The Last Time I Died (2 page)

The tip-off is the shoes.

In those heels I bet she can’t walk more than the distance between the cab that brought her here and the bar. High maintenance. Trouble. God help the man who gets in her way when she’s trying on outfits.

Dana and her friend squeeze into our table as if we’d invited them. The friend’s eyes meet mine briefly, but long enough for me to know I’ve been assessed as well.

She introduces herself around and makes it a point not to spend too much time on me in the process. I can see we’ve got an issue already. She’s at the far end of a table for six and it feels like our chairs are pulling toward each other. I’m careful about how much I direct any conversation her way. Wouldn’t want to give the wrong impression. On her end, she’s playing things very cool as well. Focusing her attention on my married friend, David. Turns out they’re in similar businesses. He in advertising, she in fashion. She’s well spoken and so effortlessly confident. They’re discussing photographers and designers I’ve never heard of.

She lives uptown.

She’s from Philadelphia.

She speaks fluent French.

She’s an avid reader.

Democrat.

Former downtown music scene fixture.

Ran the marathon last year.

Cooks.

I’m having trouble keeping up with the conversation on my end of the table because I’m listening so intently to hers and I’m afraid it’s going to be obvious soon. I force myself to concentrate on whatever the fuck David’s wife is telling me but really I don’t care at all and find myself making sure my head is held just so, in case the high-maintenance pain in the ass looks my way.

I’m a distracted peacock.

Fucking wish I’d worn the blue shirt. Why didn’t I wear the blue shirt? My eye color shifts between green and blue depending on what I wear. When I wear green, they turn green. When I wear blue, they turn blue. I’m wearing white. I would look so much better if my eyes were blue right now but I didn’t wear the god damn blue shirt. I should put more thought into this kind of thing and it’s too late to fix it now. At least I got a haircut last week. Maybe I had a premonition.

I catch myself getting caught up in my own bizarre magical thinking and insist that I return to the real world. Look at the menu. Order a drink. Check out the waitress’s ass. Do something besides fret and posture like an eighth-grade girl.

We order, we drink, we laugh. I drink a little more than I should. I say maybe three sentences to her the whole dinner, calling her bluff. She’s got a smile that makes you want to do things for her.

She’s driving me nuts. I happen to know I’m being funny this night but she’s not buying any of it. Giving me nothing. Anything that comes out of my mouth and wafts her direction sours before it hits her.

Despite my best efforts I’m sketching a composite of her personality and the life she leads when she’s not around me.

Farmers’ market on Saturdays.

Works in Tribeca.

Spinning class.

Hates to travel.

No pets.

Really funny.

I can’t stop.

The older woman at the next table makes it a point to lean over and compliment the pain in the ass on how delicious her perfume smells. She’s not wrong. The scent reminds me of somewhere I’d rather be.

We pay the check and start the debate of where to head next. Of utmost concern to me is steering the thinking toward whatever destination will be of most interest to the pain in the ass. If we drink a little more in the right environment, who knows where the evening might lead? I want her to go with us, but I know the best thing that could happen is that she decides to call it an early night and leave. Or she remembers some other plans she has. Or she meets another guy and splinters off from us. Something that gets me off the hook. But none of these things happen and we decide on margaritas across the street.

Her name is Lisa.

I know already this will not be good.

I wake up with another wicked hangover compounded by a whirlwind of half-memories from the previous evening.

Yelling at Lisa.

Martinis.

A bullshit fight with a bunch of waiters.

Something about a cab driver and Sixth Avenue and all those fucking horns.

My leg hurts but I have no idea why.

If I had my druthers I’d never wake up. I’d stay in the black of REM where there’s nothing and nobody. Like I deserve.

A shower. A shave. Some coffee with enough scotch to take the god damn edge off. My head buzzes and it makes the coffee taste extra bitter. I don’t even remember making it this morning. I sit on the bed for a good fifteen minutes thinking of nothing as I stare at the back of my open closet. What if I never moved from this spot? Wouldn’t be the worst thing that ever happened.

Every morning I’m extinguished but somehow still walking. If I had the initiative to try, I would have to work my way up to usefulness.

