Man Gone Down (24 page)

Now I feel like an ass because I have to answer. They're waiting, curious. Even Diana seems interested.

“By the golden calf riding Leviathan bareback.”

They laugh. Marco spits out his drink and slaps the table. “Sorry.” He wipes his mouth with his hand, offers me his napkin, which I refuse. I suppose that it is funny, especially if you think it's a joke. I let them laugh. Diana is the first one to regain her composure. She looks at me and I smile and it feels good. She smiles back. She's lovely, just a shade darker than honey with black hair that looks like braided silk. Then it fades—the joy—quickly back to the suspicion, which, after I've seen her smile, is all wrong. Her face shouldn't be so closed. Maggie still has her head down and Marco snorts again, a dry one this time.

“No, really,” I say. And they break up again. I try to talk over their laughter. “I was on the bridge . . .” They won't have it. Marco waves for me to stop.

I show them mercy. I keep quiet, but just looking at me is enough to keep Marco giggling. He slowly returns to form. I wave back to him—recognize our wordless truce. He inhales deeply, wipes his eyes,
and checks the girls to see if they think his breakdown was undignified. They do not. They look to me to continue. I don't know what to say, but I feel strangely touched by their attention—their acceptance—but I still haven't anything to say. I look around the table for a launch. I stop at Marco's glass and point.

“Talishire.”

“Talisker.”

“No, it's from
Talishire—islet
scotch—from the Isle of Skye.”

He shrugs his shoulders and leans back. The heat of interest has left his face. I should explain, tell the story of how Gruntcakes as a young man used to go with his older brother to be fitted for wool suits and sample the local whiskeys. But first I should tell them why I call Claire's paternal grandfather Gruntcakes. He was a stoic and unreachable English bastard until later in his life, but he always made Claire pancakes—griddlecakes—taking great care to cut small chips of butter into the batter before cooking.

The last time he went to Skye, before he and his brother fell out, they walked the foothills with flasks of Talisker. They got drunk. They got muddy, so much so that the innkeeper wouldn't take them. They spent the night in a barn. He told me that story more than once, always in some moment when he could get me alone.
“I had a boat once, a sloop. Named it after the scotch. I wanted to sail it with my brother.”
He'd sit in some corner of some large, spare room, a party going on around him, with his whittled, driftwood cane, staring into the void, searching for his lost boat, his dead brother. Taking stock of what remained: him, me, and the dinghy. We'd made it seaworthy that last summer but never got to launch it. There's an old picture of him on the boat, three-quarter profile, sailing in Buzzards Bay. I've always liked to think that he's going to find his wife, somewhere in the middle of the ocean.

“I worked at a bar once, when they first exported it.”

We're back to feeling good again.

“When did you do that?” asks Maggie.

“When I first moved here. When I was a kid.”

Maggie smiles, not at all bothered that I know how young she is, almost relieved that I've recognized the age gap. Perhaps it makes me seem less predatory, more fraternal. She isn't elegant and beautiful like Diana. She doesn't seem at home in the little cocktail dress with her hair down. She should be in shorts, at a burger joint, after playing soft-ball in Central Park. She, in fact, doesn't look as though she should be in this city at all. Her straight hair should be in a ponytail or under the hat of a team she actually roots for. She leans in, eager for more speech. Her dress falls away from her and above her left breast is a tiny, black cross. I suppose if I needed to, I could make her look like Sally—just without the freckles. She smoothes her dress against her flat chest and waits for me to speak.

“What do you do, Maggie?”

She snaps up straight, gestures at Diana. “We're law students.”

“They have internships at the firm,” adds Marco. I smile. They all smile back. It buys me some time. I try to picture myself, twelve years ago, preparing for life: plucking guitars in the East Village, reciting poems in Chelsea lofts. Even though I know it's wrong for her to be here, there's something reassuring about Maggie—her unjaded enthusiasm. I like the wiry girl in the black dress. Diana is another case, though. After the laugh she has gone quiet, but not from shyness. She seems aloof and calculating. And her martini seems to be shutting her up rather than relaxing her—reinforcing her superiority. Booze does that sometimes, make you high and mighty, saucy and silent, while you avoid what is really happening—you're scared, black, and young and you believe you can't afford to make a mistake.

