Ira tried not to cry, but he failed. “I got the ax.” This was not the second line he’d rehearsed.
Barely five minutes later, having skimmed as quickly as possible through the essential part of the story, Ira was telling Anthony about Elves & Fairies. He spoke in a manic rush. He had made himself stop crying. He described Evelyn as if she were his new best friend. “Her husband is Maurice Fougère, that amazing architect who designed the children’s museum we went to with your niece. Do you remember those windows in the ceiling?”
“I don’t care if her husband is Mark Fucking Wahlberg.” Anthony wore a look of contempt at the brink of violence. He had finished the wine. He stared for a moment at the empty glass. When he got up and went to the kitchen, Ira assumed he would fetch another bottle of wine. Or water. That would be wise; his head already ached. Ira heard water running, but he also heard what he knew was the sound of Anthony’s briefcase, the clips snapping open.
When Anthony returned, he placed a glass of water before Ira, but he was also carrying a tape recorder, a legal pad, and a fountain pen. “I’m going to forget that you waited three days to let me know you were fired. Just tell me every detail of your conversation with Betty.”
“Forget it, Anthony. It’s too late.”
Anthony leaned toward Ira. “We are going to flay them, Ira. This is never going to happen again. Willard Caldwell is going to wish he’d been given the option of very slow castration.”
“Do you really want to see the school go down? That’s what will happen, you know.”
“The answer to that is yes, Ira, if those are the cards they choose to play.”
“It’s not a game.”
“Ira, you’ve just let yourself be bought out, for fuck’s sake! I have to ask myself why you’d cave in so fast. Are you really that spineless?”
“I am not spineless. And, unlike you, I am not heartless. Can you see that I’m doing everything I can not to crack into a trillion pieces?”
“Yes. I can.” But Anthony’s voice was a hiss. He threw the pad of paper down on the table. The empty bottle toppled, barely missing Ira’s glass of water as it rolled off. The rug muffled its fall.
“I have to go out,” said Anthony. “I will be back later.”
Ira lay down on the couch and stared at the boring, pitiless ceiling, tears sliding down the sides of his face. On top of his professional misery, he was confronted yet again with the reasons that he and Anthony probably wouldn’t marry—wouldn’t join the several couples they knew who’d thrown jubilant, socially rebellious yet often profoundly romantic nuptials over the past few years. At these celebrations, he and Anthony sat side by side, hands in their laps, never looking at each other as their friends made vows not just to be true and loving to each other for the rest of their lives but to show the Willard Caldwells of the world that they were wrong, wrong, wrong. What a coward Ira was.
The phone rang. Ira’s former self announced his unavailability. He was answered by Maryjane, whose fiefdom was the Yellow Room.
“Ira? Ira, are you there?” She was waiting for him to pick up. “Ira, are you okay? I hope you’re okay. Please call me the minute you get this message, I don’t care how late it is.… Please.”
So they knew. Well, that was fast, thought Ira. And then, like a pool of ink, a cold revelation spread through his sodden, defeated being.
Betty had spoken with them, with the rest of the staff—of course she had, she must have quizzed them about Ira—before she had called him into her office. They had known all week long, or longer; there had been just enough doubt in Betty’s mind that she had asked his colleagues if the evil allegations could possibly be true. They had known, the colleagues he thought of as friends, yet they hadn’t said a thing to warn him.
6
If he were to look back on this night sometime in the future—Jesus, Robert’s heart was beating so fast that he was having a hard time believing there could be a future—would he blame it all on the stupid ring? Or no, the stupid argument he’d had with Clara about the ring. The ring was blameless; maybe the ring had been a necessary catalyst in the destiny of their relationship.
The three of them walked single file through the woods, wearing black from head to foot. It was so cold that the leaves beneath their boots were brittle with ice, but Robert’s nerves worked overtime, producing so much heat that he sweltered inside his down vest. He wished he could stop to take it off. The bucket at his side, which he’d been carrying for fifteen minutes, felt like it was filled with bricks. Turo had refused to tell him what it contained.
