“Maybe what we should’ve done before. Maybe we have to go to the police.”
“I’mnot telling my husband.”
She’d gotten real emotion back in her voice after all. A sudden and undeniable firmness that brooked no further discussion. “IfI can manage it, then you can." I was the one raped, she was saying to me. I was the one raped six times while you sat there and did nothing. If I can choose to be quiet about it, then you can. Then you have to.
“Okay,” I said. “Okay. If he calls again, I’ll talk to him. I’ll find out what he wants.”
Deanna mothered me when I got home. So did Anna — maybe she was finally happy to see someone else in need of medical attention. She brought me a warm compress to lay against my swollen nose and gently rubbed my arm as I lay half-dead on the bed.
I was back in the bosom of my family — content, grateful, the very picture of domestic bliss.
Except each time the telephone rang, I flinched as if punched in the stomach.
A friend of Deanna’s. A mortgage broker’s cold call. My secretary wanting to know if I was all right.
But there was always the next call, wasn’t there?
And they insisted on hearing about the accident. Anna wanted to know how I could have been so spastic. Stepping out of a cab, for God’s sake. Into a hole?
I said I didn’t want to talk about it. And I wondered if repeating the same lie was the same as telling different lies. If one was worse than the other. Neither one felt particularly good, not when my daughter was offering me a warm towel and my wife her unconditional love.
I tried to watch some basketball in the den, to root for the struggling Knicks. But I found it hard to focus; my mind kept wandering. There was a player on the Indiana Pacers, for instance, who looked a little like . . . Black, but Hispanic. Lopez, his name was — a backup guard. Taller of course, but . . .
“What’s the score?” Anna asked me. She’d stopped watching basketball with me at age nine, but I supposed she was trying to be kind to her bruised and battered father.
“We’re losing.” It was a safe answer these days, even if you didn’t actually know what the score was.
Just then it turned up in the left corner of the screen. The Knicks had rallied within four.
“Eighty-six to eighty-two,” Anna recited.
“A close one,” I said. “We’ve got a shot.”
“Daddy?”
“Yes?”
“Daddy — did you ever play basketball?”
“Sure.”
“On a team? ”
“No. Not on a team.”
“Then how’d you play?”
“With friends. At the park — you know.” Murray Miller, Brian Timinsky, Billy Seiden. They were my best friends growing up — but slowly, one by one, they’d faded away. Years ago, I’d seen Billy Seiden in a Pathmark supermarket, but I’d left without saying hello.
I hugged Anna. I wanted to tell her something, about love and life and how it can be fleeting if you don’t hold on — that you have to jealously guard what’s important to you — but I couldn’t think of the right words.
Because the phone rang.
Anna picked it up after the second ring.
“Foryou, ” she said.
“Who is it?”
“Some Spanish guy,” Anna said.
THIRTEEN
The conversation:
“Hello there, Charles. ”
“Hello.” His voice seemed out of context. It belonged in a hotel room smelling of blood, not here in the safety of my own den. Unless my den wasn’t safe anymore.
“How’s things, Charles? ”
“What do you want?”
“You doin’ okay, Charles?”
“Fine. What do you want?”
“Yousure you doin’ okay, Charles?”
“Yes, I’m doing okay.”
“Not getting stupid on me, Charles, right? Not running to the cops?”
Lucinda was right; he wanted to know if we’d gone to the police. “No,” I said.
“I know you promised and all, but I don’t know you that well, know what I’m sayin’?”
“I haven’t gone to the police,” I said. I was speaking softly; I’d ushered Anna out of the room, but that didn’t mean she wouldn’t come in again. And then there was Deanna, who just might pick up the phone and wonder who I was talking to.
“That’s good, Charles.”
“What do you want?” I asked him again.
“What do I want?”
“Look, I — ”
“You’re not going to get stupid on me, Charles, right? You tell the cops, you got to tell the little woman, right, Charles? You got to tell her how you’re fucking Lucinda, right, Charles? Why you want to do that, huh?”
He’d laid it out for me. The crux of the situation, just in case I’d missed it.
“I’m not going to the police,” I repeated.
“That’s good, Charles. Here’s the thing — I need a loan.”
Okay. It was the question Lucinda had begun to ask me on the phone. What if he . . . Not exactly finishing, but if she had, she would have said: What if he asks for money?
“I hate to ask, know what I mean?” he said. “But I’m a little short, see.”
“Look, I don’t know what you think — ”
“Not much, Charles. A little loan, you know. Say ten grand. . . .”
“I don’t have ten grand.”
“You don’t have ten grand?”
“No.” I’d thought it was over, but it wasn’t over.
“Shit. That’s a problem.”
“Look, I don’t have cash just lying around like that. Everything’s — ”
“That’s a real problem, Charles. I really need that loan, see.”
“I just don’t have — ”
“I think you better get it for me.” Leaving unsaid why I better get it for him.
“Everything’s tied up. I just can’t — ”
“You’re not listening to me, Charles. I’m talking here and you’re not listening. I need ten grand, Charles. Okay? That’s the deal. You’re a big fucking executive, Charles. Says so right on your business card. Senior”—saying it like señor—“creative director. Ex-ec-u-tive vice pres-i-dent. That’s pretty fucking impressive, Charles. And you don't got ten grand? Who the fuck you kidding?”
No one, I thought.
“Charles.”
“Yes.”
“I don’t give a fuck about your cash flow, okay? I want ten grand from you. You understand me?”
Yes.
“If you understand, then say you will give me ten grand.”
Deanna was calling me from the kitchen. “Do you want some chicken soup?”
“I’ll get it for you,” I said.
“You’ll get what for me?”
“I’ll get you the ten thousand.”
“Great. Thank you. Hated to ask you and all, but you know how it is.”
“Where?”
“I’ll call you again, okay, Charles?”
“Can you please call at the office? Can you — ”
“Nah. I like calling here. I’ll call you back here, okay, Charles?”
Click.
What if he asks us for money? Lucinda had wondered.
Even though he’d taken our money, even though he’d said, See, I got your money, right here, he didn’t have all our money, did he?
And as long as we weren’t going to the police, he could go ahead and ask for it.