The Pursuit of Other Interests: A Novel (30 page)

On the Monday before Thanksgiving, Donna arose early and made Charlie an impressive country breakfast of eggs, hash browns, bacon, and toast, food he loved but never ate because of concerns over cholesterol. He heard her downstairs in the kitchen clanging away, while he showered and packed. He was leaving on a midmorning flight for New York to meet Kevin F. Woods at the Marriott Marquis in Times Square. The Wizard had coordinated the details over the weekend and said things looked so positive that an offer was imminent.

When he entered the kitchen, Donna was pirouetting between the stove and the island, a long, baggy light blue robe hanging like a cape over her thin body. They had had sex the night before, ending a record nine-month period of zero contact. He had been lying in bed, reading the special college basketball issue of
Sports Illustrated
, when she walked out of the bathroom wearing a short red negligee that he had not seen in a very long while. He’d been happy merely to be back in their bed, and sex had not been on his mind.

He put the magazine down when he saw her standing at the foot of the bed. “Oh,” he said.

They held on to each other for a while before Charlie began kissing her, starting at her neck and making his way down. Before long they were all arms and legs. Midway through, things got a bit out of hand and Charlie, in an understandable state of frenzy, almost fell off the bed. After they were done, they dozed and, to their mutual surprise, did it again an hour later.

“Hi,” she said when he sat down at the kitchen table. She plopped a brown coffee mug in front of him and he watched her fill it. She looked like she was blooming that morning, her hair wild and mussed, her freckles proudly out in force.

“Sleep okay?” she asked.

“I was kind of busy.” He reached for the coffee.

“Oh, yeah, I forgot about that.” She went over to the stove.

“Ha, ha. Ha.” He took a sip of his coffee. “Is Kyle up?”

“He’s gone. He wanted to get to school early so he could run on the school track. He wants to build up his endurance.”

“Run? He’s running?”

She handed him a plate already filled with food. He liked his bacon undercooked and, even though it had been years since Donna had made him any, she had remembered.

“We have a treadmill in the basement. He should just run here. It’s a great treadmill. I never use it anymore, it’s just sitting there.”

“He wanted to run with a friend.”

He picked up a piece of bacon. “Matt?”

“Wrong sex.” She arched her eyebrows up and down.

He stopped chewing. “You mean a girl? Who?”

“Her name is Jessica Weston.”

“Jessica Weston.” Charlie picked up another piece of perfect bacon. “Where’d she come from? What’s her story?”

“Oh, she’s cute.” Donna sat down across from him at the island, holding her coffee cup in both hands. “He could do worse.”

“That’s hardly a ringing endorsement.”

“He’s sixteen. I don’t think they’re getting married anytime soon.”

“Well, I hope he doesn’t get too wrapped up with her. He has a lot going on. Basketball, school. He has to prioritize.”

“Relax, Charlie. We have other things to worry about.”

Charlie sighed. “Yeah, I guess we do.”

She drank her coffee but continued to hold her cup close to her face, her elbows on the table. “I made an appointment for that counselor,” she said. Just the top of her eyes were visible over the cup and she was speaking softly.

“Counselor? Oh, that’s right. Her.” He picked up his fork, Donna’s eyes still on him. “Absolutely. We’re going. A deal is a deal.”

“We have to work on some things.”

“Okay. You’re right. We’ll go whenever you want.” He started in on his scrambled eggs. “Whenever you want. I’m serious.”

“Also, I want to go back to work. I’m sick of sitting here alone all the time. I’m going to start looking. I’ve already called a few hospitals.”

Charlie stopped eating. “Really? You sure?”

“Yes, really. I’ve been thinking about this a long time.” She finished her coffee, then stood and returned to the stove, where she began scraping the bottom of the frying pan with a plastic spatula.

“Think you’ll get this job?” she asked. She scraped harder at the pan.

“I have a good shot. I’m meeting the head guy tomorrow morning. We’re working out together, if you can believe, at the hotel health club.”

“Kind of weird.”

“Yeah, a little.”

“What are you going to do, watch each other lift weights?”

“I have no idea. The more I think about it, it’s really weird. I hope we don’t have to shower together.”

“Do you really want this job?”

“It’s a good job.”

“Is it really?”

“Yeah.” Charlie put his fork down. He knew where this was heading. “It’s not going to be like before, I promise. It’s not, okay? It’s just a job now, it won’t be my life.”

Donna kept her back to him. “You can’t just come and go, you know.”

Charlie swallowed. “I know.”

“We’re just starting to get used to having you around here.
I’m
starting to get used to having you around here, and now you’re going to be gone. You’re going to disappear again. I don’t know if this is good for us. For Kyle.”

“Honey, listen, I need a job. I can’t just stay home and go to basketball games. It pays a lot.”

“Is there going to be a lot of travel? Are you going to be gone?”

Charlie was quiet. “There’s some travel,” was all he said.

She kept scraping, though Charlie knew there couldn’t be anything left on that pan. “You’re going to start getting sick again and going to all those doctors and getting tested for everything.”

“It’s not going to be that way anymore. It’s not. I’m done striving. Now I just want to hold on, make money. We need money. My deal ends soon. Then the money stops. This job just fell in my lap. I’m lucky. Really lucky. There’s people at the outplacement place who’ve been out for years. One guy, Bradley, he’s been out two years. Can you imagine that, two years? I haven’t been out three months.”