At the head of the line, Turo stopped abruptly; Robert bumped into Tamara. When he started to laugh, she turned and put a hand over his mouth.
Beyond Turo’s silhouette, Robert could make out three lit windows in the imperious house behind the even more imperious lawn. (Was that shrub a topiary horse?) Turo had assured them these people were away; his local contact had studied the house for days and determined that the lights were on a timer. Motion detectors triggering two outdoor spots hovered beneath the eaves of the garage and the portico, but they would venture nowhere near those areas. They would not be entering the house. Pretty minor consolation, thought Robert.
The night was moonless—a factor taken into consideration as well—so the three of them had to press close together to see the hand signals Turo had taught them. Ten minutes, the bucket. Two minutes later, the banner and stakes.
Like all the most desirable houses in Ledgely (in Matlock, too), this one was ostentatiously private: screened from the road by a towering hedgerow and from the adjacent properties by expanses of landscaped lawn and clusters of mature maple trees.
Robert looked again at the luminous face of his watch. Was it ten minutes yet? How could he not know? Oh God oh God what the HELL am I doing? he thought as Tamara silently urged him away from the trees.
The pool looked black, fathomless; a slick, dark cover stretched across its surface, effusing faint clouds of steam. The water was heated for swimming through the fall. According to Turo, it was cheaper to leave the heater on during a few days’ absence than to turn it off and risk a freeze.
Turo stood by the side of the pool, beckoning. Robert set down the bucket and, as Turo had described in the car, helped him remove the cover from the pool, folding it back in measured pleats, then lifting it up and away to place it, gently, on the grass. As if what they were about to do was an act of reverence. Now thicker, more pungently chlorinated plumes of heat rose toward the sky.
Turo pried the lid off the bucket. He carried it to the diving board. Standing almost at the lip of the board, in a slingshot motion that made Robert cringe with fear, he hurled the contents of the bucket into the center of the pool.
Robert heard a series of muffled splashes and watched several dozen irregular forms bob sluggishly along the surface, a few sinking toward the bottom. He wanted to see what they were, but Turo poked him and gestured toward Tamara, who had joined them. She held out the furled banner.
Yet again as he’d been instructed, Robert took the free end and pulled the banner away from Tamara’s arms. It had been rolled around a dowel, to unfurl quickly and smoothly. The white cotton canvas glowed alarmingly. Glancing toward the neighboring house, Robert noticed that its flanking trees were almost bare. From the distant (or maybe not so distant) porch, a harsh spotlight lit up their spidery branches. Had it been on all this time, or had someone, just now, seen or heard something?
Oh God oh God even if we aren’t caught, I am NEVER doing this or anything like it ever ever EVER again. I am MOVING to the library tomorrow.
Turo seemed alert yet calm. He moved methodically, and when he faced the distant light, Robert could see his steady smile.
Once in position, the banner obscured the entire length and nearly the entire width of the swimming pool; at one end it had been split to wrap around the base of the diving board. (No detail unexamined, Turo bragged about the work of his “organization.”) Tamara and Robert held
it taut, end to end, while Turo pinned it securely to the lawn with tent stakes. It was huge—though the surrounding prairies of darkened grass and night sky made it look puny all of a sudden. It read, in painted crimson letters four feet tall, H 2 OVERKILL.
Robert retrieved the bucket. It smelled indescribably foul. As Tamara and Turo walked swiftly—not too swiftly—back toward the woods, Robert paused to lean over the edge of the pool, where one of the cryptic dark forms still floated.
It was, unless his eyes were playing grotesque hallucinatory tricks on his psyche (and why not?), the carcass of a squirrel. A bucketful of roadkill? His stomach clenched. He felt Turo’s hand on his arm, pulling him away.
They returned, walking as fast as they could without running, along the trail that linked the parking lot of the bird sanctuary to the imperious lawn of the imperious house. They did not speak until they were on Route 2, one anonymous car among many, headed back to Cambridge.
Turo whooped like a Hollywood cowboy. “You are now a made man, amigo!” He slapped Robert’s shoulder.
