Winners (18 page)

F
OR THE FIRST
time in weeks, it feels like the weather’s about to change. The temperature plummets as the sun sinks, revealing the familiar San Francisco: a jagged stone that won’t hold heat, carved by wood and winds. With their apartment shut up tight and every window closed, the place feels small. The outside roars around the hundred-year-old clapboards, huffing and puffing to blow something down.

Lou is home for the first time in three days. That’s not quite true—she has been home, returning late and rising early, a phantom moving through Shane’s first and last hours of sleep. But they haven’t said sixteen words to one another since their far-off Thursday night, since Lou began her Fulton preparations, since Shane reverted to fending for himself. Now she lies draped across the couch like a limp chenille throw.

He decides to build them a fire. It took him years after they moved in to get around to reclaiming the fireplace, something about the separation of work and home. In the small cache of stacked wood on their deck, he finds a largish spider, something menacing, a widow or recluse. He waits for it to walk away, strutting on its six legs, taking its dangerous sweet time.

Shane feels her watching him as he builds the kindling log cabin and stuffs the classifieds inside. Soon the flames are dancing their crazy gassy dance. He stares into their black-blue middles, listening to his wife sip wine. He’d like to hear her low maniac’s laugh. He’d like to hear her tell the joke about the mouse screwing the elephant in the butt.

“You feel like a movie?” he says. Shane rolls around to face her. He dimly remembers her leaving this morning in a skirt, but now she’s dressed for nuclear winter: a thick East Coast autumn sweater, fleece sweatpants, thick wool socks. Even so, she clasps her arms around herself in a pantomime of cold. Cold equals unhappiness, in Lou’s world. He’s not sure she’s heard him but she shakes her head: no.

He goes to their music collection and reaches for the first thing he sees. It’s the second Replacements album, songs he hasn’t heard forever. Lou’s head tilts at the sound and now she smiles at him, silent. They’ve been together a long time, haven’t they.

“Remember this?” he says, lamely.

“Yeah.”

“I didn’t even know you yet.”

“Dinosaurs roamed the earth.”

“I owned condoms.”

“So did I.”

The fire cracks and pops, the dry wood burning with gusto. Her eyes float back to the magazine folded on her lap and he sees her prepare to dive inside.

“That kid is in trouble,” he says suddenly.

“What?” Her voice is soft and almost dreamy.

“That kid I play basketball with. He’s missing. He might be dead.”

“My god,” she says, automatically, her eyes snapping back to him, suddenly alert.

“Yeah. No one knows.”

“I’m really sorry, Shane. Christ.” She puts her head in her hands, briefly, as if trying to stop a headache, and then pulls her hands away. “I’m really sorry.”

“Yeah. I’ve been meaning to talk to you.”

“To me?” she says, shaking her head in disbelief: what on earth does this have to do with me? “About what?”

“About his mother. Do you remember? I mentioned her.”

“No,” she says. It’s a reflex and she doesn’t try to think if she remembers or not. No is her answer and she’s sticking to it.

“I told you,” he says. He sounds like a little kid. “I thought maybe you could talk to her.”

“To the mother.” Her face expands: the eyes wide, the nostrils flared. She looks away. This on top of everything. “About what?” she says again.

“About a job.”

“A job?” She stares at Shane. He is speaking Hungarian, some very difficult language. “What are you talking about?” She’s holding her head again. She seems to think it might fall off.

“I know,” he says carefully, trying not to yell. “I know you have a lot going on, but we’re trying to help her. You said maybe.”

“Maybe what?”

“Maybe a job.”

“Oh,” she says. He can’t tell if she remembers or not. “Doing what?” She sounds like she’s trying not to be annoyed. She sounds annoyed.

“Receptionist?”

“I just hired one.”

“I don’t know, Lou, something. It’s like the hiring rush of the century, right? It’s like they say, send warm bodies.”

“They who?”

“There must be something she can do.”

“What? What could she do. She lives in the projects, right?”

So she does remember. “I don’t know. Whatever the rest of those idiots down there do. Whatever all you people do.”

“Why don’t you hire her? Why don’t you wrap her up in bristle brush and shove her down a chimney.” Lou inhales deeply, ready to breathe fire.

“All right,” Shane says. “Fuck it.” He is ready to make his grand exit when he sees tears rolling down her cheeks, running quick as raindrops across a newly shingled roof. She doesn’t blink, doesn’t even squint or make a sound, but she is surely crying. He feels something crack inside him, a balloon of helplessness bursting in his chest. He sees the tears and moves towards her without thinking, the only thing left in his brain is you must do something to stop that now.

