Before the Fall(103)
She had done so well, she thought. She had made rules and stuck by them. She was the girl with her head on straight. Charlie was her one mistake. It wasn’t his fault really. He couldn’t help who found him attractive. He was tall and handsome with a rogue’s scruff. A charmer with green eyes that had reminded Emma of her father. Which, of course, was what it was. Charlie was a man who occupied the same space as her father, embodied the same archetype, the strong, silent loner, the Good Man, but it was a mirage. The truth was, Charlie was nothing like her father. With him, the good-guy thing was just an act. Where her father was confident, Charlie was arrogant. Where her father was chivalrous, Charlie was patronizing and smug. He had wooed her, seduced her with empathy and warmth, and then, out of nowhere, he turned into Mr. Hyde, berating her in public, telling her she was stupid, she was fat, she was a slut.
At first she treated this change as if it were her fault. Clearly, he was reacting to something. Maybe she had put on a few pounds. Maybe she had been flirting with that Saudi prince. But then, as his behavior intensified—culminating in a terrifying bedroom choking—she realized that Charlie was crazy. All of his jealousy and viciousness was the bad side of his bipolar heart. He wasn’t a good man. He was a natural disaster, and so Emma did what any sane person does in the face of a natural disaster. She ran.
Now she dresses quickly, pulling on her least flattering outfit. She wipes the makeup from her cheeks with a towel, takes out her contact lenses, putting on the cat’s-eye glasses she bought in Brooklyn. Her first instinct is to say she feels sick and stay home, but she knows what Charlie will do. He’ll offer to stay and take care of her, and the last thing Emma can handle is being alone with him.
Someone bangs on the bedroom door, making Emma jump.
“Come on, whore,” yells Chelsea. “Farhad’s waiting.”
Emma grabs her coat. She will stay close to the others, sticking to Chelsea and Carver, latching on to the pretty Spaniard. She will stick to them like glue, and then, when the time is right, she will slip away. She will come back to the apartment, grab her things, and check into a hotel under an assumed name, and if he tries anything, she will call the company tomorrow and file a formal complaint.
“Coming,” she yells, hurriedly packing. She will put her suitcase by the door and be gone before anyone’s the wiser. Ten seconds, in and out. She can do this. She wanted to change her life anyway. This is her chance. And as she opens the door, she finds that her pulse has almost returned to normal. And then she sees Charlie standing by the front door, smiling with his X-ray eyes.
“Okay,” says Emma. “I’m ready.”
Chapter 38
Hurt
Morning traffic—human and vehicular—moves up Sixth Avenue in ever-shifting patterns. Each body, car, and bicycle is a water molecule that would travel in a straight line at maximum speed if not for all the other molecules competing for space in an ever-shrinking channel, like an ocean strained through a fire hose. It is a sea of earbuds, bodies moving to their own beat. Working women in sneakers text on the go, their minds a thousand miles away, cabdrivers half watching the road and half scrolling through messages from faraway lands.
Doug stands outside the entrance to the ALC Building smoking a final cigarette. He has slept three hours in the last two days. A smell test of his beard would yield hints of bourbon, drive-through cheeseburgers, and the peaty curl of Brooklyn lager. His lips are chapped, synapses firing too fast and in too many directions. He is a revenge machine, one that has convinced itself that truth is subjective, and that a man wronged has the right, no the moral duty, to Set The Record Straight.
Krista Brewer, Bill Cunningham’s producer, meets him in the lobby, moving at a near run. She actually pushes a black guy with a messenger bag out of the way, her eyes locked on Doug’s shuffling form.
“Doug, hi,” she says, smiling like a hostage negotiator who’s been taught not to break eye contact. “Krista Brewer. We spoke on the phone.”
“Where’s Bill?” Doug asks nervously, having second thoughts. He had a vision of how this would go in his head, and this isn’t it.
She smiles.
“Upstairs. He can’t wait to see you.”
Doug frowns, but she takes his arm, leads him past security and onto a waiting elevator. It is the morning rush, and they are packed in with a dozen other molecules, all destined for different floors, different lives.
Ten minutes later, Doug finds himself in a chair in front of a triple mirror framed in bright lights. A woman with a lot of bracelets brushes his hair and puts foundation on his forehead, dabbing him with powder.
“You got plans for the weekend?” she asks him.
Doug shakes his head. His wife has just thrown him out of the house. He spent the first twelve hours drunk and the last six sleeping in his pickup truck. He feels like Humphrey Bogart in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, that same sense of crazed loss (so close!), not that it’s about the money. It’s the principle. Eleanor is his wife and the kid is their kid, and, yes, $103 million (plus 40 more for the real estate) is a lot of money, and, yes, he has already shifted his worldview, luxuriating in the idea that he is now a man of means. And, no, he doesn’t think that money solves every problem, but certainly it will make their lives easier. He can finish the restaurant, no problem, and finally finish that novel. They can afford child care for the kid and maybe fix up the Croton house for weekends while they move into the town house on the Upper East Side. The Batemans’ cappuccino machine alone is worth relocating for. And, yes, he knows that’s shallow—but isn’t that what the whole artisanal return-to-simplicity movement is all about—making sure that every single thing we do is thoughtful and perfect? That every bite of every meal, every step of every day, everything from our hemp throw pillows to our handcrafted bicycles is like a koan from the Dalai Lama.