I Thought You Were Dead (9 page)

“You look like you need a shot of tequila,” he told her.

“Just a cup of coffee,” she said, taking off her coat, an expensive black leather jacket with a down-filled lining that kept her both warm and chic. She left her silk scarf wrapped around her neck. She was always colder than he was, a fact he attributed to her smaller mass-to-surface-area ratio. “Is the coffee here any good?”

“That's a good question,” Paul said. “I don't think anybody's ever had it. I'd be surprised if it was.”

Neil brought her a cup with cream and sweeteners.

“How was driving?” Paul asked.

“Terrible,” she said. “You're sure Stella is going to be okay in the doorway?”

“She prefers it there,” Paul said. “She thinks it's too skanky in here.”

“I have something for her — do you mind if I give it to her here?”

“Go ahead,” Paul said. “She's not picky.”

Tamsen took from her purse a half pound of shaved roast beef she'd purchased at the supermarket before leaving. She fed it to the dog slowly, petting her between bites and talking to her. Stella shot Paul a look that said, “You can have the rest of the pemmican.”

Paul regarded his girlfriend, his paramour, his significant other — whatever the proper term was. Her black boots gave her an extra two inches of height, though she did not seem self-conscious about her height. For that matter she did not seem to display any noticeable body-image neurosis that he'd been able to detect. She stayed fit by working out three or four times a week in the company gym. Paul thought how nice a pair of tight jeans looked on her.

She next took from her purse a new red bandanna, folded it on the diagonal, and tied it around Stella's neck. The dog seemed to momentarily preen, lifting her head as if to see her own reflection in the glass door.

When Tamsen returned to his table, Paul noticed the bounce in her step, a spiritedness he found inspiring even when he failed to match it: it pulled him forward.

“You don't mind, do you?” she asked him, seating herself next to him. “I thought she'd like a little color.”

“I like it,” he said. “I think she does too.”

“I was going to get her a string of pearls, but it might be too Barbara Bush,” Tamsen said. She sipped her coffee.

“I have something for you too, when we get home,” he told her.

“What is it?”

“It's a surprise.”

“Is it cash?”

“No, it's not cash.”

“Cash always makes for a thoughtful gift. Just so you know.”

“It's not cash.”

“Okay. I can't wait to see it.”

When she looked around a room, she was more likely to move her eyes than to turn her head, though when she disapproved of what she saw, she tended to tilt her head forward slightly and gaze from beneath a subtly furrowed brow. She wore contact lenses during the day but needed reading glasses when she took her contacts out at night.

She dressed well for work, a bit expensively, she admitted, though her new salary made nicer things affordable, and she changed into old jeans and T-shirts at night, sweatpants and cotton tops, loose-fitting shorts and baggy pullovers, her wardrobe of a color spectrum that favored Bacon over Monet, few pinks or powder blues and plenty of browns, rusts, and blacks. She was frequently misplacing her keys or reading glasses, as her father had before her. One of Paul's favorite things about her was her sneeze, which could knock the plaster off a wall, an explosive, fricative roar with a high-pitched shriek in the middle of it that turned heads in restaurants. She always stifled it politely behind a Kleenex or napkin, but those times when she was caught short without either, she let go and blushed afterward.

“Now I'm starting to feel sane,” she said after sipping her coffee. “You must have had a pretty insane week yourself. Are you all right?”

“I'm starting jogging tomorrow,” he said. “I just decided. I'm
going to start slow and work up to maybe three miles a day. I'm also on a diet.”

“Good for you,” she said.

“I'm cutting back on ice cream too, for starters,” he told her. “No chocolate cake after midnight. No between-meal pizzas, and no more chocolate malts with breakfast. Just a few sensible rules.”

“Excellent idea,” she said. “So tell me everything about your trip.”

He told her about his father and how hard it was to see him fallen and stricken, and the odd feeling, despite the fact that he'd moved away from Minnesota and established his independence long ago, that somehow the ground he stood on was less solid than before, or that he was less sure of himself.

