Paradime (9 page)

I sit on the edge of the fountain and remain there for about an hour, watching people enter and exit the Tyler Building, way too many to track. But it’s not as if I really expect to see Teddy Trager in person. Chances are, in any case, that even if he comes here, spends any time here at all, he enters through the underground parking lot. But I want to get a feel for the place, to see the kinds of people who frequent it. And most of them, of course, are what you’d expect, just ordinary people who work in a big, impersonal office building.

Eventually, I stand up, check the time, and head off to work myself.

I do this again the next day, and again the day after that. On the fourth day, I’m sitting at the fountain, crouched over, doing something with my phone, not really paying attention, and when I look up, there he is, standing at the kerb doing something with
his
phone. He’s next to a parked limo, which it looks like he just got out of. After a moment, he puts his phone away and walks towards the entrance to the building.

I stand up now and watch him as he moves across the plaza. I check the time on my phone.

Through all of this, I remain calm, but as I’m walking to work afterwards I realise something. I’m excited. I’m energised. And as the day progresses, I can think of little else.

The next morning, Trager arrives at the same time, in the same way, and I feel as if I have cracked some sort of code. But it’s all very quick and fleeting, so the day after that I decide to try and get a closer look at him. I position myself, wait for the limo to appear and then move slowly along the sidewalk, passing by just as the driver is opening the door to let Trager out. I catch a glimpse of the car’s interior, a flash of mahogany and leather, a glint of crystal maybe. A few quick steps on, I stop and take my phone out. I pretend to be answering a call, and casually turn around. Trager is doing the same thing, talking on his phone, just standing there . . . the two of us just standing there, eight, ten feet apart, people passing in either direction.

‘Look, that’s not my concern,’ Trager is saying, a sudden boom to his voice. ‘Just
arrange
it.’

There almost seems to be an aura around him. I know it’s probably my imagination, or the position of the sun or something, but everything has a shimmer to it, an intensity – his suit, his shirt collar, his leather shoes. And I can practically smell his cologne. In a sort of trance, I watch as he puts his phone away and moves off the sidewalk and onto the plaza.

After a few seconds, I turn and look the other way. The limo driver is still there. He’s at his door, on the street side, ready to get back in the car. He glances over the roof in my direction. Our eyes meet for a moment, and I register something, the merest flicker of . . . recognition, puzzlement, I’m not sure.

And then he’s gone.

Later, at work, I tell Stanley I need a few days off. It’s out of the blue and I don’t frame it as a request, which clearly rankles, but just as he’s about to read me the riot act, something stops him. I don’t know what it is, a sudden realisation that he can use this to get rid of me? Maybe. In any case, he shrugs, and says, ‘Okay.’

I tell him thanks, that I appreciate it.

‘Whatever,’ he says, and adds, fuck-you style, ‘there’s plenty of cover available out there, you know.’

‘I’m well aware of that, Stanley,’ I say dismissively, in my best Teddy Trager voice.

This confuses him, but he lets it go.

As for my few days off, I certainly don’t need them, and I don’t tell Kate I’m taking them. What I figure is that I can explore this thing a little further, push it to some reasonable limit, then maybe exhaust it, get it out of my system. Because that’s what this feels like, something in my system, a virus.

But if that’s what it
is
, the next day things ramp up to fever pitch. I’m waiting at my usual spot, at the usual time, and at first nothing happens: there’s no limo, it doesn’t appear – not that it arrives at exactly the same time every day or anything. But after about twenty minutes, twenty-five, a half hour, I start to get impatient. I start to resent the position I’m in. I start to resent Teddy Trager – whoever the fuck Teddy Trager might actually
be
, this guy with all the homes and the suits and the visionary ideas for a better future. And I have to wonder, you know, what if he had spotted
me
somewhere? Would he have started delving into
my
life? Would he have lasted five minutes? Would he have even looked twice?

Before I can get anywhere with this, I glance across the street and see a yellow cab pulling up. After a moment, Nina Schlossmeier emerges from it, followed by Trager. Walking slowly, and with Nina doing most of the talking, they move along the block to the lights. They wait, cross, and make their way onto the plaza in front of the Tyler.

