Amanda
Summers, model of dignity and poise, is sitting erect in her chair with
one leg crossed primly over the other, the accepted public contortion of
choice for wives, and thinking of sex.
Not
with Larry.
It
pops into her head utterly unasked for, just about four minutes into Larry's
speech, which she's been tuned out of for nearly three. The image of sex
appears in her tuned-out brain when she catches a shimmering bead of perspiration
making a break for it, streaking sneakily from Larry's hairline, just above
his left temple. And this runaway drop makes her think of Frank, taking
her from behind, pressing her up hard against their cashmere blue sofa,
sliding her back and forth until her stomach is raw from the rubbing on
the fabric and their shared sweat is making her lose her grip. The image
drips away. Still sitting primly, Amanda squeezes her thighs in a quick
convulsing moment no one notices and snaps out of it.
He's
still talking. Larry can talk for days if necessary. When they argue he
wears her down not with logic or reasoning, but with the sheer effort of
his phlegmaticism. More and more words until she is rubbed raw with his
effort and gives in. She doesn't know what he's talking about right now,
her good, boring Larry, husband of eighteen years, father of their child
Thomas, provider, golfer, vice-president, bond salesman of the year. Instead
of paying attention to what he's saying she focuses on his receding hairline,
still dark on top, sprinkled with gray, his meaty lips, which are red and
full and moist and remind her again of Frank. Her thighs tense again and
she feels a soft wiggle in her stomach.
Frank
has never taken her from any angle, although she has recently begun hoping
he would. Frank and Terri have been their closest married friends since
Larry joined the firm fifteen years ago, and she often has long weekend
shopping trips with Terri, spent picking up gold baubled earrings, fresh
croissants and snappy outfits. Occasionally after they leave the mall and
are back in the car for the ride home Terri will turn to Amanda and withdraw
from her pocket: a watch, a pair of socks, a golf club cleaner, a hand
mirror. No receipt. The only evidence of her illegality (other than the
booty) is a high pink flush on her cheekbones which for a moment turns
her waxy complexion pretty. Terri often has to spend a moment catching
her breath before she starts the engine. It is that expression, and that
breathlessness Amanda imagines she will have the first time Frank assails
her from any angle.
It
started four days ago, after a shared dinner. Frank came up behind Amanda
in the kitchen and poured his half-empty water glass in the sink while
she was reaching on a high shelf for the spare sugar, and without a word
he reached up and brought down the Domino box, his arm sliding up against
hers, his body fitting to her shape. He set the box down and they glanced
at each other, no sound, nothing but the refrigerator humming and their
spouses in the dining room discussing mutual funds, and he stuck his finger
into the sugar, pulled it out, and offered it to her. Amanda's stomach
moved, her chest contracted and she took his finger in her mouth, removing
the sugar in one electric movement. Frank ran his thumb over her sugar-flecked
lips, then headed back into the dining room.
She
can't recall the last time Larry did something erotic. Or rather, after
a moment and another glance at those meaty lips, she can: He reached over
her shoulder at the movie theater during that Jeff Bridges movie two months
ago and squeezed her right breast, just once. She was overcome with a fit
of dry heaves and raced to the bathroom. Larry never mentioned it again.
Larry's
audience laughs. He has said something witty, or at least something the
gathered crowd of one-hundred and seventeen fellow traders and shareholders
and their significant others in this nondescript hotel conference room
have decided they should consider witty, and Amanda raises a gloved hand
to her mouth. Three rows over Frank turns his head and their eyes meet.
He touches his lips.
She
has never cheated on Larry. Since they had Thomas thirteen years ago, sex
has been a meddlesome relative who drops in unexpectedly at the least appropriate
times. It never had even been a matter of desire waning after years of
satisfaction; one minute it was there, and the next it was gone. Amanda
hardly misses it. Less muss, less fuss. No need to worry if the cleaning
lady will find the condom in the sheets, half-full. Amanda bade the intruder
farewell long ago, and mopped up the bread crumbs to prevent a return home.
And right now, in the middle this conference room, if Amanda really had
her druthers, she would like to stand up and make a little speech of her
own, about the beneficial aspects of adultery, Domino sugar, and the little
pockmark scar Frank has on his left cheek. A thing she never noticed until
his finger was probing her mouth.
