The Importance of Being Dangerous (20 page)

“Look, I didn't go with you because I didn't go, Belinda,” Griff said, already weary in his work slacks, socks, and unbuttoned shirt. “There's nothing more to say. Why keep going around and around with it?”

She was quick to respond. “Because if you had, (a) you would have shown some interest in my work, (b) you could have met some smart people who are
at least
your intellectual equals for a change, and (c) you might see why I'm right about letting us set up a DRIP portfolio with that hundred and fifty thousand dollars you've been sitting on. Instead, what did you do? You fucking played
pool
with those fucking people, those same fucking people
I
endured on
our
Labor Day Sunday just to please
you
!”

“Baby, I was tired. I had already tested my mind the day of your office dinner. I won an acquittal on a three-day drug trial. I was tired. That's not disrespect. Those people don't give a shit about criminal lawyers anyway. The people you work with think people who defend poor people barely made it through law school and couldn't get jobs in investment banks.”

“That's not true?” She laughed. “I mean, other than you.”

“That's not funny coming from the woman who tells me I don't respect
her
work.” He tried to soften his gaze on her. Griff didn't want to fight. It was late, past midnight, and she was standing there fully dressed in a black designer suit. Belinda still looked great at that hour. For some reason her makeup was done, but he thought it was time she take off her shoes and have a glass of wine or something. “If I didn't respect your work and your criticisms, why am I now in a position to let a hundred and fifty G's sit till I find the right thing? I'm just not interested in Smith Barney products.”

She threw out her hands. “But you would listen to
Yakoooob
?!”

“Yakoob and I have made a lot of money.”

“Yakoob is a fucking comedian with a GED, for Christ sakes, Griff! Get real, you idiot!”

Somehow, as usual, he kept his voice low. “What the fuck did you just call me?”

This enraged her. “A fucking idiot!” Belinda kicked a chair so hard her hair flew wild. “Want me to spell it? Would you prefer imbecile, moron?” She watched him steam. “That's what a grown professional man is who ignores his wife's investment bank advice so that he can invest the first real money he's
ever fucking had
based on the pot-induced gee-wizardry of a high school dropout telling nigger jokes with a microphone!” Both hands hugged her hips and her mouth stayed open. “Go ahead and call me ‘bitch.' It used to be your favorite word right about now, so you might as well use it.”

He was close. But calling her one would be so simple, so pathetically clichéd that it wouldn't sound like anything more than weakness. Besides, until he had started making money, it was she who was calling him a bitch at least once a week. “Go fuck yourself,” he said.

“I put
you
to shame.”

“You should. You got more practice.”

“Fuck you!” She kicked her heels off into the air across the room and started marching toward the kitchen. Halfway there, she stopped and pointed a finger at him. “Stay where you are. I'm not done with you, Griff.”

Once Belinda left the room, Griff relaxed again on the couch, pulled the newspaper section he was reading back off the coffee table, and tried to read. He heard glasses and pots occasionally clanging around in the kitchen behind him. A few minutes later, Belinda was back, down to nothing but her lingerie, a delicate periwinkle combination he had never seen, with a silk thong and a mostly sheer bra. She returned with two champagne flutes and a bottle of Veuve Clicquot. She put them down, winked at him, and ran up the stairs. All as if the yelling before was just sport to her. She'd come home, picked a fight, got in a few more shots than she took, and was good to go. Which might have been more titillating when they were much younger, Griff thought as he admired her fleet body whip up the stairs. But he had never signed on to that; he just rather went along with that. It rarely aroused him. It wasn't his style of sport. Belinda was that way all day long with people, putting them in the places they needed to be.

She returned in a silk robe the color of the shallow sea and a warm smile like nothing harsh had happened lately. She strode confidently over to where Griff was lying on the couch. She slowly lowered her bottom onto the cushion near his face so that he could see and smell the thonged pouch between her legs. Then she laughed and began to pour them champagne from the bottle. This was a kind of physical power she had. Belinda was extremely comfortable with her own body. She knew it was beautiful and she adorned it beautifully, down to the lingerie she wore. Lately, as the power balance in the relationship began to shift with Griff's exploits outside the home, he noticed that she was using the occasional show of pulchritude to keep him interested, if not engaged. He suspected she was at it again.

