The Executor Part 10

But why, I wanted to ask, do you care whether he's interested in you? Why, when you have me? "I understand," I said.

Her point made, she sat back, far older than I had ever seen her. "Ach. This has been going on for years. I am merely unaccustomed to a third party bearing witness."

"He has no right to upset you."

"He does all the same."

"He doesn't have to."

She smiled. "No? You would murder him for me, then?"

"I can keep him outside the next time he shows up."

"That is good of you, but I am afraid I couldn't accept. Though the burden be terrible, I bear it freely."

Her weariness didn't seem to square with the laughter I'd heard from the other room. I knew as well as anyone, though, that love makes hypocrites of us all.

In the next room, the maid began to vacuum.

"Let us talk of happier things." Alma reached into her sweater pocket and took out a check. "For you."

"You paid me yesterday."

"Yes. This is for your birthday, which I believe is almost upon us."

If I'd mentioned my birthday to her, I'd done so months ago; for her to have borne it in mind so long moved me. I was about to thank her when I looked down at the check and saw that it was for five hundred dollars.

"Ms. Spielmann, please."

"Please yourself, Mr. Geist."

"I can't accept this."

"Rubbish. You must find yourself a decent pair of shoes. A scholar cannot go around in rags."

I did need new shoes, but not five hundred dollars' worth. Think of all the books that would buy, I pointed out.

"There are other things a man should have, Mr. Geist. You've plenty of books. Now, my tea, please. Let us attempt to restore order to the universe."

12.

Despite Alma's blandishments, I still felt as though I had been relegated to second best in her eyes; added to the news about Father Fred, and the blow Yasmina had dealt me, it made for a triple whammy of disillusionment and rejection. Asking Drew to recruit people for a birthday party was, I suppose, a rather desperate attempt to reconst.i.tute my ego. Considering the short notice, he did an impressive job, managing to fill two booths of a local cantina with an a.s.sortment of friends I had neither seen nor spoken to since moving in with Alma: colleagues from the department, other graduate students, a couple of lawyers, a couple of consultants. Wisely, he had gone with an all-male cast. n.o.body asked how I was feeling. All they asked was if I wanted another Corona. Yes, I did.

Someone asked what happened when you turned thirty-one.

"It's the first year of your thirties."

"Thirty is the first year of your thirties."

"No, thirty is the last year of your twenties. It's like Y2K."

A large chunk of the evening was devoted to resolving this question. I didn't have to talk very much, for which I was grateful. Because I kept quiet, I don't think anybody noticed how drunk I was until they made their excuses (work, wives, weeknight) and came over for a handshake and found themselves reeled in for a bear hug. Whoa, there. You all right? Yes, I was. In fact, I was ready for another.

By eleven-thirty only Drew remained.

"Yasmina's engaged," I said.

He raised his eyebrows. "Wowie."

I drained my beer. "Indeed."

Outside he flagged a taxi.

"You know what," I said. "You go on. I'm going to take a walk."

He knew better than to argue. He wished me happy birthday and left.

I staggered off across the Common, stumbling through the springtime mud and humming to myself, a dismal melody whose source I couldn't quite place. I hummed it again and then it came to me, Daciana, it was hers, some Gypsy song, one she liked to wake me up with, it put me in the mood for pierogi and suicide. Here's to you, comrade. Along Ma.s.s Ave, sodium lamps glowing orange gumdrops. The air smelled bleachy. Raw, excitable, I lurched, belching, toward Porter Square, ultimate destination unknown. I could keep going all the way to Davis Square. Why was every place around here a Square? City planner with a quadrilateral fetish. But they weren't square, these Squares. Harvard Square was a triangle. Porter Square a trapezoid. Inman Square an intersection. I pa.s.sed the building where I'd lived with Dorothy, Kelly, and Jessica, and I waved at their floor. I hoped they'd found a new roommate, a fourth to complete the square, what would her name be? Alison. Or-no. Myung. Her name would be Myung and she would be mmmpre-law, she'd be the loudest of all, her screams audible over a two-mile radius.

