The Merchants of Zion (33 page)

Clutching the railing for support, I made my way down the stairs, trying to remember how last night had ended. Whatever had happened, it had been a hell of a party. Her apartment was trashed—one of the tables had levitated off its copper base and crashed to the floor, the wine bottles spilled across the hardwood floors like bowling pins. Paper plates and empty glasses covered every table, counter, and chair like the experiment of a mad upholsterer.

James was asleep on a couch. He had no blanket and was fully clothed down to his shoes. Images of him yelling, us smoking outside, and a bloody hand flitted through my mind. I was in no hurry to discover the scene he'd caused, and hoped only that I hadn't played too large a role.

I puked out my guts in the bathroom—an ornate affair of marble tiling and crystal faucets. The toilet bowl filled with small pink chunks on my first go. The second was all bile, burning my esophagus as it came up and out. I dry-heaved a few times for good measure, my diaphragm spasming as my body rejected a poison no longer there.

After five minutes I was done, and vowed I'd never drink again. I wiped my mouth with toilet paper delicate as snow, which shredded into pieces that stuck to my lips. I looked in the mirror—not a pretty sight—and picked them off, then rinsed out my mouth. The pain in my head had receded to the dull jackhammer of a construction site down the block, and my stomach settled down.

I went out onto the terrace to smoke. Someone had smashed one of the wine bottles, scattering shards of glass across the terrace that refracted greened sunlight. Avoiding the general area, I leaned against the wall. The wind was sharp and refreshing against my bare chest, and the warmth of the sun relaxed the tension enveloping my head.

Most of my tobacco was gone, but enough remained for one cigarette packed with sawdust. My last one ever, I told myself. As I extinguished what would probably not be my final cigarette, I watched the people below rush to wherever it was they were going. Seeing as it was Saturday, they were most likely finance grunts or low-level service employees on their way to work, but I imagined everyone was rushing to a hot brunch date to realize their dreams and find true love—chasing fleeting happiness before their backs broke beneath the weight of an oppressive, inflexible system.

Vaguely, I recalled raging at Ruth, but I always raged at someone whilst wasted. Another reason to stop drinking. The first thing I'd do when she woke up was apologize. I'd slept in her bed, but didn't think we'd slept together; I couldn't possibly imagine being able to perform, drunk as I must have been. The memories began to seep in: James had gotten in a fight over somebody's girlfriend. Beyond that I was lost. I'd have to ask Ruth for a recap, embarrassing as that would be. The key to bouncing back from a black-out was shamelessness.

I stepped back inside to look for my clothes. They were at the foot of Ruth's bed. She stirred and I thought about waking her, but decided against it. Whatever transgressions I'd committed, I could live in ignorance of them for a while longer.

The kitchen was directly beneath her loft, and I put on a pot of coffee and looked around for something to read. While waiting for it to brew, I heard the now familiar chime of Ruth's phone. She'd left it on the counter. Exacting my revenge for her journal-snooping, I checked the message. It was from Esther, her sister.

“I dunno. Lie?”

Scrolling back through the message log:

“No idea. What do you think?”

“What are you gonna do???”

“He's sleeping in my bed.”

“Are they gone?”

“He yelled at me. He's really drunk.”

“I can't believe it. He has no right to tell him. What happened?”

“Dont know. Think he told him.”

“OMG. How?”

Ruth. James. Rockford. Right. I set down the phone, now able to trace the previous night's foggy outlines.

I scrounged up a chewed-up pen from a metal key dish by her door. Paper was scarcer. I settled for a long receipt from a supermarket. With inefficiencies like that, it was a wonder they hadn't been absorbed by Storebrand. I scribbled my parting note on the back:

Dear Ruth,

As we never dated, I do not begrudge your personal choices. You did, however, lie to me and screw my roommate when things between us had moved beyond the platonic. For these reasons I would like very much never to speak with you again.

Hope you understand,

- Cliff

P.S. James is receiving treatment for syphilis, so you may want to get tested.

