Behold the Dreamers(65)

Indeed, Jende could see in Cindy’s new joy, days after Thanksgiving, that the security of family was her greatest source of happiness. Thanks to this rediscovered bliss, hers was no longer a marriage limping from day to day but one skipping and kicking up its heels and waltzing from evening to evening to Johann Strauss’s “Voices of Spring.”

On the day of the Waldorf Astoria gala, she and Clark entered the car beaming, the happiest Jende had ever seen them, apart or together, in over a year of working for them. Maybe the notebook entries had blown her fears away, Jende thought, assured her that her husband was a good man. Or perhaps the family reunion had reminded her of everything worth fighting for. Or perhaps it was due to something else that had happened between her and her husband, something Jende had no way of knowing. Whatever it was, it was more than sufficient to turn them into young lovers, whispering and giggling on the ride to the gala: she, lustrous in a red strapless trumpet gown; he, youthful and suave in a perfect-fitting tuxedo. They reentered the car five hours later in even greater merriment, laughing about things that had transpired on the dance floor.

“I never thought the day would come when I would see Mr. and Mrs. Edwards happy like that,” Jende said to Neni when he got home after midnight.

“Were they kissing and doing all kinds of things in the backseat?” Neni asked as she placed his dinner on the table.

“No, God forbid. I would have had an accident in one minute if I’d seen that. They were only leaning against each other and speaking into each other’s ears and she was laughing very loud at everything he was saying. He was playing with her hair … Anyway, I didn’t want to look too much, but the whole thing was really shocking me.”

“I wonder what happened. You think maybe she put a few drops of love potion in his food? The really strong one that makes a man fall for you and treat you like a queen?”

“Ah, Neni!” Jende said, laughing. “American women do not use love potions.”

“That’s what you think?” Neni said, laughing, too. “They use it, oh. They call it lingerie.”





Thirty-three


IT WOULD BE NOTHING BUT A BLIP IN A LONG PERIOD OF ENNUI, A BRIEF reprieve from the agony of putrid unions. Two days after the gala at the Waldorf Astoria, a story would appear in a daily tabloid, and the butterfly their marriage was turning into would morph back into a caterpillar.

It was a story that, in ordinary times, would have been dismissed as rubbish. Because, really, no one with a true sense of the world could be na?ve enough to think such things didn’t happen. If there had been no collective desire to find the presumed architects of the financial crisis despicable, few would have cared to read the story. Its regurgitation in newspapers of record and blogs of repute would have been another reminder why the American society as a whole could never call itself highbrow, why the easy availability of stories on the private lives of others was turning adults, who would otherwise be enriching their minds with worthwhile knowledge, into juveniles who needed the satisfaction of knowing that others were more pathetic than them.

But the story, though it first appeared in an ignoble tabloid, was not dismissed. Rather, it was talked about in barbershops and on playground benches, forwarded to neighbors and classmates. It was a time of anguish in New York City, and those who put the story on the front page knew where they wanted the rage of the downtrodden to flow.

“Did you see it?” Leah said to Jende after he had seen her missed call and called her back during his lunch break.

“See what?” Jende asked.

“The story from the prostitute. It’s juicy!”

“Juicy?”

“Poor Clark! I really hope he’s not—”

“I don’t know what you are talking about, Leah.”

“Oh, honey, you obviously haven’t read it,” Leah said excitedly. “Well, you won’t believe it, but this woman, this escort—I hate when they use such fancy words for prostitutes—anyway, she claims she has a lot of clients from Barclays, and, listen to this, her clients are paying for her service with bailout money!”

“Bailout money?”

“Bailout money! Can you believe it?”

Jende shook his head but didn’t reply. The bailout thing was in the news every day, but he still didn’t understand if it was a good thing or a bad thing.

“And you want to hear the crazy part?” Leah went on, her voice getting pitchier in excitement. “One of the executives she mentions as her frequent clients is Clark!”

“No,” Jende immediately said. “It’s not true.”

“She says it right here.”

“It’s not true.”

“How do you know it’s not true?”

“She wrote his name down?”

“No, she only mentions them by title, and I know Clark’s title.”

Jende chuckled to himself. “Ah, Leah,” he said. “You should not believe everything you read in the newspaper. People write all kinds of things—”

“Oh, I believe this one, honey. I know those men, what they do … No one’s going to make me think this is impossible—”

“There is no way it can be true—Mr. Edwards would never use bailout money for his own things. And even if the other men at Barclays use this prostitute, how does she know which pocket the money came out of? Mr. Edwards has his own money. He would never touch government money.”