The Unfortunates (32 page)
(
Spring)
It is Bob Iris decides to call. She is confused when he tells her that his offices are on the thirty-fourth floor of the Lipstick Building. He adds, “Fifty-Third and Third, you’ll see.”
She exits the subway on Lexington and walks east. Manhattan, a constellation of ATM machines and chucked chewing gum. She makes her way past the slick black piles of garbage bags and the snow heaped at the curb like dirty rags, dense and unmelting despite the coming of spring. From the jaundice glow of a parking garage, its sloping cement throat, an attendant calls to her softly, “Good morning, beautiful.” When she doesn’t respond, he says, “Eh! Now that’s fine,” in what seems to be both a rebuke of her silence and a further appreciation of her figure.
She marches along until the gray river appears. She’s gone too far. She turns back and endures the parking attendant once more. This time, now leaning against the door of his booth, he tries a
sss-sss-sss
-ing sound, compelling her to flip him the bird. Finally, Bob’s building. A looming cylinder of red granite and steel. Why is she supposed to be impressed when something ugly as a skyscraper resembles some other ugly thing, such as a tube of lipstick?
She turns through the brass revolving doors into the airy, modern vacuum of the lobby. At the bank of elevators, a security guard sends her back to the concierge desk, a giant marble egg under a fan of international flags. She presents her license. A phone call is made. She receives a laminated badge. She proceeds to the thirty-fourth floor, her ears popping, checking her image in the mirrored ceiling of the empty, speeding elevator. She’d left George in the bedroom. He wouldn’t let her raise the shades.
She passes through a set of glass doors with an electronic click. Here is her reflection again—a sliver of her face, one of her violet eyes, a collarbone—in the large mirrored letters set in a luminous resin panel behind the head of the receptionist. T-R-Y-P-H-O-N C-A-P-I-T-A-L, and the raised resin outline of a lion with wings.
“Hello,” the receptionist says. “Have a seat. I’ll let him know you’re here. Water?”
“No thanks.”
Iris is craning to see behind the partition—a wedge of the open office, rustling with employees on computers and phones, the ovoid panoramic view beyond—when Bob finally enters reception.
“Wondering why it’s Tryphon instead of Gryphon, right?”
“You mind reader, you.” She laughs. She hadn’t been. She’s not sure what either means.
“Well, the idiots who turned this canteen—follow me,” he says, and they walk through the corridor of unwalled cubicles, through the rows of men and the occasional woman at their desks, “—into, you see, what we are”—he waves at the skyline—“they wanted it to be Gryphon. But someone already had that. So they went with Tryphon. Sounds strong.
T
s are strong. And they kept the visual, like no one would give a shit. And no one does. Except me. You know what a Tryphon was?”
“No?” As they pass, the people at their desks look up at her, briefly, without shifting their expressions.
“Jackass goose herder in ancient Syria. Got himself martyred. Became the saint of keeping bugs out of gardens. Apparently, I’m the only senior partner here who bothers with
Wikipedia
.”
She laughs her brightest, most encouraging laugh, wondering if George has by now at least slumped downstairs, if he’s in the same pair of sweatpants—her sweatpants—he’s been wearing the last four days. She hopes Bob hasn’t noticed the change to her appearance, slight as it is; in the mirror she sees a woman whose face has gone thin with worry, a harried expression that surprises her, that will not go away. This morning, she made an effort with the blow-dryer. She chose her outfit carefully. Not too much, not too little.
“
You
get it. Of course the great Iris Louise Somner gets it. Here, come on through.”
They pass into his office through an antechamber where a young woman sits behind a glossy white desk stacked with manila folders.
“You know my middle name.”
“How about that. Come, sit.”
She takes a seat in one of the two chairs facing his desk, the same white model as the assistant’s, but twice as large and messier.
“Water?” he asks.
“I’m okay, thanks.”
“Whiskey?”
“Oh, no.”
“You are transfixed, I see. It’s something, isn’t it? They literally installed it two hours ago! I said to myself, ‘I’m so glad Iris is coming today, I’ll get to show her my new painting.’”
Behind Bob’s desk is a canvas of many colors, a chaotic crowd of bodies on a beach. The canvas is as large as the wall. In one corner, two men carry a gigantic umber-and-polka-dotted torso of a woman, feetfirst, into the surf; an oil rig floats in the sea. A tangled clot of figures riot at the front of the painting, fists skyward, one looking right at her with wild eyes as if he needs something she’s failed to bring. There’s a man whose head is a triangle like an African mask, and a naked woman with a gun, and two men in army uniforms embracing a giant red tulip that is without question a vagina, except the vagina
is
with a question, as beside it is a cartoon bubble that reads
I o u?
The paint is thick.
“An early Monez. You know his work?” Bob peers for a moment at the side of the canvas, sliding his fat hand behind it, pushing the painting an inch outward and releasing it.