Sometimes dinners come down to being merely exercises—accumulating experiences and killing time, until the food arrives, until it's time to go: filling the time unerringly, without spoiling appetites or hurting feelings. Without playing the fool. To be able to say “I did this” or “I saw them.” Diana stares out over the dining room. I direct the next question at her.

“Do you know each other from school?”

“No, we don't. We met this summer.” She finally speaks. Her voice is deep and soft and clear. Her mouth, like Claire's, hardly moves.

“I'm at NYU,” peeps Maggie. I turn to her, nod, and then go back to Diana.

“And you?”

“Harvard.”

“Really. What brings you to New York?”

“I'm from New York,” she answers with a hint of condescension. She turns slightly to Marco, “And the opportunity to work at Jancy.”

“I'm from Boston,” I pat the table. I don't like my tone—too syrupy, but I'm not sure how to speak. I don't want to match hers. I don't want to turn this into another competition, but I don't know what she wants to hear. I stick with the syrup.

“Do you like being there?”

“No, not particularly.”

I nod.

“No offense.”

“None taken.”

Marco jumps in. “Didn't you go to Harvard?” The girls turn to me with involuntary curiosity. Diana's face relaxes for a moment. She feels this and tightens it again. I want to kick Marco, but then I wonder what he knows. There's very little he does know about me—so I think. I don't know what Claire, in a weak, confessional moment has put out there in the channels—the gossip that came to him as fact. Whatever the case, he has always been gracious to me and remembered, as much as I'd like to forget it, my birthday. I suppose over the last few years of analyzing starting pitchers and raising discreet eyebrows at cocktail parties Marco has seen the both of us as outsiders. He knows he is. He doesn't apologize, nor does he deny it. Marco's an outsider and everybody knows it—even he. What they don't know is how and why. He's not one of the men in the storefront social clubs, which, though dwindling, still exist. He's not a grumpy landlord's son, nor the corner merchant. He's not a gangster or a steamy lover. What I know is that he appeared one day in a second-grade classroom
in a dead mill town north of Boston and he didn't speak a word of English. His father roamed the north shore for day work. His mother stitched shoes. He became a millionaire by thirty.

“Yes, I did,” I respond, nodding too earnestly as if to warn them of what's to follow.

“What house?”

“Adams.”

“What year?”

“I left.”

No one wants to ask the question—“What happened?” So they are silent for a moment. Maggie's face goes sad, concerned. I don't like it this way.

“I moved here. I wanted to try something new.”

“Acting?” Maggie's up again.

“Music.”

“Are you a musician?” I can see her picturing me at Lincoln Center, in my tux, tuning up in the horn section. It seems a shame to mar the image.

“No.” They're puzzled, but Marco seems to be enjoying himself, the budding story—if you can call it that. To me a list of events, well detailed or not, has never been one.

“I chickened out. I was playing around the city, working construction, too. I went back to school.”

“Where?” asks Maggie.

“Hunter. It's a city school.” Maggie stays spunky. Diana nods to herself as though she's figured something out.

“How was that?”

The food comes. My steak, though plated beautifully, looks inedible—a dense slab of flesh. I'm not hungry and my gas pains have stopped. In fact, it seems that my stomach has disappeared.

Marco stops his fork at his mouth.

“Do we need wine?”

The girls refuse. I wait for everyone to begin and then I cut off a piece. I chew and swallow. The meat seems to free fall, as though
I'm throatless, returning to its original shape as it does. It finally hits bottom. My stomach comes alive, rigid and unhappy.

“So what do you do?” asks Diana, no longer so formal. I'm not sure why. Perhaps the food and drink have started working. Perhaps she, because I can't match her resume, is no longer threatened. Perhaps she likes me. Maggie seems very interested, not in my response, but in Diana's response to me. She's lost her smile, chewing slowly. Marco is consumed by his food.

