Man Gone Down (25 page)

“As an African American woman, I think I'm charged to do something.” She presses those palms into the linen again. “I just think I'll do more in a board room than in a classroom.” She says it and regrets it instantly. I see her ashamed for the first time. She doesn't wear it well, either.

“Oh, my god, I'm so sorry.”

“It's okay.” She presses her hands harder and tries a pained look, like she's looking at a dead puppy. It's better, but still not good. I rub the table, too. “It's okay. I know what you mean.”

Marco returns and stands over the table.

“What should we do?” he asks. And it comes to me, the rest of the evening—more drinks, more clichés, more strange-faced performances.
He looks around the table. It seems as though between the bathroom and the table he's lost his authority and he's nervous because of this. He finally, after shifting a few times, sits. He extends his arm along the seatback; his hand rests dangerously close to Maggie's shoulder.

“What should we do?” he asks again, still nervous. He won't look at anyone in particular. Maggie has dropped her head in resignation as though she knew this moment would come. I wonder if when she arrived on her first day she foresaw this or any of the other compromises she will have to make. It's awful to see now, bonnie Maggie, her face fallen. Marco tries to look at her in secret, but we all see it. She feels it, tries to steel herself, not to resist him, but to resist the notion that there may be another way. There isn't even lust, nothing between them, but she's convinced of her obligation to this dance.

The waiter returns with a tray of small rocks glasses half filled with a clear but bright liquid. He sets one before each of us—Marco last.

“These are from us.”

Marco isn't an ambidextrous drinker so he has to take his arm down to hold his glass. Maggie reshifts, straightens, thinks of moving close, thinks of moving away, searches blindly for Diana's hand, doesn't find it. She takes her glass as well, circles it with both hands. Diana follows suit. Marco raises his glass, as do they. I raise my water. I can't let this continue, not sober, but I don't want to drink—not for the girls, not for Marco or our “friendship,” not to grease the path, lube it for Marco's entry to disaster.

“Cheers.” No one echoes him, but we all drink. He sips at the strange booze. Then nods his approval. He sets the glass down. Maggie tenses and awkwardly leans toward him, but he leaves his hand on the table.

“You don't drink?” asks Diana.

I ignore her and turn to Marco. “So James fancies himself a goalkeeper this fall?”

He shakes his head to jump into the new context. “Goalie, yes.”

“James is?” asks Diana.

“My son.”

Maggie's face is lightless. Perhaps the face she reserves for the morning after.

“Do you have kids?”

“Yes, I do, three.”

“Wow, that's a lot.”

“I suppose.”

She sneaks a look at my untouched glass. “And you don't drink.”

“Would you like mine?”

“Oh, no. I was . . .”

“I'm a recovering alcoholic—sixteen years sober.”

“That's amazing.”

“Not really.”

“You should be proud.”

“Proud of what?”

“What you've accomplished.”

“And that is?”

She exhales sharply to break the cadence. Maggie has drifted off, scanning the lower room for a way out. Marco wrings his hands. Diana leans in, lowers her voice, as if to tell me a secret. “We need people like you.” Then lower still, “Strong black men.” She straightens again, ready to share with the others, who are pretending not to listen—regardless, they don't seem to care. She speaks to me as though she's suddenly become my mentor. “Educator. Father. Role model. You should be proud.” She looks at my glass again, openly this time. “It takes a lot of willpower—what you're doing.”

“Willpower really has nothing to do with it.”

She snorts—a violent little laugh. I snap up in my seat and bark back to match her tone.

“And I don't see what my sobriety has to do with my melanin count—other than a predisposition to drink. What is it other than another manifestation of my genetics?” It throws her, brings Maggie back to us, and stops Marco's wringing. I wonder what he's heard when I speak. “And insofar as will, I find it harder to drink than not.”

I start wringing my own hands under the table. To stop, I present them to the others. I extend my left index finger to the ceiling, then slowly flex and straighten it again.

