Julian put on his shoes, twisted his hair into new points, and did a last check in the mirror. He thought of Philip, in the bedroom down the hall, and how he struggled with bow ties. For the first time that day, Julian smiled naturally. He was marrying a good guy. He was alive. And maybe parts of his mom were too. Because she did it, didn’t she, on his wedding day? After all the tiptoeing around and putting him first, she finally did what she never had his whole life. She told him what to do.
12
The Shakes
Philip leaned back in his ergonomic chair and took in the view one last time. Thirty floors above Times Square, he let his eyes wander wistfully uptown. The green bathtub of the park. The towers of Central Park West jutting up toward Columbia, where they used to live, and down to the sleek Time Warner Center. A black plug reaching for the bright blue sky. It was a sunny June day, dry with a kiss of heat, and Philip had quit his job. He dumped his few personal items in his gym bag, carefully laying on top the custom bobblehead Jay had ordered of him, and zipped it shut. He grabbed his spare suit from the back of the door. He would miss the view, and a few assistants. The rest made him want to gargle and spit.
Heads turned as he walked by the bullpen on his way out, but none of the guys spoke. What was there to say? He didn’t wake up that day planning to quit his job at the bank. But as he returned from the Keurig machine with his second cup of coffee that morning, he stopped to grab a deal deck off the printer and mistakenly grabbed a printout of an email chain as well, from a fellow VP to everyone on their team except Philip. Soliciting better deal names for Davenport 2008-1? he wrote about the deal they were marketing that week, Best one gets shots on me @ Flashdancers. Every analyst and associate replied, weighing in with new names for their deal. Toxic Shitbag, one wrote. Subprime Flesh-Eating Virus. But the winning stripper shots went to Mike Tyson’s Nuclear Mortgage Holocaust.
Philip read the email standing at the printer. A switch flipped inside him. He marched straight to his boss’s office and handed it over. Martin Hogenkamp, who would sell his mother depending on the spread. Martin read it, smiled wearily at Philip, and told him it was important to let the guys blow off steam with the hours they’re putting in, and Philip was a manager now, so try to let a joke roll.
“The American economy falling apart?” Philip said. “That joke? You brought me on to figure out exactly what we’re selling in these deals, and I told you. Garbage.” He tried to keep his voice down. “People losing their homes. Evicted. Thrown out with their kids’ Pokémon cards on the lawn. Now we’re joking about it? That works for you?” Philip offered the last drop of generosity he had left in him, waiting for a look, any sign of humanity or remorse.
His boss stared blankly. “Are you finished, Phil?”
“Yeah.” He sighed. And in a strange rush he kept talking. “I am. I’m done.” He took his ID from his wallet and dropped it on the desk. “Give me ten minutes,” he said, heading out the door. “Actually, five’s plenty.”
He was true to his word. Five minutes later he made his final pass by the bullpen, where he’d spent the last six years before rising from the swamp of pitch books, Nerf hoops, free weights, flat-screens, and man-boys, and graduating to an office with a view. He walked fast, keeping his hands and face steady until he got to the elevators. As the doors shut and he dropped down to earth, it started sinking in what he had done. What his dad would say. Gerald would hear about it and start blowing up his phone in thirty minutes, max. He had to call Jay, he told himself, get in the car and call. But when Philip stepped out to the street, into Dante’s tourist level of hell on Broadway, two things occurred to him: he was leaving work in daylight, and there was no Town Car waiting.
He hailed a cab. “Going to Brooklyn,” he said, tossing in his bag and hanging his suit. “Prospect Park Southwest.” He started to call Jay but stopped. It felt wrong, selfish to interrupt him and demand his time right before his first big trial. Philip texted instead:
Sorry 2 bug u
I quit my job
I’m very dumb but just
not evil enuf 2 cut it
Going home-getting drunk
Still love me?
