My American Unhappiness (27 page)

That makes her back away.

"Zeke, look, I'm done. It's not just the way you treated me the other day, it's a whole lot of things. For one thing, I don't really even know what we do. I don't know what sort of career track I am on, answering the phones at an organization that gets increasingly obscure and broke with each passing year."

"I resent that. You seemed to value the work we did a few weeks ago."

"I've been doing some thinking. Soul-searching."

"Look, I want to start again. We could start our own organization, without federal money. Who cares what those auditors do? We'll start a private foundation. The Foundation for the Study of American Unhappiness! We'll do the Unhappiness Festival each fall, and we'll keep the
Inventory
project on task, and..."

"Stop it, Zeke."

"No. I'm serious! I'll pay you double."

"With what?"

"What do you mean?"

"What are you going to pay me with, Zeke?"

"We'll talk to H. M., Lara. We'll explain why we need his investment in our work now more than ever."

"H. M.?"

"We'll tell him we're getting married. We will get married."

"Zeke, you've gone nuts."

"Lara," I say, taking her hand, looking into her green eyes, which are remarkably large when you fixate on them in relation to her small nose and chin. She looks down but takes my other hand, moves just a faint step closer so I can feel some heat coming off the skin of her bare midriff. Oh, what a wonderful fashion trend, may it never die again! Ever since I saw Madonna's "Lucky Star" video as a prepubescent youth, I have loved the sight of a shirt rising just high enough to show a hint of skin. "Do you believe in retroactive sex?"

"What? What is that?"

She steps back.

"No, listen to me for a second. Retroactive sex is a guilt-free way of having sex. For instance, let's say there was someone you were friends with in college, maybe you had an intense attraction to that person and vice versa, but for some reason you never consummated it. Whatever. You were dumb and young. And you see that person years later—you can have total, no-strings-attached sex since you passed up your chance at it once before. It doesn't matter what your current situation is or whatever. The sex you engage in at the present moment is actually based on a past emotional response. So, well, the emotional repercussions are done. They're over. What you are engaging in is like a purely cathartic physical act."

"What?"

"Like a sauna, or massage, or something."

"Shut up. This is serious?"

"I'd like to think so. I sort of perfected this theory. But it's a widely believed phenomenon. I am surprised you never heard of it. It has plenty of useful applications—former students, say, for a college professor who resisted the temptations set before him in the classroom and then meets the former co-ed when she is thirty-one, on a business trip for an insurance company. They could go back to her hotel, watch a filthy movie, smoke crack, whatever. It's an event happening, technically, in the present, but it's fueled by the past."

"That's not how it works," Lara says.

"Okay. Maybe you see your ex-husband's best friend, long after your marriage is over, and maybe he was single way back when, but now he's married. Right? But you can fuck him, right then and there. You still can act on something you held at bay due to social propriety, friendship, whatever. It's fine. It's a secret with no present-day complications."

"You're freaking me out," Lara says.

"Or in our case, you are no longer my employee and I am no longer your superior, so we can have the sex we would have had on that night in Omaha without any long-term emotional or logistical effects on our present situations or relationships. We get it over with, done, end of unfulfilled impulse, end of buried desire. Release of burden!"

"Omaha? This is crazy. You are such a sick man."

"Come on, when's the last time you had sex with somebody?"

"I don't know."

"See?"

"About two weeks ago, I guess."

"Oh? Seriously?" I say.

She turns away from me, crosses the room. I follow.

"Who?" I ask.

"It wasn't great. I probably won't have sex with him again."

"It doesn't matter anyway. That's the great thing about this. You can have sex with him again. Tomorrow, for instance. I, myself, had two possible opportunities for sex this week, but only one panned out and it ended badly. I don't know where she is."

"I can't believe this," Lara says. "I'm going to have to call the cops, Zeke."

"Certainly there's some sort of physical, or mental, attraction between us. All those years in the office, all of that forbidden pleasure we resisted because of professional ethics and our need for gainful employment, none of that is important now."

