The Red Book (7 page)

“Oh, Pace, I’m so sorry. That sucks big time.”

“Yeah, well . . .” Clover is touched by what appears to be genuine concern in Bucky’s voice. “We’re okay for the moment.”

This was a bit of a white lie. What with the purchase of the brownstone on East Ninety-first Street at the top of the market and its head-to-toe renovation, she and Danny, whose job as a public defender paid only a modest wage, were quickly tearing through their reserves. Danny thought they should sell the new house when it was finished and trade it, and their tony address, for a similar property up in Harlem, using the difference in cost to provide a bulwark against an uncertain future. “Think about it. You’ve always said you don’t want to be a banker forever,” he’d said. “Harlem has such a rich history. Plus it’s part of your heritage.” Clover had become so used to defining herself as un-black, for a split second she had no idea what he was talking about.

“If it makes you feel any better,” says Bucky, “Gardner Industries is kind of . . .” He turns his hand into a deep-sea diver.

“I know. I read all about it. I’m sorry. I’m sure you’ve been doing your best to try to keep it afloat.”

Bucky shrugs and shakes his head in defeat. “Not really. I mean, I
am
trying, and I definitely put one hundred percent into the business at the beginning, no doubt, but, well, in the end, I think it’s just not my thing. I’m not . . .
good
at it. Twenty years of my life, Pace. Buying this, selling that, always on the wrong cycle. I bought high, I sold low. It’s a frigging joke, my lack of business acumen. Just not my thing.” Bucky’s expression hovers somewhere between embarrassment and the shell shock of a kid in a mall who’s in that transitional stage between having lost sight of his mother and starting to panic.

“So, what is your thing?”

“What, workwise?”

“No, anything-wise. Go for it. If this was your last day on Earth, what would you do?” A career counselor had asked her the same question a few months earlier, right after she’d lost her job, and she hadn’t been able to respond. An hour of yoga had come to mind, as had making love to Danny and eating a nice dinner at Taillevent in Paris and getting a massage at that place she loved in Tribeca, but those weren’t the things the counselor was looking for, plus they were wants, not needs, and anyway what Clover really wanted
and
needed, more than a massage or a good meal, was to go back to work. Her work centered her, gave her (she knew) the illusion of control, in a way nothing else in her life had ever done. Yoga, sex, eating, relaxing, none of those yins would ever be nearly as enjoyable without the concomitant yang of her job.

And yet, even before the job loss, particularly in the wake of the death of her friend Sharon, whom she was scheduled to eulogize on Sunday (shit, she thinks, I really have to finish writing that), she was feeling antsy, in need of change, so in some ways her unemployment was the kick in the pants she should have given herself, had she had the nerve to do so. She more often than not
liked
her job and was good at it—some would even argue brilliant—but her professional satisfaction, her superhuman productivity, the enormous piles of cash she once earned for Lehman were never about the thrill of the gambling itself, never about bragging rights or beating out others for the same slice of pie, but rather about what the fruits of her eighty-hour weeks could buy her: peace of mind, relaxing vacations, light-filled homes, soft bedding, beautiful art, generous charitable donations, and Christmas gifts that left their recipients speechless, like the time she collected as many of her mother’s poems as she could get her hands on into a hardbound volume and presented Lena with a thousand copies to do with as she pleased; or the time she paid for her housekeeper’s mother’s chemotherapy; or the time she sent each of her roommates and their family members first-class round-trip tickets to France, so they could all spend New Year’s Eve at Mia’s new house in Antibes.

“My last day on Earth?” Bucky pauses for a minute, his lips pursed, his eyebrows furrowed in thought. “I’d unhook my boat from the dock,” he says finally, “and go sailing.”

Clover, who’s never once shirked a request to mentor a kid or a colleague falling through the cracks, becomes animated. “So start a sailing business! Take tourists like me who love to be out there on the ocean but have no idea how to sail on excursions. Or become a teacher! Move down to, I don’t know, the Bahamas or something and open up a sailing school. Or, hell, yank the kids out of school for a year, hire a tutor, and take the family on a trip around the world. They’ll learn more on that trip than they’ll ever learn in the classroom.” How easy it is, she thinks, to fix other people’s problems.

“Very funny, Pace. I see you haven’t lost your sense of humor.”