He shut his eyes and slumped in the vinyl seat. He felt exhausted at noon. He thought of the ocean, and life since college. Spent in the company of thieves and bandits. Not everyone at the bank. That was too broad a brush. But inside he cringed because he knew one depressing thing for sure—he had spent most of his twenties, crucial years he’d never get back, in a place devoid of chesed. Kindness. Human kindness that evokes God’s own. He’d been reflecting on his bar mitzvah a lot the past few months. Now he wondered how he ended up here, on a nice summer day, leaving a job like that with no plans for the future.
“It’s a bad accident!” the cab driver cried from the front seat.
“What?”
“On the West Side Highway, going south, all lanes shut. I go local.”
“Yeah,” Philip mumbled. “I’ve got all the time in the world.”
* * *
On a mysterious cloudy day in fifth grade, Philip visited his dad’s office for the first time.
Instead of taking the 2/3 with his mom to go to St. Ann’s, he got to play hooky and follow his dad into the black car that waited at their house every morning. It whisked them down to Broad Street, on the tip of the island. The office was a fortress of reddish gray stone outside, with shiny elevators and white guys in suits. His dad made introductions. The men shook his hand and called him mini-Rosenblum. The women touched his hair without permission and told him how handsome he was. Now and then they passed other father-son pairs, and the boys watched each other like one dog to another at the vet. After the tour, Gerald got two sticky buns and they sat on the maroon velvet couch in his office. “Not too shabby, huh?” he said, gesturing regally at the harbor view. “Pop quiz,” he said. “What is Goldman Sachs?”
“A bank.”
“And what do banks do?”
“Keep money,” Philip replied.
“We lend it.” His dad wiped a smudge off Philip’s face. “When people need to make things, big things, skyscrapers or bridges or stadiums, we help them find the money so they can do it. We’re doers. Problem solvers.”
Elegant ones. That was a takeaway from the visit. His dad didn’t look like a construction worker, or one of the guys in the payot and black hats on the way to school. The men wore silk ties in his dad’s world, and raised skylines without breaking a sweat. Got things done. It was a sense Philip internalized, and why his dad loomed large in his mind as he neared thirteen and had to choose his mitzvah project. His mom praised him when he picked chesed—the rest is commentary, she said—and told him he was on his own to come up with a project. He badly wanted his dad to like it and waited nervously when he shared his plans: a food drive at school to benefit a local shelter. His dad said how proud he was and then asked what would happen the next time that same homeless man came back to the shelter for food, and was there a way to teach him to earn his own food? He mulled over the profundity of his dad’s question. One that to this day Philip—nearly thirty and newly unemployed—couldn’t answer.
He daydreamed about his dad the whole cab ride downtown from the bank. Both his parents had a profundity to them—kids of immigrants who met at City College and rose to dominate their fields—but where his mom exuded warmth and talk and diagnoses, his dad could be reserved. Gerald’s love flew off his lips, yet respect was something else. His whole life Philip watched for things that pleased his dad—being good at sports or math—and did more of them. Lacrosse, majors, internships. He pleased Gerald without being asked. And one day he finished college, started as a fixed-income analyst, and had no idea what he was doing. Lost. He lived vicariously through Jay for years, watching him finish law school and join the ACLU. He hid behind numbers and got paid. Numbers never hurt anyone, he often thought, and tried not to think too much.
Then last fall he got promoted. He got the office and an in
vitation to the CDO structuring desk. They needed a VP with quant skills to drill down, loan level, and check their risk analyses. Martin promised insane upside. Ambitious Martin knew who Philip’s dad was. Philip said yes. For months he dug into the numbers, and they told a story: Americans borrowing like there was no tomorrow, borrowing for nothing, without signatures or jobs. Every week he warned Martin about the numbers, default rates crawling up the tranches, and chatted about the Hillary-Obama primary slugfest to keep things light. Weekly he faced a more unsettling thought: beneath the numbers were real people in trouble, feeding the beast of their bad deals. Martin thanked him and never reported his concerns. In January Philip got his bonus number, four hundred thousand dollars for a partial year, which he deposited and didn’t touch. Through winter and spring he went to work, chewed Tums, and kept his mouth shut.
Until that morning, when he found an email chain on the printer. His colleagues—every one except the bleeding-heart gay quant guy—laughing at the sick joke of it. And soon his dad would know he was a quitter, if he didn’t already.