The postscript wasn't true—as far as I knew. I left the note on the counter, weighed down by an apple. It was time to leave, but I had a problem: my keys weren't in my pocket. I'd held it together, at least since waking up, but I couldn't maintain my composure if I stayed in her apartment much longer.

I found them upstairs on a tacky, red-lacquered nightstand next to her bed. Fifteen minutes ago I hadn't wanted to disturb her in order to avoid the embarrassment of my forgotten behavior. Now I avoided waking her so I wouldn't have to confront my inchoate feelings before I buried them beneath a sediment of rationalization and ironic detachment. If I had awoken her, say accidentally, would she have filled me in on all the details from last night, or would she count on my being too drunk to remember? The world would never know, for better or worse. I shoved my keys in my front pocket and tip-toed down the stairs and out the door.

The summer's heat dropped me like a subprime mortgage, and I staggered over to vomit in the bushes by the entrance. The doorman—a different one from last night—glared at me, but didn't interfere.

I dry-heaved repeatedly, and at some point began to cry. The tears took me by surprise. I hadn't cried over a girl since high school, had been stone-faced during my mother's funeral. The last time I remembered crying was when my father told me my dog had been put down. It had been Freshman year, right before Christmas, as I was packing for my first visit home since leaving for college. Ruth had been there when I'd received the call. The dog had died the week before, but they'd waited until finals were over so it wouldn't affect my grades.

Once I got myself back under control I stepped into a bodega and ordered a coffee and bagel—I never had gotten around to drinking the pot I'd put on in Ruth's. I sat at the counter and scrolled through The Cherry Tree on my phone. A manifesto by Robespierre had climbed to the top of the front page. I tabbed open the page, read the first few lines:

“For the exploited, I have come to deliver you from the clutches of the capitalists. For the alienated, I have come to offer you the warm embrace of our common humanity. For the oppressed, I have come...”

“I have come to grow tired of you,” I muttered as I exed it out. I ate the final piece of bagel, drained my coffee cup, and exited the shop. My country's choices were between mind-controlling looters and a megalomaniac. What a world.

* * *

When James came home I was sitting in the living room, staring at my newest story. It was up to five words: “Man is cursed by women...” He approached me with an air of contrition and attempted to apologize.

“Look, I'm sorry about last night. Everything was one fucked-up accident—”

“How about this, James. Let's agree on this: we'll pretend nothing ever happened, and never mention it again. Okay?”

“You sure buddy? Sure you don't want to talk it out?”

“I'm absolutely, positively, one-hundred percent certain I don't want to hear any of your prevaricating bullshit.”

“All right, whatever you want. I'm gonna take a nap.” He went up to Dimitri's—no his, I corrected myself—room. I continued my attempt to will words onto the screen, without luck. Ruth called. I didn't answer. Then again, and a third time. I found her number on my phone and steeled myself to delete it. No need to risk a drunk, angry phone call dredging up bad memories and feelings no longer relevant to my life. But I couldn't follow through. The future was too uncertain; one never knew when a particular piece of information might be of use.

I never wanted to see or talk to either James or Ruth again. The adventures of the past few months had shattered a routine I'd been perfectly content with, while leaving me with nothing to show for it but a broken heart and ruined friendships. Ruth had come and gone as I'd feared, like a whirlwind, leaving behind the wreckage of my nascent relationship with Mary, bad-blood between roommates, and terrible memories of hungover mornings. She'd get on with her life, more famous and successful than ever, while I continued to wrestle with the pointless struggle of mine. I'd been no more than a tangent, a dalliance without meaning or any impact on her future. I only hoped the scene James and I had made yesterday left a bad taste in the mouths of her colleagues and real friends. Of course, there was no way I would ever know, and the victory was hollow.

Cutting ties with Ruth was simple enough; it was already done, and we had no mutual friends or shared haunts to complicate matters. James's situation was trickier, but the solution was clear. He was making money now and could move into his own place. No doubt he'd be ecstatic, as he never tired of complaining about how hard it was for him to live in such a dump.

* * *

Ruth called five times over the next two days, accompanied by “Can we talk?” text messages. I ignored them all, and after a week she gave up. I half-hoped, half-feared, she would show up at my door. She never did.