"Zeke. You're twisted. And you're lonely. And I have great affection for you, I pity you, losing your wife so young and now you work so hard, all of these years, on this insane project—but you're losing it. Let me say this clearly:
There's no money left.
And let me say this clearly:
I am not attracted to you and am not in love with you.
"

"Lara, let's at least talk to H. M."

"Zeke, H. M. is on the way to Mexico."

"Mexico?"

"Yes, he's been frantically trying to reach you. He's worried about things that apparently are about to be found out. He has a house in Mexico, his safe place in the event of this sort of emergency. He told me he'd find you before he left, but I guess he didn't."

"Stunning!" I say. "Jesus, how could he do that to us?"

"Zeke, calm down. You'll find some kind of job. So will I. We will be fine."

She goes off to the bedroom and comes back, holding something.

"Fine. Look," I say, "I am confident, very confident, that I can raise enough money to continue operations on a small scale, I'm sure. I mean, we may have to cut our grant program, but that seems a little nineteen-nineties anyway.
Grants?
Yuck! How passé! This is the era of the big donors, the fat cats, the private endowments, the windfalls, and I think..."

"All of that's over, Zeke. Do you read the news?"

"Lara, you have to marry me."

"Stop," Lara says. "I told you, I quit."

"What's that in your hand?" I ask.

"An electronic Taser," she says.

"Are you going to Taser me?" I ask.

"I hope not," she says.

"Where did you get a Taser?"

"My uncle is a police sergeant in Louisville. He doesn't think women should live alone without firearms. This was a compromise."

I drop to my knees.

"Lara, my mother is dying and if I am not married before she dies, then I lose the twins. They go to their aunt!"

Lara sighs and looks at me with maybe some real tenderness. She knows I have been good to her and she has been good to me, an intelligent, reliable, quick-witted assistant. She knows that she has survived difficult economic times because of my generosity. She's also known, all along, that her legs had something to do with it, and that maybe there is something more than professional tension in our relationship.

"Zeke, I'm so sorry."

"It's in her will. If I'm not married, Lara, by the time she dies, the girls live with their aunt and I am nothing more than an uncle who visits once or twice a year."

"Oh, no," she says.

"You have to marry me," I say. "I will take care of you. I will provide for you and your kids and my kids. Like the Brady Bunch!"

"Zeke, that's not how marriage works. I don't love you."

"I'm lovable though. I am!"

"You're odd, Zeke. I don't know if you are lovable in that sense of the word."

"Lara! I'm coming right out and begging you. Please marry me!"

"You don't even have a job anymore," she says.

"If I can secure my position at the GMHI, if I can prove my income is respectable, you'd consider it?"

"No, Zeke. I didn't mean that."

"What did you mean?"

"Zeke, I can't marry you," she says. "I don't love you!"

"Right," I say.

"I barely even like you," she says.

I nod.

"Don't cry," she says. "You cry too easily."

"My mother's dying. I lost my job. My kids are leaving me."

"Point taken," she says. "Weep away."

"You're being cruel," I say.

"Look, I'm going to take a quick shower and get dressed," Lara says. "Then I can go down to the office and show you a few things you might want to know, before they shut you down completely."

"I'm sorry if you felt threatened by me, Lara. I'm sorry you felt the need to get your Taser."

"I'm not afraid to use it, Zeke," she says.

"Is that a joke?"

"I don't know, Zeke."

"This is so surreal."

"It's okay, Zeke. It's okay to be in love with me; you can't help it. All of those years working side by side."

"We should be together, Lara."

"I mean it was inevitable that we'd have an awkward sexual encounter someday," she says. "I should have been more direct with you years ago. I am not at all interested."

"But what about at that conference in Omaha? We nearly kissed!"

"I know. This is the best job I could imagine having, moneywise. It allowed me to spend time with my kids when they were little, it gave us health benefits, it was easy."

"So what are you saying?"

"I might have led you to believe that I liked you more than I reallyd o."

"You mean you prefer that we just remain friends."

"I made a vow to myself on my last birthday, Zeke, and it was this: I vowed to be more honest and direct. I read this great book called
Matters of Authenticity;
it had this subtitle like
How to Stop Pleasing the People Who Don't Matter.
"

"I don't matter?"

