The Shooting (14 page)

—Maureen, he says, voice rising, becoming tense, —don't do that.

She ignores him.

—Stop it! he shouts. He sits up and dives for her, grabs the wrist of her hand that grips the handle of the gun, squeezes it very tight.

—Ow! she says.

—Let go of it. Let go.

—You're hurting me!

—Let go of it!

—You
let go of it.

—Take your fucking hands off it.
Now. Now
, Maureen.

She does. He gets up, securing the gun by placing it on the desk and standing between her and it. He's naked. She lies there looking at him naked. He covers himself with his hands, then dresses urgently, holding on to the desk to balance himself.

—What's the matter? she slurs, still playing. —You don't like me anymore?

—No, he says, —I don't think I do.

She becomes serious and says, —I'm sorry. She rolls onto her back and looks at him upside down. —Come back to bed.

He says, —No, thank you.

—
No, thank you,
she mimics in a terse man's voice. —Why not?

—I gotta get.

—You ain't gotta get, she says, mocking him and the way he talks and who he is.

—Please don't tell me what I gotta do and what I don't. Because you don't know. You have no clue.

She goes quiet, chastened. He sits in the desk chair and ties his shoes, keeping an eye on her. At the bar he thought her eyes were kind and compassionate but they are not kind and compassionate—they are just hungry. She covers herself with the blankets. But he can still smell the alcohol wafting out of her oily skin. He can still taste the bacteria in the folds of her unwashed flesh. He stands, desperate for air, desperate to leave.

—I'm sorry, she says, sincere.

—Me too.

—Aren't you even going to tell me your name at least? she says.

—Hell no, he says, holstering the gun, opening the door, and leaving.

She leans across the table at Per Se, places her hands over his. Her hands are small and dry and clean, like the rest of her. Her skin tanned, almost cured. Eyes sparkling, wrinkles at their edges. The lids of her eyes have grown puffy. Bands of tendons push out from her neck and her chest is covered in freckles, as are her breasts, most of which he can see down her loose shawl, silk or something like it, something he imagines you could drape over one of those statues with no arms or legs.

She is in town to receive an award from the United Nations. She has done something to dirt. The dirt is in Africa and the thing she has done to it is very important and the dirt in Africa is now doing very well, much better than it was doing before, so thank God for her, thank God for what she has spent all these years doing for the dirt of Africa.

—Babu, she says. —How are you? How have you been?

He signals to the waiter for another Budweiser. He wears jeans, boots, a J.C. Penney sport coat, a cowboy hat. —Me? Great. I've been great.

—Tell me more. Tell me everything. Tell me absolutely everything.

—What do you want to know?

She looks at him heavily, like she is trying to convey something without using words. He does not know what. He does not care.

—Well, I don't know. Have you missed me?

What do you think?
he wants to say.
What the hell do you think?
—What are you talking about? he says, —I see you all the time.

—It's been three years, she says.

—No, it hasn't.

—Three years and three months.

He looks away. He does not like meeting her eyes. They make him feel like she needs things from him and maybe he has them but he does not want to give them to her.

—Anyway, she says, —how's work?

Work. She always asks about work. He does not have a job. He has done his best to find his place, his purpose. He tried to be an investigator for an insurance company, uncovering frauds. Then he tried to be a security consultant to corporations, tracking down sources of leaks, thwarting data breaches. For a time he was a guard at an office building but quit when they would not allow him to carry a weapon. He taught a self-defense class at a gym, but the clientele were all models and the admen trying to copulate with them and it was disgusting to watch, and trying to get these foolish people to understand the importance, the absolute dire necessity, of self-protection was futile and depressing. The problem has always been the same: the people he works with disdain him. They disdain him on sight. They disdain him for who he is and what he wears and whom he votes for. They disdain him for his sense of humor, of which they have none. They disdain him for everything. Everything. They do not like him. He likes them, but they do not like him. They want him to change, to be more like them. Then they might like him. But he does not ask them to change to be more like him. Yet
they feel entitled to asking him to change. And, as he has found himself explaining a hundred times in a hundred meeting rooms to a hundred soon-to-be-former colleagues, if he were to change, if everybody were to abandon who he is and what he believes just because others wanted him to, what would happen to this country? What would happen? Who would be left to stand up for what is right? This country needs guys like Lee Fisher. It needs him. He is the keeper of the flame.

