The Heights Part 19

Back in the Heights, heading toward home, I felt a perceptible s.h.i.+ft in my thoughts. Already Anna Brody was less present in everything-in the black patches of unmelted snow, in the gray winter sky, and in the ash-smudged foreheads of the paris.h.i.+oners filing out of St. Charles Borromeo on Sidney Place. With each exhalation of my cold, steamy breath, I felt her leaving me, so that by the time I hit Oak Lane, I felt like a new and improved version of my old self. I was Tim Welch again.

And thus began a period of unprecedented productivity.

Day and night I worked, fueled by Coca-Cola and loud music that I blasted through headphones plugged into Kate's portable CD/tape player. Incidentally, any music with lyrics distracted me, so I began each night with Pachelbel's Canon in D cranked at full volume-then later, Bach, Vivaldi, Beethoven. Under these influences, I slashed my work, moved entire sections, edited with abandon.

Like old Thomas Edison, I didn't sleep much. I took brief naps, sometimes lying down under my worktable. I didn't shave. I showered at odd times. I began to look like a savage. I didn't recognize myself. I didn't go to the gym as planned, so I didn't do the sit-ups and the push-ups and the pull-ups and the full-body crunches. There was no time, which may explain why I began to speak more quickly, my words and phrases clipped. I stood a bit straighter. Still, I loved the simplicity of my life. During those hours the boys were in preschool, I worked. When they bathed, I edited. When they watched a video or the Cartoon Network, I revised. And after an all-nighter, my eyes raw from no sleep, my caffeinated body shaking from all the c.o.kes, I'd stop in time to make breakfast for Kate and the boys-pancakes or oatmeal, turkey bacon, apple slices, cantaloupe cubes-an early-morning feast. Then I'd hurry them out the door, do the dishes, and get back at it.

My goal? Just finish the f.u.c.king thing.

KATE.

UNDERSTAND THAT I WAS THE LEAST DRUNK OF THE VERY DRUNK, BUT ONLY BECAUSE I arrived late. Had Debbie Beebe stayed, she would've had clearer, more reliable memories of what has since become the most notorious of those evenings that we call Girls' Night Out. But since Debbie had given birth to twin girls a few months earlier-in fact, this was her first night away from them-she was eager to get back home, which conveniently happened to be just upstairs. The Beebes lived on the top three floors of a two-family brownstone co-op they shared with Claudia and Dan Valentine.

When I got there, Debbie was preparing to leave. I asked, "Why so soon?" She shook her head and indicated her chest, where her breast milk had leaked through her blouse. "I guess it's a sign I better go," she said. "Too bad," I said. "Truthfully," she told me as she slipped on her coat, "I may be getting out just at the right time." It was an odd thing for her to say, considering she'd spent the afternoon making margaritas for the rest of us.

I arrived late for the same reason I'd missed in recent weeks Debbie's baby shower, Claudia's birthday brunch, and book club (Jane Eyre) at Rebecca's house: work. Long days reviewing grant proposals and seeking out ideal grant recipients.

It had been a hard week. I was still rattled from my lunch with Anna Brody. When Friday finally arrived, I was late leaving the office, tired, and definitely not in a party mood. I went to Claudia's because-and this is my only complaint about her-if you miss one of her events, she takes it hard. She pouts. She punishes you in small ways. And Claudia had been particularly insistent this time, swearing, "You'll be glad you did." "Why?" "There's someone coming you need to meet." "Who?" "A writer friend. You'll see." "Whom does your friend write for?" "I don't know. Cosmo, probably."

Needless to say, by the time I made it to Claudia's, I was ready for a drink.

The girls were in the back part of the garden floor, which was the Valentines' family room. I could hear them laughing loudly. Someone was smoking pot, which was rare in our circle. Debbie's margarita mix was on the dining room table, and I poured myself one, sat down, and drank it fast, wanting a good buzz to come quickly. I carried my second margarita down the hall, stopping to admire the way Claudia had framed the school pictures of her boys, noticing how Otto's (age nine) permanent teeth had overwhelmed his baby teeth, how his mouth was in transition. I thought of Teddy and how soon this would be happening to him.