Outside a bar called the Thorn, a throng of people stood smoking. I was working my way through them when I felt a hand on my shoulder.

"Hey."

I swiveled around loosely.

"Hey," said the man again. His smile leaked smoke.

It was Eric.

Had I been in any other state, I would have kept walking, mortified to be caught out alone by him. As things stood, though, my mood was somewhat more expansive.

"Good evening," I said, bowing deeply at the waist.

With him were two women, Boston Irish, blond and heavyset, their fingernails painted the same hair-raising purple. The only discernible difference between them was that one had a navel piercing and the other did not.

"Joe, right?"

I was embarra.s.sed by how gratified I felt to learn that he knew my name-gratified enough not to correct him. His acknowledgment ought to've meant nothing to me. Yet it did. "Indeed. And you're Eric. And you lovely ladies are."

"Lindsay." "Debbie."

I hadn't caught which name went with which girl, so in my mind they became Navel and Non-Navel. I bowed to both. "It is an honor and a privilege," I said.

They laughed throatily. One of them offered me a smoke. I declined.

"I must guard my health," I said. "It's my birthday."

"Cool," Non-Navel said. "Happy birthday."

I bowed again.

"Calls for a shot," Eric said. He took Navel by the arm and they went inside. I looked at Non-Navel, who smiled and pulled me after them.

We cleared s.p.a.ce in a corner, and Eric sent the girls for drinks. They seemed happy to do so, returning with a tray of overflowing gla.s.ses.

"Tequiiiila," Navel said. She had a thick Boston accent.

Everyone salted and drank and bit. Then Eric told them to get beer chasers.

While they were gone, I asked if Navel was his girlfriend.

"Naw, I just met them."

"Then why do they keep buying us drinks?" At my sloppiest, I could still find the hole in a situation's logic.

He shrugged, then winked. The similarity to Alma was so striking that I almost yelped.

I can recall s.n.a.t.c.hes of what followed. There were drinks and more drinks. Jokes I knew I should not find funny but that made me sputter with delight. Then everyone got around to comparing tattoos. Non-Navel had a dolphin on her ankle. Navel turned around and lifted up her s.h.i.+rt to show a "tribal" design across the small of her back. Eric had an AK-47 on one shoulder and a weirdly old-fas.h.i.+oned staghead on the other, as though he'd had the tattoo artist copy opposing pages out of Field & Stream. Field & Stream. When I said that I didn't have a tattoo, the focus then became which tattoo I would get when (not if) I got one. Navel lobbied in favor of barbed wire around the biceps. Non-Navel seemed to think I was more of a Chinese character kind of guy. When I said that I didn't have a tattoo, the focus then became which tattoo I would get when (not if) I got one. Navel lobbied in favor of barbed wire around the biceps. Non-Navel seemed to think I was more of a Chinese character kind of guy.

"I'd get Nietzsche," I yelled over the music.

They looked confused.

I explained that he was a nineteenth-century German philosopher. They still looked confused, so I added that I, too, was a philosopher.

"Oooh," Non-Navel said. "Say somethin deep."

Later I tried to explain the Sorites Paradox to her.

"That don't make no sense," she yelled.

She had come to be sitting in my lap.

"That's why it's a paradox," I yelled. The flow of blood to my lower extremities was being severely restricted.

"What the f.u.c.k are you talking about?" yelled Navel.

"Sand," yelled Non-Navel.

"What f.u.c.kin sand?"

"It's a metaphor," I yelled.

