Ladies and Gentlemen (7 page)

“Oh, David!” Ms. Samuel said.

“Which means pacific.
Calm
.”

“Yes!” Ms. Samuel said. “Yes!”

The music then stopped, and though his eyes were still closed, he could tell the lights were brightening.

“Rest now, David,” Love said, and Applelow felt his hand touch his knee. “We’re done.”

He slowly opened his eyes. Love was smiling at him, shaking his head in amazement. Ms. Samuel, smiling as well, turned to look at the doctor, who nodded at her and said, “I’m speechless.”

“Ditto,” she confessed.

Applelow could barely contain himself. He felt sparks of energy crackling through him, as if he’d just leapt over some immense inner hurdle.

“Do you want to tell him?” Love asked Ms. Samuel.

“May I?”

Love steepled his fingers and bowed to her.

“Do you remember,” she then said, “during our first interview, when we talked about how something good was coming to you?”

“I do,” Applelow said.

“Well, it’s come, David. We’d like to offer you the job.”

“You would?”

“We would.”

Relief washed over his entire body, from the crown of his head to the balls of his feet. “Oh, thank you,” he said, and took her hand and squeezed it. “Thank you.”

“Welcome to Auratec,” Love said. He had his arm around Applelow now, as did Ms. Samuel, and they were squeezing his shoulders, and she smelled so beautiful.

“When do I start?” Applelow said.

After Love and Ms. Samuel exchanged glances, he said, “Today!”

They all laughed.

Ms. Samuel held up a hand. “There’s just one more thing we need you to do.”

“Anything,” he said.

“Look over my shoulder,” she told him, “just below that Buddha. Can you see anything?”

He squinted at something glinting in the light. “What is it?”

“It’s a lens,” she said.

“A lens?”

“You know what that means, don’t you?”

“I have no idea,” Applelow said.

“It means say hello to America, David, because you’re on Fox’s new hidden-camera show
Sucka Punch!
”

Suddenly people were streaming into the room through doors he hadn’t noticed before that were on every wall—cameramen and sound people, a couple of producers, he guessed, and maybe the director, followed by the actors who’d played Love and Samuel and Myerson and Godfrey and Madeline. All of them were laughing so hard they were holding their stomachs, staggering toward him, shaking his hand, grabbing his shoulder, or slapping his back, roaring hysterically. It was a wrap! And Applelow laughed along with
them, despising himself for it and pointing at the lens, with tears in his eyes, his face flushed with rage and shame, and it was cripplingly typical, he thought, that when he had the perfect moment to lash out, he did nothing but go along with the joke, as if none of this mattered at all.

“Oh, you should’ve
seen
yourself sitting there with your feet crossed,” said Donald, who was still wearing Love’s spacesuit. “You were concentrating so hard it was like you were in a fuckin’ trance, man. Oh,” he said, the tears streaming down his face, “will people do anything for a job, or what?”

That was the name of the segment, a producer named Ava explained: “Anything for a Job.” She had a Fox News cap on, with her hair tied off in a ponytail and a set of headphones around her neck. “And it’s the truth. I’ve got a woman in one gag doing push-ups for twenty minutes. But you, my friend, you’re really something.” The material was absolutely top-notch, and though she couldn’t guarantee anything, the biggest sucker of the year would win $250,000, so he should sign the release—the producer handed him several pages of fine print—giving them the rights to the two previous interviews as well. “All taped,” she explained, “from beginning to end.” Applelow signed immediately, his hand shaking so hard he barely recognized the signature.

“Good man,” Ava said, and slapped him on the back. Then a squawk came over a walkie-talkie. “Places everyone!” she announced.

“We’ve got another
applicant
on the way,” Donald said, making quotation marks in the air. “And if she tops you, I think I might just die.”

“It was nice to meet you,” Ms. Samuel said, and waved sweetly. Her real name was Samantha.

The sound people and technicians were hurrying off the set. “We’ve got to get you out of here,” Ava said, taking him by the elbow, “as in now.”

Godfrey’s hair and face were being touched up as they walked by. He gave Applelow a thumbs-up and said, “Great job, dude. Seriously priceless shit.”