The
laughter fades. Larry mops his forehead with a napkin embossed with the
hotel's logo and continues.
Amanda squeezes a little tighter and in a moment, she is gone again.
Terri
squeezes her husband's hand gently and for a moment he almost feels sorry
for her. Frank presses hers back and adds a reassuring circular motion
with his thumb on her knuckles. Basically, she's been a good kid all along,
and he isn't certain about leaving her in the lurch like this. Then again,
she's also known exactly how to be a colossal cunt when she wants to be.
Her money. Her house. Her decisions.
Frank
smiles softly, almost dewily at his wife, adding a slight tilt of his head.
The tough bond trader he married twenty years ago after a long series of
negotiations and discussions and prenups flutters her eyes as if she is
still in high school, then sheds the frippery and turns back to Larry.
God, what a boring speaker Larry is. As if he's trying to lull everyone
into sleep so he can personally as well as figuratively pick their pockets.
Frank puts on his game face and watches Larry expound.
Yeah,
it'll be a real shame, leaving Terri like that. But she always had all
the money anyway. She'll get along. She'll find others just like her. Frank's
positive of that.
Amanda
has been Larry's idea.
"If
she's bored she's a liability," Larry said over cigars at the club one
afternoon.
"Think
she'll catch on?" Frank wondered back at him, and slid his stogie from
one side of the mouth to the other without touching it with his fingers.
He had few talents, but a deft and manipulative tongue was one of them.
Terri, in all of her quirkiness, had long appreciated that fact about him.
"I
don't want to find out," said Larry, eyes bright, alert. He'd always been
hard to put anything over on. Always planning, always suspicious, was Larry.
Classic Type A. Frank wondered if he memorized the punchlines of every
joke ever written just so as to never be caught off guard. It was possible.
"You take care of her."
"I'll
take care of her," Frank echoed. "How much should I take care of her?"
"Well,
for Christ sakes don't fuck her," said Larry. "Just get her bothered."
"Jealous?"
Frank winked.
Larry
chewed on his cigar.
He
hasn't minded it too much, not really. All these years with Terri have
made Frank an expert at what women like, and he's kept that information
in a special drawer in his mind. Amanda's not the cheerleader she was back
in high school (Larry's shown him old pictures of her doing splits and
jumps and pyramids) but she's still got a pretty high rack on her and nice
skin. Plus, as he recently observed on the night they went sugar-dipping,
she doesn't wear perfume. That leaves just her own smell, her natural self,
and after twenty years of Terri's cloying Chanel No. 5, he finds the absence
of scent arousing. It makes doing what he's been doing with Amanda, these
suggestive maneuvers and playing around, that much easier.
Twenty
years is a long time for anything. Particularly sham marriages. These days,
Frank knows marriages of convenience are archaic and on their way to the
place the dinosaurs retired to – in the real world, no one gives a shit
who sleeps with who any more – but by the time Terri and Frank woke up
and smelled that particular change in the weather, they realized they'd
buried their sham so deep it was too much effort to go make new lives with
total strangers. She knew about his need to keep his shoes lined up, he
knew what brand of toothpaste she preferred. It happened. Normalcy happened,
even if it didn't happen with the right person. Wait around long enough,
and the moment not only passes, but the perversion becomes status quo.
It was a kind of love. Why upset that apple cart?
Except,
that was what Frank and Larry were about to do.
Frank
thinks about the letter he left in the 19th floor room for Terri that morning,
an envelope of hotel stationery with a few words of farewell and his cut
up credit cards. Where he is going in four more hours, Frank knows he won't
need them. Larry has promised to take care of everything. When Terri departed
the hotel room this morning to meet Amanda and Larry for breakfast, Frank
found an excuse to delay himself and brought his bags down to the concierge,
then left her his Dear Terri note. Twenty years, so long and thanks for
all the laughs. I'm getting out. I'm coming out.
The
song runs through his head. Donna Summer, she did know about these things.
He
wonders if Terri will throw out all of his shoes after she goes home alone.
He wonders if he should have made that kind of dramatic gesture on her
behalf, so she will have some understanding of what went on under her nose.
Frank knows Larry is leaving Amanda no such warning, and he thinks that
is a pretty foul thing to do. In just a few more hours he will be gone,
out of the country, down to the Islands with their relaxed banking laws,
for ever and anon, and Frank will be with him. Amanda will have no idea.
