The Three-Day Affair (8 page)

A brief stop for pizza and cigarettes—pack of Marlboro Lights for Marie, pack of Camels for myself, plus two lighters—and then back to the recording studio. Would Marie eat with freedom imminent? It seemed important to come through with the meal I’d promised. Especially after convincing the restaurant to change the order from “the works” to something called “crazy veggie.”

I had a cigarette lit before the key was even in the ignition. As I drove, I smoked and listened to the radio. The whole way to the studio I kept switching stations but heard nothing of our
transgressions
. When I parked my car behind the studio it was 9:40. It’d been more than two hours now, so why no word? It seemed very strange.

“Where’s Evan?” Jeffrey asked, seeing me enter the studio alone.

“I told you, I didn’t want him involved.”

“But we need him! He could’ve—”

I held up a hand. “Save your breath. He’s already on his way back to New York, so there’s nothing to discuss. One of you, help me carry this stuff over to Marie.”

Nolan watched me a moment, then took the bag of soda over to Room A. He opened the door and we slipped inside.

“What’s this?” I asked. Two buckets were on the floor, one empty and the other partially filled with water.

“I had to pee,” Marie said.

“The other’s so she can wash her hands.” A roll of toilet paper was on the floor, too.

“You couldn’t walk her to the bathroom?” I asked.

“Marie,” Nolan said, “have as much pizza as you like. Will, let’s talk outside a minute.” We left her the box of vegetarian pizza and a liter of soda, as well as the cigarettes and lighter. I followed Nolan out to the main recording room. “No, I couldn’t walk her to the fucking bathroom,” he said. “This isn’t summer camp.”

I knew he was right. “Sorry.”

He nodded. “So you didn’t tell him anything?”

“Not much. We kept things hypothetical. He said we should get rid of our cell phones. They can be traced.”

Nolan’s eyes widened. “Shit, he’s right.” He looked around the studio. “Is there a hammer around here?”

There wasn’t. But just off the main recording room was a
storage
closet containing heavy gear. “I have something that’ll work.”

In the closet was a large canvas bag filled with drum hardware. I opened the bag and removed a metal cymbal stand. A minute later, our cell phones, batteries removed, were in the plastic bag that our soda had come in. The bag lay on the studio’s wood floor. The three of us stood over it.

“Who wants the honors?” I asked.

Nolan took the cymbal stand from me. “Stand back,” he said. And then he began to smash the bag. Each time the metal slammed into the bag of phones, the loud crack made me wince.

After seven or eight smashes, he said, “I really needed that,” and then he gave the bag one final smash. Other than hitting a bucket of golf balls sometimes, I wasn’t the sort of person who
relieved his anxiety with violence. Still, I regretted having been so quick to pass up the job.

We looked in the bag to survey the damage. Satisfied, Nolan handed me the cymbal stand, which I returned to the canvas bag in the closet.

Back in the control room, I relayed what else Evan had told me. “He said that you were right, Jeffrey. You ought to write out a
confession
, take the blame. And that way, maybe Nolan and I can
negotiate
some lesser crime. He said it’s worth a shot, anyway.”

“Jesus.” Nolan massaged his forehead with his fingertips as if touching a crystal ball. He must have been seeing his own bleak future. “This is just … Jesus Christ.”

“Sorry, Jeffrey,” I said. “I don’t like that the whole burden’s going to fall on you. But I hope you understand that’s the way it’s got to be. You need to write a confession and take the blame.”

In Room A, Marie had finished a cigarette and was now eating a slice of pizza. I watched her take another bite, then bent down to get a notebook and pen from beneath the sound console so that Jeffrey could begin writing.

“Yeah, I can’t do that.”

I sat up. “Come again?”

“I can’t. Not anymore.” Jeffrey chewed on his lower lip and looked up at the ceiling as if measuring his words carefully. Then he looked back at us. “I’ve had a little time now to think things over, and … well, you guys should’ve stopped this. Stepped in when it mattered. I lost my mind there for a minute or two—hell, I’ll admit that—but you should’ve stepped in. You’re supposed to be my friends, aren’t you? Will, you should’ve stopped the car, but you didn’t. And where were you, Nolan? You should’ve been concerned about the girl instead of your political campaign.” He shook his head. “No, it’s like you said earlier—we’re all to blame.”

Nolan, who until now had been silent, was out of his chair in a flash. Before I could react, Jeffrey’s chair rolled backward and banged against a rack of sound gear. His hands flew up to his mouth, where he’d just been punched.

Nolan swiped the notebook and pen from me and stood over Jeffrey’s chair, staring him down. “Write the fucking confession, you son of a bitch!”

“I’m bleeding!” Jeffrey said through his hands.

“Write it!” He threw the notebook into Jeffrey’s lap.

For the second time in five minutes I felt jealous of Nolan. Even more than wanting to throw a few good punches Jeffrey’s way, though, I wanted a signed confession. “Nolan,” I said, “get Jeffrey a roll of toilet paper from the bathroom.” When he didn’t move, I yelled, “Do it!” He left the control room without a word.

