Derailed

TWENTY-SIX

On the train in the morning, I did not read the sports page first. Did not read about the Giants’ last lamentable defeat, about the Yankees signing yet another platinum-priced free agent, about the Knicks’ eternal search for a point guard.

For one day, at least, my Hebraic reading of the daily newspaper (that is, back to front) was put aside, and I read the paper like a concerned citizen. Concerned about the festering situation in the Middle East, the ongoing congressional gridlock, the roller-coaster tendencies of the Nasdaq. And, of course, the recent upswing in urban crime. Murder, for instance.

I had listened to the 1010 on your dial morning news flash in the shower and been pleased to hear nothing of the sort. Someone was murdered all right — someone was always getting murdered in New York City. But this someone was female, twenty-one, and French. Or Italian. A tourist, anyway.

The Times “Metro” section yielded no male victims. Likewise the local Long Island paper. Of course, even if someone had been discovered, it would’ve been too late to make it to print.

But these were modern times. The first thing I did when I arrived at the office, after saying hello to my secretary, was to get on the Net.

I searched the on-line editions of two newspapers. There was nothing about a male murder victim in New York City.

Good.

I spent the rest of the morning trying not to think about Winston’s body. Trying not to think about the hundred thousand dollars of Anna’s Fund that was no longer Anna’s. About how I was giving up — finally and futilely giving up.

It was easier said than done — at lunchtime I made another visit to David Lerner Brokerage on 48th Street.

It helped that I had to go to an editing house to look over the nearly finished aspirin commercial with David Frankel. He had the editor play it several times for me. It wasn’t the best testimonial commercial ever done. It wasn’t the worst, either. I took particular notice of the music bed, which sounded like something borrowed from a stock music house—or thrown out by one. It probably was stock, of course — something purchased for three thousand dollars, then billed at forty-five.

David, the D of T&D Music House, seemed much more personable today. As though I were a true partner in this endeavor now. Maybe because we were partners now. Partners in bilking the agency and client out of their dubiously earned cash.

“Trust me,” David said after the editor — Chuck Willis, his name was — had played the spot another three or four times, “the client will love it.”

And I thought how on the accounts I used to work on, it didn’t matter if the client was going to love it. That was always secondary to whether or not we loved it. But it was hard to love a spot where a housewife basically read the product’s attributes off an aspirin bottle.

Still, I had to look it over and act like I cared. Like it was worth looking over and making helpful hints about, suggestions for improvement.

I pointed out places where I thought the film could be trimmed. I asked them to look for a better voice-over. I would’ve mentioned doing something about that saccharine music bed, but then someone might’ve discovered we’d illegally made over forty thousand dollars off of it.

When I got back to the office around two, someone I’d never seen before was placing my mail onto Darlene’s desk. Of course — my new mailroom guy.

I asked him where Winston was. I would’ve been expected to ask him that.

The man smiled and shrugged. “He didna come in,” having trouble pronouncing each word correctly. I wondered if this was one of the disadvantaged people Winston had told me about.

“Oh,” I said, acting surprised. “I see.”

Darlene smiled at the new mail deliverer and said: “You’re better looking than him, anyway." Than Winston.

The man blushed and said: “Tank you. . . .”

I watched him walk away with a sickening feeling. Life goes on, people say when someone dies, it goes on. And there was the proof right in front of me. Winston had been gone just one day, and his replacement was making the rounds already. It both belittled and magnified what had transpired last night — it did both. It made me sick.

Later that afternoon, I held a creative briefing.

Just the thing to get my mind somewhere else, I hoped. The meeting took place at three-thirty in a conference room dutifully reserved by Mary Widger.

My band of unhappy creatives dutifully listened to me—with pads and pencils, too, no less, managing to look halfway interested in what I was saying. They were unhappy because it was another assignment for their new account—a combination cold and headache pill—instead of an assignment for their old account, which might’ve meant a commercial worth doing and putting on their reels. And they were also unhappy because I was more or less reading verbatim from a strategy statement prepared by Mary Widger. Strategy statements much like Foucault’s theorem — obtuse, complex, and understood by no one. In my bygone halcyon days, I’d simply ignored them; we’d write the commercial, fall all over ourselves laughing, and write the strategy statement from that.

Not anymore; now I read words like target audience, like comfort level and saturation, without once turning red. A dutiful drone doing what drones do — droning on interminably, or until the said strategy was read down to the last period.

I went back to my office and closed the door. I called Deanna.

“Hello,” I said. I wasn’t sure why I was calling her, but I remembered the days when I used to call her daily from work, and more than once, too.

When we’d stopped talking to each other, really talking, when we’d started talking about inconsequential things only — I’d stopped calling her three times a day. And there were days I didn’t call her at all, entire twelve-hour periods when not a single word passed between us.

And now there were so many things I couldn’t talk to her about, too — things I was ashamed of, things I could barely bear to think of.

But I called her anyway.

“Hello yourself,” Deanna said. “Everything okay?”

“Yes, fine.”

“You sure, Charles?”

I wouldn’t realize till later that Deanna wasn’t merely making small talk here. That she knew things weren’t okay with me — not the details, but enough.

But I didn’t take advantage of the opportunity — not yet. I couldn’t.

“Yes, everything’s fine, Deanna,” I said. “I just wanted to say . . . hi. I just wanted to see how you’re doing today. That’s all.”

“I’m doing okay, Charles. I am. I’m worrying about you, though.”

“Me? I’m fine. Really.”

“Charles . . . ?”

“Yes?”

“I don’t want you to think . . . well . . .”

“Yes?”

“I don’t want you to think you can't talk to me.” There was something heartbreaking about that statement, I thought. Talking—surely the easiest thing two people can do with each other. Unless they can’t. And then it’s the hardest thing two people can do with each other. The most impossible thing on earth.

“I . . . really, Deanna. There’s nothing. I was just going to say hi. To say . . . I love you. That’s all.”

Silence from the other end of the line. “I love you, too.”

“Deanna, do you remember . . . ?”

“Remember what?”

“When I played the magician at Anna’s party? I bought those tricks from the magic store. Remember?”

“Yes. I remember.”

“I was good, too. The kids loved it.”

“Yes. Me too.”

“When I turned over the hat, remember? And they thought they were going to get soaked with milk. Confetti came out. Oohs and aahs.” I’d been thinking about that for some reason today, maybe because I was searching for another kind of magic now.

“Yes, David Copperfield has nothing on you.”

“Except a few million dollars.”

“But who’s counting.”

“Not me.”

“Thinking of changing careers?”

“I don’t know. It’s never too late, is it?”

“Yeah. Probably.”

“That’s what I thought.”

“Charles?”

“Yes?”

“I meant what I said. About talking to me. Okay?”

“Sure.”

“Be home normal time?”

“Yes. Normal time.”

“See you then.”

When I hung up the phone, I thought it might actually be possible to make everything turn out okay. Not everything, but the important things. I knew what the important things were, too — they were staring at me from the ten-by-twelve picture frame on my desk.

But that’s when everything began to go wrong.