The Executor (14 page)

“Ms. Spielmann, please.”

“Please yourself, Mr. Geist.”

“I can’t accept this.”

“Rubbish. You must find yourself a decent pair of shoes. A scholar cannot go around in rags.”

I did need new shoes, but not five hundred dollars’ worth. Think of all the books that would buy, I pointed out.

“There are other things a man should have, Mr. Geist. You’ve plenty of books. Now, my tea, please. Let us attempt to restore order to the universe.”

D
espite Alma’s blandishments, I still felt as though I had been relegated to second best in her eyes; added to the news about Father Fred, and the blow Yasmina had dealt me, it made for a triple whammy of disillusionment and rejection. Asking Drew to recruit people for a birthday party was, I suppose, a rather desperate attempt to reconstitute my ego. Considering the short notice, he did an impressive job, managing to fill two booths of a local cantina with an assortment of friends I had neither seen nor spoken to since moving in with Alma: colleagues from the department, other graduate students, a couple of lawyers, a couple of consultants. Wisely, he had gone with an all-male cast. Nobody asked how I was feeling. All they asked was if I wanted another Corona. Yes, I did.

Someone asked what happened when you turned thirty-one.

“It’s the first year of your thirties.”

“Thirty is the first year of your thirties.”

“No, thirty is the last year of your twenties. It’s like Y2K.”

A large chunk of the evening was devoted to resolving this question. I didn’t have to talk very much, for which I was grateful. Because I kept quiet, I don’t think anybody noticed how drunk I was until they made their excuses (work, wives, weeknight) and came over for a handshake and found themselves reeled in for a bear hug. Whoa, there. You all right? Yes, I was. In fact, I was ready for another.

By eleven-thirty only Drew remained.

“Yasmina’s engaged,” I said.

He raised his eyebrows. “Wowie.”

I drained my beer. “Indeed.”

Outside he flagged a taxi.

“You know what,” I said. “You go on. I’m going to take a walk.”

He knew better than to argue. He wished me happy birthday and left.

I staggered off across the Common, stumbling through the springtime mud and humming to myself, a dismal melody whose source I couldn’t quite place. I hummed it again and then it came to me, Daciana, it was hers, some Gypsy song, one she liked to wake me up with, it put me in the mood for pierogi and suicide. Here’s to you, comrade. Along Mass Ave, sodium lamps glowing orange gumdrops. The air smelled bleachy. Raw, excitable, I lurched, belching, toward Porter Square, ultimate destination unknown. I could keep going all the way to Davis Square. Why was every place around here a Square? City planner with a quadrilateral fetish. But they weren’t square, these Squares. Harvard Square was a triangle. Porter Square a trapezoid. Inman Square an intersection. I passed the building where I’d lived with Dorothy, Kelly, and Jessica, and I waved at their floor. I hoped they’d found a new roommate, a fourth to complete the square, what would her name be? Alison. Or—no. Myung. Her name would be Myung and she would be mmmpre-law, she’d be the loudest of all, her screams audible over a two-mile radius.

Outside a bar called the Thorn, a throng of people stood smoking. I was working my way through them when I felt a hand on my shoulder.

“Hey.”

I swiveled around loosely.

“Hey,” said the man again. His smile leaked smoke.

It was Eric.

Had I been in any other state, I would have kept walking, mortified to be caught out alone by him. As things stood, though, my mood was somewhat more expansive.

“Good evening,” I said, bowing deeply at the waist.

With him were two women, Boston Irish, blond and heavyset, their fingernails painted the same hair-raising purple. The only discernible difference between them was that one had a navel piercing and the other did not.

“Joe, right?”

I was embarrassed by how gratified I felt to learn that he knew my name—gratified enough not to correct him. His acknowledgment ought to’ve meant nothing to me. Yet it did. “Indeed. And you’re Eric. And you lovely ladies are.”

“Lindsay.” “Debbie.”

I hadn’t caught which name went with which girl, so in my mind they became Navel and Non-Navel. I bowed to both. “It is an honor and a privilege,” I said.

They laughed throatily. One of them offered me a smoke. I declined.

“I must guard my health,” I said. “It’s my birthday.”

“Cool,” Non-Navel said. “Happy birthday.”

I bowed again.

“Calls for a shot,” Eric said. He took Navel by the arm and they went inside. I looked at Non-Navel, who smiled and pulled me after them.

We cleared space in a corner, and Eric sent the girls for drinks. They seemed happy to do so, returning with a tray of overflowing glasses.

“Tequiiii
la
,” Navel said. She had a thick Boston accent.

Everyone salted and drank and bit. Then Eric told them to get beer chasers.

While they were gone, I asked if Navel was his girlfriend.

“Naw, I just met them.”

