The Fall Guy

five

Several days passed. The same routines filled them as before. But their regularity no longer had the same agreeably lulling effect on Matthew. When Chloe set off to take pictures or attend one of her classes, it was impossible to avoid the question of whether she was in fact going off to meet the man from the motel, and the thought would leave him jangling with useless emotions. Meanwhile the sight of Charlie working or meditating, or driving off in his tennis gear, formed an image of increasingly irritating innocence. Even his own pleasantly mindless activities were losing their charm, their soothing rhythms broken by gusts of crackling interference from a situation that had nothing to do with the problems he was trying to sort out.

But what was he supposed to do? The feeling that he ought to tell Charlie about the motel remained undiminished despite recurrences of that sense of something false about it, or at least something glossed-over. Yet he was finding it vastly more difficult to tell Charlie than he had foreseen. Whenever he tried, a curious, contradictory impulse would take over. Cornering Charlie in his meditation garden or down in the wine cellar, he would begin by steering the conversation to the closeness and longevity of their friendship, meaning to prepare Charlie for the necessary blow. But within moments another part of his mind would send out torrents of diversionary chatter; meaningless blather about his own life and plans-the food truck idea, or his hope of being able to afford a bigger apartment before long, or any other topic besides the one he’d intended to raise. Charlie would look at him strangely at these moments, and Matthew knew he risked appearing a little crazy, but it was always a relief to come away from him with the secret intact, the blow still undelivered.

Who wants to be the bearer of such tidings? If Charlie believed him he’d be devastated. If he didn’t-and that was obviously a possibility-he would think Matthew was deliberately stirring up trouble. Either way he would almost certainly resent him. And it wasn’t just the summer that stood to be ruined as a result, but their whole, precariously reconstructed friendship, which for all its stresses and imbalances had become as important to Matthew this time around as it had been the first time.

So he prevaricated: told himself he needed more evidence before doing something so potentially destructive; that he’d perhaps misconstrued the episode at the motel; that Chloe and the man might have been transacting some perfectly legitimate business in his room; that even the seemingly undeniable element of deception-claiming she was going to yoga, changing her clothes-had some innocent explanation. He tried to convince himself that even if he found rock solid evidence of an affair, his duty was actually to protect Charlie rather than inflict pain on him. Or else that it was to find some way of quietly bringing the affair to an end: confronting Chloe, dropping a hint or just somehow making her feel he was watching her… All of which seemed to him equally impossible and repugnant.

What he settled on, in the end, was the formula that it was simply none of his business. None of my business, he would tell himself firmly as Chloe left the house, and the agitation started up in his heart. None of my business, as the unruffled contentment of Charlie’s demeanor prompted that sudden sharp urge to shatter it. None of my business… And after a while a fragile calm would descend on him.

One morning he was at the Greenmarket in Aurelia, waiting to pay, when he became aware of a presence at the next register. Before even turning he caught a familiar signal on his antennae. A direct glance confirmed it. There was the beefily built figure, the Vandyke beard, the gray-streaked dark hair falling in wiry clusters on either side of the broad, sharp-tipped chin. The untucked shirt, pink this time, was worn in the same billowing style, over knee-length breeches. It was the man from the motel.

He stared, unable to stop himself.

The man looked solidly in his forties; hale and undimmed, but with no trace of the youthful uncertainty men in their thirties still project. His blocky nose jutted. His eyes were small but lively, glancing around the store with a ready-to-be-entertained look. It didn’t surprise Matthew to hear him comment on what a gorgeous day it was to the sales clerk when his turn at the register came. What did come as a surprise was the accent: it was the self-delighting twang of a Southerner used to being found charming in the North. As his purchases crossed the scanner, Matthew observed them closely, and with growing consternation: bread, milk, coffee, olive oil, eggs, sea salt: not the purchases of someone staying in a motel. A bag of kumquats and some bars of chocolate appeared; still more disconcerting.

“Paper or plastic?” the clerk asked.

“Oh, I think I’ll take the paper, miss. A day like this makes you want to save the planet, dudn’ it?”

He left, carrying the bag against his stomach. Matthew, who was still waiting in line, considered jettisoning his own shopping so as to drive after him, but resisted, not wanting to draw attention to himself.

