Derailed

TWENTY-ONE

On Christmas Eve I got drunk.

The problem was my mother-in-law’s special eggnog, the special part being that it was two-thirds rum.

“Come to Daddy,” I said to Anna after I’d finished one and a half of them, but she didn’t seem to like that idea.

“You look dopey,” she said to me.

“Are you drunk, Charles?” Deanna asked me.

“Of course not.”

Mrs. Williams had an upright piano that must’ve been seventy years old. Deanna had taken lessons on it until she’d mutinied at ten years old and said enough. No more “Heart and Soul” and “Für Elise.” Mrs. Williams had never quite forgiven her for that; her punishment was having to bang out Christmas songs on the piano we were all forced to sing to. “Hark the Herald Angels Sing,” for instance. Neither Deanna nor I was particularly religious, but there are no atheists in foxholes. I belted out, “God and sinners reconcile . . .” as though my life depended on it, my syncopation slightly askew, as I was already into my third eggnog.

“You are drunk, Daddy,” Anna said dourly. She liked singing songs with Grandma about as much as she liked giving herself shots.

“Don’t talk to your father like that,” Deanna said, stopping in midchord. Deanna, my defender and protectress.

“I’m not drunk — both of you,” I said. “Want to see me walk a straight line?”

Apparently not.

Instead Anna snorted and said: “Do we have to sing these stupid songs?”

“. . . . in Bethlehem,” I sang, focusing on the Christmas star on top of the tree. It was faded from years of use, no longer sparkling the way it’d been when Anna needed to be held up in my arms during the Christmas sing-alongs to see it. A tarnished star now; you could see that it wasn’t a star at all — just papier-mâché pockmarked with glue.

“Well, that was fun,” Mrs. Williams said when we finished. Then when no one answered her, “Wasn’t it?”

“Yep,” I said. “Let’s sing another.”

“Get bent,” Anna said.

“What does that mean?” I asked.

“It means no, ” Deanna said.

“That’s what I thought it meant,” I said. “Just checking.”

“No more eggnog for you,” Mrs. Williams said.

“But I love your eggnog.”

“I think you love it too much. Who’s going to drive home?”

“I will,” Deanna said.

“When are we going?” Anna asked.

After dinner, we opened Mrs. Williams’s presents. Anna would get hers tomorrow morning: two new CDs, including one by Eminem. Two tops from Banana Republic. And a cell phone. These days if you didn’t have a phone of your own, you were some kind of dweeb. After all, you never knew whom you’d need to call: a girlfriend, a boyfriend, an ambulance.

Mrs. Williams received a lovely new sweater from Saks. She dutifully thanked us all — even me, who of course had no idea what was going to come out of the box.

“I’d like to propose a toast,” I said.

“I took away your eggnog,” Deanna said.

“I know. That’s why I want to propose a toast.”

“Geez, Charles, what’s gotten into you?”

“I know what’s gotten into him,” Mrs. Williams said. “My eggnog.”

“Damn fine eggnog, too,” I complimented her.

“Charles.” Deanna looked mad.

Anna giggled and said: “Oh my, Daddy said ‘damn.’ Call the police.”

“No,” I said. “No police. Not a good idea.”

“Huh?”

“Just kidding.”

Mrs. Williams had put up some coffee. “Coffee, anyone?” she asked.

“I’m sure Charles would love some,” Deanna said. As it happened, I wouldn’t have loved some. It was clearly a plot; they were trying to sober me up.

Meanwhile Anna was whispering to Deanna. Something about getting off her back. “I’m behaving fine,” I heard her say.

I’d sunk into the living room couch and was wondering if I’d be able to get up when the time came to leave.

“How’s your nose, Charles?” Mrs. Williams asked me.

“Still there,” I said, and touched it for her. “See?”

“Oh, Charles . . .”

Mrs. Williams had put on the TV station with the yuletide log. I stared into the flames and started to drift. It felt warm and pleasant. Until I began drifting into dangerous waters and it became unpleasant. That frozen street corner in the city.

The Charles that was all liquored up with the holiday spirit was screaming at me not to think about it.

But I couldn’t help it.

I don’t want a pretzel, I'd started to say. Remember?

I’d wanted something else.

Okay, Charles, why the fuck are you following me?

Winston with his arm casually around my shoulder, although I could feel the strength in it, and what’s more, I thought Winston wanted me to feel that strength.

“I wasn’t following you,” I said. Lying seemed to be my first instinct here — and besides, I wasn’t following Winston as much as procrastinating about following him.

“Yes, you were. Sing Sing gave me eyes in the back of my head, remember?”

“I was just going to ask you to have a beer. Really.”

“Why? You finally figured out the seven players with eleven letters in their last names?”

“I’m still working on that one,” I said, not exactly sure how to proceed.

“So why didn’t you just ask me? If you wanted to have a beer so badly?”

