Fearless (23 page)

The four people he employed looked back at him with the attentive and uncomprehending stares of kindergartners politely waiting for snack time.

“Don’t you see the mistake I made? It has nothing to do with whether I’m good enough to design what I want to design. I don’t have to be entitled to it. I don’t have to have talent. I don’t need permission. All I need is my own desire. If that’s strong enough then I’m strong enough.”

“Money,” Scott objected. He was always the practical one, suggesting that elements of the sketches handed to him couldn’t be engineered easily or cheaply. He was usually correct. “You need money.”

“Yes, that’s true,” Max said. “If I want to see my drawings built I need money. If I want to eat I need money. That’s true. But Jeff has given me that.” Max gestured at the vacant swivel chair, its owner not exercising or fighting with his wife or schmoozing with clients. Its owner was beheaded in a body bag. “He’s given me the one thing he couldn’t give me while alive. He’s set me free.”

Young Betty blinked and looked at her elders, as if suddenly Max had broken into a foreign language and they could translate. Scott smirked. Warren lowered his head. Gladys stared, mouth open, her hands going to her hips. “Max, have you lost your mind?” she demanded.

“I know I sound heartless. I’m not. It’s the truth. You have time and effort invested here and you deserve the truth. Gladys, you’ve worked here for ten years. I want you to know the truth. I hated working with Jeff. I loved it and I hated it. He was the weak part of me and it’s been killed and I won’t bring it back to life.”

“I can’t listen to this,” Gladys said. She turned to go, groaned, and looked back. Her cheeks wobbled; her eyes teared up. “You’re upset,” she told Max and left.

Betty followed Gladys out, although her eyes didn’t want to go; she turned her head to look back as she exited, squinting at her boss curiously.

Warren stepped back against the bulletin board. He was in his fifties and his talents and personality didn’t quite make up for his lack of skill. He cringed at the touch of the board’s thumbtacks, but they seemed to prod him into speech: “It’s a bad time to look—” he began and then thought better of it.

“Bad time for what?” Max asked.

“To look for work,” Scott explained. He had both talent and aggression, except for what he claimed was his true ambition, painting. “You know that. Real estate’s soft, there’s tons of commercial space. Architects aren’t hiring. They’re laying off.” Scott shrugged. He had long blond hair that he kept in a ponytail. He liked to stroke it thoughtfully and a predictable look of happy abstraction would come over him. He mumbled, “I don’t care. I can collect unemployment and do some real painting.”

“Max! Line one.” Gladys poked her head in the doorway. She sounded furious. “It’s your psychiatrist!” She disappeared.

Max laughed. So did Scott. He even let go of his ponytail. Warren straightened up and seemed alarmed.

“That’s funny,” Max called after her.

Warren pointed to Max’s phone. “She wasn’t kidding.”

A light was flashing. Max picked up warily.

“Hello, Max, how are you?” Dr. Mayer’s squeaky lisping voice came over the phone. Disembodied, it resembled a Mel Blanc voice—Daffy Doctor or Sammy Shrink. “Your wife phoned me. She’s very concerned about your state of mind. I wasn’t paying attention to the news broadcasts and I didn’t know you were in that plane. Otherwise I would have called on my own.”

This was one of the longest speeches Bill Mayer had ever made to Max. “Debby really called you?” Max said.

“Yes. She’s worried about you. But, as I say, that isn’t why I called. Would you like to come in? Anytime’s all right. I can move things around, if necessary.” “Necessary” was squeaked and lisped loudly, making it sound as if Dr. Mayer were using a walkie-talkie.

“Maybe later or tomorrow. There’s a lot I have to take care of.”

“I told you the flight would be safe,” Mayer said.

“Yes, you did.”

“I’m sorry. I understand that Jeff died in the crash?”

“Are we having a session?”

“I’m here for you to talk to, Max. That’s all. I don’t want you to feel emotionally isolated. I know that’s your pattern when something bad happens.”

“This wasn’t bad, Bill.”

“I know. It must have been horrifying.”

“Actually, it was kind of great.” Max rolled the row of pencils back and forth. He noticed Warren leave the room. Scott, however, stayed, stroking his ponytail. Max rolled the pencils faster. One of them spun away and landed on the floor.

“In what way was it great?”

“I’m not scared anymore. The worst has happened and I’m not scared anymore.” Max’s heart pounded. He rolled all the pencils off the table.