“I’m sorry,” she says, softly, her voice slipping up high. He can barely hear her. He’s trying to hold her in his arms and she lets him, briefly, before pushing him gently away. “I don’t even know why I’m crying,” she sobs.

“It’s okay,” he says. “I’m sorry.”

“No,” she says, and continues to cry. He doesn’t know what to do. She never cries and now she has her face in her hands and is sobbing on the sofa where he sits next to her, thinking, how do you fix this? What do I do?

“Lou,” he says, “Lou. Aw Lou, come on, it’s okay. Lou.”

She shakes her head, waves him off. “Wait,” she says. She gets up and goes to the bathroom, shuts the door. He hears her running the water in there. When she comes out her eyes are red and her hair is wet across her brow but she has stopped crying.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I just wanted to.”

“I know,” she says. “I freaked out. I can’t even fight right. I don’t know what, I think I’m just so…stressed… out.” She tries to laugh at herself but no sound comes. “You know?”

“You’ve been working so much.”

“It’s insane. God. I don’t think I even know sometimes how insane this is, this life. I’m sorry.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Okay,” she says. “Everyone’s sorry.” She takes a deep breath and smiles a tight-lipped smile. “Of course I’ll talk to her,” she says. “She’s not on drugs, is she?” It’s meant to be a joke but she doesn’t make it sound like one.

“She doesn’t do drugs,” he says. I hope, he thinks, I hope at least that’s true. “She doesn’t drink.”

“That’s a start,” she says. She’s through with crying but she still seems like she’s fighting to keep herself calm. “But I seriously doubt,” she says, “I just thought that after all this time you.” She tries one more time. “That you know this business, it’s not like anyone can just come in and do it. Jokes are one thing but it’s not like that at all.”

“You mean it’s not chimney sweeping.”

“I didn’t say that. You’re the one calling people idiots.”

“I didn’t mean that,” he says. She shrugs, not sure if she believes him. He’s not sure she should. He feels the anger rising again, a tide pulling back into the dry land left by her recent tears. When do I ever ask you for anything, he thinks. “I just want you to talk to her.”

“Yes, okay.” Lou lets out a sudden hoot, a release of tension that echoes through the room. They both startle like wild animals. “Damn,” she says. “There, that’s easy. Yes. Of course I’ll talk to her.”

“Thank you,” he says.

“Just one thing. I just want to make sure.”

“What.”

“That you don’t promise things.”

“I didn’t.”

“Because I don’t know what I can do. It’s like…I don’t even have time for you, how do I have time for her?”

“She can have my time for once.”

Lou doesn’t seem to hear him. “We will though. We will finally have time up the wazinga, if I can just do this right. If we can make this happen with Fulton this week. Then you won’t have to deal with the dot-com bitch ever again.”

“I’m okay,” he says. “You don’t need to worry about me.”

“Sure,” she says. “They’ll put that on your tombstone. Don’t worry about me, people. Come on, Shane. I know it’s been hard.”

“What.”

“Me. You. I mean look at us, we’re talking about some stranger and you’d think we were insulting our own mothers. Why do I feel like that?”

“I don’t know.”

“Stakes is high,” she quotes to him, a movie or song he can’t remember. She leans awkwardly, nuzzling into his chest. “Stakes is so damn high.”

He puts an arm around her. Where will this conversation go? “Mmm, steaks,” he says. He kisses her on the temple: a loud smack of a kiss, to end it. “Let’s see what I can find for dinner.” She glances at him and sighs. Okay. They’re okay. They smile at each other, but he wonders if her smile also dissolves the moment they turn away.

Later that night his cell phone rings. Lou has gone to bed, but Shane is drinking a Bud longneck and watching classic sports: Celtics–Bulls ’86, game two, one of civilization’s great achievements. Jordan goes off for sixty-three, including the drive where he jab-steps Bird on the wing, fakes once and then again, and when Bird won’t go for it Jordan freezes him with a through-the-leg dribble, back forth twice and then fades away as McHale jumps out to help. Swish that shit. He backpedals down the Garden’s parquet floor and the hostile home crowd gasps. It’s the most simply spectacular move that they or Shane have ever seen. He burns two of the best guys who ever played, makes them look like fools. But McHale and Bird still win. That’s the beauty of it. He punks them but they’re still too much. Jordan will have to wait.

Shane leaps from the couch to swipe the phone off the kitchen counter with one hand. Jimmy, he thinks, although there’s a moment before he answers it when he hopes it’s someone else.

“Hello?”