“I saw you walking a block ahead. I was just trying to catch up.”

“Okay,” Winston said. “So let’s have a beer.”

And he smiled.

We went to a place called O’Malley’s, which looked very much like what you would expect a place called O’Malley’s to look like. It had a pool table in the back, a dartboard in the corner, and a TV tuned to an Australian football match. It had two resident drunks, at least I assumed they were more or less regulars, since one of them had his head laid flat on the bar and the bartender wasn’t bothering to wake him. The other one Winston knew, because he said, “Hey, man,” and briefly clapped him on the back when we walked by.

“What’ll you have?” Winston asked after we took our seats at the bar.

“I’m buying,” I said.

“Hey, you did me a favor, remember?” Winston retorted.

Yes, I remembered. Enough to think Winston might do me a favor in return.

“A light beer,” I said.

Winston asked the bartender for two. Then he turned back to me.

“So, everything okay?” he asked. “You looked a little depressed the other day. Is it your kid? Isn’t she sick or something?”

I’d never told Winston about Anna, but word gets around, I suppose.

“No, it’s not that,” I said.

He nodded and watched as the bartender put two beers in front of us.

“I have this problem,” I said, finding a certain comfort in that word. Problems, after all, were manageable things. You had problems and then you figured out a way to solve them.

“Look, if it’s a pang of conscience about that night, forget it. Have you heard about any more computers being stolen? I told you I wouldn’t, and I haven’t.”

“Yes, I know,” I said.

“So what is it?”

Winston took a long sip of beer. I hadn’t touched mine yet — there was an ever-widening pool of water under the glass, making the bar beneath it look dark as blood.

“I did a stupid thing,” I said. “I went a little crazy. With a woman.”

Winston looked just a little confused. I understood—he was probably wondering why someone who wasn’t a friend in the strictest definition of the term was talking to him about other women, about things you talked only to best friends about.

“You had an affair or something?”

“Or something.”

“Okay. So, it’s over, or what?”

“It’s over, yes.”

“So what is it? You’re guilty about it. You wanted to unburden yourself? Fine. Don’t worry about it. Everybody in the office is having an affair. Even with each other. What do you think we talk about down in the mailroom? Who’s screwing who.”

I sighed. “It’s not that.”

“Okay,” Winston repeated. “So what is it?”

“Something happened.”

“What? She’s pregnant?”

“No. We were caught by someone,” I said.

“Huh?”

“In the hotel room.”

“Oh,” Winston said. The wife, he was thinking.

“A man came in and attacked us,” I said.

“What?”

“He jumped us as we were leaving the room. He robbed us and . . . raped her.”

I had Winston’s full attention now. Maybe he was still asking himself exactly why I was telling him all this, but at least he was interested in what I was saying.

“He raped her. In a hotel?”

“Yes.”

“What hotel?”

“Just a hotel. Downtown.”

“Fuck,Charles. What happened? Did he get away? They didn’t catch him?”

No, they didn’t catch him. In order to have to have caught him, they would have had to be told that he’d done something that necessitated his having to be caught.

“We didn’t report it,” I said.

“You didn’t report it.” Winston had fallen into the unfortunate habit of repeating every other thing I said. Probably because every other thing I was saying was a little hard to believe.

“Wecouldn’t report it,” I said, “understand?”

“Oh,” Winston said, finally comprehending the situation. “Yeah. Okay, sure. So he took your money and disappeared?”

“No. He didn't disappear.” I finally took a sip of beer — it tasted flat and warm. “That’s the problem.”

Winston looked confused again.

“He’s blackmailing us,” I said. “I guess that’s what you call it. Asking us for money so he won’t tell Deanna. My wife. And her husband.”

Winston sighed and shook his head. That's some situation you’ve got yourself into, this sigh said. I feel for you.

I wanted Winston to do more than feel for me. I wanted him to act for me. And that would take more than sympathy. It would take a kind of quid pro quo; it would take another kind of blackmail.

“So — did you pay him what he wanted?” Winston asked.

“Yes and no.”

“Well, did you or didn’t you?”

“I did. He wants more now.”

“Uh-huh,” Winston said, taking another sip of beer. “I guess that’s kind of par for the course, isn’t it. Don’t they always want more?”

“I don’t know. It’s the first time I’ve ever been blackmailed.”

Winston almost laughed. Then he caught himself and said: “Sorry, Charles. Really, it’s not funny, I know. It’s just that it’s kind of hard to imagine—I mean, you. In this kind of shit?”

He lifted his glass again and sucked down foam. “So . . . what are you going to do?”

Winston had finally reached the million-dollar question.

“I don’t know,” I said. “There isn’t much I can do. I can’t pay him. I don’t have the money.”