“What's, uh, what's going on, B?” he asked.

She finished pouring. He was not yet aroused—Belinda made him too suspicious for that. But he caught a notion of her arm from underneath and wondered how something so striking could be aligned with someone so stank. She handed him a glass and sipped her own.

“I have the kind of news that will change our lives and our marriage forever. Guess where we're going?”

“I don't know,” he said. “They havin' a dinner I can't get out of down at your office?”

“No. Japan.”

“Japan?”

“Yup. Probably Tokyo. Maybe Osaka. I'll know Friday for sure.”

“Wait a minute, B. I'm not, I mean—”

“What's wrong with the Japanese?”

“Nothing's wrong with the Japanese.” He straightened up and she motioned for him to drink up. He puzzled for a moment, took a sip, and set the glass down. “When and for how long?”

“
Six
whole months, maybe seven, if we're lucky. This client is notoriously slow.”

Griff's face twisted up like he'd tasted chopped liver. “Six months? Belinda, you gotta be kidding me. Why would you think I could just up and move to Japan for that long?”

Her face saddened. “Because you love me and you don't want me to run off with a wealthy Japanese investor. And because it would be fun as hell. We'd have all kinds of new experiences. We could travel all over the region. See things together we'd never get to see.” She pretended to pout. “And because I have no choice, so you need to come with me, sweetheart.” She kissed him gently on the forehead. “You're my geisha guy.” Then she tried to slide her hand onto his cock.

“Whoa, baby, wait up,” he said, scrambling to get up off the couch and face her. “I can't do that. I have a job. I have very im
portant work to do. People count on me. I have clients in jail awaiting trial. What do you think I do all day? How—” He was so incredulous he could barely finish a thought. “How do you think my office would respond to a request like that?”

She crossed her legs, ready to play it his way. “Honestly, Griff? I think they might fire you, 'cause they're probably that stupid. But so what? Listen to me, seriously. You've been fighting the good fight, struggling for the downtrodden felons and drug dealers, for, like fifteen years? How long can you keep doing that at sixty-two thousand dollars a year when kids right out of law school are making a hundred and twenty-five thousand before bonuses? Everybody you came up with is in private practice by now, representing white-collar criminals and making serious bank. That's exactly what you should be doing. Right after you come back from a few months with me in Japan.” She was truly pleased with her presentation. “How you like
that
? Baby!” She grabbed him by both cheeks and kissed him wet on the mouth.

When she was through, Griff sat back and just looked at his wife. He saw her as he had never allowed himself to see her before. After fifteen years of marriage, no kids, strong prospects, he never knew how or if the end would come. If it was to be a moment, by then he'd made so many compromises and slept through so many dreams that he wouldn't believe the moment if he saw it. The moment would probably come with death. Griff didn't really see this as the moment. He just knew he wasn't going to Japan. And even if Belinda would not go to sleep that night believing Griff's resistance to following her across the earth, she at least needed to hear why not.

He cleared his throat and his mind. “Belinda, let me confess my greatest failing to you. Somehow I have managed to convince every motherfucking man, woman, and child I have come across in the last couple of decades that I am a man. Except you. You don't know what I do, don't understand it, don't want to know. So to
night you come with all this like it's done, like it's all a matter of what you figured out on your own about
me
. And you, who's supposed to be my partner, the one who really knows me, you mistake me for a punk. Maybe bitch is a better word—you were hot on that one for a minute. Well, darling. I'm really not your bitch. People don't pretend to tell me how my life gets run.” Belinda's eyes assumed a fierce defensive gaze, yet she said nothing. He kept waiting to be interrupted, but she wouldn't. So he stood up and took a few steps toward the stairwell down to the ground floor. “So, baby, I'm sorry I can't finish this good champagne with you. I appreciate the thought. But I kind of feel like I've said enough for one night, and it's late. Now that you know a little something about who I really am, I'm gonna hit the pillow. There's a young brother facing twenty-five to life in the morning and they got my name on him.”