"What I mean, Zeke, is that it's better if we just remain colleagues. And since I've resigned, that means our relationship is largely over."

I decide to switch tactics; as bruised as my ego is, I don't want to admit defeat. There's too much at stake.

"I know. I think you're right," I say. I feel rather faint and take a seat on the couch. "I'm a little nauseous."

"Okay," she says. "Zeke, please don't cry again."

She goes into the bathroom, shuts the door.

"I'm not going to cry!"

"Oh, you just looked like you might," she says, from behind the door. "I sometimes hear you weeping in your office and—well, I hate it."

"That's ridiculous! I have never wept in my office."

"You do. It's very unsettling when I hear it."

"Nonsense!" I bellow.

Sitting on the sofa, I pick up a J. Crew catalog and browse for a moment. One of my favorite models, a smiling, thick-haired brunette with a rather ample bosom (by J. Crew standards), is wearing the Seaside seersucker wide halter-top bikini. I stand up, swelling in my pants, my mouth dry and tasting of copper. My hand shakes. And then I push the bathroom door open a small crack (bathrooms in old homes rarely lock!) and see Lara's figure, naked behind the frosted glass.

"Zeke?" Lara says. "Are you in here?"

What an enticing image, the flesh of a woman, her curves evident and her details blurred, behind a steaming shower door. I unzip my pants and watch her for a moment, and then I undress, standing there in my boxer shorts, my pleasure growing evident. Lara turns to face me for a moment, and I see the darkness of hair between her legs, the curve of her breasts through the frosted glass. My heart is in my throat. I hear her scream, and I scramble for my clothes.

Lara slides open the shower door, just a small crack, as I try to zip my fly and pull on my T-shirt at the same time. She reaches outside of the shower and grabs a brown towel, then wraps herself in it.

And now I hear her shrieking a little bit. "Oh, God, Zeke, you are so pathetic."

I hear real disdain in her voice. I hear that she means those last two words. My heart crashes to my kidneys; my stomach gives way to water and cramps.

"I'm so sorry," I say, dressing hurriedly in the next room. "I completely misjudged your statement."

"What statement?" she shrieks.

"When you said you were going to take a shower, I thought that was an invitation."

"How could you possibly think that?"

"Lara, please. I am a desperate man."

"That's obvious," she says, coming out of the bathroom, wrapped in a towel, pointing the Taser at me.

"I need love, Lara. I don't have much time left!"

We stand there now, she still dripping wet, I half-dressed, fully aroused, crazy-ashamed, and suddenly weary.

She shoots the Taser at a potted plant to show me it works. It sizzles and hisses, the air suddenly dense with the smell of burning leaves.

Exit Zeke.

T
HAT AFTERNOON,
I stop off at the Hospice Center again and my mother manages to sit up in bed for a moment, but she is barely lucid. She asks me where the goats have gone and then she wonders aloud how my pregnancy is going, has a coughing fit, yells out Cougar's name, and then drifts off to sleep. I go out to the parking lot and make a few phone calls, letting my fading mother sleep. I call Peter Romano, a small-time mobster who also happens to be H. M. Logan's attorney down in Janesville.

Romano confirms that H. M. is out of the country, but that is all he will tell me.

"It turns out, Zeke, that H. M. and Representative Quince Leatherberry, Republican, Fifth District, Wisconsin, spent a weekend under assumed names at a resort called Sunbelts in the Caribbean with each other and about six male prostitutes from the Dominican Republic."

"I see," I say. I start to laugh. I can't help myself.

Romano doesn't laugh.

"And they're looking at the records of earmarks, special favors, that Leatherberry might have done for H. M. using federal money. And I am afraid the GMHI might be a prominent favor on that list."

"I see," I say. "Has this been leaked to the media yet?"

"Well, H. M. called me and told me about everything last night. He said he was leaving the country. But I didn't expect this," Romano says. "He was trying to get you a million dollars before he left, for your commie-faggot think tank or whatever he's been pouring money into, but his assets have been frozen. He's apparently also linked to some big Wall Street Ponzi scheme, I don't know. I know I'll never get paid now. That's what I know. He owes me forty thousand bucks. And counting."