“I am about to frigging drive off the road,” said Robert. “Do not touch me.”
“I’ll drive,” offered Turo.
“No you won’t.”
In the backseat, Tamara laughed coolly. “Relax. We got away with it, Bob.”
“Unless they have video surveillance. That kind of money, they would.”
“Even if they do,” she said defiantly. “Even then, they’d never know who we were.”
“But they don’t,” said Turo. “We have good sources.”
Robert decided not to speak again, not to argue. He let Turo and Tamara gloat over the apparent success of their sabotage. Robert had not laid eyes on Tamara since the evening of her freegan spiel; was she the one who’d drawn Turo into this business? The DOGS. Jesus.
Gone to the dogs, thought Robert.
They would get back to Cambridge, Robert would make sure they shed Tamara, and he would give Turo a piece of his whacked-out mind. For a moment, Robert felt embarrassed for his friend; how could he hope to accomplish anything constructive this way? And who were these sketchy “sources”?
“Tell me you don’t love the rush of sticking it to the warlords,” Turo said as they began the steep descent toward the city, Boston a sprawl of indifferent roads and towers, grubby and dim but for the space-age sweep of the Zakim Bridge, its cables gilded like the strings of a massive harp.
“What makes you so sure they’re ‘warlords’? What does that mean?”
“Oh don’t get all mince-minded, dude. That kind of wealth? No good can come of it.”
“Yeah?” said Robert. “Like, how about Bono’s money, or the Gates Foundation? Some rock star from the seventies saved the woods around Walden Pond, and he’s probably got a mansion three times that size. You’re assuming a lot, Turo.”
Turo and Tamara laughed in unison. He leaned toward the backseat. “Oh man, do we have some deprogramming on our hands or what.”
Robert went silent again. They were passing the cineplex, the discount liquor store, the pasta franchise, everything closed up tight yet beckoning with brilliant signage, the pointless wattage like squandered hope.
“My friend,” said Turo, “my good, smart friend, don’t be so fearful. You’ve grown up so protected. You’ve grown up so—”
“Soft?” barked Robert. “Ignorant? Go ahead, dogmatize me, Turo.” Dogma. The pun he hadn’t intended to make was almost funny. But not.
Turo let Robert’s sarcasm ring through the car. “No,” he said quietly. “I was going to say, so insulated from corruption. Which is no insult. You know what I think about your family, man. You know how envious I am. But your family, it’s not the world most people live in. Your family is Disney compared to most people out there.”
“While you,” said Robert, “you grew up in a peasant village in the mountains, exploited by fatcat landowners, slaving away at menial harvesting tasks.… Oh but wait!” Robert slapped the steering wheel. “Gosh how could I forget, your father was the fatcat landowner!”
“Go ahead and mock me,” said Turo. “At least I’m facing down the guilt of my inheritance. Just think what the world would be like if we all gave it a try.”
“Wow, chill, you guys,” said Tamara. “It’s not like we signed the Kyoto Protocol here.”
“This is the adrenaline talking. No big deal,” said Turo. He turned on the radio. “Coltrane. Bingo.”
Robert slowed the car when at last they approached their neighborhood. He started searching for a space; this late at night, they’d be lucky to park within ten blocks of their building. Here, night was undermined, darkness trumped by streetlamps. As they drove past the mansions of Avon Hill, their fancy façades oozing hauteur yet separated one from the next by little more than a pebbled driveway or trellised path, Robert wondered if the DOGS would ever dare launch an attack on one of these places. They wouldn’t have the guts.
Two blocks from Linnaean, Robert squeezed the car into a nearly impossible gap, turning the wheel so many times that his shoulders cramped. The walk to their building was mercifully short.
Tamara unlocked her bike from the street sign and waved. “Make peace, you two,” she said before riding off toward Mass. Ave. She raised one hand over a shoulder to flash them an old-fashioned peace sign.
Robert rolled his eyes.
“We should’ve offered to drive her home,” said Turo. “That’s a long ride. Long and cold.”