“Almost there,” the cab driver cried through the partition. “Bus lanes. It’s slow.”
Philip looked out the window. They were inching to the fork at the bottom of Broadway, a few turns from the tunnel. He watched tourists crowd around the bronze bull statue, kneeling to smile and cup its balls while cameras snapped photos. His phone vibrated as they headed underground. He ignored it. By the time they reached Brooklyn, Philip had two messages and three texts from his dad. The first voicemail gave off a strained but friendly “hard day?” vibe, but he sounded anxious in the second, asking about misunderstandings at work. His texts were more direct:
Where are you
Is your phone on
Turn your phone on.
They pulled off the expressway onto the leafy streets of Windsor Terrace. At the sight of their neighborhood, bright at midday, Philip was overcome with nostalgia and a scary feeling of failure. Or freedom. He remembered discovering the neighborhood when they were looking to buy their first place, and falling in love. The funky old frame and brick houses. Epic inflatable lawn displays at the holidays. Cops nursing to-go beers and laments outside Farrell’s on Friday nights, alongside artists and writers—that white girl who directed Paris Is Burning?—or the random MSNBC anchor browsing the farmers’ market at PS 154. It was lovely. Their home life was real. So why did his days in the city feel like holes punched out of it?
The cab stopped at their building, an Art Deco beauty on the park with turrets like a castle and a courtyard full of trees. Philip ducked into the Palestinian family bodega on the corner. He had a vague notion that if he got drunk and had pizza, and ate too much and smeared it on his face, he might feel relatively less disgusting on the inside. Amina, the chubby oldest daughter, sat at the cash register. She had spread out her makeup kits on the counter, and her iPhone was balanced on a box of Slim Jims, filming. Half her face was painted green like the Shrek princess. Philip grabbed a six-pack, paused, and grabbed another one.
“You subscribe to my channel yet?” Amina asked when he put down the beer.
“Channel?” he said.
“On YouTube. My tutorials. I do dragons, aliens, Bollywood, DC, Marvel, and X-Men. And Jessica Rabbit. I told you last time. I’m trying to monetize. You OK?” she asked.
“Yeah.” Philip smiled. “Why?”
“Starting a little early.” She bagged the beer. “AminaMagic. Don’t forget to subscribe.”
Philip went upstairs and ordered pizza. He put on gym shorts, climbed on the fire escape overlooking the park, and started drinking. He was considering whether the number for the old pot dealer still worked when Jay finally texted back:
FREE AS A BIRD!!!
WE HAVE TO CELEBRATE!
I’d call but I’m in a moot
for my opening statement.
Call you later—proud of YOU
He smiled sadly at this. Of course Jay was proud. He’d been telling Philip to quit for years. Jay was the original trigger for all these feelings in Philip—the disquiet with his life, the sense of being outside watching it. The night they met, at a BGLTSA meeting in college, Jay was already advocating for some cause, and since then Philip had yet to find any kind of passion to match his husband’s. Jay wasn’t nice about it, either. “White, Harvard, rich parents,” he listed on his fingers lately when Philip complained about his job. “That’s called options, Phil. Work it out.” So he did. He quit. And now, three beers in with the sun tickling his face, he was still waiting for someone to come tell him the purpose of his life.
The door buzzer went off. He climbed inside and pulled on a T-shirt. But when he opened the front door it wasn’t the pizza. It was an old guy in a rumpled suit. Jay’s dad. Philip quickly recognized him—he was sure though they only met once—but his brain froze in denial.
“Mr. Warner?”
“Philip!” His hands were stuffed in his pants pockets. “Nice to see you again.”
“You too. Wow. I didn’t know you were here. In New York. Does Julian?”
“I didn’t tell him.” Aaron winked. “Did you?”
“Oh no. No, so that’s a real hundred percent surprise. Come in?”
“Thank you.” He shuffled slowly into the apartment. A faint unwashed smell floated from his suit as he passed by.