As I watch them now, I feel a sense of panic. In a few seconds they’ll be inside the building, and that’ll be it, done, today over. I could wait until one or other of them comes out again, but there’s so much activity around here I’d probably miss them. All it would take is a tiny distraction, and I wouldn’t even know. So what do I do? I can’t go to work. I can’t go home. My throat is dry, and the prospect of the empty hours ahead is unbearable. I’m actually about to freak out, but then something happens. Teddy and Nina stop, maybe ten yards from the entrance to the building, and turn to face each other. Are they saying goodbye? If so, what then?

If she takes off, I could follow
her
.

The sudden, unexpected creepiness of this thought causes my stomach to churn. But then it becomes clear that they’re
not
on the verge of a goodbye smooch. In fact, they seem to be locked into a more serious sort of conversation, with Teddy now doing most of the talking. After a moment, they start moving again, but this time they veer left and make their way back onto the sidewalk. They go south, and I follow at a discreet distance – the creepiness somehow mitigated by, I don’t know, numbers, gender balance . . .

I’m clearly out of my depth here.

Nevertheless, as we move, I study them closely. As usual, Teddy looks like he’s wandered off the set of a magazine shoot, and, although Nina is just in jeans and a T-shirt, she looks amazing.

We’re half a block apart now.

I wonder where they’re headed, and what’s next, and what would happen if one of them looked over their shoulder and saw me. I wonder who all these other people on the street are.

I need to keep focused.

Two blocks later, Teddy and Nina go into a coffee shop, a pricy boutique place that does locally roasted organic brews and gluten-free pastries. I cross the street and wander around for a bit, waiting, giving them some space. But I’m excited, and I guess I lose track of time. When I next check, it’s been over ten minutes and I’m on Seventh Avenue.

How do I know they weren’t getting their shit to go?

Fuck
.

Stretched out like some optical illusion, the block between Seventh and Sixth seems longer than I remember, longer than it can possibly
be
, and when I eventually get to the end of it I’m out of breath and ready to throw up. I look over at the coffee shop and suspect I’ve blown it. I wait another five minutes, and then cross the street. I approach the entrance, look inside, and realise I was right. They’re gone.

I hang around for a while but eventually give up and go home. I tell Kate I had to leave work early because I felt sick. She’s concerned and wants to help, but I insist that I just need to go lie down. Staring up at the bedroom ceiling, I replay the events of the morning in my head. Pretty quickly, however, it all comes to seem a little unhinged to me, a little crazy. It’s just that . . . I don’t really feel that way. I don’t feel unhinged, or like I’m stalking this guy. In a way it feels like he’s stalking me. Because I didn’t ask for this, or go looking for it, and I certainly don’t understand it. But I can’t ignore it either.

In fact, I don’t really see an alternative.

So the next day I’m up and at it again. Trager arrives at his usual time and enters the building. An hour or so later, he reappears with Doug Shaw, and I follow them to a place on Madison, where they have coffee. But afterwards, on the way back, it all starts to feel a little weird again. It’s as if what I’m doing is utterly pointless . . .

So do I stop? Do I turn away?

Maybe this is an attempt to force the issue, but what I do instead is get closer to them – so close that as they slow down at the entrance to the building, backed up in a short line of people waiting to file through the revolving doors, I end up directly behind them. I’m so close that I could reach out and touch the back of Trager’s head, or stroke the fabric of his suit, or whisper his name and get him to turn around.

But then what?

At the last moment, I step to the left, out of the line, and watch the two men go inside. Through the copper-tinted glass I follow them as they stroll across the lobby. At one point, Trager stops and pulls out his phone. Shaw makes a gesture at him with his hand and keeps going, walking over to what I assume are the elevators.

I then stand there, staring through the window, and it takes me a while to see it, for it to click – my own reflection in the glass is superimposed on Trager. He’s facing in my direction but is busy with his phone and doesn’t appear to see me. For my part, I switch focus from one image to the other, from mine to his, and back again, until I get confused . . . Trager scruffy and unshaven one second, me groomed and in a suit the next . . .

I
think
I bought a suit when I was younger, or it may have been a rental, I don’t remember, but this feels like the first time. I’m not in a hurry, so I start with a tour of a few menswear departments, Bloomingdale’s, Saks, Barneys, just to get some ideas. Then I sit with my phone for a while in a coffee shop and scroll through the websites of various magazines,
GQ
,
Esquire
,
Details
, looking for advice, tips, the basic vocabulary I’ll need if I’m going to do this.