Robert walked ahead, up the stairwell and into the apartment.
Once they were both inside, Turo said, “So you’re really that flipped out.”
“I am really that flipped out, and I am going to bed, so I can flip out in my dreams, too. I have two labs and a lecture tomorrow—excuse me, today. In like three and half hours. Jesus.”
“Have dinner with me tonight, will you? Back here?”
“Yeah. Fine.” Robert shut his bedroom door, practically in Turo’s face.
He went to his desk, turned on the computer. He groaned. Three e-mails from Clara. He read the last one first.
Oh sweet cat, I don’t know where you are, and I’m going out of my mind. I’ve tried your cell a jillion times and you’re not picking up. Please, please forgive me. I acted like a lunatic, a crazy-jealous-hysterical GIRL. I want us to be strong, Robert. I can’t go to bed till you call. PLEASE call; I don’t care how late. I love you I love you I love you I love you.
Clara wrote e-mails like she wrote her papers, everything tidy and grammatical. The torrent of I love you’s was something akin to radical.
Turo, Robert, and Tamara had left their phones behind when they went on their “mission.” According to Turo, this was part of the preordained M.O. Robert picked up the phone from his night table. He flipped it open. Thirteen messages. Clara Clara Clara Clara …
Robert’s freshman-year roommate had been a jock Neanderthal, straight from central casting. Huge and blond, a true golden boy, a virtual Viking, Sam was a lacrosse player from northern Minnesota who aspired to become “an economic player in D.C.” Robert had liked the guy at first—different was good, right?—but the farm-country charm wore thin when he’d sampled the sexual wares of a dozen girls by Christmas break, most of the merchandise poked and prodded in their way-too-small room at all hours of the day and night. Sam saw himself as a genius stud and loved to spout advice to Robert, whom he saw, by contrast, as hopelessly challenged on the mating frontier. Robert came to think of Sam as the Pillager, and while he could have blamed the guy’s hyperactive sex life for inhibiting his own, he actually found it perversely distracting—a guilty form of entertainment. That spring, Robert finally hooked up with a few girls, including a classmate from Newton South, but no one sparked him until Clara, whom he met in statistics the fall of sophomore year. By then, he was rooming with Turo, and the Pillager was just another dorm mate he’d greet with a “Hey, how’s it hanging?” as they lined up for lunch.
But now, as sleep refused to bless Rober
t with a respite from his bifurcated guilt, a stray bon mot from Sam flashed past: “The minute they offer to do your laundry, it is definitely severance time.”
Not that Clara had never done Robert’s laundry before. A washer-dryer combo in the kitchen was one of the perks in his apartment; since Clara still lived in a dorm, Robert was happy to let her use it, and if his dirty stuff filled out a wash or two, then so much the better for him.
But Wednesday (just yesterday?) was the first time she’d put his clothes away, which she did without asking him—and which, really, shouldn’t have been a big deal. She decided to surprise him by “neatening up” the contents of his dresser, emptying out and rearranging everything from his tennis socks to the cummerbund and tie Granddad had given him to wear to his prom.
What happened was this. Robert came back from the library to find Clara reading on his bed. She gave him a secretive smile. “Hey, bobcat,” she said. “I think I found something I wasn’t supposed to find.”
“Yeah? Well, then probably I wasn’t supposed to find it, either.” He thought of Turo, who by then had begun to disclose the details of his midnight escapades.
Clara was straightforward—she was practically a guy in this respect, which was cool—so instead of going through some big, coy guessing game, she just reached over to the side table and held out a small red box. Robert didn’t recognize it, not at first.
“Okay,” he said. “So I’m still in the dark, Clara.”
She opened the box and held up the ring. “It fits perfectly … here.” She slipped it onto her left pinkie.
“Oh that! That’s the ring Aunt Clo gave me. Years ago. I had this major crush on her when I was a kid. She gave it to me as a consolation prize. I guess the only reason I haven’t lost it is that I never really wore it.”
“Oh.” Clara’s smile dimmed a bit. “That’s so sweet.”