The Silent Wife (4 page)

Driving around in her Audi Coupe, she puts the windows down and soaks up the noise and commotion of the city, taking pleasure in the din and tumult of things going on everywhere: the vendors, street musicians, and outdoor markets—and even the crowds, sirens, and traffic jams. A teenage girl with a bunch of balloons dances across the street. A man in a white apron sits in full lotus on the steps of a restaurant. She stops at the framer's with the Rajput painting, picks up a travel book, buys a kitchen scale to replace her broken one, and on the way home sits down with a frappuccino at her local Starbucks, leaving herself enough time to walk the dog and broil a chop for dinner before attending her class in flower arranging.

2

HIM

He likes getting an early start, and over the years he's pruned his morning routine down to the fundamentals. His shower is cold, which kills the temptation to linger, and his shaving gear consists of canned foam and a safety razor. He dresses in the semidarkness of the bedroom while Jodi and the dog sleep on. Sometimes Jodi will open an eye and say, “Your shirts are back from the laundry” or “Those pants are getting bagged out,” to which he replies, “Go back to sleep.” He swallows a multiple vitamin with a jigger of orange juice, brushes his teeth from side to side, the wrong but fast way, and thirty minutes after getting out of bed he's in the elevator riding down to the parking garage.

Well before seven he's sitting at his desk on the fourth floor
of a four-storey building on South Michigan, below Roosevelt. This building—a brick and limestone structure with a flat roof and steel-framed insulated windows that were state of the art when he installed them—was his first large-scale renovation, undertaken after a decade of flipping houses and before the South Loop condominium craze sent property values out of sight. When he first acquired it the building was dead space, and he financed its conversion into office suites with three mortgages and a line of credit, all the while labouring side by side with the workmen he hired. He could have done everything himself, but if his money ran out the banks would foreclose. In this business things like mortgage payments, taxes, and insurance make literal truth of the saying that time is money. The suite he has claimed for himself is a modest one, consisting of two offices, a small reception area, and a washroom. His office is the larger of the two, the one overlooking the street. The decor is modern and spare, with bare surfaces and solar shades—uncluttered with antiques and bric-a-brac as it would be if he'd let Jodi have her way.

He makes his first call of the day to the deli that delivers his breakfast and orders, as always, two BLTs and two large coffees. While he's waiting he takes an old tobacco tin from his desk drawer, pries off the lid, and dumps the contents onto his desktop: Bugler rolling papers, book of matches, and small baggie containing a handful of dried buds and leaves. During the time he was depressed he found that smoking a little weed first thing could lift him out of his apathy and help him get down to work. He's accustomed now to the ceremony of rolling and lighting
up, and he likes the mellow way of easing into his day. He takes his spliff to the window and exhales the smoke into the open air. Not that it's any kind of secret that he likes a toke or two; he just doesn't think that TJG Holdings should smell like a frat house.

It used to be that from his window he had a clear view of the sky, but what he sees now is a small irregular patch of blue floating amid the condos across the street. Better than nothing, and he's not going to knock the boom. Anyway, his attention is focused on the people waiting at the bus stop. A few are standing in the shelter even though the morning is clear and mild and the shelter is littered with trash. He likes it when he can ID some of the regulars: the bopper with the headphones and backpack, the old skinny guy in the baseball cap who chain-smokes, the pregnant woman in the sari and jean jacket. Nearly everyone is focused on the oncoming traffic, straining for a glimpse of the approaching bus. As usual, one or two have stepped off the curb and are standing in the street to get a better view. When the sighting finally occurs the tension visibly dissolves, as if they were one and all of the same mind and body. Reaching for fares, the loose congregation compresses into a restless column. He, of course, spotted the bus when it was blocks away. Sometimes he feels like God up here at his fourth-storey window.

The man from the deli brings breakfast to his desk and takes the money that's been left for him under a paperweight. Todd gives him a nod and continues talking to Cliff York on the phone. He's making notes but won't need to refer to them. He has no trouble mentally keeping track of names, dates and figures, times and places, even telephone numbers. The project
under discussion, a six-unit apartment house in Jefferson Park, is in the middle stages of completion. Initial obstacles—plans, permits, financing—have been overcome, and all the units have been gutted. He and Cliff, his general contractor, are talking about water pressure. They set a time to meet later in the day to look things over and hear what the plumber has to say.

Tackling his breakfast he finds the toast a little soggy, but the bacon is crisp. When he's finished both sandwiches and one coffee he gets back on the phone, this time with his real-estate agent, who has found him a potential buyer. This is good news. The apartment house is an interim project. If he has to he'll hold on to it and lease the units, but the game plan is to sell it and use the capital for his next venture, an office building on a grander scale, something that will trump everything he's done so far.

Stephanie arrives at twenty past nine. She takes her time getting sorted and it's half past before she appears in his office with her notepad and files and pulls a chair up to his desk. Stephanie is girlish, a young thirty-five, with bushy hair that she bundles into a ponytail. He always takes an interest in where and how Stephanie is going to place herself, whether directly across from him, where he can see her only from the waist up, or to his right, where she's inclined to cross her legs while resting her forearm on the desktop to take notes. The oval desktop overhanging a rectangular base allows for plenty of legroom all around, so when she chooses to display her legs, for whatever reason, he counts it as his lucky day. If she's wearing jeans he has a view of her crotch and thighs; if it's a skirt he gets to look at her knees and calves. She doesn't flirt but doesn't seem to notice
or care if he watches her cross and recross her legs. Today she's in jeans but takes a seat on the far side of his desk, so he has to make do with the twin peaks that strain against the middle buttons of her blouse. She's not much taller than five feet, which is why the size of her bosom is so impressive.