I raised the housing issue with James, and he agreed to move out in about six weeks, at the end of September, which was good enough for me. We did our best to avoid all contact with one another. He traveled outside the city more, leaving for days at a time. When he was home he stayed in his room, and exclusively ate sandwiches from the bodega around the corner. He bought his own tablet, a sleek top-of-the-line model, stopped drinking, and worked on God-knew-what in his room.

Elly's education continued apace, and with my more stable life I was better able to give her the care and attention she deserved. Her father had become more attentive as well, spurred on perhaps by the trauma of our Chicago trip. He came home earlier and either dismissed me so he could spend time with his daughter or sat and watched TV with us rather than retreating to his study to 'work' as he had before.

The second week after Ruth's party he asked to speak with me, alone. We went into the kitchen, leaving Elly to watch cartoons. He unstoppered a decanter and poured two glasses of scotch. It was the first I'd seen him drink in weeks. A part of rehabilitating himself as a father, no doubt.

I didn't know what to expect, and prepared myself for the worst, that I was getting fired or having my hours pared back, with compensation to match. Best case scenario: he needed to satisfy an itch to rant.

“Cliff,” he said, with the voice of a man comfortable being feared trying to sound avuncular. “As I'm sure Helen's told you, I've always thought you were a waste of money. There's nothing you can do that a regular nanny couldn't do better. And for less.”

Helen had always omitted those specific bits of conversation with her husband, for which I was grateful. Nevertheless, in order to keep him talking I nodded as if she had. He'd said “you were” instead of “you are,” so maybe he intended to apologize for one of his many previous slights against my character.

He gulped down the rest of the glass and poured himself another. I'd barely touched mine, and rushed to keep up—stifling the urge to gag as I did. I wasn't man enough to drink scotch sober, and probably never would be.

“For a moment I was convinced Helen saw you as a surrogate son. To replace Ryan. I don't know if she told you this—since she seems to talk more to you than to me—but after your gross negligence on your trip to Chicago I was determined to be rid of you. For good

She had not told me, but I had guessed. “You're lucky Elly likes you so much. Otherwise...” he trailed off.

“I am, sir,” I said, having no clue what he wanted to hear me say.

“But don't you ever think about taking advantage of my daughter.”

“Excuse me?”

“When she's eighteen. If you try to exploit her for my money...” he didn't finish, only glowered.

“With all due respect, Mr. Felkins, I don't think you understand our relationship. I see Elly like a sister, and—“

“Calm down, calm down. My apologies. I think about my baby girl and...” His refusal to finish his thoughts was grating.

“Is that what you wanted to speak to me about?” I tacked on a “Sir,” at the end. To avoid sounding impudent.

“Right, right,” he said, answering my concern with a thump of his glass. Two down and he was having a third. “Not much of a drinker, son?”

“I'm still on the clock. Watching your daughter,” I said, somewhat more acerbically than I'd intended.

He thought that was a hoot. “Right. For the longest time I was pretty sure you were a fag. Ninety-five percent sure. But...” I wanted to shake those last words out of him.

“Let's level with one another,” he said. “I haven't been the best father. Maybe I wasn't before... you know... Ryan. And definitely not after. But I've been an even worse husband, if that's at all possible.” Tears welled in his eyes. Like squeezing water out of a stone. I was privy to a miracle of Biblical proportions.

“So I wouldn't blame Helen. I'm curious though...” Unable to continue, he swished around the scotch in his glass. He looked at me with the ugliest puppy-dog eyes I'd ever seen. The entire conversation had left me flabbergasted, but with this image of defeat it all clicked.

“You think your wife's been cheating on you? 
With me?”

“Well... uh... she's not?”

“No way.” Mr. Felkins picked himself right up, whipsawing from pathetic to embarrassed, and slammed the chair's backrest against the table as he pushed it in. “Right, so how much do I owe you for tonight?”

“I invoice your accountant every other week. He deposits the money directly.” Mr. Felkins harrumphed and led me out of the kitchen, one hand gripping my shoulder. In the living room, he let me go so he could scratch behind his ear.