Charisma is a mysterious and powerful thing. I have it in limited supply, and that which I do have functions under highly specialized conditions. A certain cla.s.s of smart, strong-willed woman finds me endearing. In general, though, I'm not the type of person who wins people over in bars. Whatever Eric had working against him-that beard, for starters-he had a far more potent weapon coursing through his bloodstream, one unavailable to mere mortals like me. I've already mentioned that he was handsome in a predatory sort of way. When we'd first met he had been so sullen and uninterested in me that I had failed to credit him with anything more than a genetic hold on Alma. Under the influence of booze and despair, however, I now saw that I had been wrong: he was in fact preternaturally charming, oozing s.e.xuality, and knowing instinctively what women wanted to hear and when they needed to hear it. It's hard for me to remember exactly what he said, but in truth the words themselves are unimportant; in seduction, as in all forms of marketing, form supersedes content. I do remember struggling to formulate questions that would reveal something of his character to me. I wanted to know who this person was, this confidence man who had the potential to replace me. What molten substance bubbled at his core? But he had a way of making me feel awkward when I asked a question he didn't want to answer. He would pretend not to have heard me; he would invariably be looking in the other direction, nuzzling Navel, whispering in her ear, making her giggle. I watched her finger skip across the hollow of his chest and up to his cheek, then down to hook under the droopy neck of his T-s.h.i.+rt. I watched as the finger traced around the collar to the nape of his neck, dancing then down his back, coming to rest near the top of his b.u.t.tocks, where the elastic of his underwear rose over his waistband. He did not react to this advance: he expected it and did not seem the slightest bit surprised. Non-Navel was watching them, too. She may have been in my arms, but it was his power keeping her there. Drunk as I was, I could tell from the way they responded to him, their bodies open and inclined, that he had both girls bridled. In this way, they looked familiar to me. They looked the way women used to look when they talked to my father.

I WOKE with my face squunched. Warm, stale air washed over my naked back. Itchy-eyed, cotton-mouthed, I lay there running my fingers over the surface below me, which I tentatively identified as an unsheeted futon.

I heard snorting, felt s.h.i.+fting, became aware of a body next to me. Rising up on my elbows turned a simple headache into pure evil, so I eased myself back down, lying motionless until the world stopped crackling. Then I slid out of bed and began hunting for my clothes. This was a real challenge, as the room was dark and covered in heaps of dirty laundry, and I kept having to pause to let nausea pa.s.s.

I'd collected both shoes, one sock, and my still-b.u.t.toned s.h.i.+rt when from the next room came a shout.

"Mothaf.u.c.ka."

Startled, I dropped my s.h.i.+rt.

The body in the bed stirred, sat up. It was Non-Navel. "Hey," she said.

"Son of a b.i.t.c.h. " "

"Jesus," said Non-Navel. She rubbed her nose, watching as I excavated around her b.u.t.terfly chair. "What are you doing?"

"Mothaf.u.c.ka."

"Simma down," yelled Non-Navel. She told me to come back to bed.

I mumbled about needing to find my pants.

Outside, more ranting.

"Hey," yelled Non-Navel. "People are sleeping, y'inconsiderate cu-"

The door burst open. I, pantsless, dove for cover. Navel had no such qualms. In she marched, wearing nothing but a T-s.h.i.+rt, her makeup smeared into war paint. She planted herself in the middle of the room-arms akimbo, thighs aquiver-and bellowed: "Youbastidwhethaf.u.c.ksmys.h.i.+t."

I seized a crusty dishtowel, tried gamely to cover myself with it.

"Get the h.e.l.l outta my room," yelled Non-Navel.

"Bastid." Navel was striding toward me. "Whez my s.h.i.+t?" She wrapped her beefy arms around me and swung me toward the floor, my superior size mooted by hangover and the element of surprise. Down I went, noting as I did another tattoo she'd failed to mention, a cackling shamrock and the words ERIN-GO-f.u.c.k-YASELF inscribed on the inside of her left leg. I looked up to see her rearing back to strike me-and then Non-Navel came flying into the frame, tackling her, and the two of them went rolling across the room, caterwauling and yanking each other's hair.

"He took my s.h.i.+t! He took my s.h.i.+t!"

"You crazy b.i.t.c.h, shut the f.u.c.k up."

"My s.h.i.+t!"

Briefly, I watched, transfixed. Then I came to, grabbed what I had, and ran.

The kitchen was littered with gla.s.ses and overflowing ashtrays. My pants were splayed across the back of a folding chair. I had the presence of mind to check for my wallet and keys before stepping sockless into my loafers.