Within minutes I’m all over it – cuffs, vents, lapels, gorges, folds, quarters. I also search around to see if I can find out what – or who – Teddy Trager wears. He seems to go for a classic look, two-button, slim fit, charcoal grey or navy. No brand names are mentioned, but he has to be a Tom Ford or Brioni type of guy, I’m assuming. Anyway, by mid-afternoon I’m ready. I decide to take my chances with a small menswear place on 53rd Street that I come across on Yelp. It does off-the-rack and bespoke and gets a lot of five-star reviews. I go in and don’t pretend I know more than I do. There are two assistants, one older, probably in his sixties, but he’s on the phone, so I get the younger guy, which is fine. It’s stupid, but I feel intimidated by the atmosphere. I catch sight of myself in a couple of different full-length mirrors and realise how scruffy I look. But then . . . what does that matter? For all these guys know I could be a billionaire.

The young guy is attentive and knowledgeable. He takes my measurements, gets me to try on a few things, and then calls out a tailor from the back room, who adjusts, tugs, smooths, and before I know it I’m actually buying a
suit
. There are a few minor alterations needed, with the hems, which will take about two days. I’m impatient about this, but I want the damn thing to look right.

Oh, it will, the tailor reassures me, standing back, nodding his head, making all the right noises.

I have no doubt that whatever exorbitant amount of money I’m about to shell out here (money I don’t have), it’s only a fraction of what someone like Teddy Trager would be prepared to spend on a suit.

And of course that’s not all.

As I’m taking out my credit card (the only one I have left that works, thanks to Phil Coover), I hear myself asking about shirts, ties, and accessories.

When I’m outside again, on the sidewalk, I take another look at the credit-card receipt, and as I walk to the nearest subway stop, the number keeps turning over in my mind, continuously, as though on a loop . . . three thousand two hundred seventy-nine dollars, three thousand two hundred seventy-nine dollars, three thousand two hundred seventy-nine dollars.

Holy shit.

And that – it suddenly occurs to me – is without a proper pair of shoes.

A couple of days later, after I pick up the suit (plus two shirts, a tie, and a pair of cufflinks), I go to a place on Fifth for shoes (another four hundred bucks) and then take the whole lot home in a cab. Kate is in Brooklyn at some coding study group, a new thing she’s taken to doing. I hide the stuff under the bed, stand there like an idiot, and almost immediately take it all out again. I put on the suit, with one of the shirts and the tie. I go into the bathroom and stand in front of the mirror. The suit looks fabulous, but I feel very self-conscious in it. Maybe I need to shave and do something about my hair.

I usually only shave every three or four days. It’s a look, I suppose, and one that in my case is probably due more to laziness than anything else. I do a proper job of it now, though, and it definitely works better with the suit. But still, my
hair
. . .

I carefully fold and bag everything and put it under the bed. Then I head out to a barbershop I sometimes go to on Avenue A. When I’m in the chair, I’m not sure what to say, what instructions to give . . . a bit shorter, tidier, part on the right? Again, I’ll bet Trager pays a fortune for a haircut, and that he probably flies to Paris or Milan to get it done. Nevertheless, I come away with at least some approximation of his look. But only as I’m walking back up the stairs to the apartment does it occur to me that I’ll have to have a conversation about it with Kate.

She notices all right, but I wouldn’t exactly call it a conversation. She makes a face, does a weird thing with her eyebrows, and mumbles something.
I’ll talk about your haircut
, she seems to be saying,
I’ll talk about anything, but you’ve got to talk to
me
first.

Fair enough . . . but where would I begin? I end up saying nothing.

The next morning, I shave again, and really take my time over it. I’m not sure what Kate’s exact plans are today, but when I come out of the bathroom I see that she’s already gone, with her laptop and a folder of notes – I’m guessing to Brooklyn again. I feel like this can’t go on, but I don’t know what to do about it. The worst part is that we’re caught in an economic rat trap. To put it at its baldest – and I’m not saying I want this to happen or anything, I don’t – but if we were to split up, and I were to leave . . . Kate would no longer be able to afford the already modest rent on the apartment, and she’d have to leave too. Her outstanding student loans would stymie her at every turn, and she’d probably end up living back with her folks, getting turned down for cashier jobs at the local Walmart. And fuck knows where
I’d
end up. So, whatever we do or think or feel now is polluted by this knowledge. It’s driving us apart and turning us both into liars. She can’t call me a coward for not standing up to Gideon, in case that drives me away, and I can’t tell her I’m now effectively dependent on Gideon, in case that drives
her
away.