—Fine, he says.

Whenever he speaks she nods enthusiastically and happily to whatever he says, holding strong eye contact and smiling, like every word from his mouth is music and everything in the world is just wonderful. As he does every time he sees her, he has the impression she is not listening at all to what he is saying, and if she is she does not care, that she is interested only in how she looks to him, whether he thinks badly of her. She does not need to hear about his life, what she needs is to look good for him and for him to tell her that all the things she suspects are her fault are not her fault and that there was nothing she could do. The only thing she ever really thinks about, he knows, is how guilty she feels. Not him, not his life—how guilty she feels. That is his job, as far as she is concerned: to keep her from feeling bad. So he could say anything right now, anything at all, and she would not hear it, she would just nod and smile enthusiastically and happily.

—Yeah, he says, —these days I'm more and more in the necrophilia space.

—Wonderful, she says brightly, nodding and smiling.

—Necrophilia and bestiality.

—Hey, do what you love and you never have to work a day in your life. She lifts her white wine to her lips. He watches her open her face and pour the wine into it.

—You act like you're the first person who's ever said that.

—Well, it's
true.
So where are you
living
? Where do you
live
? Still on the Upper East?

—No, I was living there but now... He trails off, looking at her hands. One is wrapped tightly around her wine stem like she is
afraid someone will try to take it from her, and the other is on the table beside her plate and it is opening and closing in a fist over and over. He suddenly does not have it in him to finish. —Now I live somewhere else, he says quickly.

—Where?

He does not want to tell her. —Greenwich Avenue.

She claps her hands, gasps. —The West Village! Do you rent or own?

—Own. I bought it last year. Late last year. No, two years ago. Wait, three years ago I guess.

—How many bedrooms?

—Six, but seven if you count the office.

—Oh, she says, surprised. —Is it just you?

—Just me, he says. —Me, myself, and I.

—That's a lot of space for one person.

He wonders if she is angling to move in with him, if something has gone wrong for her and she needs somewhere to live. —I have a lot of things. It was available and I could afford it. It's the penthouse. Privacy, you know.

—Your father and I met in the West Village. Did you know that?

—No.

—It used to be so different. It used to be beautiful.

—It's still beautiful. I mean, I like it. It's quiet.

—Have you heard from him?

Lee shrugs, not wanting to talk to her about his father.

She points to Lee's hat. —He used to wear one just like it.

—I doubt that.

—No, he did. He looked just like John Travolta in
Urban Cowboy.
He was the hottest thing. Gay men hit on him
constantly.
She laughs. —Do gay men hit on you
constantly
?

—Hell no, he says, shifting in his chair.

—You're not their type anyway. You look way too hetero.

He feels insulted without understanding why. —Thank you, he says.

—Anyway there probably aren't many of them left down there these days, are there? It's all Wall Street guys and the drugged-up children of international tycoons. Most of those homes are empty
because rich men buy them only to park their money. It's a ghost town now. They've gutted it, gutted it. I hate it.

—When were you here? She tries to wave it off but he says, —No, you've been here? You've been in New York, you've been to the West Village, and you haven't... He lowers his voice because he realizes he has been almost shouting. —... and you haven't
called
me? You haven't
seen
me?
What the hell is wrong with you?

—I've
read
about it! In the paper! The
Times!
My God!

He does not believe her. —Well, I
like
my neighborhood, he says, pouting. —I
like
the West Village. I
like
what it is now. Nobody bothers you. Nobody needs you. Nobody wants anything from you. Nobody expects anything of you. That's the way I like it. It's quiet and calm, and I'm so high off the ground that on cloudy days I can't even see the daggone street, I can't see nothing but the sky above me. Reminds me of back home.