“Chimney man.” It’s a cell to cell connection, bad, filled with crackle and pop. “You got my money?”

“Who’s this.”

“Yeah, you know who this is. You heard about your boy Sauce.”

“Heard what.”

The low voice laughs. “Come on now. You know how we do this. He still got family, and they still owe me money. You the fairy godfather, right, now y’all wanna take care of business or bury that bitch? It’s up to you.”

Shane hangs up, switches off the phone. He looks around the room for witnesses, but there aren’t any. There’s no reason to believe that just happened, he thinks. On the TV, in the first overtime, Bird is backing down his defender in an isolation on the right side. It’s a crucial time, and important play, but Shane can’t remember what Bird is going to do. Either fade away or up and under, one of the two. Get rid of the phone. Don’t go back. There’s a way out, he thinks, I know there is.

H
E PICKS UP
Debra on Thursday morning. He feels nervous, as if he’s the one headed for an interview. Imagine: putting on his best high-tops and strutting through the parking lot to offer himself as drug dealer, pimp, armed robber, con man. A non-stop job fair up here.

They talk about nothing in particular on the ride down. Weather, traffic. Crappy, crappy, they both agree. He doesn’t bring up the gym, the drugs, the phone call. He mentions she looks nice. It’s true. She wears a synthetic fabric business suit in a light cream color white people can’t do, and in that color her skin looks particularly smooth and rich and shiny, as if she’s been buffed and waxed and soft towel washed. It’s not a particularly nice suit but somehow it makes her look long and elegant. Her short hair is sculpted into tiny waves along the top of her head, a slightly extra-spiked look that makes her seem extra young. Her eyes clear and alert and blinding black and white. Small gold earrings. He has explained to her as best he can about the casual office deal but he sees she doesn’t trust him when it comes to clothes. Can’t blame her. She looks too good for the job, although he doesn’t tell her that.

The 101 slips by with its monster billboards, touting companies of the day: Sybase, Cysive, Sapient, Cisco. Names like James Bond–villain business fronts or the sinister hissing of Disney snakes. They listen to the radio, the station still set where Jimmy left it last. This is K-P-O-O, a young boy is saying, San Fran-cis-co, maybe seven or eight years old, charming as hell. Bay-ba bay-bay! He glances at Debra but she is elsewhere, staring at the office parks blurring by.

The interview is set for 11:00 a.m., and they pull into the lot early, with plenty of time to spare.

Lou and company are dug into a corner of their own office park, one enormous room in a steel-glass building they scored before the Bay Area went all-out office mad. The
Lever.com
leadership has no idea what they’re going to do when success requires a bigger space, although the assumption is that vast sums of money will settle everything. He doesn’t remember what they pay per square foot but he knows the newest tenants in the building are forking out a good bit more than the going rate in the Empire State Building. That’s a cocktail stat he’s heard more than a few times. He knows that every company in the building is a technology company, that despite appearances this is a prestigious address. Every outfit listed on the building directory is worth millions, although none of them has ever made a dime.

The
Lever.com
office space is open and newly neutral carpeted, with a bathroom and tiny so-called conference room that must have been an oversized broom closet in the architect’s original plans. Sixteen tables made from unfinished doors dominate the space, clustered in fours that each form a loose cross configuration. At the end of each table, a black metal file cabinet sits at a right angle, squaring off the work area to give the illusion of personal space. With the tables in a cross, the file cabinets arranged like flags flying the same direction, the clusters actually look more like swastikas than anything else, Shane thinks. There’s not a lick of privacy here, and the sixteen people who work long days together each stare at their neighbor’s ear, catching every word that passes through the boxed air around them.

He has warned Debra about the silence. Sixteen people work here but the place is crazy quiet. You swing open that tinted glass door, step inside, and hear nothing except an insect clicking of plastic keyboards, the tiny squeak of a swiveling pneumatic chair, the high metallic tympani of someone’s rock ’n’ roll music seeping from firing-range headphones. Few phones ring, few conversations break out. He has heard his wife insist that the office isn’t always weird and quiet, but it’s been like that the few times he’s made it down here.

A wave of tilted heads and curious eyes hits the opened door. Up front, at the nearest table, a very young guy wearing the headset of an operator-standing-by holds Shane’s glance from a seat that faces the door. The receptionist. The guy with Debra’s job, Shane thinks.

“Can I help you?”

“I’m Shane McCarthy. Lou’s husband?”

“Oh, yeah, I’m Mark.” He points a gotcha finger at him. “I’ve talked to you on the phone. How are ya?”