They're silent—dormant. My powers have grown over the years. I've put them all to sleep.

A taxi takes the girls west. The valet holds the door open for Marco. He tips him and we get in. Marco tries to hide the fact that he's smashed. He rides the clutch, lurches from stoplights. He makes it to the FDR without rear-ending anyone and begins to weave through the traffic. I wonder if I can sue him if he crashes.

“Got the cigars?” I give him one. He bites the end off and spits it out the window. “Matches?”

“No.”

He jumps across two lanes and gets off on Twenty-third. He pulls over and points at a bodega.

“Would you mind?”

When I come back out, he's leaning against the car chewing on his cigar. His face has changed. It's sharper, somber. I've never seen him this way before—introspective, perhaps. I strike the match and the pop and sulfur bring him out for a moment. But after I light him and he thanks me, he goes back to that face.

“You know, I always wanted one of these.” He shakes his head. “And now I realize that it's just a car.” He stands straight and walks away from it and starts to pace the sidewalk. I light my cigar. The smoke tastes like chocolate, leather, and wood. He calls from across the sidewalk. My smoking seems to have signed some unknown pact with him.

“What happened back there?” He draws a circle in the air with the cigar.

“I don't know.”

“Really?” He asks as though I'm being deposed. “Everything seemed to . . . everyone seemed to be having a good time.”

“Sorry.”

“No, no.” He waves at me while looking down at the street. “You did the right thing.”

“I did.”

“Yeah.” He looks at me with the grave face, almost angered that I would question him when he was so sure of himself. He goes to take a drag and stops. He walks to me, eyes wide and blazing. He points at his chest, defiantly, then he starts to speak, then softens as though he's just seen something delicate flash in his mind.

“I've never cheated on my wife.” He says it as though he's now on the stand. “Not even when we were just dating.”

“That's good.”

“No.”

“Why no?”

“Well, I've never been sure why. I do love her, but it's not because of that. Your wife, if you don't mind me saying, is a beautiful woman.”

“Thanks.”

“You ever cheat on her—probably not, huh?”

“No.”

“What about her? She ever cheat on you?”

“No.”

“How do you know?” He drags on his cigar and checks his watch. “You never called her back. Too late now.” The thunder punctuates his words. He rolls his eyeballs up. The steak is now whole again in my belly. “Fuck, let's get out of here.” He circles the car, opens his door, and looks across the roof at me.

“You all right, man?”

“I'm fine.”

She was not the one, not the girl.
“I don't need much,”
she always used to say and I hadn't believed her at first so I tried to give her everything I could, but she kept saying it:
“I don't need much.”
I never figured out what that little bit was.

Marco starts the engine. I hadn't noticed that the rear window extends down over it, revealing the big aluminum V-8. Transparency—a heart on display. Even so, few know what makes it go. Claire had said that she loved me, was still saying it with electric eyes and girlish cheeks—“
I love you”
—handing out the words like two-bit lemon ices.

Like Ahab I do not sleep but unlike him I don't die—I dream. I dream of Claire with someone else. It makes it easier I suppose, to say goodbye. Money. Plans. Johnny Little Nancyboy left a message for me to go to Greene Street, the corner of Broome. He'd said that there would be better work.

I get up and feed Thomas. He eats. He looks better than yesterday. I wonder who will take care of the fish when I go. I suppose I could leave a note for Marco with care instructions and they could pick him up when they get back. Maybe they won't come back. Maybe she'll stay with Edith. It would be better, cheaper. The kids could go to public school. The house is paid for and they would have all that space. They can just open up the door and run outside with a ball by themselves. I don't think Claire even wants to live in New York any longer, anyway. She hasn't danced in years and the people she's met since then, the mothers she's befriended, the ones she actually liked are all leaving. They can't afford it, either.

