Hard Feelings (11 page)

Then I did a search for Rudnick, Eisman and Stevens and I found a reference to Michael J. Rudnick, Esquire. Unfortunately, the page dealt with the sale of office space in lower Manhattan, and didn’t tell me anything I didn’t already know.

I remembered how Rudnick had been wearing a wedding band. I wanted to know who his wife was, what she did for a living. I wanted to know if he had children and, if so, how old they were. I wanted to know where he lived. I remembered seeing the address the other day for a Michael Rudnick on Washington Street in the West Village. Washington Street was very far west, near the West Side Highway, in the meat-packing district, a primarily “gay neighborhood.” Maybe Rudnick was gay and the wedding band meant that he had a husband.

My computer made a beeping sound, the signal that I had an e-mail. It was from Bob, requesting a detailed list of all my outstanding proposals.

I deleted the message, then went back to searching the Net for information on Michael J. Rudnick.

I arrived home from work at a little after seven o’clock. The lights in the foyer and living room were on, but the bedroom door was locked again. I knocked softly. There was no answer, so I knocked again, a little harder.

“Come on, just open up,” I said. “I don’t want to have to go through this nonsense again tonight.”

I knocked again, then I heard footsteps and the door unlocking. I entered the room and saw Paula standing with her back to me, facing her closet. She was still in her work clothes—a conservative navy suit. I went up to her, stopping a few feet away.

“Look, I know there’s absolutely nothing I can say to you right now,” I said. “But you just have to know how sorry I am. I swear to God I’ll never do anything like this again, and I—”

She turned around toward me. I was so startled I couldn’t speak and I felt like crying. The left side of her face on and above her cheekbone was red and swollen, and the area under the eye was dark purple. I couldn’t believe she’d gone to work looking that way.

“My God,” I said. “I’m
so
sorry.”

I tried to reach out to touch her, but she backed away.

“Stay the fuck away from me,” she said.

“Look,” I said. “I—”

“I’m telling you this once so you better not forget it,” she said coldly. “If you ever,
ever
hurt me again the marriage is over. I don’t care what you say or what excuses you make up. I’m not going to be one of those stand-by-their-man women who stay with their abusive, alcoholic husbands. Fuck that.”

“I didn’t mean to hurt you,” I said.

“Don’t give me that bullshit! You were trying to push me and you know it!”

I couldn’t argue with this because it was the truth. I sat down on the bed and started to cry into my open hands. It was like I was at a funeral—my lips were quivering and I was short of breath. I knew this wasn’t just about Paula. I was releasing stress and anger that had been building in me for days.

“You’re going to A.A. and we’re going to counseling,” Paula said. “I called my therapist today and he recommended a Dr. Lewis, a marriage counselor on Park Avenue. I made an appointment for Friday at six.”

I continued to cry. I probably hadn’t cried so much since I was a kid—Paula certainly had never seen me cry this way and it seemed to be having an effect on her. If I wasn’t showing so much distress, she probably would have continued to yell at me. Instead, she stood in front of the bed for a while, then she sat down next to me, resting a hand on my knee. I knew she would have been acting very differently if she knew my crying had very little to do with her.

Finally, I stopped sobbing. Paula said, “I want to forgive you—I really do. I mean, I hurt you once and I know how important it was for me when you gave me a second chance. I want to do the same thing for you, but I want to tell you right now it’s going to be very hard. What you did last night was so awful—it was the worst thing you could’ve done. What the hell’s wrong with you?”

“I’ve been having a problem,” I said.

“A problem? What kind of problem?”

I almost told her about Michael Rudnick. My lips started to move and a faint sound came out of my mouth, but I caught myself just in time.

“There’s just been a lot going on with me lately,” I said.

“What do you mean?” she said. “You mean with your job? You’ve had problems at work before, but you’ve never acted like this.”

“It’s different now.”

“Why?”

“It just is. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s a midlife crisis—”

“At thirty-four?”

“—or maybe it’s just stress. Look, I know there’s no excuse for what I did, all right? Maybe you’re right—maybe I
do
have a drinking problem. I’ll go to A.A.—I’ll go into counseling with you if that’s what you want. I’ll do anything to get things back to normal with us.”

I tried to hold her hand but she wriggled it free.

“Is there anything I can do for you?” I said. “Can I get you some more ice or something?”

“I’ll be fine,” she said. “It looked a lot worse this morning.”

“What did people at work say?”

“I made up a story. I said I slipped coming out of the shower and fell against a towel rack. I think they believed me.”

“You sure I can’t get you something? Even something to eat?”

“I’ll be okay—really. I’d just like to be alone for a while.”

I changed out of my work clothes, then went into the kitchen. I didn’t have much of an appetite, but I decided I was probably starving and just didn’t realize it. I took out the leftover sushi from the fridge and picked at it in the living room while I watched TV.

About a half-hour went by, then Paula came out of the bedroom. She took her sushi out of the fridge and sat on the chair adjacent to me and we watched TV together. We barely spoke. Several times, I tried to initiate conversation, but each time she had a curt, one-word response, and I realized that it was probably best to leave her alone—not push her. She would start talking to me again when she was ready.

Paula said she’d rather sleep alone, but at least this time she didn’t lock me out of the bedroom. She let me take a spare blanket and pillow out of the closet to sleep with on the couch.

At around eleven o’clock, I walked Otis. When I returned to the building, I got onto an elevator with a young boy. He was about thirteen years old and he had curly red hair. I had seen him many times over the past few years, in and around the building. Usually, he was with his mother or father, but now he was alone, holding a basketball. I remembered how I had been bouncing a basketball on the sidewalk in front of my old house in Brooklyn, the first time Michael Rudnick invited me to his basement.