I was met in the hallway by Rebecca, who was hurrying to the bathroom. "Hey, Tess's sister is here. She's a writer."

"Ah, the writer. Claudia told me . . ."

"Yeah, well, we were telling her all about you."

"Really."

"She writes puff pieces, mostly for The Wall Street Journal."

"I didn't know the Journal did puff pieces."

"Well, it's their own particular kind of puff. Aren't they great?" Rebecca indicated the margarita pitcher. "I've had three!"

Clearly.

"Anyway, we've been telling Lacey all about you, your work, all that you're doing." Shamelessly, Rebecca lowered her jeans and sat on the toilet. I pulled the door closed. She kept talking. "I'm so proud of you! So many people talk about making a difference, but you're making a difference!"

"Oh, I don't know." But I smiled because it was true.

A woman hooted in the back room. Other women cheered.

"What's going on back there?" I said.

"How many have you had?" Rebecca called out from the bathroom.

"Margaritas? I'm working on my second."

"You may want to finish it before you go back there. That would be my advice."

The door to the back room swung open, and Claudia poked her head out. "Rebecca, get your b.u.t.t in here! Oh, Kate, just in time. I want you to meet Lacey. She's a wr-"

"Rebecca was just saying."

"But first, hurry, you two. Intermission is almost over."

In the back room of the Valentine duplex, a state-of-the-art home entertainment system had been installed to project movie-theater-equivalent images on a large flat screen. Speakers hung in all four corners gave the viewer a Dolby-surround-sound feel.

Dan the Bear was a movie buff. He loved John Ford westerns, Frank Capra's Mr. Smith Goes to Was.h.i.+ngton, and Billy Wilder's Some Like It Hot, and he had a particular pa.s.sion for the disaster films from the seventies, Poseidon Adventure, The Towering Inferno, and Earthquake.

What the girls were watching that night probably was not what Dan the Bear had in mind. Bend Over Boyfriend had been more instructional. I knew this because Claudia had drunkenly shouted it in my ear. "It was more educational. We learned about the anatomy. How much lubricant!"

She said lubricant in such a way that it was as if she'd been waiting her whole life to say the word. In fact, she kept saying lubricant or lube or the verb form, lubricate, as she got me up to speed.

"This s.e.x therapist and her not-too-shabby husband have made this video series where women f.u.c.k their men. We already watched the first one. It was all about the mechanics, the anatomy of the a.s.shole, some terrific foreplay techniques." Claudia inserted the evening's second DVD. Then she continued, like an announcer at a sporting event, "These are real people. Real husbands and wives. Real girlfriends and boy-friends. This isn't p.o.r.n for p.o.r.n's sake. It's educational. It's instructive." She held up the laminated case. "Unlike most sequels, Bend Over Boyfriend Two is better than the original." She read the blurb on the back of the box: " 'More Rockin', Less Talkin'.'"

Lacey, the Wall Street Journal reporter, cozied up next to me with a joint in her hand. "What you're doing sounds incredible."

"Yes, I think it is-I mean, it could be. We're a young foundation."

"Tell me about it."

We shared the joint as I described my work with Bruno, his illness, and the ticking clock. And Cortez. She said she knew of Cortez (who didn't?), but she hadn't heard anything about the Lucy Foundation. It so happened that she'd begun work on a long-lead piece about the New Philanthropy. She had interviewed Bill and Melinda Gates and George Soros, among others, but had been looking for a smaller foundation as a point of contrast. She seemed to think the Lucy Foundation might be what she'd been looking for.

Maybe it was the pot, maybe it was the margaritas kicking in (or the mixture of both), and maybe it was an effort to avoid what was up on the home movie screen, but I felt an almost giddy sense of hope. Here was a reporter-young, eager-who wanted to make a mark, and she wanted to make a mark with me.