“I don’t want it to be like it was before, that’s all. I can’t live like that. It doesn’t make sense. We don’t need to make that much money.”

Charlie pushed his plate away, went over to the stove, and held Donna from behind. “Let me just give this a shot, check it out, and we’ll take it from there. I have to check this out. I would be crazy not to. Everything’s going to be fine.”

“You really think so?”

“Everything’s going to be all right,” Charlie said again, as convincingly as he could.

On the cab ride to the airport, he called Ned. His conversation with Donna and the bleak, rainy November day had once again raised his doubts. He was just getting things right at home and now here he was heading off again to take a job that could put him right back to where he had been: traveling, working weekends, checking e-mail at midnight.
Consumed
. He decided that he needed a dose of Ned’s sunshine to chase away the fast-forming clouds.

Ned picked up on the first ring. “Charlie?” He sounded shocked.

“Yeah, it’s me. What’s wrong?”

“I wasn’t expecting you. I thought you were going to New York.”

“I’m on my way to the airport. Just thought I’d call for some last-minute advice. Thought maybe we could role-play.”

Ned was quiet.

“Hello? Are you there?”

“I can’t talk right now. I’m busy. I need to finish something for Jason.”

“Forget him. You know, I was looking at his suit the other day. He’s totally off-the-rack.”

“I really have to run.”

“Hey! I’m still a Category B. B-plus. You’re required to talk to me. You’re legally bound. I need a charisma jump-start. How many times do you think I should wink tomorrow?”

“I have to go now. Good luck, though, really good luck.”

Charlie was disappointed. He had assumed that Ned would prattle on until he at least got to the airport. “All right, I’ll call you later, I guess.”

“Charlie?”

“Yeah?”

Ned paused. “I just want to say that I regard you as my friend. And I hope that you do too. I’ve always tried to treat you fairly. I try to treat everyone fairly.”

Charlie waited for Ned to say something else, but he didn’t. He just hung up.

When he reached O’Hare, he had an immediate sense of disorientation, if not an official out-of-body experience. He hadn’t stepped foot in an airport in more than two months and was overwhelmed by the noise and rush, the controlled chaos that greeted him. Mondays and Fridays are always the worst times to travel, and this particular Monday, thanks in part to the rain and approaching Thanksgiving holiday, things were crazier than usual. The lines at the ticket counter, newsstands, and security stretched endlessly and the undercurrent of impatience and frustration was palpable.

After nearly thirty years of travel, Charlie had grown oblivious to airports: LAX, LaGuardia, Reagan, Dallas/Fort Worth, Heathrow, were all indistinguishable backgrounds, white noise. If he wasn’t checking his BlackBerry or cradling his cell phone to his ear, he was lost in conversation with a client or colleague. With those buffers gone, he was left naked to the environment.

As he made his way to the gate, he took the scene in with the eyes and ears of a newly arriving immigrant. It might very well have been just his mood, but everyone seemed stressed and exhausted as they made their way through the terminals, dragging their luggage on wheels behind them, their faces stoic, their eyes either flat or on fire. Occasionally he would see small children with parents, explosions of color and energy, walking excitedly past. But everything else was muted, gray.

He was officially light-headed as he slowly made his way through the terminal, his head down. When he got to his gate, he found it crowded; all the seats were taken and more than a few people were standing, waiting for the flight to be called. Most of the travelers seemed downright depressed, while others looked like hostile schoolyard bullies, their eyes narrow, their jaws clenched, as they circled the area searching for precious electrical outlets for their laptops. Charlie stood off in the corner and leaned against a wall and waited.

His flight was more than an hour late and by the time he boarded he was feeling decidedly tense. He had traveled first-class for years, so it was a shock to find himself back in coach. Xanon had made the arrangements and apparently they worked on a budget. Had Charlie known this, he would have used his own miles to upgrade. He hadn’t bothered to check his ticket, so he was stuck.

He took his seat on the aisle and settled in next to a diminutive older man wearing a brown sports coat and matching tie with a knot the size of a fist. He smiled eagerly at Charlie when the plane took off.

“Boy, isn’t flying something?” he asked when they were airborne.

Charlie was trying to find a comfortable position in his cheap seat when the man nudged him with an elbow.

“Going or coming?” he asked.

“Going.”

“I’m coming home,” he said.

Charlie nodded. Being back on an airplane, his second home for years, had an unexpected settling effect. His head cleared. He took out the current annual report from Xanon, as well as an old copy of
The New Yorker
from his briefcase. He considered the annual report, then put it down—he simply could not read anything more about this company—and began to skim the magazine.

After a few minutes, the man turned and asked, “Do you like that magazine?”

“Excuse me? What?”

“I’ve never read that magazine,” the man said. “You would think I might, because I’m from New York, but I never do.”

Since he did not want to encourage conversation, Charlie said nothing to this. He stared blankly at the man, then returned to his magazine.

“This is only the second time I’ve ever flown. Do you fly often?”

“Yes.”

“What line of work are you in? Sales? People in sales seem to fly a lot.”

Charlie kept his eyes on the magazine. “Advertising.”

“My, that must be interesting.”

“It’s very interesting.” Charlie flipped through the pages of
The New Yorker.
He stopped when he came across a small ad near the back:
The Incredible Swedish Smart Chair.