She's brought in a sheaf of files and a list of things to run by him: pricing on ceiling fans, Web addresses of landscapers, questionable invoices. Anything that is not strictly routine, he wants to know about. He didn't get where he is today by overlooking details or letting his business get away from him. He's only one man and his profit margins are not stupendous, which means that everything counts. He glances at his watch, just so she knows that her late entrance has not been overlooked.

“Nothing from Cliff?” he asks, when it comes down to the invoices.

“Not yet.”

“Show it to me when you get it. Last time he listed material costs for something that we supplied ourselves. What was it?”

“Bathroom tile.”

“Right. Bathroom tile. And grout. He billed me for the goddamn grout.”

She's done the research he asked her to do on toilets and hands him the brochures. “The low-flow models are cheaper than the dual-flush, but they're not reliable,” she says.

“What's wrong with them?”

“They don't always flush.”

“They have to flush.”

“It doesn't always go down.”

“Cliff has installed them before.”

“You can't chance it,” she says. “Not with rental units. You should take a look at the dual-flush options.”

He frowns and asks, “How much?”

“It's not too bad. You can get something reliable for five hundred.”

“That's three grand for the goddamn toilets. We could go to Home Depot and get toilets for fifty bucks apiece.”

“You could, but you won't.”

“What else?” he asks.

“You need to think about fridges and stoves. It could take a while for them to ship.”

“Get me some quotes. If everything comes from the same supplier we should get a price break.”

“How do I know what sizes?”

“Look at the plans.”

“I don't have the plans. You took them home with you.”

“Get a set from Carol at Vanderburgh. The units aren't all the same.”

When she's gathered up her papers and given him a view of her retreating ass, he drifts for a while, listening with one ear to the busy noises coming from her office. His mind is on everything at once, encircling the whole of his world at a sweep, as if it were a baseball field and he were on a home run, flying by the bases, all the while with his eye on the ball. It's come to a point where he savours the constant apprehension, the risk he takes with each small decision, the strain of being overextended, the pressure of betting everything on the current venture. The anxiety
he feels is stabilizing in a way, letting him know that he's alive and on track. It's anxiety cut with anticipation, an interest in what comes next, a stake in things unfolding. This is what propels him through his day.

During his depression he lost that forward momentum. In fact, the loss of it was the very thing that was wrong with him. It was time without nuance or modulation, always the same, minute by minute, day by day. He knew nothing of the defeat or futility that people assumed he was feeling. He was simply not there, an absence, an empty space.

He checks the time and makes a call. The sleepy voice that says hello gives him a gratifying jolt, waking up his gonads.

“You're not still in bed.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Don't you have a class?”

“Not till later.”

“Spoiled rotten.”

“I hope so.”

“What are you wearing?”

“What do you think?”

“Birthday suit.”

“Why do you want to know?”

“Why do you think I want to know?”

“Is this official?”

“Off the record.”

“I'll need that in writing.”

They keep this going for a long while. He pictures her lying in twisted sheets in the cramped bedroom on North Claremont
where she shares an apartment with roommates. He went there once, in the early days when there were still places on her body that he hadn't touched. Afterward, in the kitchen, the roommates gathered round and asked a lot of nosy questions—mostly about his age and his wife. After that they started meeting at the Crowne Plaza on Madison, where the staff is consistently distant and polite.

As he talks to her he's buffeted by feelings that still register as vaguely foreign, making him wonder if he's someone else, not Todd Gilbert but a man who sidled into Todd Gilbert's body during the months when he was absent. In the short span of time that he's known her, she's given him back his life. That's what he owes her, the gift of life, as found in the feelings that make a man human—not just love but greed, lust, desire … the whole teeming, disruptive lot. Even his impatience is a gift, the impatience to be with her that dogs him the whole day through. Even his jealousy is a gift. He knows it's her right to be with a younger lover and fears that it's just a matter of time before she figures this out. Painful as it is, he's at least in the land of the living.

Jealousy is new to him; he's used to feeling confident with women. According to Jodi the confidence comes from growing up an only child with a doting mother, a nurse, who stuck to part-time work in spite of money being tight so she could mostly stay at home and look after him—her way of making up for the shortcomings of his father, a public-works employee who drank. When he was still in high school he assumed the role of his mother's provider by learning how to make money and take responsibility,
and for this he was much praised, not only by his mother but by his mother's friends and his teachers and the girls he knew. Women like him. They like him because he knows how to look after them. He looks after Natasha, but there's a catch with Natasha. She makes him conscious of his aging body and flagging vitality. Not because of anything she says or does; only because she's young and desirable and insatiable.

He's still on the phone when Stephanie returns with a sheaf of cheques for him to sign. He's been pacing and comes to a halt by the window. She puts the cheques on his desk and waits. Stephanie, he knows, is well aware of the goings-on between him and Natasha, who came here once looking like she could eat him alive. Stephanie's words. What kind of assistant speaks to her boss like that? And lately, Stephanie has made a point of walking in on their telephone conversations. She leaves him no choice but to end them abruptly, like now. She has a pen in her hand and thrusts it at him as if they were fencing.

Before leaving the office he calls Jodi to say that he won't be home for dinner. It's a courtesy call; she's aware that he's seeing Dean tonight. But he likes to let her know that he's thinking about her. He's a lucky man and doesn't lose sight of the fact. She's still a knockout with her slender figure and dark hair, and in spite of being a homebody herself, she understands that he can't be spending his evenings sitting around the condo. Some of his friends have to be home for dinner every night. Some can't even go for a beer after work. Luckily, his buddies are vast in number—including virtually everyone he's ever worked with—and many of them are single or divorced, so he can nearly always
find a drinking partner. Not that he minds an evening on his own, when it comes to that.