Their sullen teenaged kid who they shut up in the boarding school up North
will have no idea. But before Frank and Larry can make their getaway, Larry
has to finish the goddamn acceptance speech first.
A
smile creeps across Frank's broad face and Terri and Amanda slip from his
mind. They are gone, and only the bond salesman of the year remains.
Whit
Burgess's face is a frozen mask of deepest concentration, projecting for
all that he is worth that Larry Summers's speech is nothing short of a
prosaic miracle, that if their bond salesman of the year wanted to talk
all afternoon and into the evening, a filibustering glut of loquacious
crap, why then Whit Burgess would be here to lap it all up.
Behind
his mask of delight, Whit, short for Whitney E. Burgess, III is picturing
the various methods of slow death which might be inflicted on their bond
salesman of the year. His favorite, the one he has returned to over and
over in the last 18 hours, since he got the phone call, involves tying
each arm and each leg of the sorry piece of crap to a separate horse, then
whacking each of the beasts on the hindquarters until they took off like
it was the Kentucky Derby. He imagines just how much force it might take
to literally rip the flesh from the body, to yank bone from cartilage.
Last night while Whit mulled these options he insisted the cook make up
a roast chicken, and during his solitary meal sat there tearing at the
wings, joint by joint with precise care, savoring every motion, imagining
them to be the joints of Larry Summers, bond salesman of the year for Burgess,
Raucher and Gardner.
The
accounts, the call warned 18 hours ago, were hollow. Larry was selling
the figurative apples he didn't have at prices he couldn't possibly match,
and didn't Burgess, Raucher and Gardner learn anything from that African
crook uptown ten years ago who nearly made off with all that cash?
Whit
came away from the call with a light head and a chest that couldn't seem
to suck enough air in. It took forty seconds of digging for the inhaler
in his desk which he almost never needed these days to restore his breathing
to something resembling normal, and then he began checking. Manually. No
secretaries. No assistant. Whit stayed until four yesterday morning with
only a break for his chicken dinner determining that somehow, in some way,
Larry Summers had just about fucked the respectability out of an institution
Whitney The First started seventy-eight years ago. There was, all told,
just about twenty-six million dollars absent. Possibly more. Whit fell
asleep on his desk and was awakened by the phone at six; he showered in
the bathroom attached to his office, dressed and hurried to the hotel across
town for their annual shareholder meeting and awards program.
By
9:15 am he was standing at the podium, aching in every joint, wanting just
a toot of the stuff he used to love so much, just one, for old time's sake,
and holding up his water glass. "And now, to a man who truly needs no introduction
– so I won't give him one – Larry Summers, our bond salesman of the year!"
And through his sleep-deprived daze suddenly there stood Larry with his
big heavy red face and his fat-mouthed smirk and slicked-back hair rising
to the occasion, squeezing Whit's hand in a way that was yet another fuck
you, and Larry was at the podium for his speech. Whit stepped back and
let him talk.
Whit
has no intention of ruining the shareholders meeting with this. Shareholders
don't like when twenty-six million dollars disappears. They tend to get
riled up, which is why Whit has told no one on the inside what he knows.
There is business to be taken care of, and if he is careful there may be
a way to salvage the company. Before he left this morning, Whit placed
a phone call to a family man he has long been friendly with downtown, and
he knows that just outside those conference room doors a barrage of specially-arranged
security will be waiting. Not police. Not yet. They're for later. The gentlemen
Whit has summoned have no need to read a Miranda warning before asking
their questions. They will escort Larry away, and he will be dealt with.
What's left afterwards will go to Central Booking.
His
stomach rumbles. Whit's new fantasy: The Cornish game hen he fully intends
to have for lunch. So many small bones, so many ways to rend. Larry Summers
is dead meat.
The
words have come out in a torrent; he isn't even adhering to his planned,
careful speech of a thousand words. No, Larry has seized his moment of
glory and run for the goalposts with it. "As the great economist Keynes
once noted...." comes out of his mouth and he wonders what the hell he's
really telling these people. He hears himself say things he has never even
filtered through his brain before, just on and on with thought after unchecked
thought and he suddenly has a terrible fear: What if, in his waking stream-of-consciousness
lapse he manages to suddenly announce that he has bilked the firm of over
a twenty-six million dollars, and that is why he is the bond salesman of
the year?
