Scott hadn’t left the room. He was slumped against the wall, stroking his pony tail. His eyes were glazed.
“Get out of here, Scott. I want privacy and you should be stroking yourself in the bathroom.”
“What?” Scott asked, startled.
“Go. Out.”
“What did you say?” Scott moved back. He had let go of his tail. He bumped into the door frame. Young Betty appeared next to him.
“Oh, I forgot to tell you,” she said, her eyes lowered, her tone soft, head bowed fearfully. “Mr. Lobell called yesterday. He said he needed to talk to you as soon as possible.”
Mr. Lobell was the real-world incarnation of Nutty Nick, the man Jeff had literally died trying to impress. Jeff had met him once; Max had only spoken to him on the phone. “Okay,” Max said. “What’s his number?”
“I’ll get him for you,” Betty said, her head up, her tone bright. She left. Scott smirked at Max as if he’d caught him at something. From the hallway they both heard Warren ask Betty in an excited, hopeful whisper: “He’s calling him?”
“I’m leaving,” Scott said and did, with the smirk still in place.
Max put his damaged shirt back on. It made him shiver. His nipples hardened. He reflected that he had gotten laid twice in the past twenty-four hours. Not since he and Debby were creating Jonah had he enjoyed such frequency. Then it had been with the same woman, of course. He wasn’t a Catholic and yet the unprotected sex of deliberate procreation had felt more deep and intimate than when the act was only self-indulgent. He longed to repeat those weeks of determined love — to make a second child. They could leave Jonah with Debby’s parents for a week and fly to Europe (now that the air was terrorless) and he could witness the uncompromised architecture of the Old World (now that his artistic failure was painless) and they could fuck in hotel beds and on hotel rugs and in hotel baths…The daydream was interrupted by Max remembering that he had ended his marriage that morning. Well, so what? he thought and allowed the images to resume. Married or not, it was still a fantasy.
“It’s Mr. Lobell,” young Betty said in an intense low tone. She had entered all the way into Max’s office to deliver this news. “He’s on one.”
Max turned away from Jeff’s desk as he lifted the receiver, hiding his face from his dead partner’s post, so that Jeff wouldn’t see him turn down Nutty Nick. Max didn’t believe in ghosts, but why take a chance? “Mr. Lobell?”
“Just a moment,” a male voice said. Silence, then a booming voice: “Hello!”
“Mr. Lobell? This is Max Klein.”
“Hi. How are you? You look all right. I just saw you on CNN in front of your apartment building. With your son. Where’s he going on the bus? To camp? Isn’t it late for camp to be starting?”
“It’s a day camp.”
“Isn’t he old for day camp?”
“No one’s too old for day camp.”
Lobell’s big voice chuckled. “Hee — hee — hee,” he laughed in a deep tone, like a storybook giant. “Well, he has a very brave father. I’m glad you weren’t hurt. But I’m sorry, very sorry about Mr. Gordon. I liked him.”
“He was a good—” Max stopped himself. Lying was so easy; almost impossible to avoid. “He was a close friend,” he amended.
“I also wanted to tell you not to worry about the presentation. I’ve made other arrangements.”
“You’ve hired other architects?” Max was startled, not upset. That had been quick. It meant there had been competition all along, racing beside them at the same pace.
“Yes. Other things being equal, if the designs you came up with were as good as what you did with the Long Island store, I probably would have hired you, but — well, to be honest, I’m a superstitious man. I’m sorry. You don’t need to hear any more bad news, but I felt I owed it to you to tell you directly.”
“What do you mean,” Max wondered, partly to himself, although he spoke aloud, “that you’re a superstitious man?”
“You know. Anyway, I expect a bill for the preliminary drawings. Please extend my sympathies to Mrs. Gordon—”
“Excuse me.” Max couldn’t let this mystery go. “What do you mean, I know? I don’t know what you mean when you say you’re superstitious.”
“Well, you were on your way to see me and you couldn’t get here. So I feel there’s a jinx…” The giant’s voice hesitated, flustered by embarrassment.
“You mean I’ve got bad luck and you don’t want to catch it?”
“No, no, no,” the giant said, almost chuckling. He had the false good cheer of a man in a Santa Claus suit. “This project requires a lot of immediate attention. Obviously you’re going to need time to adjust to this tragedy. We’ll work together in the future. Thank you for—”
“Yeah, goodbye,” Max hung up rudely. He hadn’t felt angry until Nutty Nick lied. In fact, he had been grateful to hear his previous, truthful statement of worry that Max was jinxed. Max had survived all these attempted killings; he thought he was lucky to be alive, that he was overflowing with good fortune. That was wrongheaded. Nutty Nick was right. All these events were bad luck. He was dogged by bad luck, by the malicious actions of an evil god.
Was it punishment? The therapists would line up from New York to China to tell him it wasn’t. But they wouldn’t make much of a living informing their patients that they deserved their fates.
Okay, it is punishment, Max decided. What for? What did he do? Abandon his ambitious plans? No, not for that. Everyone had jumped off the ship of ideals. A huge asteroid would be on its way to pulverize the earth if that were a serious crime.
Gladys interrupted. “Max, a Mr. Brillstein is on the phone. He says he’s your lawyer.” She had her hands on her hips again, a scolding posture.
“I’m sorry you don’t approve,” Max said.
“It’s not up to me to approve,” Gladys flung her hands out, tossing the subject away. “Maybe you should close the business. I just think you shouldn’t be making decisions right now. You shouldn’t turn down a job like Nutty Nick, the kind of success you’ve worked so hard for. You’ve wanted a job like that for years. You’ve killed yourself to get it—” She was revved up, pacing in a tight circle, full of passionate feeling and mistaken history.
“Gladys—” Max stopped her, hand up, a smile on his face. “Mr. Lobell called to tell me that, because of the crash, he isn’t hiring us.”
“What?” Gladys asked this of the rug, as if something hideous and unknown had erupted at her feet.
“And, believe me, I wasn’t working hard all these years to figure out the best way to display programmable VCRs next to microwave ovens.”
Gladys ignored his sarcasm, because that’s all it was to her, Max realized. All these years she had thought his most profound statements were the talk of a wise guy. “He’s not giving you the job because of the crash?”
“Well, we’re jinxed. We’re on our way to see him with the prototype drawings and the plane crashes. Who wants to invest millions in a design scheme made up by people with such bad luck?”
“That’s disgusting.” Gladys mumbled this as she shuffled out. She slumped, aging as she walked away. She was beaten. She had encountered a human act that was beyond her comprehension. “What a disgusting man,” she said almost to herself.
Max was amused. He smiled at her exit. “He’s perfectly normal, Gladys,” he called out.
Gladys stopped just beyond the doorway. Her evenly divided black and gray hair, pulled back into a bun, seemed to have turned mostly gray. He was sorry to have teased her. She used to mother Jeff. He would hug her affectionately, complain in a teenager’s whine if she nagged him, and ask her advice (which he never followed) about his children. For a moment, Max thought she was going to cry. “Don’t forget,” she said softly, discouraged, “Mr. Brillstein is on the phone.”