his obvious discomfort. Gladys, however, was too upset or didn’t care. She rushed into Max’s arms. Max didn’t feel her plump squat elderly body; he got the clammy embrace of his own clothing.

“My God, Max,” Gladys said. “What a nightmare.”

“Yes,” Max said and moved her away. He picked at his polo shirt, peeling it off him. The shirt reclaimed him as soon as he let go. He decided decorum was preposterous. Bending over, Max pulled at what felt like his own skin. He shed it.

“Max,” Warren said with a hint of surprise at the nudity. The office wasn’t formal, but it wasn’t a dormitory either. In fact, Max usually wore a dress shirt, if not a jacket.

Gladys picked up the shirt and commented, “It’s torn,” in a wondering singsong, studying the hole.

“Could you get me a towel?” he asked Betty. Betty was a pretty woman in her twenties. She stared at Max’s bare chest. Her look wasn’t lustful. She seemed curious about her boss’s chest, though. What was she thinking—Gee, his chest hairs aren’t gray? Max wished she wanted him, but he was too old, and probably too something else, even if he were young. Betty was a cheerful person: she went to concerts, she danced, she laughed a lot, she cared about her long nails and her thick auburn hair, she enjoyed shopping. She was happy, that’s the name for it, Max decided. I’m not. Even if I were young she’d think I was old.

Meanwhile she brought him a towel from the bathroom.

“Come into my office,” Max said. His employees followed him into his and Jeff’s room. The offices were the front half of a loft, rented from a comic book distributer who used the windowless back half for storage. The draftsmen had space with a window on an alley; Gladys and Betty were opposite with a view of a parking lot. The partners had the large front room to themselves, their desks side by side, facing two floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking Seventh Avenue and the concrete bunkers of the Fashion Institute of Technology, an ugly view that Max liked to believe was an encouragement. No design of his, no matter how practical or commercial, was as defeated as what he looked at.

Max was unmoved by the sight of Jeff’s desk. The empty chair and spread of unfinished designs weren’t poignant or even unusual. It was normal for Jeff to be away, busy with lots of errands and family emergencies and long lunches and of course his daily hour in the gym from eleven to twelve. The deserted workstation, ready for his return, was more embittering than heart-tugging.

“Everyone’s called,” Gladys said.

“Yeah, practically every client,” Scott said and sighed, as if he were exhausted by all the conversations.

“We’re so proud of what you did,” Betty said. She flashed an embarrassed smile, a girlish smile.

“What I did?” Max looked at his cleared desk, at the row of perfectly sharpened pencils that he always made sure to leave ready to greet him the next morning, tips clean and sleek, ready to be his dutiful tools. He turned away from them.

“The children,” Gladys said. Scott and Warren nodded respectfully.

“You were so brave,” Betty said. Max understood why Betty was peering at his bare chest: she was looking for signs of the crash.

“Thank you. I know this is as much a shock to you as it is to me or Jeff’s family. He spent as much time here—” Max stopped, thinking, No, he didn’t. “Anyway, I know you’re all feeling upset but I want to give you as much notice as possible. We have—what do you think, Warren?—about three months’ work?”

“I guess,” Warren said reluctantly.

“I don’t want to keep the firm going after that. Even if we complete the work sooner than three months—in fact, I’d like us to get it done as fast as possible—but even if we finish it this week, you’ll all be on salary through October. You can start looking for jobs right away and I’ll help out, think up people to call, give recommendations—”

“Max,” Gladys lowered her usually high pitch, as if the deeper sound couldn’t be heard by the others. “Not now. Don’t make decisions right now.”

“I know what you’re thinking. And it makes sense. But it isn’t like that. I intend to go on working. But I drew these houses,” he gestured at the Zuckerman Long Island drawings, “and Nutty Nick stores for money. I liked doing it, partly because I liked supporting my family and being part of the world. Who was I to think I could do better than anyone else? I eat at McDonald’s. I even kind of look forward to their french fries. So why should I disdain their architecture? I’ve never met a king, how can I expect to build cathedrals? I don’t even know the CEO of a corporation, so who am I to think I should be designing Citicorp?”