“I’m fine.” Shane introduces Debra, who is looking around the room suspiciously, waiting for somebody to jump them. No one’s going to jump them, but everyone’s staring at the new arrivals: the devil’s husband, in a rare appearance, with a black chick sidekick, overdressed. Everyone else here is white or maybe pink at most, dressed in fine fabric Valley casual or baggy Techno slob. And there she is, wearing the wrong skin and looking ready for a sit-down at a Midwestern bank. She must feel inappropriate already, and Shane tries to think how to make things right.

“Right, right,” Mark is saying, his fingers flying across the keyboard, his hand darting out to swivel click and then back again. Debra watches his darting hand as if it were a rat. “Eleven o’clock, right?” He taps his thumb against the lower right part of his screen where in thick red numbers the time’s displayed. They are thirty-two minutes early. The traffic wasn’t so bad after all.

“Do you want me to see…” Mark says, trailing off, looking back and forth between Shane and Debra and their enemy the clock.

“Oh, no,” Debra says, in a voice that’s smaller than any noise Shane has heard from her yet. Debra the Small. “I’ll wait.”

“Yeah,” Mark says. “You know, she’s on the phone.”

“She’s always on the phone,” Shane says. “She has dents in her head.”

“That’s fine,” Debra tells Mark, ignoring Shane’s best try.

“Cool.” Mark guns his finger at two chairs pressed against the wall. Debra looks at them as if trying to decide something. She picks a chair, puts her purse on the other one and her manila folder on her lap. No seat for him. She’s on her own, now.

“I’m gonna wave hi,” he tells either Debra or Mark, he’s not sure whom. “And then I gotta go.” According to their arrangement, Lou will organize her ride back. It’s Thursday. He’s going to try to make it back to the city in time for basketball.

He makes his way to Lou’s marketing cluster, waving a silent hello to engineering Rich who gives him a quick victory salute before diving deep into his keyboard to resume his two-fingered typing prayer. Rich’s cluster consists entirely of guys, the coders, and designers perched behind enormous monitors, ridiculously young, dressed in brightly colored T-shirts and loose multipocket pants and maybe a baseball cap, rocking back and forth to headphone beats or slumping demi-0lifeless toward the floor. As he passes, he sneaks a quick glance at their screens. One of them seems to be working, flinging words and mathematics together, his fingers flying as if defusing a bomb. The others are slacking: downloading music, watching a Stickman cartoon Kung fu animation. None of them notice him as he moves by.

Lou’s group sits against a wall of windows that look out on careful grass strips and the fresh-paved parking lot outside. Lou herself isn’t there, but he recognizes the two women and the guy. The women face each other, typing in short conversational bursts, giggling at one another across the table. Shane has heard about their incessant computer conversations, typing electronic notes to one another like high-tech schoolgirls. The clicking stops as he gets closer and they turn to greet him.

“Hi!”

“Hey hey. How’s it going?”

“Good. How are you guys doing.”

“Aw, you know.”

“Lou around?”

“She’s in the conference room.” The woman’s name comes slowly to him: Trish. Pretty and blond and elfin and very, very clean. Athletic. He had a conversation with her once about lacrosse.

“I’ll peek in,” he says. He excuses himself and moves towards the door, hearing the chit-chat typing crescendo in his wake.

Inside the ad hoc conference room, his wife is on the phone, talking cheerfully about money. Fulton. Today might even be the day. She waves him into the seat beside her, but he stays standing, not wanting to linger though he must say something before he leaves her and Debra alone.

“Sure,” Lou is saying, “no problem.” She nods at him and tells him to hang on with one raised finger. “Okay.” She leans back in her seat, pulls the phone away from her ear, puts a hand over the receiver. “Hey baby. I’m on hold.”

“Who’s holding you. Fulton?”

“One of his minions.”

“Oh you little tramp.”

“Sure. They don’t call it the new economy for nothing.” She smiles, bites her lip. “We’re this close to an offer sheet,” she whispers, finger and thumb held pincer close.

“That’s great.”

“I know it.” She listens to the phone for a moment. “We’re talking fourteen right now for twenty-two, which would value us at sixty-four, post-money.” He sees now the well-scribbled pad in front of her.

“That sounds good,” he says, trying to remember what that means.

“Yeah. We’re trying to get them to twenty-one.” She’s barely talking to him. She’s barely there.

He kisses her on the head. “Good luck. I’m gonna run. I just wanted to pop in. We got here a little early.” She nods at him, but she doesn’t know what the hell he’s talking about. “Debra Marks. We’re a little early,” he repeats.

