Derailed

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.

The Knicks lost at the buzzer.

Deanna asked me what was wrong, and that’s what I told her — the team lost and I’d been pulling for them.

“Poor baby,” she said.

Which is exactly what Lucinda had said to me that day on the train. Poor baby, as she’d patted me on the arm and whispered something into my ear. Something about me being sexy.

Which maybe I was, back before I’d turned into a clown.

Vasquez wanted ten thousand dollars.

I didn’t have ten thousand dollars just lying around. It wasn’t sitting under the mattress or accruing interest in a bank account, either. What I did have was approximately $150,000 worth of stock certificates sitting in a file cabinet in my office attic. Company stock, handed out to me each and every year thanks to Eliot’s beneficence.

Deanna and I had a name for those stock certificates—a designation that left no doubt as to their purpose. Not our vacation fund, or our retirement fund, or even our rainy day fund. Anna's Fund. That’s what we called it. Anna’s Fund, there for whenever and whatever might come in the future. Call it a hedge against a coming depression.

An operation, for instance.

Or ten operations. Or other things I didn’t necessarily want to contemplate.

Anna’s Fund. Every paper penny of it.

But what else could I do but pay him?

I lay in bed with Deanna, Deanna already starting to doze even though it couldn’t be much past nine. Those twenty-six third graders take a lot out of her—and now this, what would this take out of her? If she knew, that is—if she found it. If I broke down and told her, not breaking my promise to Lucinda, not exactly, not telling the police. Just her.

Then I wouldn’t have to give Vasquez his money, would I? Unless . . .

Unless Vasquez threatened to tell someone else. Unless he said, Fine, your wife knows — great, but Lucinda’s husband — he doesn’t. Lucinda’s husband, whom she’d sworn would never know, no matter what, never know she’d gone to a hotel room with another man to have sex and ended up having more sex than she’d bargained for.

If I can manage it, then you can, Lucinda had said to me.

I owed her that, didn’t I? After letting another man rape her—after sitting there and watching another man rape her? We were in this together.

Besides, I could fantasize all I wanted about telling Deanna, but the truth was, I could no more imagine telling Deanna what I’d been up to than I could imagine telling Anna. I could rehearse the very words; I could imagine the burden being lifted. See? No burden. But it was make-believe — it wasn’t real.

After Deanna was safely asleep, I went upstairs to the attic to rummage through our file cabinet. Under A for Anna’s Fund.

Only to find it, I had to wade through a few other things first, the file cabinet having surrendered over the years to general disorganization and chaos. High school diplomas, college degrees, birth certificates—a record, more or less, of us. The Schines. Milestones, achievements, life-changing events. A tiny pair of footprints courtesy of Anna Elizabeth Schine. A degree from Anna’s kindergarten. And farther back — a marriage certificate. “Charles Schine and Deanna Williams.” Promising to love and honor — a promise I’d callously discarded in a downtown hotel.

There was a surreal quality to taking my stock certificates out of the file cabinet in order to pay off a rapist. There was no manual for this sort of situation, no self-help books promising to make it all better.

On the way out of the den, I passed Anna’s room — a sleeping Anna bathed in moonlight, or was it simply her night-light? She’d begun plugging it into the wall again soon after she’d gotten sick. Because she was suddenly scared to death to be alone in the dark. Because she worried she’d wake up hypoglycemic and wouldn’t be able to find her sugar tablets — or maybe that she wouldn’t wake up at all.

Sleep seemed to relieve her of all her anger and sadness, I thought.

I tiptoed in and leaned over her bed. Her breath brushed against my face like butterfly wings (remembering now how I’d once pinched a monarch’s wings between my thumb and forefinger to show it to a four-year-old Anna before carefully placing it into a cleaned-out jelly jar). I planted a kiss on one cool cheek. She stirred, groaned slightly, turned over.

I went downstairs and slipped the stock certificates into my briefcase.