She tilts her head, trying to reconcile the painting with her memory of the artist’s name. It sounds familiar.
“It can’t be the same painter,” she ventures, remembering the housemate with the ferrets, the poster behind the TV, “who did
Water Lilies
?”
“Water Lilies!”
Bob cries. “We would be drinking whiskey if this were
Water Lilies
. You’re hilarious.”
She’s said something stupid, clear enough.
“Mon-
ez.
Contemporary guy. Really has it, don’t you think? A bit
Guernica
, a bit Guston. I got a deal.”
“It’s very good.”
“Come, look at the view.”
Because of the strange shape of the building, Bob’s office is a glass bowl. The East River, the meaner of the two rivers, spans beneath them. From so high up, the view divides into patterns: the dirty lace of the whitecaps; the wake of a slow-moving barge; the tight rush of cars on the FDR, hugging the curve of the waterway.
“See there.” Bob stands close beside her. “North is the Queensboro Bridge. And all the way down is the Williamsburg.”
“Oh? Yes?” The Queensboro looks to her like a great discarded leg brace, all silver screws and pins. A helicopter heaves sideways over the river. The landline on Bob’s desk rings. He ignores it.
“See the neon Pepsi-Cola sign?”
“Cool. Is that Queens?”
“Roosevelt Island. Between us and Queens. Okay. Look down and right. South, right there, you see that building? See how only the exterior is left, the light coming through the windows from behind?”
“The one that looks like a castle?”
“It totally does. That’s the old smallpox hospital. Abandoned.”
“Makes the back of my knees feel weird. The height.”
There’s an infinitesimal pause, a moment between them, where she knows it’s up to her. Instead, she says, “That’s great,” referring to nothing in particular, and quickly goes around his desk and sits back down in her chair.
“How’s real estate?” He returns to his spot in front of the painting. “Still fucking brutal?”
“I’m not selling anything these days, to tell the truth. I’m trying, but nothing’s moving. I’m kind of getting the freeze. Being the newest hire, I’m the lowest on the pecking order, so I don’t get the good listings. I guess they thought I’d bring in my own clients, I’d know a lot of people because of the Somners. As it turns out, I don’t know anybody. I don’t know if it’s the right kind of work for me, anyway. I go in every day, in case, and help out whoever.”
“How’s George? I’ve tried to get him on the phone.”
“Not so good.”
“All my fault, in a way.”
“What is?”
“How you met George. Because of me.”
“I did? I don’t know about that.”
“You don’t? There’s not much to it. I’m the one dragged George on that golf trip. So, that’s the first thing.”
“Deep down, he doesn’t like golf.”
“Right? He thinks he does, but he never wants to go. And, he’s no good.”
She’s seized by a new worry. Is George paying dues at clubs? If so, why hasn’t she found contracts or receipts? She’ll need to cancel them. In all their marriage he’s never even suggested they go to a country club.
“What a stink he made that day, like a little girl.
It’s too hot, I forgot my clubs, I’m wearing the wrong pants
.”
“I didn’t know you were on that trip! I don’t remember seeing you. I only remember George.”
“Well, I didn’t have anything to check.”
“Right.”
“I saw you first. With that dog. I told George to go talk to you. I said, come on, man, ask her about her dog. It’s easy.”
“No!”
For a moment, his jowls tighten. He sticks out his lower lip and leans back in his chair. “Yes,” he continues. “I saw you, and then I stayed out of the way. I mean, I’m so fucking
charming
.” He leans forward and laughs a genuine laugh, his mood apparently passed. “Your husband, no offense, never would have said boo to you if I hadn’t shamed him right up into it.”
“I can’t believe it! That was one of the only days I had 3D with me in coat check. I mean, that’s a fancy old place. Didn’t you think it was weird I had a dog in there?”
“I assumed you were blind.”
“You didn’t.”
“No, I didn’t. You sneak him in there?”
“I did. I had him with me less than a week before they spotted him under the counter. Fired me on the spot. Whatever. 3D showed up the month before, getting in the Dumpsters, wandering around the sandpits. They’d pinpoint him on the security cameras and rush out to catch him, but he’d be gone. For the staff it got to be like tracking Bigfoot. One day I’m at security check-in saying hi to this old guy Marvin, and he’s playing me footage on the monitor from the night before. 3D, making a bed on the lunch terrace. With a tablecloth. Circling and circling. Awesome. Then 3D, the real 3D I mean, leaps through the open door of the security booth. Right into my arms. Scared the living shit out of us. That’s how I named him. He went from 2-D to 3-D, get it?”
Why is she gabbling on and on? A relief to be asked a question she can answer without feeling out of her depth, a relief to stall asking the favor she’s come for.
“Holy shit, that’s delightful,” Bob says, ignoring another phone call.