The celebration was over. And down he went.

FOR THE SUN
, the crisp early February wind, and an appointment in the city, Sidarra wore her best. She looked forward to this day once a month when she had a morning round table meeting with the mayor's education staff at City Hall and did not technically need to report to her office in Brooklyn. She could wear what she wanted. That morning after a long shower she dried her newly toned body and suffused her naked skin with Quelques Fleurs fragrance, slipped La Perla lace over her primary attractions, and went to the wardrobe with glee. Her imaginary husband still lay in the white cotton sheets, a hazel-eyed bar of Godiva watching her from beneath the canopy. She put on a blood red Dolce & Gabbana dress that hugged her down past the knee, a pair of Jimmy Choo shoes one shade darker, a fox coat, and shades to minimize the UV and maximize the splendor. Leaning naked against the door, her imaginary husband wrapped her in a full hug, pulled back her bra for a last kiss of her breast, and hoped with his hard
ness that she would stay a little longer. As she stepped into the bright sun to her car at the curb, Sidarra thought she saw Tyrell approaching from the far end of the block. But when she looked directly, whoever it was had vanished quickly. Her day was her own.

The glamour ended as soon as the long meeting started. As usual, the agenda included a proposed bond offering for new school construction. As usual, yet another good idea was defeated by the end of the meeting. The only good news was that all of the mayor's choices for a permanent schools chancellor to replace Jack Eagleton had finally turned him down—all five of them. Only Dr. Grace Blackwell remained.

But really, Sidarra spent most of the meeting spacing out. She wondered how her daughter could talk like a monster disguised as an angel. She wondered how some people could talk so long at meetings and say nothing. She walked out of the building and back toward the garage where she'd parked and wondered when it was that she stopped having big ideas. There was a time when she did, and being in the palatial confines of City Hall's meeting rooms—even if she was too shy to speak—always made her hungry to retrieve them. There was a time when Sidarra thought she might be a leader, and the reminder made this day different from any she'd had in a long time.

As she pulled out of the driveway in her fabulous German cocoon, she decided there was no way she was going back to her office in Brooklyn. Maybe she should plan for her fortieth birthday. It might be fun to have a joint of some of Yakoob's bodacious smoke right about now. Or go belly-dancing. Sidarra fumbled with the stereo knobs she was still learning to use and pressed
PLAY
. Anita Baker's “My Funny Valentine” came on like a wish come true. She waited for the light to change at Foley Square and Worth Street, pulled out her cell phone, and started punching in the number for the dance studio in Union Square to find out the
afternoon class schedule. She always kept belly-dancing gear in the trunk, just in case. It was two o'clock.

The pedestrians moved along the crosswalk in their typical blur except one, a man still leaning against the light pole. He was tall and wore a long, open cocoa brown wool coat and a dark green suit. Sidarra was momentarily stuck on him, as he was on something in his head. Daydreaming, he had not noticed that the light had changed. He stood alone looking up about halfway into the tall buildings across the street. His expression bore a combination of pain and resolution as well as an ignorance of strangers who might have caught him distracted in his private moment. Alone like that, he was purely beautiful. An innocent strength and a serious wonder came off the fine lines of his long, mature face. Sidarra blinked twice behind the steering wheel and momentarily held her breath. Just as the light changed green for her, she realized. Just when the light turned red for him, he stepped into the street. It was Griff. She honked her horn and he immediately jerked backward.

“Griff!” she called out of her window. He didn't hear her. “Griff!” she shouted ecstatically. “It's me!”

Shaken from his daze, he peered into the windshield and squinted to make out who was calling to him from behind the glare. “Sidarra?”

She leaned her head out of the open window. “Yes! Yes, it's me!” She opened the car door and stood up with one foot still on the floorboard. The row of taxis, town cars, and other hooligans behind her began slapping their horns like monkeys.

His demeanor brightened. His eyes awakened to more than the fact that he had been daydreaming dangerously at a Manhattan crosswalk. They woke to the image of her outside his thoughts. “My God. Hey! It's you. Sidarra. Hey, baby! Hey!”

