Charles was, I believe, flummoxed — both by the substance of my inquiry and the fact that I’d chosen to pursue it with him. Many years previously, my father-in-law had been the Rolls-Royce-driving financial director of a British conglomerate that had collapsed in notorious circumstances. He had never entirely resurfaced from his consequent bankruptcy and, in the old-fashioned belief that he’d shot his bolt, he lurked about the house with a penitent, slightly mortified smile on his face. All financial and domestic powers now belonged to his wife, who, as the beneficiary of various trusts and inheritances, was charged with supporting the family, and there came into being, as the girl Rachel grew up, an axis of womanly power in the house from whose pull the sole male was excluded. From our earliest acquaintance Charles would raise a politely inquiring man-to-man eyebrow to suggest slipping off for a quiet pint, as he called it, in the local pub. He was, and remains, an immaculately dressed and most likable pipe-smoking Englishman.
“I’m not sure I can be much use to you,” he said. “One simply got on with it and hoped for the best. We weren’t building bunkers in the garden or running for the hills, if that’s what you mean.” Understanding that I needed him to say more, he added, “I actually believed in deterrence, so I suppose that helped. This lot are a different kettle of fish. One simply doesn’t know what they’re thinking.” I could hear him tapping his pipe importantly. “They’re likely to take some encouragement from what happened, don’t you think?”
In short, there was no denying the possibility that another New York calamity lay ahead and that London was probably safer. Rachel was right; or, at least, she had reason on her side, which, for the purposes of our moot — this being the structure of most arguments with Rachel — was decisive. Her mythic sense of me was that I was, as she would point out with an air of having discovered the funniest thing in the world, a rationalist. She found the quality attractive in me: my cut-and-dried Dutch manner, my conversational use of the word “ergo.” “Ergonomics,” she once answered a third party who’d asked what I did for a living.
In fact, I was an equities analyst for M—, a merchant bank with an enormous brokerage operation. The analyst business, at the time of our displacement to the hotel, had started to lose some of its sheen, certainly as the source of exaggerated status for some of its practitioners; and soon afterward, in fact, our line of work became mildly infamous. Anyone familiar with the financial news of the last few years, or indeed the front page of the New York Post, may remember the scandals that exposed certain practices of stock tipping, and I imagine the names Jack B. Grubman and Henry Blodget still ring bells in the minds of a number of so-called ordinary investors. I wasn’t personally involved in these controversies. Blodget and Grubman worked in telecommunications and technology; I analyzed large-cap oil and gas stocks, and nobody outside the business knew who I was. Inside the business, I had the beginnings of a reputation as a guru: on the Friday of the week Rachel declared her intent to leave for London, Institutional Investor ranked me number four in my sector — a huge six spots up from the year before. To mark this accolade, I was taken to a bar in Midtown by some people from the office: my secretary, who left after one drink; a couple of energy analysts named Appleby and Rivera; and a few sales guys. My colleagues were both pleased and displeased with my achievement. On the one hand it was a feather in the bank’s hat, which vicariously sat on their heads; on the other hand the feather was ultimately lodged in my hatband — and the supply of feathers, and the monetary rewards that went with them, were not infinite. “I hate drinking this shit,” Rivera told me as he emptied into his glass the fifth bottle of champagne I’d bought, “but seeing as you’ll be getting most of my year-end fucking bonus, it gives me satisfaction on a wealth-redistribution basis.”
“You’re a socialist, Rivera,” Appleby said, ordering another bottle with a tilt of thumb to mouth. “That explains a lot.”
“Hey Rivera, how’s the e-mail?”
Rivera was involved in an obscure battle to keep his office e-mail address unchanged. Appleby said, “He’s right to stand his ground. Goddamn it, he’s a brand. Have you registered yourself down at the trademarks bureau yet, Rivera?”
“Register this,” Rivera said, giving him the finger.
“Hey, Behar says he’s going to tell the funniest joke he ever heard.”
“Tell the joke, Behar.”
“I said I’m not going to tell it,” Behar said slyly. “It’s offensive.”
There was laughter. “You can describe the joke to us without telling it,” Appleby counseled Behar.
“It’s the nigger-cock joke,” Behar said. “It’s hard to describe.”
“Just describe it, bitch.”
“So the queen’s on Password,” Behar said. “And the password is ‘nigger-cock.’”
“Somebody tell Hans about Password.”
“Somebody tell Hans about nigger-cock.”
“So the queen says”—here Behar went into a twittering English-woman’s voice—“‘Is it edible?’”
Rivera said, “Jesus, Hans, what’s going on?”
Panicking, I had suddenly lurched to my feet. I said, “I’ve got to go. You guys keep going.” I gave Rivera my credit card.
He said, stepping away from the others, “You sure you’re OK? You’re looking…”
“I’m fine. Have fun.”
I was sweating when I arrived back at the hotel. After a tormenting wait for the single working elevator, I hastened to our front door. Inside the apartment, all was quiet. I went directly to Jake’s room. He was askew in a mess of sheets. I sat down on the edge of his IKEA child’s bed and righted his body and covered him up. I was a little drunk; I couldn’t resist brushing my lips against his flushed cheeks. How hot his two-year-old skin was! How lovely his eyelids!
I went to my bedroom in a new state of excitement. A lamp burned by the bed, in which Rachel, prone, motionlessly faced the window. I circled the bed and saw that her eyes were open. Rachel, I said quietly, it’s very simple: I’m coming with you. Still in my coat, I knelt beside her. We’ll all go, I said. I’ll collect my bonus and then we’ll head off together, as a family. London would be just fine. Anywhere would be fine. Tuscany, Tehran, it doesn’t matter. OK? Let’s do it. Let’s have an adventure. Let’s live.
I was proud of myself as I gave this speech. I felt I had conquered my tendencies.
She didn’t move. Then she said quietly, “Hans, this isn’t a question of geography. You can’t geographize this.”
“What ‘this’?” I said masterfully, taking her hand. “What’s this ‘this’? There is no ‘this.’ There’s just us. Our family. To hell with everything else.”
Her fingers were cool and limp. “Oh, Hans,” Rachel said. Her face wrinkled and she cried briefly. Then she wiped her nose and neatly swung her legs out of bed and went quickly to the bathroom: she is a helplessly brisk woman. I removed my coat and sat down on the floor, my back resting against the wall. I listened intently: she was splashing running water over her face and brushing her teeth. She returned and sat in the corner armchair, clutching her legs to her chest. She had a speech of her own to give. She spoke as one trained in making legal submissions, in short sentences made up of exact words. One by one, for what must have been several minutes, her words came bravely puffing out into the hotel room, conveying the history and the truth of our marriage. There had been much ill feeling between us these last months, but now I felt great sympathy for her. What I was thinking about, as she embraced herself ten feet away and delivered her monologue, was the time she’d taken a running jump into my arms. She had dashed forward and leaped with limbs splayed. I nearly fell over. Almost a foot shorter than me, she clambered up my body with ferociously prehensile knees and ankles and found a seat on my shoulders. “Hey,” I said, protesting. “Transport me,” she commanded. I obeyed. I wobbled down the stairs and carried her the length of Portobello Road.