“Have a seat,” Philip said, leading him to the living room couch. “Relax. You want anything to drink, water or—” He noted the bottle in his hand. “Beer?”
“What’s that you’re drinking?”
“Blue Moon? A—wheat beer?”
“Yeah, one of those.”
“OK. I will grab that and let Julian know you’re here.” Philip started to leave but hesitated. Aaron looked frailer than he remembered. “You’re good? Alone here while I—” Aaron nodded. “OK.” Philip smiled. “Be right back.” He hurried to their bedroom and called Jay but got no answer. He texted:
Your dad is in our apt—call me!
Immediately Jay texted back:
Do not engage.
Let in but don’t talk.
But don’t leave alone in apt.
Be there ASAP
FML
Philip took his time in the kitchen, opening a beer. “Here you go,” he said as he entered the living room. Aaron wasn’t on the couch where Philip had left him. He stood at the oversize windows looking onto the park. The sun lit up his thick white hair.
“Pretty,” Aaron mused. “The lake.” He turned around, eyeing the room from coffered ceiling to Persian rug. “Y’all got it all here.”
Philip instantly saw their home as Aaron might—a big, swanky, old-school New York apartment. But bought at Jay’s insistence without help from Gerald and Ruth, strictly from their earnings and the little money Lacy had left Jay. “Aaron!” Philip said warmly, buzzed and always keen to normalize. He handed Aaron the beer. It almost slipped from Aaron’s hand, but he grabbed it in time. “Sorry!” Philip cried with a jolt of adrenaline. “Was that—I’m a klutz, sorry. Cheers.” Philip took a long swig. “I haven’t seen you since—I met you, at Lacy’s service. How have you been?”
“I’m alive.” Aaron smiled and sat down on the iron radiator cage by the window. He pressed his beer into his legs. “What time does Jules get home?”
“Lately? He’s got his first trial as lead counsel next week. Working around the clock. He flies to San Diego this weekend for it.”
“The ACLU, right?” But before Philip could answer, Aaron continued: “Staff Attorney, ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project. What’s it about?” Aaron asked. “The trial.”
“Prison conditions, where ICE keeps undocumented folks waiting for deportation. Sick conditions. Men and women stuck there for years, Central Americans, Mexicans, people who got on the terrorist watch list for some unknown—”
“Lacy was Mexican,” Aaron blurted. He took a slow, careful sip, watching Philip. “Jules’s mom. Half Mexican, she thought. On her mom’s side. Not su
re if he knew that.”
“He does,” Philip said. “I think it’s a lot of what drives him now. His work.” He noticed Aaron held his frame like Jay did, and despite Aaron’s elder gut, Philip could see where Jay got his lankiness. The sexy long limbs he loved. And, yes, Jay told him not to engage with Aaron, but how did that work when your father-in-law was in your home?
“So he does well?” Aaron asked.
“Jay?” Philip furrowed his brow. “Yeah. He’s a superstar.”
“He has a good career.”
“A great career.”
“Helping people,” Aaron muttered at the bottle pressed firmly into his thighs. “What about you? I saw you in a suit earlier.”
“Oh.”
“I was on the park bench, across from the building, when you got out of the cab.”
“Right.” Philip sucked on his beer. He liked being a good host and chose not to dwell on the creepy image of Aaron watching from the bench. “People like to sit there, nice view of the—I work at Morgan Stanley. Banking. Worked. I quit my job today.”
“There’s always another. Enjoy your freedom while it lasts.” Aaron sat forward. The sunlight caught a moth hole in the sleeve of his wrinkled, and once fashionable, gray chalk-stripe suit. “Your family does well?”
“I’m sorry?” Philip said.
“You’re from a—stable family. Well-to-do.”
“You could say that.”
“Jewish.”
“That too.”
“Did y’all ever go there?” Aaron asked. “Israel?”
“No. My mom wrote a paper and—we’ve been boycotting since Bibi came to power, done-to becoming doer, victim turned oppressor—” Aaron watched him, uncomprehending. “Never been,” Philip said. “I hear Tel Aviv’s nice.”
Lone Stars Page 23