“I’m being totally serious.” Gardner Industries may have been driven into the ground by its lackluster CEO, but Clover knew from the most recent issue of
Forbes
that Bucky himself was still worth enough. Which combined with Arabella’s chunk of the Debevoise family trust meant, theoretically, that Bucky could spend the rest of his life circling the globe, and not only would his bank account not feel the difference, but it would also continue to grow, recession notwithstanding. “Really, what’s to keep you from sailing off into the sunset today?”

“My wife. She hates boats. She hates anything having to do with the water.”

“Arabella hates the water? But wait, don’t you live on Long Island Sound?”

“Yeah. She hates our house, too. And quite possibly everyone in it.”

“Huh. Well, what
does
she like?”

“That’s a loaded question, Pace. I’m not sure you want to hear the answer.” The effort of keeping the outside edges of his lips turned up into a smile lends his face an air of desperation and melancholy that Clover finds more haunting than a circus clown’s.

“Try me,” she says.

“Okay.” Now Bucky stares down at the nick in the nail polish on Clover’s left toe, remembering the pleasure of having once sucked on it. “She likes our portfolio manager, Brad.”

“Huh?” Clover feels her BlackBerry vibrating in her purse. She ignores it. “As in
like
like?”

“As in God only knows, but a few months ago I accidentally picked up her phone instead of mine and found reams of full-on sexts between the two of them. He calls her—I mean, it’s so crazy—his little Bac-o-bit. I think he’s like an Orthodox Jew or something, for Christ’s sake! Or for, well, you know, whoever’s sake. Yahweh I guess they call him. I’m sure she’s with him right now. Brad, that is, not Yahweh.” Bucky’s face shows neither sadness nor anger. Numbness, if Clover had to pinpoint the emotion, but she can’t get a proper reading. “She said she didn’t feel well this morning as we were packing to leave, that I should just go to the reunion without her, but I called the house to check in after my plane landed, and the housekeeper told me she was out playing tennis.”

“Oh, boy.” Clover isn’t sure what she finds more surprising, the fact of the affair itself or the part about Arabella Debevoise having sex with a Jew. “So what are you going to do?” Her BlackBerry buzzes again. This time she quickly checks the screen and sees a 617 number she doesn’t recognize. She hits “ignore” again.

“Nothing. At least for now. I mean, a divorce would be really complicated and messy. And I have no idea if she even wants one. Or what she wants, period. I guess part of me is relieved that she’s actually getting out of bed in the morning. Arabella, well, let’s just say she hasn’t been a picnic to live with, and I certainly haven’t been able to make her happy, and if this guy wants to take on that kind of burden, I say be my guest. The irony of course is that I was the one who insisted on hiring
Brad
”—he says the name mockingly—“to manage our money. This guy I knew from the Fly Club recommended him. Said he’s ethical to a fault, and when I met him I thought perfect. That’s exactly what I need. An ethical Jew. Which is funny, considering the circumstances, but on the mark, money-wise at least. I mean the guy’s so unbelievably good at his job—his regular job, that is, managing our assets, not, you know, fucking my wife—that I don’t want to fire him. Especially in this climate, you know? I mean, some days I’d like to shoot him in the balls, but . . .”

“Oh, Bucky, I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t be. I’m not.” He smiles wearily. “By the way, nobody else knows about this, so, you know, keep it on the down low, okay? I don’t even know why I just told you.”

Clover touches him lightly on the sleeve. “Don’t worry. I’m a good keeper of secrets.” There must be something mentally liberating, she thinks, about unloading to a person who once knew you intimately but would probably never see you again until the next reunion, if ever. A kind of tabula rasa without the blankness of the rasa.

“Thanks. What about your husband?” says Bucky. “Is he—”

“Oh, we’re practically newlyweds,” says Clover, cutting him off. “I still find all of his faults endearing, and as far as I know, he’s not fucking his secretary.”

“No, I meant”—Bucky laughs out loud, eliciting the first burst of color in his cheeks that Clover has noticed all evening—“is he here with you?”