“He fucking hit me,” Jeffrey said, and slowly lowered his hands. The blood covered his fingers, his teeth, and his lower lip, which was swelling purple.

“Are your teeth okay?” I asked.

He felt around them with his tongue. “I think so.” He wiped his mouth with the bottom of his shirt. The shirt came away with enough blood to make my stomach twist. He looked at the blood and shook his head. “I didn’t deserve that.”

I had no response.

“All I was doing,” he said, “was explaining how simpleminded it is to think this was all my fault.”

“How about we don’t talk right now. Let’s just be quiet, both of us, until Nolan comes back.”

“Fine with me.” He tested his teeth again with his tongue. Marie caught my eye and looked away. Had she seen the punch? If so, it would only confirm her fear that sooner or later,
something
brutal was coming her way.

“Anyway,” Jeffrey said, “I didn’t see either of you guys rushing to set her free.”

“We were trying to
protect
you.”

“Yeah, well if you really wanted to protect me you would’ve ended this as soon as it started. You could’ve stopped the car or driven—”

“Just shut up,” I said. “I don’t want to hear it.”

Jeffrey winced, then reached into his mouth with his thumb and forefinger, and tugged. “This one’s loose. I can wiggle it a
little
. Man, he’s going to pay for that.”

I couldn’t sit there any longer. “I’m going to see what’s keeping him.” Jeffrey seemed more interested in his face than my
immediate
plans. From the doorway, my voice under control again, I said, “I’m sorry about your tooth. But Jeffrey?” I waited until he was looking at me, his fingers still in his mouth. “Write the fucking confession. And make it good.”

The bathroom looked like it was straight out of a 1950s high school. Blue tile, two stalls etched and inked with graffiti, stained urinal. Part of my job was to keep the bathroom clean. Now and then we’d hire an intern for minimum, some college dropout with fantasies of recording platinum records at the Hit Factory, and the first thing I’d delegate was bathroom duty. The interns never complained, because their fantasy always began with
paying
their dues in exactly this manner.

Nolan was leaning over the sink, splashing water on his face. “Hand me some paper towels, will you?”

I did. He stood up and wiped his face. Balled up the towels and pitched them into the trash. “I don’t blame you for sending Evan home, by the way. It was a decent thing to do.”

“Thanks,” I said, “but maybe it was decent
and
stupid.”

“This is really something, huh?”

I agreed. It was something.

“Think he’ll write the confession?”

“After the punch you threw?”

“Oh, come on. He’d made up his mind already.”

“You knocked one of his teeth loose.”

“Good.” He was studying himself in the mirror now. Even after a full day—this day—his hair was perfectly in place. His shirt looked freshly ironed. He could’ve walked up to a podium and given a speech, and nobody would know he had concerns beyond his constituency. Still, he must have seen some nuance I’d missed, because he frowned at his reflection and turned away. “Why now?” he asked. “That’s what I don’t understand. I was going to be a United States senator, Will. I was going to win that election. I had him beat.”

It seemed likely. His rival was an aging baby boomer with
unnaturally
white teeth and the angry tan of a pro golfer. Before
becoming
a congressman, Stan Byers had run an insurance company into the ground. He called his state
Missoura
, winked a lot, and warned his God-fearing constituents that without his stewardship, they could kiss the Second Amendment good-bye. Which was nonsense—Nolan was hardly some urban liberal. He was born and raised in Missouri farm country and had won marksmanship
trophies
in high school. At Princeton he’d been head of the debating society, where he’d learned skills he’d put to good use in his current position as state senator for the Twelfth District.

In a sense he’d been working toward this election for as long as I’d known him—paying his dues, working to perfect the strange art of becoming a national figure. The election was still half a year away, but his lead in the latest polls was more than the
margin
of error. Surely he’d begun letting himself imagine the
confetti
falling and the marching band playing in his victory parade.

My own dreams lacked that sort of spectacle. But they were mine, and I’d been working toward them with quiet diligence.
For a moment I entertained the idea of recording Jeffrey without his knowledge. Maybe I could coax him into a confession that
exonerated
Nolan and me. It wouldn’t be hard. The band this
afternoon
had left in a hurry, so the main recording room was already miked. If I could get Jeffrey into the recording room, and if I were in the control room alone and could load up the reel-to-reel …

It would never work. For one, Jeffrey now seemed convinced that we all shared responsibility for what’d happened. He was being very egalitarian that way. But also, I knew I couldn’t scam my friend—even Jeffrey, even now, even if it meant saving myself. I had neither the talent nor the constitution for subterfuge.

Nolan looked at his watch. “Fuck, it’s getting late. I should’ve called Ronnie before we busted the goddamn phones.” Ronnie was his campaign manager. “I know it’s bad timing, but if I don’t check in with him and he can’t reach me on my cell, he’s going to panic. And trust me—we don’t want Ronnie panicking.

