Richard was a self-made millionaire. His family was among the few that hadn’t left for the Main Line when the urbanites turned sub. His architect father never really kept a good job, and the family had mostly come up on his mother’s income as a corner-shop psychic. Richard had decided that the way out of the lower-middle-class morass was by way of politics. And swinging from far-right to far-left and settling in the middle, he had made his way into city hall as an advisor, and from there to Plutus, where we had met. After a few years there, he had gone off to practice law with a corporate firm that he had pulled out of bankruptcy. Last we’d talked, he was going to buy out a smaller firm in New York. They represented private plaintiffs defrauded by the big investment banks.
“So, buddy, what a fucking emergency this is. I was taking a nice happy stroll in cleavage canyon, and now here I am.” He put his hat down and brushed snowflakes from its brim.
“What’s her name?” I asked, trying to seem casual.
“I’m not too good with names,” he said. “Especially not strippers.”
“With the amount you’ve given away to strippers you could’ve gotten married to a very high-maintenance princess.”
“I’m too much of a redistributionist,” he said.
“Perfect excuse for promiscuity.”
The bit of banter lifted none of the darkness from the meeting.
“So they let you go,” he doubled back. “Tell me what happened.”
There was a silence. I felt reluctant at having elevated my anxiety and panic to such a degree that I had dragged him away from his brief moment of fun and pleasure. I could see that he had come in carrying a good deal of strain on his face. I should have thought more before calling. He had always said that I was his scion at Plutus. He was probably going to take this whole thing in a personal way.
I started by describing the face-off in the office and what George Gabriel said about being an advocate. Then I provided the backstory, which, really, was just the party at my house, and the three days in the office before that.
“That’s it?” Richard tapped the table. “This guy doesn’t talk to you for a week. Comes to your party. Then, the next workday, he’s all, Go home, see you, don’t let the door hit you?”
“That sums it up.”
Richard grew quiet. Underneath the uncouth vulgarity, Richard’s mind was a beehive of syllogism. I could see the processes shooting off in his eyes. He muttered like he was counting the Omer. I was always soothed when he did that, especially when he did it in front of me. It made me feel that I was protected by some ancient brotherhood going back to that firebrand who had risen against the pharaoh. It was the pluck and passion accumulated and strengthened over thousands of years of persecution. It was a cache that I didn’t have access to, because I came from a people who had been defeated and never recovered and had nothing to give to those of us who had started a new life in the West. I folded my arms and waited.
“What’s the guy’s name? The one they brought in.”
“George Gabriel.”
Richard lost his grip on his cup. One of the children sitting near us let out a yelp and laughed. The spilled latte slid toward the edge of the table. I made a dam with a napkin. The children liked what I had done and clapped. A smile appeared on my face. Neither child looked anything like me. That made the smile turn hollow.
“George Gabriel?”
“Yeah,” I said. “You know him?”
“I do. German guy. Married to a journalist at Der Spiegel. She lives and travels through all those — stan countries, exposing corruption, agitating for more openness. I know his wife a little better, but they are really very similar.”
“In what way?”
“That whole generation of Germans,” he said. “They feel like since they confronted the question of Hitler and accepted responsibility for it, they can now judge the rest of the world. They see fascism everywhere, though never in themselves.”
“What was all that dormant, latent, mysterious stuff? If anything I was doormat, not dormant.”
Richard added a second napkin to the dam. “Hard to say.” He paused as the waitress came over to give us extra napkins. She was a young brown-skinned girl with pink Mohawk hair. Behind her apron she had on tattered fishnet stockings and short shorts. “I need to hear more.”
“There’s nothing more. I have been in the guy’s company only twice and the second time was to let me go.”
“At your house. Was Marie-Anne there? Did she, you know, rub him the wrong way?”
“She doesn’t rub, you know that.”
“Maybe he expected a little rubbing?”
I knew Marie-Anne well enough to know that she never gave off invitational signals. Even when I wanted her to be flirtatious she limited herself to friendliness. Ever since the illness there had been a drop-off there as well. “I don’t think so.”
We were interrupted by the Rach 3 ringtone of my phone. It was a number I didn’t recognize. Thinking that perhaps it was someone administrative from Plutus, I excused myself and ducked into an alcove containing a yet-to-be-announced exhibition. The paintings seemed to be of no painter I had ever seen before. The cityscapes looked European, but I couldn’t place which city it was. Even my knowledge of art history was disappointing today.
It was Candace. There was North Indian classical music in her background.
“Are you home?” she asked. “I’m coming to your house.”
“No, I’m not,” I said. “But why? I mean, why are you coming?”
“I remembered something else he said,” she told me breathlessly. “When will you be home? I’m in a cab. I’m almost there.”
“George Gabriel? I’m at the art museum. Across from my house. Come to the back of it. I’m there with a friend. Come over, come right now.”
Richard and I stepped outside to wait for Candace and bummed cigarettes off a couple of college kids cowering behind a pillar. Upon seeing Richard’s watch they demanded that we pay them for the cigarettes. Richard negotiated a two-for-one deal and congratulated them for being attentive to the ways of the world. “Fuck capitalism,” one of the kids replied.
Candace emerged from the cab in the same peacoat from earlier and a red Siberian bucket hat with two small fur pompoms. Her delicate face was framed nicely by the hat and made her appear like a revolutionary intellectual. She tugged at her red gloves and waved as she paid.
“I hired Candace a couple years ago,” I told Richard by way of explanation. “She says she has something to share.”
“Cute girl,” Richard said in a whisper before she got close to us. “But no rack.”
“She isn’t an offering.”
I brought Candace over by the elbow and the three of us headed back to the café. We occupied the same table as before. The only difference was that Richard switched seats with me so he could stare at the waitress.
“So what do you bring?” Richard turned to Candace before she even placed an order for coffee.
Candace looked at me for confirmation.
“You can talk to him,” I said. “He’s like my lawyer.”
“And former head of Plutus,” he added.
She seemed relieved to hear that. “Well, like I said, Friday night at the party I was really drunk, and so was he, so take all of this with a grain of salt. But George was obsessed with the bookshelf. There was this one term he kept using. I had forgotten all about it till after I left you at the elevator earlier today. I sat down in my cube and opened my phone and saw this word I had saved in my notes. It’s where I write down all the words whose meanings I have to look up.”