We agreed to exchange numbers, but during our mutual search for pen and paper, we were distracted by what was up on the big screen.

Claudia: "Now watch how much she uses, because apparently, you want to lubricate his a.s.shole real good . . ."

"Can we watch something else?" someone said, laughing.

The man reached back to help spread open his b.u.t.t cheeks.

"Look how bad he wants it!"

The room grew eerily quiet as the blond wife slowly worked the head of the d.i.l.d.o into the man. When the woman gave a sudden thrust, only Claudia cheered.

Lacey to me: "You were saying."

"Oh, I don't know, something about the future."

Later, as we were leaving, Lacey asked for my card. She said she'd be calling me Monday morning. "And Katie?"

I liked that she called me Katie.

"I know you think I'm drunk, but actually, I think very clearly when there's more booze in me than blood. And what I'm saying is, I'm going to write about you and your foundation."

"It's not my foundation," I protested.

"Yes, but you know what I mean!"

I was happy when I got home. Tim was still up, back from his boys' night out, sitting at the kitchen table working, or at least pretending to. He asked how it had gone. I started to drunkenly tell him about my day, and I was fully intending to compliment Debbie's margarita mix and even render in detail the p.o.r.no movie experience when he interrupted with a simple "TMI."

TMI was an acronym he'd picked up from his students. Too much information. "Oh, right, so I don't have to tell you everything?"

"I'm actually asking that tonight you don't."

"Okay, then. The upshot? The Wall Street Journal is going to write about my work. Can you believe it?"

"That is terrific," he said, genuinely excited.

I started a shower to wash the smoke out of my hair. But before I shut the bathroom door, I called out to Tim: "So how was your boys' night out?"

Tim shrugged and mumbled something.

"What did you all talk about?" I asked.

He looked at me as if to say, You don't want to know.

I smiled back at him and said, "Oh, right-TMI."

TIM.

I DIDN'T WANT TO GO. KATE MADE ME. SHE WAS GOING OUT WITH THE GIRLS AND HAD a sitter, so I reluctantly met up with the Weasel and his men-d.i.c.k Beebe, Dan Valentine, Tom Manker-who were having their monthly meal together at Peter Luger in Williamsburg. I sat on the end with another man who was (thankfully) also a newcomer. Initially, the talk was small, although my ears did p.r.i.c.k up when Dan the Bear made pa.s.sing mention of a risky investment that had gone sour. It had been a hard day for Dan. He'd lost a bundle. I asked him if Claudia knew.

"Yes," he said glumly. "But she's not as upset as I am."

Easter was two weeks away, and if Dan's investments didn't rebound, Claudia was going to strap one on and have her way with him. I didn't let Dan know that I knew. But clearly, he was dreading the day.

All in all, I found the evening interesting, from an anthropological point of view. A night out with a bunch of steak-eating men, sans wives and kids. What might these meat eaters discuss? Their good fortune. Tom Manker, who worked for Brown, Harris and Stevens, bragged that while the nationwide housing bubble had recently burst, the Heights seemed immune to falling prices. For fun, I referenced past speculation-driven debacles: Tulipomania, the Panic of 1837, the junk-bond high jinks of the 1980s, and, for good measure, I tossed a sub-prime smoke bomb into the conversation. "No," Tom said. "This is not that. House prices in the Heights are only going up, up, up!" d.i.c.k Beebe snorted in agreement. The Weasel kept saying, "Yawn. Yawn." Meaning, I suppose, he wanted to talk about something else. When our slabs of steak arrived, the Weasel got his chance: "So, who's hot?"

I managed an "Excuse me?"

"Who would we like to bang?"

Before I could change the subject, someone offered up that all of our wives were hotties. "Especially Tim's wife," someone said. Agreed. Fortunately, for the purposes of the discussion, all of our wives were off-limits. But other wives, nannies, and babysitters were up for grabs.