“How's your brother?” she asked.

“Filling the power vacuum,” Paul said. He told her about the problems with his brother and about his fear that stepping aside to let Carl run the show was going to cost him somehow.

“He's taken the whole thing over,” Paul said. “He even fired Dad's broker so he can manage Dad's investments himself, online. I know he knows what he's doing, but I'm not sure I trust him.”

“Look, Paul, you have to be really careful not to let money make things ugly or weird between you. I see it at my job all the time. I know you and Carl already had a strained relationship; I'd hate to see this push it over the edge. In the end, it's not worth it. You know that, don't you?”

“Anyway, we'll see,” Paul said. “Actually I have a confession to make.” He told her how he'd found and copied his brother's PINs, “just in case,” and explained his reasoning at the time. He acknowledged, though, that since then, he'd had the feeling he'd done the wrong thing. He asked her what she thought.

She looked at him.

“What?” he wanted to know.

He had a terrible sinking feeling, realizing he'd just fallen in her eyes.

“You want me to wave my hand and absolve you of this?” she said.

“So you definitely think it was wrong?”

She laughed, more a laugh of disbelief than hilarity.

“Gee, give me a second to sort through my right and wrong folders. Stealing … stealing … oh, here it is, in the
wrong
folder.” She regarded him for a moment. “You're really not sure if this is right or wrong?”

“Well, no,” he said. “It's not a question of right or wrong. It's wrong. It's just a question of how wrong.”

“What difference does it make?” she said. “Wrong is wrong. It's not a sliding scale, as Sister Michaeletta used to tell us. It's not like stealing a candy bar isn't as bad as stealing a fur coat. Stealing is stealing.”

He felt crushed. For the first time, he'd disappointed her. He felt as if all the progress they'd made toward becoming closer was being negated.

“Look, Paul,” she said, “I'm not your moral compass. I'll talk to you about whatever you want to talk about, because that's the deal, but alarms go off when I feel like you want me to solve your problems. I'm just trying to take care of myself right now. I hope that doesn't sound cold. I don't think you're a terrible person or anything. I just don't want you to pass the responsibility for your decisions off on me. Do you see what that does?”

“I do,” he said.

“I'm sorry, but Donald used to do that and I'm a little sensitive,” she said, softening her tone. “Like he wanted me to be his mother or something. He used to ask me to wake him up in the
morning, so I'd make sure the alarm was set, but then he'd sleep through it and be mad at me, and I'd say, ‘Wake your own fucking self up — you're not in high school anymore.' And I knew if I wasn't there for him to blame, he never would have overslept. The alarm clock would have been enough. It was like I was his moral overdraft protection or something.”

“He sounds like an asshole.”

“He
was
an asshole,” she said, again softening her tone. “And it's not fair to blame you for that. I'm your equal, Paul. And I'm your friend. You can talk to me about anything, but if you want to confess and be absolved, I can't do that.”

“No,” he said. “You're right.”

“I'm trying to be nonjudgmental here,” she said. “I mean, it's
your
life …”

“Can you understand what I was thinking?”

“Of course I can understand it,” she said. “If you think he's going to do something, why not just ask him to show you the books? Why isn't that the first option? He even told you you could. Tell him you want him to teach you about investing.”

Paul made a face.

“I'm sure I was just being paranoid,” he told her. “There's just this history …”

“Look — what do you want me to say? It's your business. He's your brother. Men are such idiots when they start getting competitive. I give up.”

He took the list of PINs from his pocket, ripped it into a dozen pieces, and threw the scraps into the wastebasket. When he'd finished, she leaned over and kissed him. She was wrong about lacking the ability to bestow absolution.

“You said you got your dad a computer?” she asked.

Glad to shift topics, he told her about the shiny new IBM he'd helped his mother set up, with all the newest chips and the most
RAM and the biggest hard drive and an extralarge monitor. He explained how they were going to get his father online. She asked what the prognosis was.