“Oh, sorry. Sadly, no,” she says. “He’s down in Guantánamo with a client.” The client, Abdullah Amir, owned a profitable chain of grocery stores in Islamabad before his incarceration as a suspected terrorist in 2002. His captor, a Pakistani border guard of meager means, was paid twelve thousand dollars by the U.S. government to turn him in. Abdullah’s children had not seen him for seven years. Danny had been working pro bono, during his weekends off, to try to rectify this, so that Abdullah Amir Jr., now a teenager, would not be so fueled with rage at the U.S. justice system that, unlike his father, he might actually (and somewhat justifiably) resort to terrorism in vengeance.

“Good for him. Somebody’s got to defend those dudes.” Clover detects a trace of disingenuousness in Bucky’s voice, reminiscent of his mother’s offhanded remark about Clover’s eyes that ill-fated Christmas—“Isn’t that just the most marvelous shade of blue! Are those colored contacts?”—but she can’t be sure. She is reminded, once again, that she dodged a bullet. “Hey, do you want to get out of here?” says Bucky. “I’m dying for a roast beef sandwich.”

“Elsie’s is gone,” says Clover, practically smelling the dank woodiness of the sawdust on the linoleum floor of that tiny hole in the wall whose siren call lured the young couple whenever it was flounder night in the freshman union.

“Really? Okay, then, how about the Tasty Diner?”

“It’s now a Citizens Bank.”

“You’re kidding me.”

“I wish.”

“Man, fuck Adam Smith.” Bucky had majored in economics, retaining little beyond the basics of what he learned. “What about a cheesesteak at Tommy’s?”

“It’s a pizza joint now. I think Bartley’s is still around, though, if you need a side of nostalgia with your fries.”

“Great,” says Bucky. “Burgers and beer on me. Let’s go.” He throws his arm casually around Clover’s shoulder and leads her toward the exit.

“No,” says Clover, although she allows the arm to stay. “On me.” Saying this gives her an intense jolt of pleasure. Back when they were dating, it was a foregone conclusion that Bucky would fund all meals out, since Clover had no wiggle room in her meager budget for nonessentials. Or even for nonluxury items like condoms. Because Bucky’s stomach, always achingly empty after his daily crew practices, required frequent ingestions of off-campus food between regular meals, he was more than happy to foot the bill.

“Fine.” Bucky smiles. “On you.”

The two head up Dunster Street past the new Malkin Athletic Center and the Signet Society, the arts and letters club where Jane, who spent the bulk of her college years writing for the
Crimson
, and Mia, who spent the bulk of hers starring in school productions, had been denied admission, while Addison, who spent the bulk of her years partying instead of painting, had been tapped for membership sophomore year by an old prep school friend who thought she’d be fun to have around. “I don’t get it, guys,” Addison had said to Jane and Mia, when the club nixed her suggestion to have the two of them join at the end of sophomore year. “I told everyone how great you both are. How good your writing is, Jane; how good your acting is, Mia, but I have no idea what happened!” Jane brushed off the rejection without a second thought. Mia, who was dying to spend her lunch hour digesting both the Signet’s reputedly good food and Ibsen’s transformation of the theater with like-minded souls, looked completely crushed. “No big deal, Addison. Thanks for trying,” she said. Later that night, Jane came into Clover’s bedroom, where Mia was nursing her disappointment in an ice cream sundae, rolling her eyes, claiming she’d just heard from another member that it was actually Addison, whether intentionally or not, who’d quashed any chance of her and Mia’s membership, when she was asked to describe her roommates in a single word. “Suburbanites?” Addison had answered, adding a delayed, “But really fun and nice!” too late to matter. And that was the end of that.

“You know,” Clover now says to Bucky, after settling down in a booth at the burger joint, “people work through the kind of stuff you and Arabella are dealing with all the time. Take my parents. They spent
years
sleeping around with other partners—with permission, but still—and now the two of them are off living by themselves up in the woods of Oregon, totally at peace and seemingly happy together in their little self-sustaining yurt.”

“Oh my God, a yurt?” says Bucky. “I always loved all those crazy stories about your family.”

“Yeah, well . . .” she says, thinking: You had your chance, and you blew it. And by the way, I hated most of the stories about your family—“they’re definitely colorful.” She states this without the shame or disdain she once felt for her parents; if anything, the older she gets, the more she’s grown to appreciate their adherence to a particular set of guiding principles, as far as they might be from her own.

“I remember the one about your mother getting arrested for, what was it again?”