Invisible Boy (29 page)

Dean had brought up the investigation despite my shin-kick of

under-the-table admonition.

I draped my napkin across my lap. Taliaferro’s spilled down wide from his collar, a waterfall of snowy bib.

He took another big bite of roll, chewed once, and knocked it back with a slug of ice water. “You even know what a moolie
is, Madeline?”

I gave him a curt nod. Sure I did: slang abbreviation of the Italian for “eggplant.”

“Do yourself a favor,” he said. “Look around this restaurant.”

It was a dark green room with a Burger-King solarium tacked on: lots of framed one-red-rose-on-a-piano-keyboard posters, two
big ESPN-tuned TVs hanging above the bar.

Taliaferro brandished the knife. “Nice place, am I right?”

“Lovely,” I replied.

He put down the knife, handle-tip at rest on the tablecloth, blade balanced against his butter plate’s edge. “You wanna know
why?”

“Enlighten me.”

Taliaferro rubbed the pad of a thumb to and fro against the thin skin on the back of his other hand. “Because it’s all one
color,
that’s
why.”

Christoph smiled. Astrid was still on Planet Chanel behind her

sunglasses.

Dean reached into the bread basket, handily avoiding having to look me in the eye.

I leaned forward, mashing my cast against the edge of the table. “A little kid got beaten to death, Vinnie. I found his bones.
It has literally
nothing
to do with skin color.”

Taliaferro reached past the oil-and-vinegar cruets to pat my free wrist, his face screwed up with a sympathy I wanted no part
of.

“Fucking animals, hon,” he said. “Look what they did to Newark.”

Christoph nodded. “I find these conversations so helpful because I must admit to being still confused by certain aspects of
your national culture.”

“Really?” I said. “Which ones?”

“More wine?” asked Dean.

Christoph waved a hand over his glass, declining.

“Perhaps we can help,” I said, “by throwing light on any particularly troubling nuance of American life?”

Dean stepped on my foot.

I took a swallow of beer, then smiled across the table at Christoph
and
whacked the side-edge of my kneecap hard against my husband’s thigh.

“Well, Madeline,” said Christoph, smiling back, “I must say that I find it astonishing, for instance, that you put up with
all of these

niggers
.”

I nearly choked on my Heineken. “
Excuse
me?”

“I mean, really,” he went on, “why don’t you just send them all
back
?”

Jesus, maybe Astrid’s gift of Hitleriana really had been a cry for help.

I looked to Dean, who appeared to have developed a sudden penchant for bird-watching out the restaurant window.

“
Christoph,
” I said.

“Maddie?”

“I’m astonished.”

“How so?” He smiled again, eyes all crinkly.

“Well, haven’t you forgotten something?”

“Forgotten what?” he asked.

I leaned across the table to pat his hand. “I could have sworn this is the part where you’re supposed to leap up out of your
chair for a rousing chorus of ‘
Deutschland Über Alles.
’ ”

Christoph pursed his lips, brow furrowed.

“Certainly not,” he said. “I am Swiss.”

Back at the office I kicked a bottle cap off the parking-lot asphalt into the border of scrubby weeds.

“
That
went well,” said Dean.

“I’m sorry.”

He sighed.

“Look,” I said, “I was raised by feral hippies in California. The only pointers I got on how to act wifely at a business lunch
came from
Bewitched
reruns.”

I elided over the summers with my grandparents. It’s not like I picked up many important safety tips at the yacht club. They
never mentioned money, much less actual work. Mealtime conversation consisted mainly of Jew-bashing and requests for more
cocktails; thankfully, children weren’t expected to weigh in on either topic. Or on any other.

And besides which, am I the only one here who was nauseated by
today’s
lunchtime conversation?

“For God’s sake, Dean, you didn’t even speak up when Christoph announced he could always spot someone Jewish because their
ears
are lower.”

Dean looked away from me. “I’m not asking for Samantha twitching her nose here, Bunny. I just wish you’d dial down the Jane
Fonda routine a bit.”

“Jane
Fonda
?”

“Whatever.”

“Are you fucking
kidding
me?”

“Look, I’m just as much behind the whole ‘I am Woman, hear me roar’ thing as the next emasculated liberal-arts guy, but why
do you even care what someone like Taliaferro thinks? So he’s a north-Jersey redneck misogynist. Big fucking deal.”

“And what about Christoph’s contribution? I didn’t exactly see him soliciting contributions for UNICEF.”

“I still don’t see the point in you going all mano a mano over the antipasto platter.”

“The
point
?”

“You heard me,” he said.

“How can you even
work
with these people, Dean? You’ve got Christoph blathering on about how we should ship all the ‘niggers’ back to Africa, and
his henchman Vinnie ready to push everybody onto the boat with German shepherds and a firehose.”

“Bunny, it’s cold out.”

“What d’you guys do for office meetings?” I asked. “Break out the white sheets and big pointy hoods and do a kickline?”

“Exactly. Then we gang-rape the secretaries and go burn a cross down by the river.”

“That’s not funny.”

“Oh, please. It’s fucking hilarious. Let’s go inside.”

He put a hand on my shoulder.

I shrugged it off. “Dean, do you even get why this matters to me?”

“Right now? What I get is that I’m standing in a parking lot freezing my ass off.”

“I’m serious.”

“Me too.”

“Don’t fuck with me,” I said.

“I’m too fucking
cold
to fuck with you. Or anyone.”

“Dean, for chrissake,” I said. “Christoph and Taliaferro back up to me, rain down an entire dump-truck load of shit on my
head, and you don’t say one
word
?”

He looked away, jaw clenched.

“I mean, what the
fuck
?” I continued. “Did they, like, hide some psycho-alien Reagan-pod under your desk and suck your brains out?”

