The Last Romantics(52)

My roommates had already left for work. It was 9:30 a.m., Monday. I had keys in my hand, my coat on.

“I think I’m in trouble,” Joe said. “I hit someone.”

“Hit? You were driving?”

“No, hit with my hand. I hit Kyle. I punched him.”

“You punched Kyle?” All at once the morning fell away. “Why?”

“He fired me. He threw me out of the building.”

“What? Where are you?” I heard a wail of sirens, but I wasn’t sure if the sound came from the phone, where Joe was, or from the street outside my apartment building.

“I’m at the library.” Again the strangled sound. He was crying, I thought. A real cry, a sound I recognized from that long-ago day at the pond when I had almost drowned, when Joe cursed his own foolishness, his role in making something wonderful turn to sorrow.

“Stay there,” I said quickly. “I’ll come to you.”

*

I met Joe on the stone steps of the New York Public Library, but it started to rain, a heavy, drenching shower, so we ran to a nearby deli, where we sat on plastic chairs and drank watery coffee from paper cups. Joe wore no coat, only a short-sleeved polo, and held no briefcase. Rain darkened the shoulders of his shirt, and his hair shrank to his scalp, making him look cold and small. I shivered at the sight of him.

“I didn’t mean to hit him,” Joe said. “It just happened. I was just so, so . . . angry.”

“But why did he fire you?”

“My numbers haven’t been great. And I’m expensive, Fiona. Kyle is worried that things are getting ready to turn.”

I remembered the exchange I’d witnessed at the party. “And what else, Joe?”

Joe paused and rubbed his face with his hands. “He thinks I need to straighten up. Too much . . . I don’t know, partying.” Joe paused. “You know, I was pretty wasted at the engagement party. Did you read your poem, Fiona?” He looked at me with an open face, innocent.

All at once the anger I’d held since the party faded. “No, I didn’t,” I said.

“Send it to Sandrine, okay? She’d love to see it.”

I nodded. Then I said, “Joe, do you think you have a problem?”

“No,” Joe answered quickly. “Of course I don’t.” There was another pause, this one longer. Then he said, “And Kyle mentioned something about a harassment allegation. My old secretary, Sierra.”

Sierra? My mind searched for a face, and then all at once, of course. A dawning recognition, a connection between two disparate points. Sierra, the strawberry blond from Joe’s engagement party.

“She said you harassed her?”

“Something like that. Kyle said she wouldn’t press charges. If they fired me. Otherwise she might. She threatened him. I think she wants more money, better office, better job. She isn’t that great on Excel, which is the God’s honest truth, so she got moved downstairs into HR. There are no windows down there, none.”

I did not respond immediately. My brother’s face was red, still wet and raw from the rain. At last I said, “So she’s lying about sexual harassment as leverage for a better view? Is that what you’re telling me?”

Joe slowly shook his head. “Fiona, Fiona, don’t be so na?ve. People do things like this. Women do them. It isn’t uncommon.”

“I saw you,” I told Joe, “with Sierra. At your engagement party.”

“What?” He looked genuinely confused. “Oh, behind the screen. Is that what you mean?”

I nodded.

He sighed and looked at the floor. “I love Sandrine, I really do. But it’s so hard to say no. Why would I say no? You understand that now, don’t you, Fiona?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Look at you,” Joe said. “Look at how you dress. Look at how you talk to guys. I’ve seen you flirt. You’re practically a different person since you lost weight.”

This was a new Joe regarding me. A starkly serious Joe with a cold calculation in his eyes. He was judging me, assessing me. And suddenly my brother became a stranger. I recognized in Joe the kind of man about whom I wrote most viciously on the blog, the kind who carried himself with an entitlement that masqueraded as confidence. Joe believed that he deserved whatever he wanted—Sierra, Sandrine, an annual raise, a six-figure bonus.

“This isn’t about me,” I said.

He rolled his eyes. “I did not harass Sierra. I didn’t. We’ve flirted, yes. She’s a very attractive woman. Once we kissed, a long time ago. We made out, at an office party. Okay? Happy now, Fiona? This was before Sandrine and I were serious. Way before.”

“Before you were serious? But you were already dating?”

“Yes. Before we were serious.” He put his face in his hands, and then he sat up straight. “I need to call Kyle. I just need to talk to him. We’re brothers, for Christ’s sake. I know we can work this out.” He punched a number into his phone. I watched his face as the line rang and rang and rang.

Joe hung up. “I’ll call Derek,” he said.

And so he did. On and on, friend by friend, fraternity brother by fraternity brother, the wide circle he shared with Kyle: Kevin, David, Lance, Kurt, William, Xavier, Mike B., Mike H., Mike S., Hank, Matt, Camden, Bobby, Logan, Cal. Joe would often bring one or two or five of these boys back to Noni’s house on weekends or breaks, for home-cooked meals and movies. Generally they holed up in Joe’s room or piled themselves in front of the television with beers and bags of Doritos. To me, adolescent hormonal Fiona, they were like great cats, sultry and sleepy, launching into quick, explosive motion before languishing again into blurred half sleep. Eyelids lowered, voices so deep, grunting at one another in monosyllables, like the language of some ancient tribe. They moved with a certainty about their place in the room, their place on the planet. I marveled at it. I wanted it.