The beer flowed. I soon concluded the steaks all must have come from the same angry cow, because the men got ornery. They kept punching one another in the shoulder to emphasize a point. It was like a junior high locker room. At any moment, one of the guys might have started snapping the rest of us with a cloth napkin.

Out of respect for the fine women of the Heights, I'll refrain from sharing the names of the most desired. But it was a curious mix of the older/highbrow and the younger/funky. As the conversation went on, I found it odd that a certain someone had not been mentioned. Offhandedly, I brought up in my best oh-by-the-way tone, "What about Philip Ashworth's wife?"

The Weasel turned toward me, bared his beaver teeth, and said, "Don't kid yourself, Welch. She's completely out of your league."

Loud, manly laughs. Another round of beers.

The other newcomer-an una.s.suming man on all counts-had said nothing up to this point. With his pale skin, tortoisesh.e.l.l eyegla.s.ses, and an ill-fitting dark blue sport coat, he looked like the kind of man who'd played too much chess as a kid.

The Weasel asked if the Newcomer had anything he'd like to add.

"Why, yes. I'm reminded of a guy I know."

I was grateful this man was speaking. It took the pressure off me.

"For our purposes, let's call him the Happily Married Man."

The other men turned and listened in.

"The Happily Married Man doesn't like to travel, because he hates to be away from his wife and kids. This man loves his wife the way one should love one's wife. But he has to make a living. So he goes on a business trip to a major American city. He and an a.s.sociate are going out for dinner, as they've just closed a major deal. The Happily Married Man will be going home in the morning. He's feeling great. He's taken care of business. He's in the shower, lathering up his body with soap, shampooing his hair, when his cell phone rings. He steps out of the shower, answers the phone, and his business a.s.sociate says, 'Don't leave your room. I'm sending over a gift.'

"The man finishes showering. He slips on the nice terry-cloth robe the hotel provides. At eight on the dot, a knock comes on his door. He opens the door, and the most beautiful woman he has ever seen is standing in the doorway. She is a knockout. Perfect skin, exquisite b.r.e.a.s.t.s, a tattoo of thorns around her ankle. She asks if he'd like her to come in."

All of us stopped midchew while the Newcomer took a sip of seltzer.

The Weasel couldn't stand it: "Keep going."

Newcomer: "Well, the Happily Married Man invites her in and proceeds to have unbelievable, astonis.h.i.+ng, best-ever s.e.x with this woman. They do it in the bed, in the shower, on the cold tiles of the bathroom floor, in every position imaginable. He comes so many times, he loses count. He comes so much, he wonders if there's any come left inside him."

The gist of the story is that the man catches his flight, gets home to his wife, makes mad, pa.s.sionate love to her, and remains to this day a Happily Married Man. He's never told his wife, feels no remorse, has absolutely no desire to cheat again, and to top it off, he's certain the whole experience made him an even better husband.

Genius.

When the Newcomer finished his story, all of the men spoke up at the same time. "Bulls.h.i.+t!" "Didn't happen." "Too good to be true."

Pause, then the Newcomer: "Oh, it happened."

Dan the Bear: "How do you know?"

The Newcomer said nothing but smiled smugly.

The Weasel: "Oh my G.o.d. You are that guy?"

Me: "It's not our business."

"I'm not saying anything."

But clearly, he was that guy.

"I'm neither confirming nor denying!"

Me, practically shouting: "Waitress, check, please!"

Here's what I learned that drunken night: The only difference between me and those other men was that I had an opportunity with Anna Brody that they'd never have, a once-in-a-lifetime chance most of them would never pa.s.s up, except for maybe the Newcomer. But he'd already had an Anna Brody moment of his own. Most important, I learned that not only was it possible to pull off the Weekend, it very likely could make me a better, more loving husband and also improve things at home. My upcoming Weekend with Anna Brody was the kind of sacrifice I was willing to make.

I was drunk enough that I almost had myself convinced.