The boy’s name was Jonathan. I didn’t know why I knew this. I must have overheard his mother talking to him once.

“Have a good game?” I asked.

I had never spoken to the boy before and he double-taked before he said, “Yeah.”

“Where did you play?”

“A schoolyard,” he said shyly, and he looked up toward the illuminated floor numbers above the doors.

Staring at the boy, I imagined inviting him over to my apartment one day when Paula wasn’t home to watch a basketball game on TV. We would make a bet—he would choose one team, and I would take the other. If his team won, I would give him five dollars. If my team won, I would give him a wedgie. Then, if I won the bet, I would chase him around the apartment, pull up his underwear, and pin him down on the couch.

I snapped out of it, suddenly aware of how the back of my neck was sweating.

The elevator doors opened on Jonathan’s floor and he left without saying goodbye. I hoped he wouldn’t tell his parents that some pervert had been leering at him in the elevator.

Later, standing in front of the bathroom mirror, I couldn’t believe what was happening to me. First I’d pushed my wife into a wall
on purpose
, and now I was starting to have sick thoughts about preying on innocent boys.

I needed a glass of Scotch. I knew it was probably the wrong thing to do, but I couldn’t stop myself. It was the only way I’d be able to relax, get back to normal. Besides, I’d only have one drink. What harm could one little drink do?

I made sure the door to the bedroom was still shut and then I opened the liquor cabinet quietly, only to discover that all the bottles were gone. I should have known that Paula would do this. For a moment, I considered going outside again, to the deli on First Avenue, and buying a couple of beers, but I stopped myself, realizing that this was probably for the best. I had to get on the wagon sooner or later so I might as well start now.

Lying on the couch, I was sweating again. Unable to sleep, I turned on the TV with the volume muted. Otis climbed onto the couch and settled down next to my face. I petted him gently on his back and head and underneath his neck. It had taken me a while to get close with Otis. Originally, I’d wanted a cat, but Paula had her heart set on a cocker spaniel and, eventually, I gave in. I never thought I’d turn into one of those people who talked to their dogs on the street, but lately I had caught myself doing it all the time. And, right now, because I needed to tell somebody how I was feeling and there was nobody else to tell, I whispered into Otis’s floppy ear: “I’m gonna kill him, Otis. I’m gonna kill that fucking bastard.”

9

IN THE MORNING, I left a message on Bob’s voice mail that I was sick and wouldn’t be coming into work today. This was partly the truth because I’d been uncomfortable all night and I’d awakened with a sore throat, a stuffy nose, and a stiff neck. But even if I’d felt 100 percent I would have taken the day off.

Paula wasn’t any more talkative then she had been last night. I was glad to see that her bruise had faded; underneath her makeup it would be barely noticeable.

I showered first and when Paula finished her shower I was already dressed in one of my work suits and was putting on my shoes. It was only seven-fifteen, but I told Paula I wanted to get a “head start” this morning. When I went to kiss her goodbye, she stepped back, not even letting me kiss her cheek.

It was raining hard, so I took an umbrella with me and left the apartment. I was in a hurry, so I took a cab across town to Madison and Fifty-fourth.

I was hoping to catch Rudnick on his way to work, figuring that as a lawyer for a Madison Avenue firm he must get to work very early. When the cab dropped me off I checked my watch and saw it was seven-thirty on the dot. I went to the spot near the main entrance where I had waited yesterday, except today the ledge was covered with puddles and I couldn’t sit down.

For over an hour, I watched the streams of people entering the building. Almost everyone was carrying an umbrella, some at an angle against the wind, making it harder to see their faces.

As nine o’clock approached, the volume of people arriving for work increased, but there was still no sign of Rudnick. I wondered if he had come in already—some executives arrived at work before seven-thirty—and I was kicking myself for not leaving my apartment earlier.

At a few minutes after nine, I decided to call Rudnick’s office on my cell phone. I said I was “Mr. Jacobson, an old client of Michael Rudnick’s,” and Rudnick, the son of a bitch, took the call. I hung up immediately. Without another thought, I entered the building through the revolving doors and looked up Rudnick, Eisman and Stevens on the building’s directory. When I got off the elevator on the thirty-second floor and approached the receptionist, I felt blood pulsing in my head.

“Michael Rudnick, please.”

The receptionist stared at me as if I were frightening her.

“Do you have an appointment with him?” she finally asked.

“Just tell him an old friend is here to see him.”

“I’m sorry,” she said, still seeming slightly afraid. “I can’t ask one of the lawyers to come to the desk without giving them a name.”

I decided that the woman, who looked like she was about twenty-five, was probably a temp. A full-time employee wouldn’t have referred to Rudnick as “one of the lawyers” and I knew that if I kept being demanding I could get her to do anything I wanted.

“Look, I’m a very close old friend of Michael’s and I wanted to surprise him.”

“Can’t you just tell me your name?”

“It wouldn’t be a surprise if he knew I was here.”

The girl thought this over for a while then said, “Okay, he isn’t with a client right now, so you can go inside . . . I guess.”

The girl told me where Rudnick’s office was—“straight back, all the way to the left”—and I thanked her for “helping me with the surprise.”

I entered Rudnick’s corner office without knocking, stopping a few feet in front of his desk. He was sitting there, reading some papers, and he looked up at me, completely startled.

Finally, he said, “What are you doing here?”

I didn’t rush to answer. I stared at him for five, maybe ten seconds, wanting to milk this.

“What do you think I’m doing here?” I asked, smiling menacingly.

“The receptionist didn’t tell me you were here,” Rudnick said, as if this were his only problem with me suddenly appearing in his office. We continued to stare at each other until he said, “So what do you want?”