As it happened the man was walking, not driving. Leaving the store, Matthew saw him at the upper exit of the parking lot. Matthew put his own shopping into the truck, and walked after him, keeping well back. After crossing Tailor Street the man cut through a passageway next to the hardware store into a quiet back alley that led past a communal vegetable garden to the bridge across the Millstream creek. Matthew followed him over the bridge, where he turned left along Veery Road, the street that ran parallel with the creek. It was a residential street of houses in large private yards with tall hedges and fruit trees and rustic split-rail fences. There was no sidewalk. The houses on the left backed onto the high bank of the creek, and it was into the driveway of one of these-a simple whitewashed A-frame with a screened-in porch-that the man now entered. He was lifting the domed black lid off a Weber grill with his free hand as Matthew reached the driveway. The same hand a moment later stuck a key in the front door of the A-frame, opening it. The maroon vintage car Matthew had seen outside the motel was parked in the driveway. It was a Chrysler LeBaron.

Matthew walked on to the end of the road, which eventually curved around to intersect with the county road, and made a left onto Tailor Street. From there he crossed to the Greenmarket parking lot and climbed back into his truck.

So, he was here. Not ten miles away in an East Deerfield motel this time, but right here in Aurelia. Staying here, it appeared; renting or borrowing that A-frame. Buying supplies for himself. Stocking up (the thought sent its own painful reverberation through Matthew) on Chloe’s favorite snack.

All of which implied what, exactly? Was there any difference between a lover who lived far away and had to rent a motel room to visit, and a lover who moved right in under the husband’s nose? No. Infidelity was infidelity.

But as he drove back up the mountain he felt the encroachment of new disturbances. He found himself imagining the progression of feelings between the two lovers that must have taken place in order to bring about this development: tender exchanges about missing each other; increasingly bold proposals for how to be together more often. It seemed to him he could hear, almost as if it were taking place right there in the car, the conversation the lovers must have had, breathless with the thrill of illicit passion: I want to be with you all the time… I want that too… What if I had a place of my own up here…? What if I found you somewhere in the listings…? None of his business, he repeated mechanically to himself, and yet it seemed to him he could feel, on his own senses, the mounting excitement at the new intensities of passion, intimacy, danger, that such a move would bring about. And by the time he got back to the house there was no doubt in his mind that things had taken a serious turn for the worse.

The next day at breakfast, Chloe asked Charlie what he was planning to do that morning.

“I have a conference call. Why?”

“There’s a preview for an estate sale at one of those mansions across the river. I thought you might want to help me pick out some things.”

“Sorry, Chlo. I have the call scheduled. I did tell you about it.”

“Did you? I forgot. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. The preview’s on all week.” She yawned. “I think I’ll go to yoga, in that case.”

She cleared a few things off the table and called goodbye from the kitchen.

“Are you coming right back?” Charlie asked.

“Yes?”

“Grab me a watermelon juice, would you?”

“Sure.”

She left in the Lexus. The sense of something catastrophic arising inside him gripped Matthew. Some explosive force seemed to be coming at him from within. He stood up, staggering a little as he pushed back the chair. Charlie glanced up from his iPad.

“You okay?”

“Yeah. I’m actually going to head off too. Do the shopping before it gets too hot.”

“All right, Matt.”

He drove straight to the Yoga Center, a barnlike wooden building down a cul-de-sac at the back of town. The Lexus wasn’t in the parking lot. He’d predicted it wouldn’t be, and yet its absence genuinely shocked him. He couldn’t quite connect Chloe with the blatantness of her lie.

He drove straight to Veery Road, slowing as he approached the short driveway to the A-frame. The LeBaron was in the driveway, but not the Lexus. But the comfort its absence afforded was short-lived: he found the car less than a hundred yards away, hidden behind a small commercial strip with office buildings and a wine store, where Veery Road intersected with the county road leading out of town. Evidently Chloe had decided it wasn’t safe to park right in her lover’s driveway.

Well, and so what to do? The explosive feeling had passed, leaving a kind of murkily ruminant confusion. In a dim way he’d assumed that the possession of unequivocal knowledge would spur him into some equally unequivocal action. But in fact he felt less clear than ever. The idea of going back to the house and telling Charlie he could catch his wife in flagrante if he hurried down to Veery Road was too grotesque to countenance. But to go back and say nothing seemed just as awful. Telling himself he needed to think, he circled back through town and went down to the creek, leaving the truck in the parking lot by the bridge.