“Then why do they keep buying us drinks?” At my sloppiest, I could still find the hole in a situation’s logic.

He shrugged, then winked. The similarity to Alma was so striking that I almost yelped.

I can recall snatches of what followed. There were drinks and more drinks. Jokes I knew I should not find funny but that made me sputter with delight. Then everyone got around to comparing tattoos. Non-Navel had a dolphin on her ankle. Navel turned around and lifted up her shirt to show a “tribal” design across the small of her back. Eric had an AK-47 on one shoulder and a weirdly old-fashioned staghead on the other, as though he’d had the tattoo artist copy opposing pages out of
Field & Stream.
When I said that I didn’t have a tattoo, the focus then became which tattoo I would get when (not if) I got one. Navel lobbied in favor of barbed wire around the biceps. Non-Navel seemed to think I was more of a Chinese character kind of guy.

“I’d get Nietzsche,” I yelled over the music.

They looked confused.

I explained that he was a nineteenth-century German philosopher. They still looked confused, so I added that I, too, was a philosopher.

“Oooh,” Non-Navel said. “Say somethin deep.”

Later I tried to explain the Sorites Paradox to her.

“That don’t make no sense,” she yelled.

She had come to be sitting in my lap.

“That’s why it’s a paradox,” I yelled. The flow of blood to my lower extremities was being severely restricted.

“What the fuck are you talking about?” yelled Navel.

“Sand,” yelled Non-Navel.

“What fuckin sand?”

“It’s a metaphor,” I yelled.

Charisma is a mysterious and powerful thing. I have it in limited supply, and that which I do have functions under highly specialized conditions. A certain class of smart, strong-willed woman finds me endearing. In general, though, I’m not the type of person who wins people over in bars. Whatever Eric had working against him—that beard, for starters—he had a far more potent weapon coursing through his bloodstream, one unavailable to mere mortals like me. I’ve already mentioned that he was handsome in a predatory sort of way. When we’d first met he had been so sullen and uninterested in me that I had failed to credit him with anything more than a genetic hold on Alma. Under the influence of booze and despair, however, I now saw that I had been wrong: he was in fact preternaturally charming, oozing sexuality, and knowing instinctively what women wanted to hear and when they needed to hear it. It’s hard for me to remember exactly what he said, but in truth the words themselves are unimportant; in seduction, as in all forms of marketing, form supersedes content. I do remember struggling to formulate questions that would reveal something of his character to me. I wanted to know who this person was, this confidence man who had the potential to replace me. What molten substance bubbled at his core? But he had a way of making me feel awkward when I asked a question he didn’t want to answer. He would pretend not to have heard me; he would invariably be looking in the other direction, nuzzling Navel, whispering in her ear, making her giggle. I watched her finger skip across the hollow of his chest and up to his cheek, then down to hook under the droopy neck of his T-shirt. I watched as the finger traced around the collar to the nape of his neck, dancing then down his back, coming to rest near the top of his buttocks, where the elastic of his underwear rose over his waistband. He did not react to this advance: he expected it and did not seem the slightest bit surprised. Non-Navel was watching them, too. She may have been in my arms, but it was his power keeping her there. Drunk as I was, I could tell from the way they responded to him, their bodies open and inclined, that he had both girls bridled. In this way, they looked familiar to me. They looked the way women used to look when they talked to my father.

 

 

I WOKE with my face squunched. Warm, stale air washed over my naked back. Itchy-eyed, cotton-mouthed, I lay there running my fingers over the surface below me, which I tentatively identified as an unsheeted futon.

I heard snorting, felt shifting, became aware of a body next to me. Rising up on my elbows turned a simple headache into pure evil, so I eased myself back down, lying motionless until the world stopped crackling. Then I slid out of bed and began hunting for my clothes. This was a real challenge, as the room was dark and covered in heaps of dirty laundry, and I kept having to pause to let nausea pass.

I’d collected both shoes, one sock, and my still-buttoned shirt when from the next room came a shout.

“Mothafucka.
”

Startled, I dropped my shirt.

The body in the bed stirred, sat up. It was Non-Navel. “Hey,” she said.

“Son of a bitch.
”

“Jesus,” said Non-Navel. She rubbed her nose, watching as I excavated around her butterfly chair. “What are you doing?”

“Mothafucka.
”

“Simma down,” yelled Non-Navel. She told me to come back to bed.

I mumbled about needing to find my pants.

Outside, more ranting.

“Hey,” yelled Non-Navel. “People are sleeping, y’inconsiderate cu—”

The door burst open. I, pantsless, dove for cover. Navel had no such qualms. In she marched, wearing nothing but a T-shirt, her makeup smeared into war paint. She planted herself in the middle of the room—arms akimbo, thighs aquiver—and bellowed:

“Youbastidwhethafucksmyshit.”