“You’re probably better off calling from a pay phone anyway.” I told him there was a phone at the gas station two blocks away. “But can I call Cynthia first? She goes to bed early when she’s at her sister’s.”

This was completely illogical of me. Time was precious. But I had a sense it might be the last time I spoke to her as a free man.

He nodded. “Try to make it quick, though.”

I told him I would. Then I hesitated. “Do you think it’s at all strange that the robbery hasn’t been on the radio? When I was in the car, I kept listening for it.”

He thought for a moment. “I think every single thing about this fucking situation is strange.”

I went into one of the stalls and came out with a roll of toilet paper. “Do me a favor.” I tossed him the roll. “Take this in to
Jeffrey
. And try not to kill anyone while I’m gone.”

I had change on me, but not enough. The gas station attendant changed a five-dollar bill for me. (
Sure, I remember the guy
, I
pictured
him saying to the police.
Gave him twenty quarters
.) The phone was attached to the station that only partially blocked the wind that’d kicked up. I called Cynthia’s cell, and when the
electronic
voice told me how much money to deposit, I began to feed the telephone with quarters.

Since our niece regularly woke up at dawn, spending the next fourteen hours wearing everybody out, Cynthia went to bed early when she stayed there. She could already be asleep. And even if she were awake, she might let my call go through to her
voicemail
, not recognizing the number.

Then I heard that single word—“Hello?”—and my chest
tightened
. A giant chasm opened up between what I knew and what she didn’t, and I had to force myself not to confess everything.

“It’s me,” I said. Deep breath, I told myself. Take a deep breath, and lie to your wife. “My cell isn’t working for some reason. How’re you doing?”

“I’m good,” she said. “Tired.”

“Me too. We went to Antonello’s for dinner.”

“Did you have a good time?”

Just a few hours earlier I was ready to announce,
You and I are officially in the record business.

“Sure,” I said. “It was okay.”

“Did you have a lot to drink?”

“Not too much. Why?”

“You sound funny.”

“I
am
funny.”

She didn’t laugh, but I knew she was smiling. “Oh, so get this,” she said. “Anne was riding her tricycle around the driveway, and I was drawing a road for her with colored chalk …”

I listened, but less to the story itself than to her voice. The lightness of it.

She didn’t talk for long. Didn’t want to keep me on the phone. “Thanks for checking in,” she said, “but you should get back to your friends.”

I told her good night.

“Have a good time,” she said. “Enjoy golf tomorrow.”

I said I would.

“Good night, Will,” she said.

“Wait.”

“What is it?”

I needed to get off the phone. Return to the studio. Nolan was waiting.

“Tell me something first,” I said. “Before you hang up.”

“Tell you what?”

Anything
, I wanted to say.
Tell me anything
. Instead, I asked her about the traffic on the Jersey Turnpike. If it was heavy.

I returned to the control room and told Nolan where to find the telephone. I handed him the rest of my quarters and my building key so he could let himself back in.

“Where’s Jeffrey?” I asked.

“Bathroom. Trying to fix his face.”

After Nolan left, I sat down and waited. Marie was turned away from me, facing the rear of Room A. I felt a strong curiosity about her, and a desire for her to like me, and I wondered if this was true of all kidnappers.

At least a full minute passed before it dawned on me. There she sat, not thirty feet away. It would be easy. I could have her out and into the cool night air in half a minute. Nothing was stopping me. Except for me.

Once, I saw a hypnotist perform at a bachelor party. When he told his subjects that they couldn’t get out of their chairs, they
really
couldn’t. They struggled with all their might—teeth gritting, muscles tightening—but not one of them got out of the chair. I was commanding myself to get up. And I was also commanding myself not to.

There were a hundred reasons to let her go, yet I felt locked to my chair. It wasn’t only the fear that she’d tell. I still believed in Nolan, and in myself. Believed that we’d find a way out of this with our lives more or less whole. I didn’t believe this completely. Just enough to cause me to hesitate, until Jeffrey appeared in the control room’s doorway, a big wad of paper towel pressed to his face. As he stepped into the room, the big box of untapped
courage
inside of me snapped shut.

“How’s the tooth?” I asked.

I felt chilled, looking at him. His fat lip curved upward like a grotesque grin.

“It’s still in my mouth.” He sat down on the sofa. “You smell like smoke.”

I removed the cigarette pack and lighter from my pants pocket and handed them to him. Then I watched him try to hold a
cigarette
in his busted lips.

“Why did you say earlier that Nolan was a snake?” I asked. We obviously weren’t going to make a move until Nolan returned, and I wanted to get to the bottom of something.

He lit the cigarette and took a long draw, like he’d been
waiting
all his life for that jolt of tar and nicotine. He exhaled and handed me back the pack and lighter. “Oh, pick your reason.”

“No, I’m serious. Tell me why you said it.”

“You’re telling me that you disagree with the assessment?”

“Yes, frankly, I do.”

Another draw of the cigarette. He shut his eyes in bliss, or maybe pain, and exhaled a stream of smoke. “After all these years, Will, your naïveté continues to astound me.”