The rocks near the bridge were crowded with the usual idlers and vacationers. Downstream the numbers thinned out. He spotted a promising ledge on the other side of the creek. The fast-flowing water was too wide to jump, and he rolled up the legs of his pants to cross. From the rock, looking downstream, he saw the blue-trimmed white apex of the A-frame, standing out above hedges on the other side. If he walked another fifty yards and climbed up the steep bank, he would be standing in its backyard.

Had he come here in order to do that? He hadn’t been conscious of it, but what other reason would there have been to come? And yet what could possibly be gained by placing himself there?

What do I want? he wondered. What am I looking for? Did he need to see Chloe in the house, with the man, in order to satisfy himself that his appraisal of the situation was correct? Surely that wasn’t necessary. What, then? Baffled by his own actions, he climbed off the rock and walked back upstream.

A group of Rainbows was settling in on a flat reddish slab where the water fell in combs from one level to another. At their center, unmistakable with his Dürer ringlets and the cobble-like muscles of his arms and torso, was Mr 99%. Torssen. The “Prince.” He had a baguette in his hands and was breaking off pieces to share out. He was laughing, his teeth gleaming in the morning sun, and the others were laughing too, their silver- and leather-bangled arms stretched out toward him. Some of them were pretending to plead for their morsel of bread like children, adding further to that sense they always gave off as a group, of staging and performing their own busy merriment for the benefit of others: the Babylonians, presumably, whom of course they affected at the same time not to notice. It was striking, but even more so was the almost-no, it had to be fully-conscious manner in which this charismatic breaker of bread was reproducing in his own gestures those of Christ from a thousand illustrations of the miracle of the Loaves and Fishes. You had to hand it to the guy, Matthew thought; he had a gift for striking a pose. His long, sinewy arms made their motion of breaking and offering the glazed loaf (it looked like one of the over-aerated “French Sticks” that the local bakery, Early to Bread, sold) with an ease and grace that seemed to source the action in some utterly natural impulse of generosity.

Matthew passed on, wondering why he felt so irritated by these harmless people, and so ill-disposed toward the ringleted man in particular.

When he drove back behind the wine store the Lexus was gone. He looked at his watch: an hour had passed since the beginning of Chloe’s “yoga.” She’d be on her way home, he realized; with Charlie’s juice. Watermelon juice! Cynical amusement brought a smile to his lips as he thought of the thin, astringent flavor of this decoction that Charlie was so fond of. It seemed a fitting gift, somehow, from his unfaithful wife.

He was such a funny mixture of weakness and strength, Charlie. Or softness and hardness. He could be ruthless, that was for sure; selfish in the extreme. But there was that hurt, vulnerable side to him too. Whenever Matthew found himself thinking too harshly of him, he would remind himself of this.

He remembered an incident from the evenings he and Charlie had shared when Matthew first came to the States. They’d been in one of the bottle-service clubs on Twenty-seventh Street that Charlie had frequented for a brief period, where he would pay five hundred dollars for a bottle of vodka and, when he was drunk enough, invite women to their table. They’d just sat down, when a silver-haired man had come over to say hello to Charlie. Charlie had seemed guarded, and when the man left, he’d downed his drink in a single gulp, baring his teeth at the burn.

“Have you ever been fucked in the ass?” he’d asked. “Because that’s what that guy did to me.” The incident he’d recounted to Matthew had occurred when Charlie was working as an analyst. The bank had been doing an IPO for a telecom equipment company, and the silver-haired man-a senior manager-had been pressing Charlie to join him on a junket in Las Vegas, where the company was giving a presentation to potential investors. Analysts weren’t supposed to go near these presentations, and Charlie had asked his boss to shield him from the improper pressure coming from the silver-haired guy. But instead of shielding him, the boss had made it clear that Charlie would lose a chunk of his bonus if he didn’t go. It wasn’t the bonus itself that he cared about, Charlie had said, but the year-end review. If that was bad, as it would be if he held out, he’d be finished in the business. So he’d gone to Vegas, accepted the courtesy suite at the Bellagio, the limitless Pol Roger champagne, the hospitality bag stuffed full of Hermès ties and Zegna cuff links, and in return had written a report that smoothed over the company’s liquidity problems and minimized the threats to its long-term market share posed by its rivals, and in short had let himself, as he repeated with morbid self-disgust, be “royally fucked in the ass.”

He’d never mentioned the episode again, and Matthew had forgotten it until now. It must have been the humiliation Charlie was undergoing at the moment, albeit unwittingly this time, that had brought it back.