Having grown up poor, I never understood what it cost to be rich: how much a home cost, how much tuition cost, how much it cost to run in certain circles, to maintain a lifestyle. We had cheap rent, and we lived in a small, naive world.

I think I remember coming to New York to become rich—to make a name for myself, with a guitar and notebooks in tow, but it didn't work. I don't know why we'd expected it to, and we never made a contingency plan in case it didn't. I see Claire and myself, twelve years ago, young and stupid—rube-like—making plans to succeed, plans that were really closer to fantasies than anything else.

Most things fail. Most people fail. Most ideas go bad; movements, marriages. I strum the guitar. It's out of tune, but I keep playing anyway—nothing in particular, just random chords I come to finger.
It's only money.
That's all I really need now for damage control. I put the guitar down and sit up. I get a clean sheet of paper and write a list.

Today:

Go to SoHo

Go to school

Go to Marta—get check

Find some way to make money tonight

Find apartment for them

Not specific but good enough because it's written down—doable, practical tasks. Things I will do. Things I choose to do. A contract, that sober and of age and consenting, I freely enter. I get up and get dressed. I go downstairs. Marco is standing in the kitchen, dressed and reading the
Times.
The phone rings. He answers and hands it to me.

“Hey. Morning.”

I take the phone from him.

“Hello.”

No one responds, but I know it's her. I believe I can hear her breathing and I know her breaths—each one of them—elated, angry, sad. This is how she breathes when she doesn't know what to say, when in the moment before speaking she realizes how very different we are, how enormous a gap there is between us two and that she hasn't the power to cross it, that I have given up trying. In this breath there is an assessment, a reassessment of me, of her, of us. There is a hint of shame—that she believed in something between us, first without prudence, then without wisdom. Now there's only breath as a symbol—an expression of loneliness.

“Hello,” I say again.

“Where were you?” She lets her voice waver on the verge of crying. The kids must still be asleep.

“I worked yesterday.” Marco leaves, allowing me to lie about his message. “I didn't know you called until late.”

“Of course I called.” More breaths; these are more frustrated, hurt—which means that somewhere in them is a hope. It makes them worse for me to hear than the lonely ones. “You went
out?”
Which is an accusation of me spending money.

“Marco took me out to dinner. I met him in the city.”

“I had everyone by the phone. Everyone wanted to sing to you. They were so disappointed.”

“I'm sorry.”

“It's okay.” Like a fool, I believe her—that it is okay, that she has hope that things will turn out okay. I can't imagine her remarrying, but I can't imagine her alone, but like last night I cannot see the face of the man who would replace me, and I wonder if I've damaged her too much for her to ever love or trust again.

“Did you find anything for today?” It's a simple enough question, but it sounds ridiculous coming from her—Claire as the hardscrabble wife of a day laborer.

“Yeah.”

“What are you doing?”

“Something for Johnny—I don't know.”

“Ick. That guy gets jobs?”

“I guess so.”

“Maybe you can start getting your own jobs?”

“Maybe.”

“You talk to Marta?”

“Today.”

“Great. School?”

“After work.”

“Will anyone be there?”

“I get out at four.”

“Oh, okay. I'm sorry.” She wants to stop asking these sorts of questions, but she can't help herself. “What about apartments?”

“Tomorrow.”

“We don't have much time.”

“I know.”

She brightens. “What about Pincus?”

“What
about
Pincus?”

“I saw his new book. It got great reviews.”

“Did it?”

“I'm sorry.”

“Why are you sorry?”

“I keep bugging you. I'm putting it all on you.”

“No. It's fine.”

“Things'll work out.”

“Yeah.”

She sighs. “I feel better. I'm sorry.”

“Shh.”

“Are you coming this weekend? The kids miss you. I miss you.”

“I'll try.” It doesn't sound genuine to me.

“Happy birthday.”

“Thanks.”

“I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

She seems to wait on the line as though she's expecting me to say more, but she hangs up before I can disappoint.