I seized a crusty dishtowel, tried gamely to cover myself with it.

“Get the hell outta my room,” yelled Non-Navel.

“Bastid.” Navel was striding toward me. “Whez my shit?” She wrapped her beefy arms around me and swung me toward the floor, my superior size mooted by hangover and the element of surprise. Down I went, noting as I did another tattoo she’d failed to mention, a cackling shamrock and the words ERIN-GO-FUCK-YASELF inscribed on the inside of her left leg. I looked up to see her rearing back to strike me—and then Non-Navel came flying into the frame, tackling her, and the two of them went rolling across the room, caterwauling and yanking each other’s hair.

“He took my shit! He took my shit!”

“You crazy bitch, shut the fuck up.”

“My shit!”

Briefly, I watched, transfixed. Then I came to, grabbed what I had, and ran.

The kitchen was littered with glasses and overflowing ashtrays. My pants were splayed across the back of a folding chair. I had the presence of mind to check for my wallet and keys before stepping sockless into my loafers.

“Motha
fucka.
” Navel was coming at me, arms out like a zombie, dragging Non-Navel, who had her by the leg. “Mo. Tha. Fuck. A.”

Down a stairwell, skidding turns, slamming walls, daylight ahead; moving fast until a ghastly howl of pain brought me up short.

“Wait!” Non-Navel appeared, out of breath. “Heah,” she said, pressing a piece of paper into my hand. “Call me?”

 

 

WITH THE HELP of a bus stop map, I determined that I was in Arlington, five miles northeast of Cambridge. I set out on foot, repeatedly glancing back in expectation of one or both women barreling down the sidewalk after me. Stores were open; it was long after nine, and I felt sick, having missed breakfast with Alma. I picked up the pace, jogging along until I found a cab.

I came in via the back porch and tiptoed to my bathroom. As I scrubbed away smoke and grime, I thought about Navel and her accusations. If anything had happened, Eric was surely to blame, although I suppose in her mind that made me guilty by association. What, exactly, had he stolen? Her purse? Phone? Drugs? Whatever it was, it had nothing to do with me. I groped indignantly for bits and pieces of the previous evening, feeling sick all over again when I got ahold of them. I saw a drinking game at the girls’ apartment, everybody down to underwear; remembered grasping something sweaty and fleshy and not knowing to whom it belonged ... Had we all been in the same room? Had it been that bad? I could never know for certain, but whatever had taken place could not be revoked; it would stand between us eternally. I wanted to vomit. I
was
guilty—not of theft but of lowering myself. I stood indicted in my own eyes: I’d done as he had done, I had made myself his equal, and I hated myself for it.

In the kitchen, Alma had put out a plate of herring and a mug of black coffee.

“Good morning, Mr. Geist. I trust you had a nice party. I thought you might require this.”

Cheeks burning, I sat down to my
Katerfrühstück.

T
here are few places more beautiful than Cambridge in its blooming days, days all the lovelier for the preceding months of misery. For Alma, however, whose attacks were triggered by heat, the spring thaw meant a greater likelihood of being knocked flat by pain. Twice in three days she failed to come down for breakfast, and when it happened again a few days later, I dialed Dr. Cargill. Her advice—wait it out—left me restless and dissatisfied, and to occupy my mind I set about making Alma some lunch, which I put on a tray and took upstairs. Her bedroom door was closed. Hearing nothing, I decided not to knock but to put the tray down, allowing her to take what she would whenever she was ready. I started downstairs again, then stopped and looked back. The tray was a few inches from the door. What if she came outside and stepped right into the food? Or worse: tripped and fell down the stairs? I nudged the tray back a few feet. But what if she was too exhausted to make it all the way over to the tray? I nudged it closer. But what if the food spoiled, sitting out here on the landing? She might get salmonella. I picked up the tray; I would take it downstairs and leave it in the fridge. But what if she was hungry and needed food and couldn’t call out to me? What if she did call out and I didn’t hear her? Sandwiches didn’t go bad, did they? I used to bring my lunch to school and keep it in my desk, where it sat all day long, fermenting. But I was a kid back then, I had a robust immune system, I never got sick. The elderly were especially susceptible to food poisoning. They could die. It was a curse, having these factoids at my disposal . . . But Alma was healthy. Sort of. But this. But that. Up went the tray; down it went; back it went, then forth. Finally I began to worry about waking her with all my futzing around, so I left the tray where it was, halfway between close and far, and went back down to the kitchen to call the doctor again. When I got there, though, I couldn’t bring myself to do anything. I didn’t want to cry wolf. I had to trust that her chosen course of action (i.e., inaction) was best. But she had said to call anytime.