Carpool Confidential (40 page)

“So is there any hope?”

“Of what?” Once again, whatever was supposed to translate words between my ears and my brain wasn't kicking in.

“Me. Us.” I wondered whether it was coincidence that he was sitting in almost the exact same spot in the exact same position as the night he'd left. Other than that, the similarities were elusive. His hair was longer and he was thinner, he had two black eyes, his glasses were held together with electrical tape, and his nose was swathed in bandages. And the differences weren't just physical. The night he'd left he'd looked like a confident, entitled, master of the universe. Now he just looked like a very flawed man.

“How can you even ask that?”

He shrugged. “You never know if you don't try.”

“I'm sorry I assaulted you last night.” I figured I could start generously.

“I'm sorry I pressed charges.”

I shrugged. “It didn't matter. The police said they'd have had to arrest me anyway.”

He looked pained. “Was it awful?”

“I don't need to do it again.”

He grinned, which made him wince. “No. Me either. Cassie, I know I have no right, but would it be all right if I asked a question?”

I wasn't sure, but I nodded.

“Is—did you sleep with him?”

“My date?” I shook my head. “No.”

“Not him.”

Oh. I looked at him for what felt like a long time. “Yes.” I felt like I was daring him to make something of it. “How did you know?”

Something that could almost have been a smile if it hadn't looked so sad came and went across his face. “You left the blog bookmarked on the computer. I read it, and I just knew where you'd gone. I know you, Cassie. Still.”

I couldn't deny that.

“It's good. Really good. You're going to go far.”

“Thanks.” I was thinking that if he tried to take credit for getting me started on the blogging path by leaving me, I might have to re-assault him. I folded my arms. “So.”

“Where”—he ran a hand through his hair—“should I start?”

“Jordan Hallock,” I suggested. “How about there? Or”—I didn't think it was possible for this to still have the power to make me sick—“is there more?”

He took a deep breath. “It didn't start until after she was done with the apartment. I'd always found her attractive, but nothing more than that. Cass, this is going to be a really tough conversation.” Then he got up and walked out.

I sat there, wondering where exactly he thought he was going. Was that it? All the answers I was getting? Just as I was about to go after him, he came back with two glasses of his precious, rare scotch.

“I should probably be grateful you didn't eBay this.” He smiled as he handed me one.

“It was already open, or I might have.” I took a sip. Barbecued gasoline. “Very nice, thanks. Why don't you go on? I'm pretty tough these days.”

“OK. I'd never had an affair before Jordan, but to be honest, Cass, I'd wanted to.”

“I see.” Despite everything I said earlier about the hurt being less, this really did hurt. Hugely. “And why didn't you?”

“Because I never wanted to be that kind of person. I loved you, I still do, and the boys—”

“But you're not
in
love with me,” I reminded him.

“I'm sorry I said that. I guess I was trying to make myself feel better about what I was doing.” He closed his swollen eyes for a second. When he opened them, he was crying. “For a long time I've just felt like I was quietly dying, becoming nothing. Work stopped being fun and a challenge, we stopped being a couple. Then one day, Jordan came to my office with one of those eighteenth-century oils, you know the hunting scenes—”

I couldn't resist. “That reminds me, the study's going to look awfully bare when I send those out to the guy who bought them on eBay.”

“Cassie.” His voice sounded strangled. “Those are—”

“I know, Rick, relax. I was just kidding.” And I had been. But his response had been barometric to me: even if he was experiencing major emotional turmoil, and I believed he was, he'd been able to focus on that.

“Anyway, she brought them to my office, and, honestly, I have no idea to this day how it happened, but we ended up— you know.”

“Not really. Going to a hotel? Arranging a meeting? What?”

He looked incredibly shamefaced. “On my desk.”

“I see.” There really was no getting around each revelation striking like a fist. I could only hope recovery time got successively shorter. “And?” My heart was thudding so hard I thought it might drown out the answer. No such luck.

“It was great.”

I closed my eyes.

“Not in that way. More like I was terrified of being caught, of catching an STD, that she'd turn out to be a bunny boiling maniac. All of that was there inside me the whole time. But I felt unbelievably alive. Immediately afterwards, honestly, my pants weren't even up”—I know I'd asked for honesty, but come on, that was TMI, wasn't it?—“I started feeling awful about you and the kids and what I'd done, but somehow that awfulness felt better than the nothingness.”

“How long ago did it start?”

“I'm not sure. Maybe a year, a year and a half.”

God, that hurt. Nothing like putting a time frame on how much of a joke your life, your marriage, has been. And speaking of STDs. “Did you use condoms?”

His face told me all I needed to know. “I see.”

“I trusted her.”

“Good move.” So now I was going to get the humiliation of going back to Elizabeth Katz.

“Then Paulette caught us.”

“You hadn't moved it to a hotel?”

He shook his head. “Well, actually, that's not true. Sometimes. But the danger was what I needed. If it was just an affair, it stopped doing what it was supposed to. If it was safe, I could take it or leave it. Frankly, in a hotel it wasn't that different than being married.”

My head was pounding. I, apparently, had been the blindest, stupidest, most head-in-the-sand wife in the entire universe. “But how did you go from there to Paulette? I mean, I guess she clearly is, but I never had her pegged as your type. Actually, Jordan either.” I wrinkled my nose. “They're both really fake, somehow. Couldn't you have picked nicer people?”

He did a little barky laugh, but he was still crying. “I think nicer people wouldn't have participated. And I went from Jordan to Paulette because she offered to do a threesome with me and Jordan.”