Finally, I stand and slide my jacket on. At least I look the part of a capable lawyer. A capable lawyer ten years older than I actually am.

My keys must be somewhere. I dig through the suit I wore last night. There’s blood on the lapel. I find them in the front pocket for some reason. Lucky break.

One more cup of coffee as I gather my thoughts.

I am a cancer of me. I want to suck myself into the black hole of my mind and I want to take you with me.

There’s a stack of unopened mail on the kitchen counter. I should pay those bills. The stack is getting tall. On the bottom is the letter from Lisa’s lawyers. It’s been sitting there for a week now. Or maybe it’s been months. I don’t know. I don’t want to know. It can’t be good news. Good news comes from Lisa in a manic phone call. She’s reconsidered. She wants to talk. She’s drunk. She’s horny. She’s forgiving. I love good news. Bad news comes from her lawyers. Bad news usually leads to more bad news.

I’m not opening that letter.

I have fantasies about disemboweling her lawyers. Cutting them open and removing their intestines so they can see them. Holding them up in the daylight should they care to take a look as they die a slow, painful, aware death. They’re bad people who enjoy their jobs on top of it. I’d use the dullest knife I could find.

I am the sticky, syrupy, sinful residue of a hate reduction sauce. I am thick. I am obstinate in my despair. I am nothing. I’m not opening that letter.

But I should pay those bills. Maybe I’ll send the letter to the power company. They can deal with it.

An hour later, I’m sitting behind my desk listening to some douchebag whine about an inheritance. His grandfather left him a nice cut of the bazillion dollars he earned as a captain of some industry and I can tell already that if this asswipe has his way he’ll burn through it before he’s thirty. He’s twenty-eight.

Lucky for him, there’s no chance of that. No, he’ll live a safe, padded life thanks to the strict discipline his great-grandfather laid down on his grandfather that leads to the kind of strength and willpower and lack of scruples that results in fortunes this large. On the other hand, it also leads to a lifestyle that produces offspring who don’t know their fathers or, in turn, how to father. So what you end up with is a lot of money and a fuckwad grandson who seems to think he’s entitled to the keys to the bank.

Instead, what Junior here gets is a structured payout that’s tiered to different ages tied, in theory, to corresponding leaps in personal growth and responsibility. He got a hundred grand as soon as the old man dropped dead. Basically a bonus for showing up at the funeral. At thirty, he gets another five hundred, the assumption being that he will be in the mood to marry around then and this will pay for the wedding and eliminate any of the speed bumps so many newlyweds and poor married people have with regard to money. At forty, he gets a check for another million, to make sure Douchey McDouche’s kids are taken care of. At fifty, he gets the rest. Three million. What was that geezer thinking? I tried to steer him toward donating it to charity or leaving it to a beloved cat, but he wouldn’t have any of it. He had a soft spot for the boy and from what I could tell, felt that he had failed his own son by not being around while earning all the god damn money. So this was a make-good. Not that it would make anything good. The kid was lost a long time ago.

He’s wheedling around trying to convince me that he’s so smart he can handle all this financial stuff himself. Never mind the weeks I spent sitting with the guy who actually made the money ensuring everything was just so for little mister man here. I’m waiting for him to start questioning our rate and asking for a retroactive break on the price his old man already paid. Like we give refunds. Meanwhile, he’s wearing a brand new Cartier Pasha. Yesterday, it was an Ernst Benz ChronoScope. Sorry all that free money isn’t enough for you, Hoss. Nice to see you’re making smart decisions before the check even clears.

I think I punched a garbage man last night. Or a bum. One of the two was breaking my balls about not being able to stand up. My knuckles are all scratched up so that must have been it. Or I fell. But usually falling means scratches on my palms and face. Must have been a punch.

There’s no way to hide the scabs since we’re going over the details in these documents and I have to keep pointing things out to this dumbass. I don’t care. Not a little.

To each of his idiotic questions I nod and shrug and recite the lines that service my client while protecting the firm. Twelve years sitting in this chair. The wheedling pansy in front of me doesn’t have any new problems. And I hate his tie. I wonder if he’s ever been hit in the face. Probably not, but I’m telling you it would do him some good.