“You teach, right?” More of Marco's faulty intelligence, but it's okay. I start nodding, not to her question but to some internal beat I can't seem to refuse. Her syntax is slipping. Her jaw muscles relax. She puts her fork down and spreads her long fingers on the white tablecloth. Her hands are fine and ringless. She gently pushes her palms into the linen. Her calm makes Maggie change—drop the rosy-cheeked smile. They're not so young anymore. They both exhale and seem to, right there in their seats, become women.

Marco hears the silence and stops. We all exhale together and look to one another. I feel tired and it seems okay to show it. I cover my face with my hands, rub my palms into my eyes as though I'm just waking up. When I take them off my face, Maggie and Marco are eating again. Diana watches me. Everyone has a new face, born from a tacit agreement that the old bald white guy isn't here: The Irish Catholic girl doesn't have to pretend to be a WASP; the black girl doesn't have to out-WASP her. And Marco can stop trying to guess at who's mocking him—all manner of
thing
well.

I'm still nodding. And it must seem to her a profound response—that I'm contemplating my years, my road to here. Perhaps I am, but I can't tell. The nod becomes a slow rocking. She joins me, rocking. Poor Diana, trapped in oak-paneled rooms and towers of glass and steel, never an error in diction, tone, or pronunciation, but never arrogant, never haughty. Poor Diana, some twenty-first century princess. For her sake, I lie.

“Yes.” We both stop rocking.

“Where?”

“Hunter College.” Another lie.

She nods, once. “That's great.” Maggie nods, too. “My mom went there, back when it was free.”

“It was a teacher's college.”

“Yep.” The three of us take it in.

Marco gestures at my plate with his fork. “How is it, man?”

I look down at my half-eaten steak and wonder how I'll finish it. I cannot. Maggie pushes rice around her plate. Diana picks at her vegetable concoction. Her jaws move slowly and evenly. I cut another piece and wonder if I should bother chewing it before dropping it into the pit.

“I inhaled mine.”

“Was it good?”

“Great.”

He's buzzed. There's more red in his face than usual, along with a hint of moisture. I never figured him for a lightweight. He excuses himself. Maggie looks at me as though she's a child, waiting for a bedtime story. I would like to tell her one—tell her something—but I have nothing to say. I look at my plate; the blood from the endless meat has contaminated my potatoes. I cut a big slab and swallow it. It lands heavily, making me wince. I look at the girls. They've pushed their plates away. Maggie still wants her story. Diana wants one, too.

“What kind of law are you interested in?”

Maggie starts to answer but stops and gives way to Diana.

“Corporate. IP and such.” Maggie nods in agreement. And I must give something away with my face or body, an eye roll or slight sag, because she holds up a hand as though to hold off my judgment.

“I'm not going to lie. I want to make money,” she nudges Maggie. They both grin. Then she grows serious. “I owe my parents that.” She tries to find agreement in my eyes—as though I would understand. Whatever she sees allows her to continue. “And I don't want to have to worry about money. I want to be able to travel, and when I have kids, be able to take them places, as well—give them things, not spoil them. I mean I'll want my kids to have jobs, but I also want to give them every advantage.”

Diana can't possibly know how many times in the last twelve years, I've heard this speech—how much I continue to hear it from those who believed themselves to be entitled but haven't achieved it yet.
They don't want much . . .
only what they want—some minimum of comfort and privilege. But there's something about her that makes me listen, more than her beauty. She seems to believe what she's saying.

“How much personal wealth does someone need?”

I shrug.

“Both of my parents were teachers. Don't get me wrong. They did wonderful work. They touched a lot of people, but how many CEOs did they meet?” She points at Marco's empty seat repeatedly, like the gesture's a stutter, until she finds the words. “Do you know who
he's
had lunch with this summer?” She almost stands. Thankfully, she doesn't. Militancy doesn't become her. I think she knows that. She regroups but doesn't recant the “he,” as though Marco was a “he” to me, as well.

“I get it from two sides—race
and
gender.” She stops, seems to search for something inside and begins again. I look at the blue wall again and think of whales, great fish, sea beasts, and what a swallowed man would find in their bellies: whole civilizations, perhaps wicked, perhaps good, but full of people who have long forgotten they were once in flight at sea.