“Debra Marks.” She’s listening to the earpiece, to see if Fulton has come back on the line. “Oh, shit. That’s today.”

“You thought I’d just come down for a visit.”

“I don’t know what I thought. Shit. Oh baby.”

“We’re early, though, you got time.”

“I don’t, though, I don’t. Shit. I’m sorry, I totally forgot. This is going to be all day, this thing. Lawyers have been activated. We’re supposed to head up there this afternoon.”

“Great. It’ll be easy to drop her off then.”

“She, uh.” His wife’s forehead is folding in on itself, wrinkling into the problem. “We have to do it next week,” she says.

“Next week?”

“Next month?” She smiles ruefully. “Year?”

“Lou.”

“Baby, I can’t. You know what this is. Without this there isn’t any that, you know?” She stabs at the paper in front of her with the pen. “Please,” she says. “First things first.”

He looks at the paper with all those numbers, and the calculator that still reads 66.666666.

“Thirty minutes,” he says. “That’s all. Twenty.”

She shakes her head. “Please.”

“No,” he says.

“No?” She shakes her head again. She’s heard him wrong. “Please,” she says again, as if it were already settled. “Tell her I’m so sorry, we’ll reschedule for next week. It’ll be better. I’ll know more then. Explain the situation. She’ll understand. She doesn’t want to meet with me on a day like this. Really.”

“No. You explain it. You tell her you can meet again next week.”

“Yes,” Lou says, but not to him. “I’m here. No, please, I know exactly how that goes. Don’t they always?” She smiles into the phone. Wait, she mouths at him, but he shakes his head and opens the door and shuts it not so delicately behind him.

He sits down next to Debra and together they wait. For thirty-five minutes they sit there, silent, watching the office operate around them. An early lunchtime is in progress, the office filling with the hollow hum of the microwave and humid air of reheated dinners. People must start here early, to beat the traffic rush. There is something with bacon in it; leftover pungent yellow curry thick with onions. A delivery man arrives with a pepperoni-sausage pizza for the programmers’ table. Receptionist Mark eyes Shane nervously from time to time, careful not to catch his eye.

“She’s still on the phone,” Mark says, at the forty-minute mark. “It looks like maybe noon?”

“Noon?” Shane says, disgusted, but Debra touches him on the wrist and nods, meets his eyes.

“I’m fine,” she tells Mark.

“Okay,” he says, relieved.

“I’m sorry,” Shane says to Debra. He hears her stomach growl, sees her swallow nervously.

“You should go,” she says quickly, “Really, I’m fine.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. Go.”

“Okay.”

He stands, glancing at his watch. If the traffic’s cool, he’ll still catch some game. His morning cup of coffee and the lunchtime office smells poke him in the guts.

“Bathroom?” he says to Mark, even though he knows where it is.

When he steps into the bathroom he can hear Lou’s voice loud and clear. Even this private part of the office has one of those lowered ceilings where sound seems to travel freely between the rooms. How embarrassing, he thinks. But to his relief her voice disappears, he hears the door open and close, and he can get down to business. He’s still in there, finishing up as he hears the door open again and the voices begin.

“Nothing?” Lou is saying. “Coffee, water, Coke?”

“A Coke,” Debra says.

“Diet or regular?”

“Diet.” He can picture them here, facing each other, doing their best to smile. So far so good, Shane thinks. One question, one correct answer. Lou comes through.

He hears them settle down at the table in the cramped conference room. He flushes the toilet, turns on the water to wash his hands and leave. He closes his eyes. In the next room, Lou is smoothing back her hair behind her ears too many times as she always does when she’s distracted. He turns off the water. They are sitting there in silence while his wife looks over Debra’s résumé. She’s never seen anything like it. This woman hasn’t worked for three years. He holds himself steady against the sink, picturing, listening.

Debra waits quietly, busying herself with nerves. He knows that the only interviews she’s been on in the last three years were with social workers, housing authority administrators, school teachers—very different sorts of interviews indeed. In these encounters she’s learned to be needy, pushy, deserving of help and ready to fight for her rights. He remembers telling her: no need to push but be yourself, confidence without presumption. He listens for Debra, listens for her to do anything at all.

Say something, he thinks, leaning his head against the wall. Is she afraid to open her mouth? Does she think her voice will sound too loud? Is she imagining all the wrong things she’s about to say? It occurs to him that her nervousness is not that fear of how will I impress, what will I do to dazzle. Her fear is that her grammar’s wrong, her suit is wrong, her skin is wrong, and Shane is wrong. Her fear is that she is about to royally fuck everything up.