“Oh, God.” I thought maybe I
was
going to faint now. Or puke. Or both.

“It never happened, though.”

“Is that the truth? That's what you wanted?”

“Yeah, it is the truth. And, yeah, that's what I wanted. I mean, what man doesn't on some level?” I flashed on
Lesbo Gangbang
. Looked like it had been his. “But it wasn't so much sexual. More that it seemed riskier, worse, more dangerous.”

“I see.” I didn't, though, not really.

“But after a while, you build up a sort of immunity. The familiar stops feeling dangerous.” He put his glass on the table, his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands. Another time I might have been tempted to go comfort him, but not today. I was having that dizzy sensation. He sounded almost exactly like Letitia said his father had been, women, dangerous cars, drugs. “When that stopped giving me the feeling, I started doing stuff, risky stuff, with my trades.”

“What, Rick? How bad?”

“Pretty bad. I made some bad decisions. Risky buys that…tanked.”

“But surely that happens? You can't always be right. People know that going in.”

“First of all, I have always been right. That's why I was in a position to do this, and second, they weren't authorized trades.”

A seriously new gust of fear. “Rick, you could go to jail.”

“I know that.” He almost smiled. “I knew it. But again, it kept the demons at bay. But then I got caught. Internally. I was let go on the spot—I'm sorry, I tried to tell you I hadn't been, I just didn't know how to give you the truth. Cass, you can't say a word about this, but Bowers & Flaum, let's just say it's in their interests to keep it quiet. I paid back some out of our money, but obviously I couldn't touch the real amount. I set up a trust with the rest of our money to shield our assets from creditors if they come after me. That's where the money's gone.”

I was actually surprised by how little I cared about that right now. “How does Barry Manilow come into this?”

He got that strange light in his eyes again. “That
was
some kind of fate. I'd gotten myself into this awful position. I was lying awake, sweating at night. I was sleeping with two women other than my wife, I'd committed fraudulent trades and covered my own ass in a very unethical way. I was a disaster.”

I nodded. That certainly sounded true.

“And then one night I went to see this Barry Manilow show with Paulette in Atlantic City—she's a big fan—and I was transfixed. I mean, I'm not a music guy, but this went straight to the heart. I don't know why, but I felt so…calm and centered. I bought some CDs and played them on Bose Wave in my office, on the iPod, and I started to get almost obsessed. I started thinking about his trajectory from jingle writer to performer to cultural icon. Honestly, the rapport he has with his audience is incredible.”

“I'm sure that's true, Rick, but I'm—”

“I tried to talk to Paulette about it, but she just didn't get it. She loves musical theater, though. I had to see every single Broadway show with her—”

I don't know why, but that surprised me almost as much as the revelations about affairs, sex clubs, and derivatives fraud.

“—and mostly I didn't like them, but it occurred to me one night that it would be interesting to try the format with Barry's music. I called up the guy who wrote the script for, remember that horrible musical comedy about the people who starved to death on the Russian steppes that Katya made us go see?”

I shuddered. “Unfortunately, I do.”

“Well the play was awful, but I thought he had some talent. And it turned out he knew this team who had done a similar thing for Wham! and they were really enthusiastic, so it started.”

“And?” I asked, “are you happy? Do you like it?”

He lifted his hand like he wanted to rub the bridge of his nose and dropped it when it came in contact with the bandage. “I am,” he sounded surprised. “I do.”

“Oh, Rick, why didn't you just tell me?”

“Because you're so damned perfect, Cassie. You always do things right, never need anything from anyone. How could I come home and tell you that I was completely off the rails?”

“Why does everyone say that?” It was seriously starting to piss me off. “I never feel that way, ever. I'm always one step short of a mess.”

“You don't come off that way. And I lived with you. For a long time.”

“I'm sorry,” I said. And I meant it. “I didn't mean to make anyone feel that way, ever.”

He nodded. “I know. The thing was that the further off the rails I got, the easier it was to just keep going. Slept with one other woman, sleep with another. Did one risky transaction. Why not do another? You have to keep upping the ante to get the same thrill.”

“So was it that easy to leave us?”

He gave me a long look. “Of course not. It was agonizing. You, the boys, having to act like an asshole—” He must have seen my mouth opening, because he put up a hand. “—an even
bigger
asshole than I really was. So I used this alibi service; I'd used them before when I was seeing Jordan. They can make you look like you're in one place when you're actually in another—”

“Yeah, unfortunately I'm familiar with their work now. It turns out that if you leave your wife a fake number but a real hotel, and she looks up the number, you can kind of get busted. So if they guarantee their services, you might want to see if you can collect a freebie. So is that what the orgy was, upping the ante?”

He nodded. “I know you won't believe this, Cassie, but I'd never been before. Things weren't going too well with Paulette, and I convinced her it would…spice things up a little.” He laughed. “I'm not sure she agreed. What were the odds of you being there?”

I laughed. “Slim, and yet I was. Rick, didn't it occur to you that if you had two mistresses and you were needing to spice things up, you had a larger problem?”

“Nothing occurred to me, Cassie”—he looked very serious—“that's the problem. If I'd thought at all, I wouldn't have done any of this stuff, none of it. I missed you and the boys so much, it's been like a constant physical pain. The affairs, honestly, I don't know why. They weren't even that great. I never stopped loving you or wanting you and our life. I just, once it got started, I didn't know how to undo any of it. I know what I've done has been both unspeakable and unspeakably messed up, but what do you think, Cassie? If I get help and figure it out? Really do what I need to do?” He got up and went down on his knees in front of me. “Is there hope?”