She motioned urgently for him to get a grip and walk over to her. He eventually complied and stepped into her embrace. The
taxi-honking be damned, she was so glad to see him. Griff grabbed her up like an adolescent boy and smooched her fat on the lips.

When it was a few moments past time to let go, she pulled back. “What do you know? My statue man. What are you doing here?”

“I work here,” he said. “I'm just coming from court.” He pointed up the street to the Criminal Courts Building. “Just got a continuance on a trial that was supposed to…What? What are
you
doing here?” His smile was so fresh he couldn't fake it.

“Well,” she grinned uncontrollably, “I had a meeting with the mayor's staff like I do once a month.” More taxicabs came upon them. Like a law of nature, more honking commenced.

His eyes scanned her face several times before they ventured over her clothes. “You look, baby, you look just marvelous. Can I say that? Damn, it's nice to see you. It really is. Sid, I can't think of another human being who I would rather break my legs than you almost did.”

She giggled and pinched his side. “Get in, please. Where are you off to?”

He started for the passenger door. “I didn't know really. That's probably why I was so distracted. I guess I could go back to my office. I haven't eaten. I don't know. I thought I'd be at trial now, but the judge was reassigned at the last minute so we got continued till next week.”

“Wanna do something?” she asked, turning to face him beside her.

“With you?” he answered. She nodded a little too happily. “Baby, in the worst way. Whatever you wanna do. I could use some hooky with you. God must be looking out for me today.”

Griff sounded relieved, nearly excited except for the weight of preoccupation his eyelids couldn't hide. She watched him pass a heavy glance over his own clasped hands. That's when Sidarra realized she might not just love Griff, she
knew
him. She knew that
he did not ordinarily stand dazed at intersections like that and walk out into traffic. She knew he had more inner cool than his worried hands now showed. Whatever was on his mind, whatever made him this way right now, she knew she was the one thing that could make it right.

“Let's eat, baby. Relax,” she said firmly. “Whatever happened this morning, let me buy you lunch.” She drove west. “The handle on the floor to your right will put the seat back for you.” She heard the electric seat recline under his weight and he sighed. Sidarra found the stereo button with no problem this time. “My Funny Valentine” began again.

Several blocks later Griff realized that Sidarra was driving around in circles so that he could rest his mind. “C'mon, turn right here,” he said. “Let's go to Odeon.”

Located on West Broadway just up from City Hall, Odeon was a fashionable place to be seen eating if you were a reasonably high-level official in municipal government. By the time Sidarra and Griff strode in, the lunch crowd had tapered away and the place had the feel of fresh air returning. The Art Deco detail was good on the eye. The waiters were slowing down. The maître d', who knew Griff, hurried up to greet them.

“How are you, Griff?” the man with the slight accent and full mustache asked.

“How are you, Sergio?” Griff returned.

Sergio looked pleased to see him and turned a warm gaze on Sidarra. “Hello,” he bowed toward Sidarra and turned back to Griff. “I have a very nice table for you and your lovely wife, Griff.”

Neither of them corrected him because, it struck them privately, there was no better error. And what if they were married? The idea rushed up and hit them on the back of the neck. The world had never seen either of them that way before. It was a damned good idea. So they decided—each in their own head—to
pretend to be married, to try out the feeling, until whenever their day together ended.

Once they were seated at a nice half booth on one end of the uncluttered room, their giddy elbows began to bump and they stared hard at each other. Suddenly Griff was brimming with something to say. “How much do you follow astrology?” he asked her (as if it were a sport).

Sidarra laughed and shook her head, trying to decide how much to lie. “I follow it from time to time,” she answered (as if it were a debate). She followed it at least twice that much.

“Griff's wife. How nice to meet you,” a waiter interrupted, and stepped forward to gently shake Sidarra's hand. “Serge told me you were here,” he said in a thick accent, and smiled at Griff. “How are you, my friend?” Griff nodded and warmly took the bald man's hand. “Your husband is the whip, did you know that? This man great lawyer. Bad. Ass. Appetite killer, too. Bad for business. Believe me, I know.”