He
pauses just a moment and scans the faces. Still eager, most of them. No
accusations. Amanda has a soft adoring empty look on her face; Frank's
smile widens into Cheshire cat land, and even geek boss Whit has an expression
on his puss that seems to indicate Larry has ascended from above. They
love him. They all really love him so much they have no idea how to even
express it.
Larry
resumes: "And so, I wish to leave you with these parting ideas..." Oh,
yes, he feels it now, it is all coming to a close, enough with the run-ons
because in just a few minutes he will be free, he will have accomplished
everything he set out to do two years ago when it became clear that this
was it, this was as good as it was going to get: He was going to retire
in the job he'd held most of his adult life, retire and fade into the sunset
and eventually die, leaving everything to the most pathetic lap dog of
a wife in the world, Amanda and the mind-bendingly stupidest son who ever
existed, Tommy, both of whom would take his fortune and do exactly what
he has done with this speech: Go for the touchdown.
But
it is so goddamn awfully hot in this room; the floodlights have been beating
down on him for nearly twenty minutes now and his collar feels stiff and
his arms are tired from leaning on the podium. He licks his lips and smiles
at the crowd, who are so with him and for him and paying all of their attention
to him he is Godlike in these moments. They all wish they could be as superhuman
as Larry Summers, the man who doubled the record for most bonds sold in
a year, the man who set the bar higher for every schmoe who comes after
him. The man who will be in the Caymans by dinnertime and who could give
a shit if any of them ever get their pensions.
He
has only one worry: Yesterday afternoon. The rendezvous was meant to be
a quick tension-reliever, and he let himself into Frank and Terri's apartment
with the key Frank had given him months earlier. No one was supposed to
be home, and as expected, the apartment stood empty. Frank was usually
late for these things. Larry slipped into the master bedroom toilet to
get changed, and when he heard the front door open again he crept out wearing
only his Calvin Klein boxers and socks. Seconds before he jumped out into
the living room to surprise holy hell out of Frank, he paused. There was
still some killer instinct left in him, and that told him: Wait.
He
waited. There was a shuffling of papers. Drawers open. And Terri's voice,
muttering to herself. Terri. Bad news. She picked up the phone, and placed
a call. Larry dove back into the bathroom and pulled on his clothes, then
waited in the shower stall until the door closed and locked again. Terri,
gone. Frank, still late. Unnerved, Larry went back to the office.
She'd
always been a sneak, that Terri. Going through Frank's things like that.
Coming home in the middle of the day to be a goddamn nosy carpet munching
bitch. He hoped she found what she was looking for. Spoiled his afternoon.
Couldn't trust her. Good fucking deal she'd be left in the cold. Just a
few more hours to go.
Larry
mops his forehead again. It is getting hotter. Even hard to breathe. Time
to get out. While the getting's good, as his old cowboy heroes would say.
Mosey on outta here. Head for the last roundup. "And on that note," he
pauses for dramatic effect but the pause lasts a moment too long, because
his throat closes up on him. He forces it to open. "I leave you. My most
humble thanks and good wishes for all of us in the coming bull market!"
Behind
him, Whit, good sap that he is, jumps to his feet with applause. The remainder
of the room gets the message and slowly rises, like a herd of sheep, their
modest clapping turning into a real corker of thundering applause. Larry
smiles over his shoulder at Whit. He has done it. They're all fucked, and
he's in the clear. Whit reaches forward and claps Larry on the shoulder
– kind of hard, which knocks the smile from his face for a second. The
clapping continues, it seems to go on for an eternity. Larry begins to
think he can hear the applause in his chest, pounding harder, harder, crescendoing
impossibly. It is as if all of the love in the room, all of Frank's love,
and Amanda's love and Whit's love and the crowd's love -- and even stupid
Thomas's cynical teenage boy love has reached an overflow point, to where
Larry can no longer contain it all. They love him so much.
The
roar reaches Larry's ears. And in a last moment of clarity, suddenly he
knows he's never going to see the Cayman Islands.
"And
now," says Whit in his cheery, clipped New England accent, hand still clasped
firm on Larry's shoulder, "let's all raise our glasses. A toast to Larry
Summers, bond salesman of the year."
"Here
here," the crowd gestures.
Larry's
heart explodes.
It
feels like coming.
And
then, it feels like nothing.