Applelow had nothing to say in response. After the producer showed him out, he walked dazedly to the elevator bank and watched the dial climb toward his floor. A woman in a suit dashed past him out of the car, her heels clicking sharply down the hall toward the fake office. “Going up,” a passenger said to him, pointing above, and Applelow shook his head. When the door closed, he turned and watched the woman stop to check her appearance in the glass of a fire-extinguisher case, then pluck a piece of lint off her lapel and was gone.

He walked home in what he later realized was a state of shock, his mind filled with the recurring playback of people streaming into the room, their faces contorted with laughter, their outstretched hands grasping at him. At times he caught himself standing on the street corner after the light had changed, so mortified that he had to urge himself forward, and at one point he became so disoriented he wasn’t sure how to proceed.

Then he turned onto his block and saw Mrs. Gunther at the top of the stoop, a black garbage bag in her hand. She took each step right foot first, and once at street level she threw her bag against the pile of trash and kicked it, slapping her hands together like a
child who’d just completed a difficult task—or like a woman who no longer needed his help. He waited for her to enter the building before he walked up the rest of the block, and the sun came out as he stared up the steps. It was so bright when he entered the foyer that his eyes had to adjust for a moment to the dark stairwell, which he staggered up, the banister creaking as he clutched it, to his landing, where he stood staring at his keys. Outside, the wind gusted fiercely, shaking the door frame and rattling garbage-can lids. He heard a woman on the street say, “Oh, my!” and then laugh.

Marnie’s door opened behind him. She was wearing a suit, dressed for work, with her hair and makeup done. Her eyes looked large and bright, and her teeth very white against her lipstick, though in the gloom he could barely make out any colors. But she seemed calm and happy, and she smiled at him without pretense. “I heard you come up the stairs,” she said.

He looked down at the sunlit foyer, then at the keys in his hand.

“I wanted to thank you,” she said. “For talking to Zach. For letting him stay with you. I don’t know what you told him, but somehow you set him straight.”

Applelow nodded.

“I didn’t think he could be, but you did it. He left for school this morning, and he’ll go into the military in the summer. It’s been such a relief to me I can’t even say.”

Again he looked at his keys, as if they wouldn’t work or he might jam the wrong one into the lock.

“Are you all right?” Marnie said.

“I’m fine.”

“You look nice.”

He glanced down at his tie. “Thank you.”

“How about we have a drink this week?” she said. “My treat. You can stop by the hotel.”

“All right,” he said.

Marnie checked her watch and said, “God, I’ve got to finish getting ready,” then raced back into her apartment.

Once inside, Applelow took off his coat, though he was cold to the bone. His message machine was blinking and he pressed
Play:
it was a restaurant manager from down the street calling to say he had an opening, that he’d appreciate hearing back from Applelow at his earliest convenience. In fact, if he was available this evening, he could start training immediately.

The bedroom door was open and he thought he might lie down, but it was so dark in there that it spooked him. He’d left the coffeemaker on, the stinking dregs burned to the bottom of the carafe. He rinsed it out and watched the brownish-black liquid swirl down the drain. Then he took his money from his wallet and pulled the book down from his shelf, and when he opened it a handwritten note fell from the pages and twirled to the floor.

He replaced the book immediately, almost throwing it back on the shelf, as if it were scalding to the touch. Then he went through
the whole process again, but the book was obviously empty. So he began pulling down book after book, flipping through the pages and finding each one empty. Finished but even more frantic, he ripped the whole shelf off the wall, then got down on his knees and started peeling off the bindings and tearing the loose pages into little pieces. If a book was too thick he wadded up the cover and threw it as hard as he could in whatever direction, until none were left, nothing more to destroy, and he kneeled there with his chest heaving.

“David?” Marnie called from the landing. “Are you all right?”

He grabbed Zach’s note off the table and flung the door open so hard that it dented the wall.

Marnie, who’d raised her fist to knock again, stepped back in fright. “I heard noise,” she said. She looked terrified. Applelow waited in the doorway, his shoulders pumping.

She took another half step back from him. “What is it?” she asked.