“They gave him a drug that's supposed to dissolve clots, but you have to administer it within an hour or so of the stroke, and since they didn't really know how long he'd been lying there when my mother found him, they're not sure how much good it did him. Some guys, if you give it to them quickly, are practically walking and talking within hours. He's obviously not.”

“He'll get better,” Tamsen said. “He was in good shape before it happened, right?”

“That's why I'm starting jogging,” Paul said. “I totally mean it. Enjoy my beer belly while you can, because in six months, this sucker is gone.”

“Well, I'm proud of you for starting,” she said.

“I'm serious. Besides, it isn't even really a beer belly.”

“It's not?”

“When I was in college, I wanted to look more mature, so I had a silicone belly implant.”

“It worked.”

“I'm thinking of having it removed.”

“Are you gonna stop tweezing the top of your head too?” she asked.

“Think I should?”

“Up to you,” she said. “Don't change on my account.”

He looked around. Doyle, Brickman, Bender, D. J., Mickey, Yvonne, O-Rings, and McCoy had the far end of the bar pinned down. The blues band, which had been on break, was taking the stage again.

“You still interested in losing weight?” Tamsen asked him.

“Yeah. Why?”

She leaned over and kissed him again.

“Take me home, then,” she said. “I want to give you a thousand-calorie burn.”

“We talking sit-ups and push-ups?”

She whispered in his ear, “I'm thinking of an entirely more pleasurable form of exertion.”

He smiled. He was terrified.

H
e kissed her in the parking lot. She pressed him up against her car and kissed him back. He felt a stirring in his loins, only to realize it was her hand. Until he was primed and stiff and ready to ravish her, he wouldn't be able to relax, which made it all the more difficult.

“Hold that thought,” she said with a smile, releasing him and getting into the car.

“I'll do my best,” he thought. “Maybe this time will be different.”

He lifted Stella into the backseat. As Tamsen drove, Paul tried to think of anything but sex, because he knew overthinking it was precisely his problem. He and Karen had been crazy for each other when they first met. Their love life began to abate the day they'd gotten engaged, lost somewhere in the friction of planning the wedding. The sex between them died long before the love did, but sex was the canary in the coal mine, an early warning he hadn't heeded. He knew that sexual intimacy was a partnership, but he nevertheless blamed himself entirely when he started to lose his erections. He'd never been so sexually driven, in any of his relationships, that he could carry forth regardless of what his partner was thinking or feeling. It was Karen's very eagerness that aroused him, her passion and her abandon, more than how she looked or what she wore.

A marked diminution of passion was, as he understood most marriages, not uncommon. There was always something else to do, or she was too tired, or they had to wake up early, or she brought work home that she needed to finish. Maybe tomorrow … maybe this weekend … maybe next week … The first few times he failed, Karen gave him the “It's okay, it happens, just hold me” speech. The longer they went without sex, the more important it became to succeed the next time they tried. The more important it was, the more self-conscious he was and the more pressure he felt. The more pressure he felt, the more he failed. The more he failed, the less she initiated anything or pressed the issue, knowing it would only make him feel bad. It was a downward spiral. They tried therapy, but it only made both of them even more self-conscious. Eventually they became more like brother and sister than husband and wife, a compromise they could live with, but not indefinitely. He told himself that he wasn't truly impotent — that he was just a failure with Karen, a victim of “situational impotence,” and that under different circumstances, with the right woman, he'd be his old self, a stag in rut, a mighty lion. Wouldn't he?

“You're thinking too much,” he warned himself.

It also occurred to him, on the drive home, that he wasn't just competing against himself — there was Stephen, the radiologist, with whom Tamsen was already sleeping.

“Be Zen. Take the time she gives you and be glad,” he thought.

By the time they reached his house, he realized he'd failed once again to hold the thought. Perhaps he'd get it back. She had a bag full of clothes with her, as well as a large black bag full of books and papers, which Paul set down on the kitchen floor. Stella sniffed at her bags.