“Un huh.” This was one of the few things Bill Mayer could say without squeaking or lisping. It was also the doctor’s most frequently used sound. Max often wondered if that’s why Bill had become a psychiatrist.

Max’s heart thumped in his ears. His throat swelled. He was strangling in his own blood. “I’m going to be myself from now on, Doctor. No more hiding.” The pressure was gone. Max inhaled easily. His chest felt sore, but his heart was quiet.

“I’m glad you’ve found something good in it.”

“I got mugged this morning.”

“No shit,” Scott mumbled.

“Were you hurt?” Mayer asked.

“No. Nothing seems to hurt me these days.”

“I’m surprised you’re at the office. I would have thought you’d want to stay home.”

“I was going to stay home. Anyway, I have to go.”

“I understand. Would you like to set up a time for an appointment?”

Max thought about what he had just claimed for himself, that he would not hide anymore. He smiled. “I don’t have to go, Bill. What I meant was, I don’t want to talk to you anymore. If I do, I’ll call.”

“Fine, Max. That’s fine,” Mayer lisped gently.

Max hung up and dried himself with paper towels. He spread his torn polo shirt on the air-conditioner vents. Then he picked up his scattered pencils. Gladys called in: “Your mother’s on the phone.”

“Can’t talk to her. Tell her I’ll call her back.”

This brought Gladys into his office, hands on hips, and scolding: “
You
tell her. She’s upset. She’s worried about you. She asked me how I thought you were and I don’t want to tell her I think you’re acting cuckoo.”

“Tell her I’m cuckoo. Tell her I’ll call her back. I don’t want to talk to her.”

His tone was commanding. Gladys blinked, surprised by it. “That’s really what you want me to say?”

“Yes.”

Scott hadn’t left the room. He was slumped against the wall, stroking his pony tail. His eyes were glazed.

“Get out of here, Scott. I want privacy and you should be stroking yourself in the bathroom.”

“What?” Scott asked, startled.

“Go. Out.”

“What did you say?” Scott moved back. He had let go of his tail. He bumped into the door frame. Young Betty appeared next to him.

“Oh, I forgot to tell you,” she said, her eyes lowered, her tone soft, head bowed fearfully. “Mr. Lobell called yesterday. He said he needed to talk to you as soon as possible.”

Mr. Lobell was the real-world incarnation of Nutty Nick, the man Jeff had literally died trying to impress. Jeff had met him once; Max had only spoken to him on the phone. “Okay,” Max said. “What’s his number?”

“I’ll get him for you,” Betty said, her head up, her tone bright. She left. Scott smirked at Max as if he’d caught him at something. From the hallway they both heard Warren ask Betty in an excited, hopeful whisper: “He’s calling him?”

“I’m leaving,” Scott said and did, with the smirk still in place.

Max put his damaged shirt back on. It made him shiver. His nipples hardened. He reflected that he had gotten laid twice in the past twenty-four hours. Not since he and Debby were creating Jonah had he enjoyed such frequency. Then it had been with the same woman, of course. He wasn’t a Catholic and yet the unprotected sex of deliberate procreation had felt more deep and intimate than when the act was only self-indulgent. He longed to repeat those weeks of determined love—to make a second child. They could leave Jonah with Debby’s parents for a week and fly to Europe (now that the air was terrorless) and he could witness the uncompromised architecture of the Old World (now that his artistic failure was painless) and they could fuck in hotel beds and on hotel rugs and in hotel baths…The daydream was interrupted by Max remembering that he had ended his marriage that morning. Well, so what? he thought and allowed the images to resume. Married or not, it was still a fantasy.

“It’s Mr. Lobell,” young Betty said in an intense low tone. She had entered all the way into Max’s office to deliver this news. “He’s on one.”

Max turned away from Jeff’s desk as he lifted the receiver, hiding his face from his dead partner’s post, so that Jeff wouldn’t see him turn down Nutty Nick. Max didn’t believe in ghosts, but why take a chance? “Mr. Lobell?”

“Just a moment,” a male voice said. Silence, then a booming voice: “Hello!”

“Mr. Lobell? This is Max Klein.”

“Hi. How are you? You look all right. I just saw you on CNN in front of your apartment building. With your son. Where’s he going on the bus? To camp? Isn’t it late for camp to be starting?”

“It’s a day camp.”

“Isn’t he old for day camp?”

“No one’s too old for day camp.”