It’s fucked up.

And doubly so if you count the fact that I’ve just spent our rent money for the next couple of months on new clothes that I don’t need. I mean, maybe
I
think I do, but I can’t tell Kate that. It’d be easier to tell her I spent the money on blow and tequila or lost it playing online poker.

I’m in a bad mood now. I take out the suit, put it on, go into the bathroom and stand in front of the mirror for a few minutes, adjusting my hair, straightening the tie. I’m already frustrated, but when I try out the voice and do a couple of the gestures, I begin to feel really awkward.

Maybe I shouldn’t be doing it here.

Leaving the apartment is hard. I feel incredibly self-conscious, like a kid dressed up for his grandmother’s funeral, so the last thing I want is for someone I know to see me and start a conversation – anyone, the guy down the hall, the mailman, that lady from the nail salon next door who spends half her life taking cigarette breaks. But I keep going, and by the time I get to Union Square, and down onto the platform, I’m invisible, just a guy in a suit on his way to work.

I get out at 51st and Lex and wander for a bit. I steer clear of the general area around the Tyler Building at first – the risk of exposure, I decide, is too great. Of course, I wouldn’t know anyone there, but the potentially terrifying thing is that someone there might know – or think they know –
me
.

After a few minutes, I relax and start to enjoy it. There’s an undeniable thrill involved in this, an adrenalin kick from pretending to be someone else – or maybe it’s just from being dressed differently, I don’t know. But isn’t that a thing? You see it in the army. Put a uniform on a guy, and he changes, he puffs up, gets a little cocky. With this suit on, I find it’s like that, I’m walking with my chest out, not quite strutting, but . . . I catch my reflection in a store window and can imagine being that guy – a venture capitalist, a fund manager, a Teddy Trager.

But for how long? At what point do I either give up or decide that this simply isn’t enough? I’m not sure, but when I look around me now and realise how close I’m getting to the Tyler Building – circling the area, stealthily, like a predator – I have to concede that I probably have no intention of giving up at all. At the same time, the closer I get to Trager, to being in a position where I might bump into him on the street, the less confident I feel – the intense thrill of earlier giving way to a confused flush of anxiety.

The closest I get is to the fountain in front of the building next to the Tyler, the spot where I based myself on that first day. I sit on the edge of the fountain, phone in hand, and just . . . wait.

Thirty, thirty-five minutes pass, and nothing happens. I suspect that a part of me is almost relieved, but then I glance over and see Doug Shaw emerging from the revolving doors of the Tyler. My heart starts to race. I track him as he walks across the plaza. At one point he turns and looks in my direction. I could swear that our eyes meet, but at this distance it’s hard to tell. In any case, I have a nano-sized panic attack and look down at the ground. When I look up again, he’s gone.

Fuck
.

But what would I have done? Gone over and spoken to him? The impossibility of this, the ridiculousness of it, strikes me now with considerable force. What do I think I’m doing? Not just here and now, but generally? My behaviour, the stalking, the suit, my attitude at work, the way I’ve been treating Kate? All along, as this has developed, I’ve had a growing sense that something in me is unhinged, or broken, and that feeling now surges through my body, stirring up concomitant feelings of shame and inadequacy.

I stand up from the edge of the fountain and move away. I cross Sixth and go south. The pace I’m walking at now is different, slower, more self-conscious. I’m reluctant to go home, but at the same time I can’t wait to change out of this suit.

Twenty minutes later, I’m on First Avenue, approaching 10th Street, for the most part staring down at the sidewalk in front of me. But then I look up. On the next block, coming in the opposite direction, coming towards me, is Kate, carrying her laptop case. After a second, she too looks up, and I’m pretty sure we make eye contact, but she doesn’t seem to recognise me. She doesn’t react at all. What she
seems
to do is stare right through me, as though I’m not even there. At the corner, she turns left onto Tenth. I turn right, and cross over. When I’m a few feet behind her, I call out her name.