“If it wasn’t for 3D, I guess I wouldn’t be here.”
“No, I think it goes, if it wasn’t for
me
you wouldn’t be here.”
“Yes.”
“As much as you enjoy my company, I’m curious. To what do I owe the honor of your visit?”
“It’s hard to talk about.” She takes a deep breath. “George is not doing great. I mean, he’s fine, we’re fine, but he’s having what he calls”—this is not how she meant to start—“an existential crisis.”
Bob’s guffaw is so loud it startles her. “Well, fuck, sure he is. Existential is the only kind of crisis available to a person as loaded as that guy. Between us, boy, oh, boy, that show was a mess.”
Was she right to come? He cares about George, doesn’t he? She hasn’t got anywhere else to go! At least he isn’t like the other people George had counted as friends, pretending not to see her in town.
“It’s not the embarrassment. We’re not doing so well with—” She takes a breath. “There’s a lot of debt.”
“What? Is it bad?” he asks, looking genuinely worried.
She must say as little as possible. She must protect—she doesn’t need to tell him how she ransacks the house for the unpaid bills George has hidden from himself. How she’s taken over his cell phone, screening the calls he receives from creditors day and night, has been receiving for many months, as it turns out, as she’s learned from the various creditors’ agents—Steve and James, Yolanda and Kate, Kevin and Anthony and Velda and Maria and Frank and—infuriating, how they give phony first names, as if they are friends. She won’t tell Bob how George scowls and mutters his way from one end of the house to the other, hours at a time. How he didn’t seem to notice when she took over negotiations with the banks and the credit-card companies. How with what savings Iris and George retained in their joint account—what a short leash, it turns out, CeCe kept him on—Iris paid the most pressing debt outright, the balance on the orchestra’s contracts, as well as the stagehands and performers and staff. She won’t mention how they’d gone to the warehouse in Queens where George was storing the larger set pieces, saving them in the hopes the show might still tour, and he sat on the dingy floor and cried while she negotiated a payment plan, organized the staggeringly expensive pickup and demolition of the sets. How she’s sold almost everything she thought he wouldn’t notice go missing: her wedding dress on eBay; the espresso machine; the crystal and china from the wedding they never used anyway; a pair of austere leather-and-wood chairs from Sea Guest Bedroom 2, which the dealer bought for $6,000 after declaring them authentic Stickleys; the living-room TV and the second plasma screen from Sky Guest Bedroom 1, explaining to George she was making home improvements and wanted to upgrade their entertainment system. One day, she remembered he used to wear an old, valuable-looking watch. He’d worn it at the wedding and the first year of their marriage, but she hadn’t seen it in a long time. She took a stealth look in his dresser and found the brown velvet case, empty. She decided she shouldn’t look any further, that his personal treasures should remain off-limits, but that she might sell the jewelry he’d given her, her old aunt’s voice—
Foolish, the women who think stones are for beauty. Stones are for disaster.
After the jewelry was gone, it struck her there might be value in the mostly forgotten library, with its collection of books assembled from the Somner holdings by the decorator. To the slight bespectacled man who drove up from the city, first she sold a book from 1790, from Scotland, called
Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile
, then, a first-edition double volume of Dickens’s
Our Mutual Friend
and an illustrated folio
King James Bible
from 1711. Next, a water-damaged seven-volume set of Audubon’s
Birds of America
and a first authorized edition of the piano-vocal score of Giuseppe Verdi’s
Il Trovatore
, and a signed copy of a novel by Evelyn (a man, the dealer corrected) Waugh titled
Handful of Dust
. She’d fired the part-time groundskeeper and the pool maintenance and Erika, the housecleaner who came once a week, a niece of Esme’s, and canceled the car service—George has stopped leaving the house anyway—and halted their various institutional and recreational memberships, and cashed out what was left of their wedding registry, and she was still barely holding the creditors at bay; she means to trade her car in, but week after week puts it off. She would like to sell the cream-colored Lexus that waits exclusively for George in the garage, though she’s never seen him drive it, but she can’t find the title anywhere in his papers and can’t think of a way to ask. She won’t mention how, for a man who is depressed, George has developed an increased, insatiable appetite for sex and at all hours presses himself upon her like a glum, murderous rabbit; that his desire to have a child has grown more fervid by the day, certainly more fervid than hers; that they have, to her mixed relief, been unsuccessful in this endeavor. She can’t mention how he’d quit Hud-Stanton so he could attend rehearsals and never told her—she’d discovered the truth only when she called his office and gotten Audrey’s assistant. Audrey, program officer of the renamed fund, mortifyingly compassionate and graceful, George’s fund having been dismantled. How George, stamping around the house or burrowed in his office, found the absence of the people who tended to their home, and the increasing mess (though she does try her best) unaccountable: Where have they gone? Why does Iris insist they drink brewed coffee, when he prefers espresso?