Once again, neither of them disabused the man of his assumption.

Sidarra looked up into the waiter's eyes. “My guy doesn't play,” she said.

“Ha ha ha ha ha!” he blurted, and pointed knowingly at Sidarra.

The waiter insisted on a complimentary bottle of red wine, Griff conceded, and the man disappeared. Then Griff eagerly returned to his point. “Well, I don't really follow astrology either, but I have seen a psychic several times over the last few years.” He paused, realizing Sidarra probably didn't figure him for that. She didn't. But he could see that she was more interested in what he had to say than in why he saw a psychic. “I first went to her about eight years ago, as a gag, a favor to a friend who swears by her. At first, nothing came of it, but near the end of one session, she gave
me an interesting warning. She told me I better be prepared for my Saturn return. 'Cause it was coming up.” He raised his eyebrows in fun. “That's supposed to be some spooky shit if you know about Saturn returns. Do you know what a Saturn return is?” he asked.

Sidarra looked away for a second. “Vaguely,” she said. “It's some kind of crossroads. A spiritual crossroads? A pure moment?”

“Almost,” he smiled, glad that she'd heard of it. His voice grew lighter and full of breath. “As the psychic explained it to me, in every person's chart, Saturn returns to the same exact point in the sky every seven years. I'm not sure how long it stays. But its presence is a very powerful force, especially if we ignore it or make excuses for it. It's supposed to create a time of crisis. We're supposed to surrender to the crisis and make careful choices. It's one of those opportunities to either change course or remain stuck repeating dumb shit in your life.” Then, for no obvious reason, Griff reached across the table and gently squeezed Sidarra's hand. “The truly cool thing about this notion, Sid, is that supposedly the return of Saturn coincides with the point every seven years when all the cells in your body have completely regenerated. Every single cell. It's as if you're new.”

Sidarra was sitting on the edge of her seat, squeezing her legs together under the table, and with the hand Griff did not touch, twirling red wine around in her large glass every few sentences. “If nothing else, it's some very useful poetry,” she finally said. “I like it. You buy it?”

“I do,” he answered quickly, with an unfamiliar mischief in his smile. “A year later the psychic was right. Seven years ago I had a Saturn return—my work, my marriage, and I needed some pretty serious medical help.” He moved food around his plate and finally filled his fork with salad he wouldn't lift to his mouth. “I don't think I did it right, Sid. I got help for the injury and eventually
healed up. But I didn't change a thing about my work. And my marriage, the only thing we did was to buy our brownstone. Some people have a child to save a relationship. We bought a building.”

Sidarra smiled into her food and looked lovingly across the table. “Now it's back?”

“Seven years later, baby.
And
I'm forty-two now. I mean six times seven, right? There's no doubt Saturn's back. And there's no doubt I've got an answer this time.”

“What makes you so sure?” she asked.

Griff leaned back in his chair, took her in his eyes, and leaned his elbows forward on the table again. “Because this time it followed
me
. I was already changing when it came over me.” He sighed with a gentle smile, as if he wasn't sure how much to reveal. Maybe Sidarra was wrong. Maybe she didn't know Griff as well as she thought. First the psychic thing, now shyness. Griff finally continued. He explained how playing pool again was an improvement in his life. His politics had grown stale and apathetic, but Whiteboy had changed that. “My anger's back, but I don't get as mad anymore. That's a good thing, too. You know, you can change by returning to yourself, Sidarra.”

“That's true!” she said, emphatically agreeing with him by pointing in the air. “But I'm not sure how to tell you this.” She caught the moment when Griff's face registered worry. “I'm pretty sure your psychic got her math wrong.”

Now he looked really worried. “She did?”

“I think Saturn returns every forty-nine years, darling, not every seven.” Sidarra felt bad breaking it to him. He was so sure.

Griff looked briefly crestfallen and stared down at his plate for a moment. “Wow, hundred bucks a session, she really had me going,” he muttered to himself. “How 'bout the cell replacement part? That probably happens every seven years, though, don't you think?” He smiled at her.