Tensing immediately, she spins around. It takes her a second to focus, her face registering confusion, recognition, then shock. I’m aware, obviously, that I look different, but it’s only now that I realise just
how
different, and how weird this must be for her.

‘Danny . . . ?’

‘Hi.’

We’re standing there, facing each other, half a block from our building, from our
bedroom
, and it feels as if we’re total strangers.

‘Jesus—’

‘I had a job interview,’ I say quickly, ‘and I . . .’ This is horrible. ‘I didn’t tell you about it because I didn’t want to get your hopes up.’

‘But—’

She doesn’t know what to say, torn between obvious incredulity and even more obvious irritation.

I stumble through some improvised details, saying it’s a front-of-house thing, sort of a . . . managerial position, in one of Barcadero’s sister restaurants, a new one opening soon . . . downtown. I can’t believe I’m saying this stuff, because it doesn’t add up, and Kate has to know that. I’m a kitchen guy, not FOH, I work prep, I work the line, I work with
knives
.

But she’s barely listening anyway.

It’s the suit. With her free hand, she takes the lapel of my jacket between her fingers and feels the material.

‘Holy shit,’ she says, ‘this is . . . what is it, cashmere?’

‘Yeah.’ I swallow. ‘And wool. Merino. It’s a mix. A guy at work lent it to me.’

She looks into my eyes, holds my gaze. I can tell that her mind is racing, that she might even be a little afraid and is no doubt asking herself . . . what kind of fucking PTSD is
this
?

‘Come on, Kate,’ I say, ‘let’s go. I want to get this damn thing off me.’

As we walk the half block to our building, go inside, collect the mail and make our way up to the fourth floor, the tension between us is palpable. The obvious thing would be for Kate to ask me how this supposed job interview went, but she can’t bring herself to do it.

I get the suit off, have a shower and change into normal clothes. As Kate chops up some fruit to put in the juicer, I sit at the table and open the mail. Most of it’s junk. One piece is a reminder from the debt-collection agency – another in the regular series that Kate has been receiving for over a year now.

I slide it across the table, so she’ll see it when she turns around. Which she does almost immediately. She picks the letter up, glances at it, then steps on the pedal of the trash can beside her, and drops the letter in.

Without saying a word, she goes back to her chopping.

I sigh. It’s deep, and audible, probably louder than I intended. It’s not directed at Kate in particular. I’m tired. I’m confused. It’s a
sigh
.

Clearly not how it sounds, though.

‘
What?
’ she says, turning around, knife up.

‘Nothing, I—’

Seeing me notice the knife, she rolls her eyes and puts it down.

‘Look,’ she says, ‘
you’ve
got a job now, this Barcadero thing.
I
can get something too, I’m trying, I’m out there.’

‘I didn’t mean—’

‘In fact, just today, I heard of a possible thing, part time to start with, but maybe more, it depends.’

‘Kate—’

‘I met with Harold Brunker again, and he was saying he could put in a word with some people he knows, movement people. There’s a website they run, and there could be an opening. It wouldn’t be much at first, but we could use the money.’ She pauses. ‘I mean,
obviously
we could. Right?’

Put in a word? What has she been saying to this guy?

‘Well, Danny, couldn’t we?’

I shift in the chair. Squirm, really. ‘Yeah, we could, sure, of course . . . but come on, Kate, a fucking
website
? Jesus Christ, what about your dreams? What about law school?’

‘I don’t know, Danny, what about it? I’m twenty-five years old and already drowning in debt. And why?’ She throws her arms up. ‘Because I took out a student loan in order to get a worthless degree from some shitty college no one’s ever heard of.
That’s
why. It’s a debt I can’t repay and that will always show up in credit checks. It’s a debt that ironically means I’ll probably never be able to get a decent job, certainly not one as a fucking lawyer, that’s for sure. So, I don’t know, working for people who want to change things, and make a difference? That actually sounds pretty okay to me. But working for people who want to make companies like Gideon Logistics accountable? To expose their hypocrisy? To make them bleed?’ She pauses. ‘I’m all
over
that, Danny. Bring it fucking
on
.’