Lobell’s big voice chuckled. “Hee—hee—hee,” he laughed in a deep tone, like a storybook giant. “Well, he has a very brave father. I’m glad you weren’t hurt. But I’m sorry, very sorry about Mr. Gordon. I liked him.”

“He was a good—” Max stopped himself. Lying was so easy; almost impossible to avoid. “He was a close friend,” he amended.

“I also wanted to tell you not to worry about the presentation. I’ve made other arrangements.”

“You’ve hired other architects?” Max was startled, not upset. That had been quick. It meant there had been competition all along, racing beside them at the same pace.

“Yes. Other things being equal, if the designs you came up with were as good as what you did with the Long Island store, I probably would have hired you, but—well, to be honest, I’m a superstitious man. I’m sorry. You don’t need to hear any more bad news, but I felt I owed it to you to tell you directly.”

“What do you mean,” Max wondered, partly to himself, although he spoke aloud, “that you’re a superstitious man?”

“You know. Anyway, I expect a bill for the preliminary drawings. Please extend my sympathies to Mrs. Gordon—”

“Excuse me.” Max couldn’t let this mystery go. “What do you mean, I know? I don’t know what you mean when you say you’re superstitious.”

“Well, you were on your way to see me and you couldn’t get here. So I feel there’s a jinx…” The giant’s voice hesitated, flustered by embarrassment.

“You mean I’ve got bad luck and you don’t want to catch it?”

“No, no, no,” the giant said, almost chuckling. He had the false good cheer of a man in a Santa Claus suit. “This project requires a lot of immediate attention. Obviously you’re going to need time to adjust to this tragedy. We’ll work together in the future. Thank you for—”

“Yeah, goodbye,” Max hung up rudely. He hadn’t felt angry until Nutty Nick lied. In fact, he had been grateful to hear his previous, truthful statement of worry that Max was jinxed. Max had survived all these attempted killings; he thought he was lucky to be alive, that he was overflowing with good fortune. That was wrongheaded. Nutty Nick was right. All these events were bad luck. He was dogged by bad luck, by the malicious actions of an evil god.

Was it punishment? The therapists would line up from New York to China to tell him it wasn’t. But they wouldn’t make much of a living informing their patients that they deserved their fates.

Okay, it is punishment, Max decided. What for? What did he do? Abandon his ambitious plans? No, not for that. Everyone had jumped off the ship of ideals. A huge asteroid would be on its way to pulverize the earth if that were a serious crime.

Gladys interrupted. “Max, a Mr. Brillstein is on the phone. He says he’s your lawyer.” She had her hands on her hips again, a scolding posture.

“I’m sorry you don’t approve,” Max said.

“It’s not up to me to approve,” Gladys flung her hands out, tossing the subject away. “Maybe you
should
close the business. I just think you shouldn’t be making decisions right now. You shouldn’t turn down a job like Nutty Nick, the kind of success you’ve worked so hard for. You’ve wanted a job like that for years. You’ve killed yourself to get it—” She was revved up, pacing in a tight circle, full of passionate feeling and mistaken history.

“Gladys—” Max stopped her, hand up, a smile on his face. “Mr. Lobell called to tell me that, because of the crash, he isn’t hiring us.”

“What?” Gladys asked this of the rug, as if something hideous and unknown had erupted at her feet.

“And, believe me, I wasn’t working hard all these years to figure out the best way to display programmable VCRs next to microwave ovens.”

Gladys ignored his sarcasm, because that’s all it was to her, Max realized. All these years she had thought his most profound statements were the talk of a wise guy. “He’s not giving you the job because of the crash?”

“Well, we’re jinxed. We’re on our way to see him with the prototype drawings and the plane crashes. Who wants to invest millions in a design scheme made up by people with such bad luck?”

“That’s disgusting.” Gladys mumbled this as she shuffled out. She slumped, aging as she walked away. She was beaten. She had encountered a human act that was beyond her comprehension. “What a disgusting man,” she said almost to herself.

Max was amused. He smiled at her exit. “He’s perfectly normal, Gladys,” he called out.

Gladys stopped just beyond the doorway. Her evenly divided black and gray hair, pulled back into a bun, seemed to have turned mostly gray. He was sorry to have teased her. She used to mother Jeff. He would hug her affectionately, complain in a teenager’s whine if she nagged him, and ask her advice (which he never followed) about his children. For a moment, Max thought she was going to cry. “Don’t forget,” she said softly, discouraged, “Mr. Brillstein is on the phone.”