Ghosts of Manhattan: A Novel(67)

Still staring at William, I wonder what will be his happiest day. He’s made it clear it won’t be his wedding. For the birth of a son, I imagine he will spend the hours of his wife’s labor with friends in a bar around the corner from the hospital and be very drunk when the baby arrives. His happiest day will not be connected to anything external to himself. It will be the day he consumed the most. The day he gets a ten-million-dollar bonus or a twenty-four-hour stretch in Las Vegas when he wins at the craps table, covers the spread on the Super Bowl, takes a few hits of ecstasy, snorts a gram of blow, and has sex with five strippers who are all sisters.

I know I can feel more than this. I can feel good and bad on an order higher than what is only primal, away from a virus eating through flesh.

I look away from William as though I’m coming out of a trance, trying to decipher the images that have just come to me and not conscious of how long I’ve been under.

On William’s desk is the Jenny McCarthy Playboy centerfold spread over his computer keyboard. “William. We actually have a few women working here.”

He seems to acknowledge but draw no conclusions.

“Why don’t you put that in a drawer before someone has to fire you.”

“Sure, Nick. Sorry.”

I want to sit up from my desk as though I sense it causing an allergic reaction, constricting the air passageways in my throat and making my breathing weak and shallow. I feel like I’m cracking up. I need a vacation from this place. The days away have shown only that I need many more.

“Hey, Nick.”

“Yeah, Ron?” He’s gotten out of his chair and walked over next to me and is speaking in a quiet tone.

“Can I ask you something?” I can never get over the irony of this question.

“Sure.”

“Do you think that it can be the same person for both love and sex or that the two things are different enough that it would have to be two different people and that to make it one person necessitates a compromise?”

I give Ron a look that I hope says I want no part of this conversation, but I make the mistake of not actually cutting him off. He somehow interprets it as curiosity.

“See, what I mean is, with love there’s this trust and intimacy. That’s all great but it’s kind of safe and it’s not the person you lose control over and want to tear her clothes off. With the best sex there’s total abandon and maybe some risk and doubt and then physical heights. It can be aggressive and conquering and not so safe and trusting, with everything already explored and understood. It’s wilder and dirtier and probably not with the person who would then be your first choice to talk about your favorite books with. And the person you talk about books with may not be the first person you want to have crazy sex with. I’m not saying one person can’t be good at both things. I’m saying one person can’t be number one in both things. There has to be a compromise to choose one person. Right?”

“Jesus Christ, Ron. I don’t want to know you like this. Go ask William. He seems to have all this figured out.”

He looks at me wide-eyed and blank. Of possible responses, this is not one he had anticipated. “You’re an ass.”

“Exactly how you should feel about me. Get back to work. Go sell some bonds.”

I stand up and walk away before he can leave. I think Ron may not be such a terrible kid and has about a year left to be saved from all this. I could fire him but that wouldn’t be enough to do it. He needs to fire the industry.

I grab my coat and walk to the elevator and leave the building. I decide to walk to the subway station for the 6 train and the walking feels good, like I’m occupied and getting somewhere. The sidewalks are full of brisk walkers, but each is closed off from the others like letters dropped through different mail chutes. Their eyes are ahead and slightly down as they travel over a path they have beaten many times before. Their focus is entirely on delivering themselves to the destination and not on what they may encounter along the way. There is no interaction among people, but possibly because there are too many people. To pass a single person in an entire block would require a hello. To pass one hundred people in a single block requires efficiency and skills of self-preservation.

When I stop at a street kiosk to buy a newspaper, I see the most closed of all. His eyes averted, he looks ready to collect my change and move me on like a package on a conveyor belt. But in response to my smile and hello, his veneer cracks. In one moment he mentions the plight of the Knicks, the NFL playoffs, and the weather. His pent-up niceness comes bursting through like a volcanic eruption through the crust of the earth. Each of the people on the sidewalk may have their own lava to come out with only the prick of a pin.

I tuck the paper under my arm and walk down the steps to the subway trains.

In my subway car alone I see East Asian, Indian, black, Hispanic, and white people, from young to ancient, from suits to tattoos. The mixing process is so complete that even in this car of thirty people, they’re all here. This is the real New York, all the rest that is outside the walls of the investment banks. It reminds me how small and pathetic my life inside those walls can be. Rich but pathetic. I can’t remember the last time I rode the subway.

I climb out of the subway near Union Square and start for the Cedar Tavern for an early lunch and a drink. I haven’t spoken with Julia in a few days now, and I pull out my cell phone to call her. I dial her cell phone so she’ll see my number on her caller ID and she can decide whether or not she wants to pick up.