Once I get rid of him there are a few other clients and meetings and some conference calls to attend to. They all go pretty much the same. I get through them playing a tepid version of my former self. Thank god I’m a meaningless cog in this vapid machine. I could be replaced in a matter of hours if anyone cared to make the effort. So far no one has. I wonder how long this can last. Not much longer. I am a victim of inertia. When I was on my way up, I couldn’t be stopped. I had three job offers the second I passed the bar. I doubled my salary twice in seven years thanks to some brash self-marketing and shrewd interview choices. I quickly became the darling of my current firm’s founder, sitting in with his biggest clients and gaining experience my peers wouldn’t come close to until they had put in another decade of grunt work and ass kissing.

I was being groomed for bigger things.

Whispers of making me a partner had even begun circulating for a brief second or two. How I must have been hated. But that was when I was on my way up. I am now on my way down and it would appear that once again nothing can stop me.

My head is pounding and there’s only so much coffee I can drink before the balance tips from beneficial by way of caffeine buzz and energy boost to an annoying incessant need to urinate causing me to excuse myself three or four times from the same meeting. Unprofessional.

I wish I had some coke. I don’t. I have to gut it out.

My debit card is missing. I’m guessing it’s at a bar, but fuck me if I know which one. I should cancel it, but I don’t. I will. Just not now. It would take seventy-two seconds to cancel it and order a new one. It’s exhausting to even think about.

I spend the conference calls grunting agreement with whatever is being said and drawing detailed vignettes of my clients in sexual positions they may or may not enjoy in real life. The fat banker with the twitchy eye swallows a cock where I should be writing down interest rates or fees or something important. An old lady I’ve never met gets a Penthouse body and Jessica Rabbit tits and a Mandingo boyfriend putting the stones to her from behind. I forgot how much artistic talent I’ve been ignoring my adult life. Too late now to do anything serious with it. Maybe I’ll start an anonymous Tumblr with these and see if they go viral. They won’t. I won’t.

Hours later, my headache is dissipating. I think of myself as heroic in my struggle against the lingering damage of the night before. I’m a gladiator. I am the myth behind the man. I can’t wait to go to sleep.

Lisa doesn’t call. I check my cell to see if I drunk dialed or texted her last night. Nope. Between meetings I try her office. Nothing. I hang up before the voicemail picks up. Her office phone has caller ID.

The final meeting of the day includes my direct supervisor and former mentor, Harry. I haven’t seen a lot of him lately. His choice. We’ve had our talks and he’s suggested things like taking some time off or maybe not putting myself under so much stress. What is unspoken but understood is that I’ve disappointed him both as a lawyer and a man.

The meeting is brutal because it involves me discussing numbers and details and I have to pay attention even though I want to put my eyes out with a staple gun to stop looking at these papers that I hate so much.

I run the meeting and Harry sits like a granite lion at the end of the table. Harry’s gravitas alone is worth an extra hundred grand in billing from this client. He’s a big, navy, pin-striped security blanket. He’s watching me closely. If I’m getting anything wrong, he isn’t correcting me. I think things are going well. Considering.

I wrap the meeting up, our clients sign some papers and hands are shaken. Another satisfied customer gets fed a few bad jokes, has their back patted, and is escorted to the elevator. I know this was a test. I know I failed. Inertia.

Harry watches the doors close and turns to me, staring me down as only a disgusted father figure can.

—Everything okay?

—No. Why?

—Because you’ve been acting like an ass and you look like shit.

—I’m fine. I’ll be fine.

Harry looks me over. I can’t tell if he’s going to fire me or hug me or is just thinking about what he’s going to have for dinner.

—Christian. We’ve talked about this. Enough. Get your act together.

Harry walks away, a flaccid smile on his face for the receptionist who may or may not have heard our conversation.

(Oh, the perils of divorce.)

As our man at the bar can tell you, should you muster the courage to engage him—but, again, I urge you please do not—the path of separation is fraught with ugly pain and selective memory and endless meditation on impossible alternate realities.