He lifted his chin. “It’s a job, all right? It’s a fucking job. With a fucking paycheck. Not to mention the health insurance.”

He looked at my cast but was nice enough not to mention that I’d been doing even less to augment his salary lately, given
all those hours I hadn’t been on anybody’s clock for out in Queens—or down at St. Vincent’s so they could keep breaking my
damn arm.

And I was the one who’d talked him into moving down here in the first place, not to mention meeting up with Christoph.

But these guys are still assholes.

I shivered.

“Dean, look,” I said, “I’m sorry—”

He shook off
my
hand this time. “Here’s an idea: the next time you want to go all Angela
Davis
on my ass, all oppressed by the patriarchy?
You
pay the rent—”

“I
said
I’m sorry. Jesus—”

“Because on
your
pay we can live in a cardboard
box
, on top of a fucking
subway
grate.”

We stared at each other, livid.

I dropped my eyes first.

The wind picked up, making dead leaves skitter across the asphalt.

The rush of air was cold and dry, and we were both standing here in this stupid parking lot because I’d asked for it—because
I’d thought it was what I wanted.

Maybe he could work here for a year or something and then move on. Preferably without requiring denazification.

“I
am
sorry, Dean. Really. Look, we’ve both been under a lot of

pressure—”

“
Some
of us have work to do,” he said, cutting off my attempt at conciliation.

“Hey, I just wanted to—”

But he’d turned away and started walking toward the building’s front door.

I followed three paces behind, willing his silent back to rot in hell.

Y
ou’d tell me if Christoph were sleeping with other women, wouldn’t you?”

Astrid and I were sitting in an empty office on the first floor. I could hear Dean and Christoph talking, upstairs, apparently
having a fine old time.

“I think he is,” she said. “I think he’s cheating on me.”

“Maybe we should crash the Christmas party. In disguise.”

“I’m not joking.”

“Astrid, it’s not like Christoph would tell me if he were sleeping around. I mean, he knows I’m your friend.”

She still hadn’t taken off her dark glasses. Or the hooded coat.

She smelled perfectly fine so I figured she at least had to launder it occasionally—unless she had six of the things and just
rotated.

“He hasn’t said anything to Dean?” she asked.

“Why would he tell Dean? That would be incredibly stupid.”

“Because you think Dean would tell you?”

She was sitting in a desk chair on wheels, twisting it back and forth slowly. I don’t think she’d even noticed my broken arm.

“Dean
would
tell me,” I said. “And Christoph knows that, so he wouldn’t tell Dean.”

“So you
do
think he’s cheating on me but hiding it from Dean.”

“Astrid. I will say this one more time: I do not think your husband is cheating on you, nor does
my
husband think your husband is cheating on you. End of story.”

“But Maddie—”

“And if you ask me again I’m going to walk upstairs and invite Christoph over for brunch and a threesome tomorrow morning
just to get this the hell
over
with.”

She rocked the chair faster, but at least that had made her smile a little bit.

Okay, so it was more of an “Oh please, like he’d sleep with you?” smirk.

Well I’d rather blow Eichmann, honey, so I guess it all evens out.

“Take your sunglasses off,” I said.

“What?”

“Your shades,” I said. “They’re giving me the creeps. ‘Madeline, I am your father….’ ”

She put them on top of the desk.

“Way better.”

She started rocking the chair again. “He’s cheating on me, Maddie. I know it.”

“Astrid, look,” I said. “Can I be honest here?”

“Of course.”

“You’re sounding a little crazy. Like, the
DSM-III Revised
kind of crazy.”

She stopped rocking. “How do you mean?”

“We’ve known each other since we were fifteen, right?”

She nodded. “Yes.”

“You remember the first night we got to be friends?”

She looked away.

“It was around the end of November,” I said. “Sophomore year. A bunch of us were hanging out in Randy and Pauline’s room,
even though they were both away for the weekend. Just a random Saturday afternoon, a while after lunch—I forget why we were
all there. You guys were probably doing bong hits in the closet or something, hiding from the dorm parents.”

“You never partied with us back then,” she said. “You were such a straight arrow. Didn’t even smoke cigarettes yet.”

“Randy and Pauline’s beds were shoved together, like a gigantic sofa with piles of pillows. Typical dorm room: Indian-print
tapestries on the walls, big posters from Fiorucci. All of us just lazing around on our stomachs talking shit, you know? What
boys we liked and did they like us back, and which of us had lost our virginity already, how much school sucked, and how there
was never anything to do on the weekends.”

Astrid didn’t say anything, but she’d slowed the chair’s motion, listening to me like I was soothing her fears with a bedtime
story.

Maybe I was.

“Everyone else kind of drifted out of the room, eventually,” I continued, “wandered down to the common room to smoke a butt,
or to the dining hall for dinner, but you and I stayed, just kicking back, still talking. We didn’t even turn on the lights
when it started getting dark outside. We had too much to say, couldn’t be bothered to walk across the room.”

“We must have left to sign in by ten, but I don’t remember getting up, even then.”

“The Lewises were on duty,” I said. “Two doors away, right at the end of the hall. We ran there and back, babbling the entire
time. You never even went downstairs to smoke, just leaned out the window with a Marlboro in your mouth every hour or so,
fanning the smoke away, insisting nobody’d be able to see you through the trees.”

“You were terrified of getting busted, but I was right.”

“We were still talking when the sun came up.”

Astrid put her feet up on the desk and leaned her chair back on its axis. “Our first all-nighter.”

“Of many,” I said.

“We must’ve talked for eighteen hours straight.”

“At
least
, before we finally passed out from sheer exhaustion.”

“And we didn’t even have a term paper to blow off writing, at the time.”