“Zach,” he said, his chest still heaving. He held up the note, shook it, then took her hand and slapped the paper into her palm. “Your son,” he said. “That
boy.
”

“What?” she said. “What happened?” Her composure was crumbling before him, as if she suspected that whatever he was about to say would destroy it once and for all. Her eyes darted over the note as if she were experiencing REM. “I don’t understand. What does this mean?”

Seeing her like this, Applelow couldn’t speak for a moment: he simply didn’t have the words, or how to enumerate her various failures. The landing was so dark that when he looked at her he could see only blacks and grays—and he was suddenly exhausted.

“David,” she cried, her face sour with tears. “Say what you were going to! Tell me what this means!” She put a hand over her mouth.

“I wanted to say,” Applelow began, watching her, “to
tell
you,” he added, shaking a finger in the air and then pressing it to the note, “that Zach’s … going to be
fine.
” He opened his arms out wide. “You should know that,” he said. “From me.” He took off his glasses and wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. “I wanted to tell you that before, and I forgot. I just forgot to. So that’s all.”

Marnie waited for him to say something more, but when he didn’t she laughed just once and wiped her eyes with the heels of her hands. “Thank you,” she said. “I’m glad you think so.” She laughed again, though it sounded like a sob. “I think he’s going to be fine too.” She took a handkerchief out of her purse and dabbed at her tears. “I’m sorry,” she said. “You startled me.”

“No, I’m sorry,” he said, leaning against the jamb. “It’s been an awful day.” He watched her collect herself. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“That’s all right,” she said. “I scare pretty easily.”

“I do too.”

She handed back the note. “Well,” she said. “I really have to go now.”

“Good-bye, then,” he said.

Standing at his door, he watched her walk down the flight of stairs. She took each step carefully, her fingers gliding lightly along the banister. It was so bright in the foyer that she seemed to be descending into a different realm, the square of sunlight downstairs every bit as white as the darkness in his bedroom was solidly
black. Marnie’s form was a mere silhouette on the stairs, but her color was restored at the bottom. Her suit, Applelow could see now, was a deep blue, her blouse purple, her hair red, her skin pale white. At the door, she stopped and took a pair of sunglasses from her purse—they had green lenses and gold frames—and put them on before she stepped outside. And when she did, her dark-blue overcoat billowed out behind her, the gusts whistling until the door closed gently and sealed off the sound.

Soon enough, Applelow thought, she would know some version of what he already knew. Soon enough, Zach would confess, and perhaps land back here. But not now. No, this was a different matter entirely. For now, he told himself, say nothing. Bring no suffering. Share no harm. He repeated these commandments over and over again, because these were the only things about his future that he could control.

From the basement below Roddy Thane’s office came a sudden clanging, then his radiator burbled and hissed. It was winter and the English department’s boiler had been out for more than a week. A number of professors had brought in space heaters and several fuses had shorted out, damaging the building’s wiring. So the college’s head maintenance man, Mike Donato, had lately been ubiquitous. When Thane was leaving in the evenings he often saw Donato, grounding outlets in the hallway or staring up at the burnt, twisted guts of a ceiling fixture. Or he heard him working his mysteries in the basement, cursing the old boiler, his voice carried along the pipes and up into Thane’s office as if through a tin-cup telephone.

Now the clanging reverberated through the building, a repeat concussion of metal to metal, followed by a sound like multiple kettles being put on a stove. It was Friday evening, almost 7:30. Everyone but Thane had gone home.

A few minutes later, Donato knocked on his door. “Have we got heat, Professor?”

Thane closed his tabloid magazine, clicked off the radio, and waved him inside. Donato, severely bowlegged, walked like he had a bishop’s miter pinched between his thighs. He squatted in front of the radiator, turning its black knob to cut off the steam, twisting it again until it hissed back to life.

“Nice work,” Thane said.

Donato shrugged. “This is just a patch-up job.” He stood up, smacked his hands clean, and winked, then took off his glasses—a piece of electrical tape holding one of the hinges together—and wiped them clean on his shirttail. “To be honest, they’ll need to spring for a new boiler.”