—Back home, she says, flip. —That dreadful place.

—It wasn't dreadful. I don't like you calling it that.

—You hated it there.

—No I didn't. It wasn't bad, in retrospect. He wasn't either. I mean, in comparison.

—In comparison to
what?

—To people here. At least he has some kind of moral center, unlike people here. She laughs. Lee shrugs. —Back then, I was just a kid and I just didn't understand his values or appreciate them like I do now.

—I can't believe you're
defending
him. All I've ever heard you say about him are terrible things.

—That's not true.

—It is.

He suddenly feels cruel. —What do you tell them about me?

—Who?

—People. People you know, people in your life, people in Africa. The African dirt people.

—I don't know what you mean.

—When they say,
Where is your son
,
don't you have a son?
What do you tell them?

She is starting to cry. —Lee, please.

—When they say,
Why aren't you with him, why did you leave him with that man? Why don't you miss him?
When they ask you that, what do you tell them?

She says something into the napkin she holds to her face to hide. He cannot hear it.

—What's that?

—They don't ask, she says.

—They don't ask. And why not? Why don't they ask?

—We're busy over there, it's very serious work, people are
dying,
we're not on vacation—

—You don't tell them, he says. —Right?

She falls silent.

—You don't tell them about me. You don't talk about me. You talk about your other kids, but you never even mention me. The people you know don't even know you have another son.

—Oh no, you're so wrong.

—You're ashamed of me. I embarrass you.

—No.

—Your life with him was a phase. Just a phase. A person you once were. You grew out of it and moved on and got another husband and had other kids, and now you look back at him and me with regret.

—No.

—With regret. Don't you?

—No.

—Yes, you do. Yes, you do.

She stares at him with her mouth open and eyes red and wet. Then she laughs, once. It is like a death throe. —Lee, she says, —I hope one day you learn it is better to be kind than right.

He has come into possession of many other properties around the world—Madrid, Miami, Los Angeles, Chicago, Manila, Kuala Lumpur, a few more here in Manhattan—but he has never gone to them, he rents out some but most remain empty, beautiful places you pass like tombs and wonder who lives there. He always preferred
this property, the West Village penthouse. The highest and quietest. The safest. It is home. He never sees his neighbors. The building staff does not bother him.

One night, late, he is on his laptop in the living room near the front door, where he sits to work on his various pursuits—an online bodybuilding publication, an urban survivalist resource teaching post-civilization skills to a world on the brink of imminent global societal collapse, but most often doing nothing more than searching for her, again and again, all he has of her is her first name and her hometown and a vague memory of her face—when he hears the door to the staircase out in the hall open and then ease shut, followed by the shuffle of several pairs of feet hurrying their way up to his door. He reaches for the gun, always nearby. He puts aside the laptop and stands and tiptoes to the door, and he is pointing the gun at the door while he stands there holding his breath and assessing, wondering if this is it. Then giggling and more whispering:
—Do it, do it, no you, no you!

Children. To confirm he peeks through the peephole and sees the tops of their heads. Their skinny little shadows stretch on the wall behind them, and he can almost feel the children through the door, their frantic little heartbeats inside their bony chests, the wind through their throats as they whisper to one another, fast and high pitched,
—Do it, do it, no you, no you.
Without meaning to he leans too close to the door and taps the gun's barrel against it and they run away, silent, terrified. He watches them through the peephole. He counts four of them—one girl, three boys, one boy taller than the rest, one shorter, three white, one black. A black boy. The black boy is the smallest one and the only one smiling, the only one laughing. The only one not afraid. The super's son. Lee must be some sort of myth to them. The mysterious recluse. The building's very own Boo Radley. And what does Boo Radley do in the book? He saves the children. He is weird and marginalized and misunderstood and he saves them.