“Uh-huh. So you’re going to let him tell your wife,” he said, adding up all the variables but coming up with the wrong answer. “Sure — fuck him. She loves you, doesn’t she? So you fucked around — who hasn’t? She’ll forgive you.”

“I don’t think so, Winston. I don’t think she will forgive me. I don’t think she could. Not with our daughter and all. . . .”

I explained the rest. How Lucinda refused to let her husband know, either. How I felt I owed her that.

“Shit,” Winston said. Then, after a long moment of silence: “Been a great couple of months for you, Charles, hasn’t it?”

He was referring to losing the credit card account, I guessed — even the mail department must’ve weighed in on that one.

“So,” Winston said softly, “what do you do now?” as if asking himself that question, putting himself in that situation, maybe, and wondering what he'd do. And it’s possible that it was then, that very moment, that he finally understood why I’d asked him here, why I’d followed him four blocks in the freezing cold to get him to have a beer with me. Maybe because he said to himself, If it was me, I’d kick that blackmailer’s ass. I’d kill him. I would. Dismissing that as a reasonable alternative for me, of course, since I wasn’t exactly the violent type. No, you had to have a little muscle to do something like that, you had to have a little experience in these matters, gotten your hands dirty now and then, or at least your fists bloody. Didn’t you?

Winston put his glass down — midswallow he put it down and looked at me.

“What the fuck are you asking me?” he said. He’d finally put two and two together; he’d finally figured it out.

“I was hoping — ”

“You were hoping what? ” Winston cut me off. “What?”

“You’d help me.”

“You were hoping I’d help you.” There he went, echoing me again, but this time not because he couldn’t believe what I was saying, but because he could.

“. . . and the Sydney Black take the ball upfield . . .” The TV was still tuned to the Australian football match, which had evidently reached the do-or-die point of the game, because the crowd was roaring now, on their feet screaming for victory.

“Look,” Winston said, “I like you, Charles. You’re okay. I’m sorry about your daughter, man. I’m sorry about this blackmail thing, I am. But you’re not my brother, okay? You aren’t even my best friend. I have a best friend, and I’d do just about anything for him, but even if he asked me what I think you’re about to—I’d say, Go fuck yourself. Do we understand each other?”

“I just thought maybe you’d . . . see him.”

“Seehim. What the fuck does that mean? And when I see him, what would I be supposed to say to him? Huh? ‘Could you be a nice guy and stop bothering my friend?’ Is that before or after I kick his ass for you?”

Winston was no dope — a 3.7 GPA, and even with a history of drug abuse, his brain cells were still more or less intact.

“I’d pay you,” I said.

“You’d pay me. How nice of you. Great.”

“Ten thousand dollars,” I said, plucking the figure out of the air. I’d paid ten thousand to Vasquez already, hadn’t I—ten thousand seemed about right. Out of Anna’s Fund again, but maybe there’d be a way to replenish it—that I had been giving a little thought to.

“Ten thousand,” Winston said. “Orwhat? ”

“What do you mean?” I said, even though I knew exactly what Winston meant. I’d been trying to leave that part of it unsaid.

“Or what?” Winston repeated. “If I don’t take the ten thousand. And ten thousand is a lot of money for me—I’ll admit it. But if I turn you down anyway. Then what?”

“Look, Winston . . . all I’m asking you — ”

“You’re asking me to commit a felony. I’m just wondering why you thought I’d say yes.”

Then, after I didn’t answer him: “How did he put it to you, Charles? The rapist. The blackmailer.”

“What?”

“When he asked you for money—he said you pay such and such to me. Or else. Isn’t that how he said it? More or less? So that’s what I’m asking you. I’m asking what the or else is.”

“Look, I think you misunderstood — ”

“No, I understand perfectly. You’re not asking me for money—you're offering it — I understand, very generous of you. But if I turn it down, if I say no thanks — then what? What’s my alternative here?”

He wanted me to say it out loud. That’s all.

I caught you stealing. I caught you stealing, and I can tell. Delivering mail is no great shakes, but prison is a lot worse. Right?

I might have offered to buy him a beer like a long-lost friend, but it wasn’t friendship I was banking on.

But I couldn’t bring myself to say the words.

I’d hoped Winston might do it as a favor—I’d let him off the hook once, and now Winston would get me off mine. That ten thousand dollars might do the trick here. But now that Winston was forcing me to issue the actual threat, I found I couldn’t.

And I thought: I'm not Vasquez.

“Ten thousand dollars, huh,” Winston said. He turned back to the football match: “. . . ball kicked upfield, Dover has it in the left corner . . .” He looked over at the sleeping drunk, who’d momentarily roused himself before sticking his head back down on the bar. He tapped his fingers on the edge of his beer glass — tink, tink, tink, like a wind chime caught in a sudden breeze.

And then he turned back to me and said: “Okay.”

Just like that.

“Okay,” he said. “Fine. I’ll do it.”