The Antiques

by Kris D'Agostino

“You’re a weak man, Josef Westfall.”

  “So they tell me.” He went up to the dark One-PASS offices and retrieved his wallet, credit cards, and license.

  He loved the vacant city. There were no taxis anywhere, but he was able (after considerable effort) to flag down a dilapidated gypsy cab and haggle the driver from thirty dollars to twenty-five (still a fleecing, but he wasn’t in a position to turn down the ride) to take them to midtown. He sat between Ariel and Nora. Conversation in the car was awkward. Josef didn’t speak and Nora lofted banal questions at Ariel like “Where did you go to school?” and “How do you like working for Josef?” (Josef instructed her not to answer the latter.) He learned many things about Ariel Bronstein. She came from California (Pasadena), was the daughter of two lawyers (divorce attorneys), held a BA in literature (from Northwestern), had lingered around Chicago after graduating for two years because she fell in love with one of her professors. Everything she said was news to Josef, who never bothered to ask her about her personal life.

  BellWeather Capital occupied the thirtieth and thirty-first floors of a curved glass monolith near Grand Central. Josef didn’t know for sure that anyone would be there, but he would have bet a thousand dollars that Marc Crawford (despite Monday’s emails) was like him and did not miss a day of work unless he was keeled over the toilet, and even then did so reluctantly. The car deposited them at Bryant Park.

  “Have fun, lovebirds!” Nora said.

  “I’ll text you later,” Josef told her.

  “Whatever.” She walked off, waving her fingers backward at them.

  Josef and Ariel crossed the street and went in. They showed their IDs to the security guard and were issued visitor stickers. Josef led the charge, wearing the spare suit he kept at Nora’s and his boots (he had no other options in the footwear department). There was no one at reception. Josef saw a clipboard. He grabbed it and gave it to Ariel.

  “What am I supposed to do with this?” she asked.

  “Pretend like you’re taking lots of notes.”

  “What notes?”

  “Make it look like you’re doing something important, all right?”

  They didn’t see anyone in any of the cubicles honeycombed across the floor. There was no one behind any of the glass office partitions. They ascended the floating steel staircase. Crawford’s office, all glass and open space, lay at the far side. And there he was! At his desk, feet up on the table, talking on the phone. Whatever he was saying, he accentuated by pointing his finger into invisible holes in the air. When he saw the pair approaching, a palsied kind of expression came over his face. Clearly he was not a man accustomed to pop-in visits, and with nary a buffer or shield in sight, he was vulnerable. Josef knew this. Time to pounce while the fucker had his pants down.

  “Marc!” Josef said. “Just the man we were looking for.”

  “You should have called. We’re not operating at full steam, as you can see. I’d have told you to schedule something for next week.”

  “Oh no, no, no, my friend,” Josef said. He heard Ariel behind him scribbling. Crawford’s eyes bounced around. “May we come in?”

  “Um, I guess. But really . . .”

  Josef sat in one of the chairs opposite the desk. Ariel plopped down on the couch, clipboard poised. Crawford eyed her as she crossed her legs. With the dress and her glasses and the clipboard and the end of the pen drifting up to touch her lips between scribbles, she exuded, intentionally or unintentionally, an imposing presence. Josef had a flickering image of fucking her and Nora, both of them wearing scant scraps of tight leather. He needed to stay focused. “I’ll get right to it. I know you’re a busy man.”

  “Let’s get something on the books for next week, huh?” Crawford said. “We’ll sit down, have lunch, that kinda thing.”

  “There isn’t time for that. My father passed away and I’m headed upstate to grieve. It’s now or never.”

  This was, of course, an outright lie. He had not spoken to anyone in his family re: departure plans for Dad. He did not even know where his father’s body was or whether any specific matters required his attention. He assumed his mother had all of that figured out, assisted (however inadequately) by his hot mess of a younger brother. He felt no guilt in using George’s death as a gambit to win Crawford’s sympathies. If it helped the cause, George himself would have approved.

  “Josef,” Marc said. “I truly am sorry to hear about your dad.” Ariel sharply underscored something and adjusted her glasses. Crawford’s eyes went from Josef to Ariel and then back to Josef. “Go be with your family. This can wait.”

  “I’m going right there. As soon as we move this deal forward.”

  Crawford made a telling facial tic that involved briefly touching the knot of his tie and clearing his throat at the same time. Josef made note of it and evaluated it as Not a Promising Sign at All. “Look, Josef, I’ve sent the whole deal structure back to the acquisition committee for another vetting.”

  “Don’t give me that. There’s no acquisition committee. We both know the acquisition committee is whatever MIT geek you’ve got chained up in the back looking over the Excel sheets. This will make us both a lot of money!”

  “I’m not sure we’re convinced of that over here, quite frankly.”

  “I knew it!” He stood up.

  Marc went on. “I’m not saying we aren’t going to move forward. We just need to mull it all over a little more. You know how it goes. We don’t want to rush into anything. Neither do you.”

  “I need an answer.”

  “I can’t give you one.”

  “So you’re passing?”

  “I didn’t say that. All I said is we need more time. Let’s get something on the books next week. Lunch! We’ll take a look fresh. Go. Be with your family.”

  “I can better serve my family by closing this deal.”

  Ariel made a vigorous circular motion with her pen.

  “Who is this?” Marc asked.

  “My top financial strategist.”

  “This isn’t a good time.”

  “Just say yes and we’re gone!”

  “I can’t. Not right now. Not today.”

  “If you pass and I take this elsewhere, you’ll be sorry.”

  “And if you walk away because you’re impatient, we’ll just go into beta. My dorks say we’re close.”

  “You’re a smug little asshole.”

  “Okay. I think this—”

  “You’re not fooling anyone with that comb-over—”

  “You should be careful—”

  “It will never change the fact that you’re short and you’ll always be short.”

  “I’m going to let that slide. We’ll attribute it to maybe you aren’t thinking clearly because you’re distraught over your father.”

  Josef clapped his hands and rubbed them together and winced because the cut palm stung. He sat up straight and narrowed his eyes. “You should know this by now, Crawford,” he said. “I don’t get distraught!”

  * * *

  They went to get him. Mother and daughter. A final collecting. Abbott hummed in the backseat. Her mother looked out the window at storm-damaged trees. Each street was a soggy, paper- and branch-strewn mini-disaster.

  The funeral director carried the remains out in a black wooden box. He offered his condolences. The walls of his office were a muted taupe and his desk chair was dark wood and red leather. Abbott paced before the windows. Diffused light spilled in through somber paisley drapes. There were two diplomas on the wall, but Charlie didn’t even want to know what degree you needed to have in order to oversee death preparations. She’d done an inadvisable thing and gone on the Internet to look up what happened when a body was cremated. And it was grim. A complete cremation was, she learned, a two-step process. First the body was exposed to several hours of intense heat and flame, after which time the remains—mostly ash and bone fragments—were run through some kind of grinder to create—according to the National Funeral Directors Ass
ociation website, and these words would haunt her—a smooth and uniform powder-like texture.

  The box was screwed together, so she could not open it to see her father turned to this powder-like substance. Was that what awaited all of us? Exposure to intense heat and flame followed by being processed down to a powder-like texture? And while she was on the topic, wasn’t it just powder? What was the difference between powder and powder-like? The funeral director, whose name she had already forgotten, and there was no nameplate on his desk to remind her, was talking to her and her mother, but she was too busy thinking about these questions to even hear him. She did not want to die. She knew that. Ever. It was lonely. It had to be. Once you were on the other side, no? And now the fear of Rey being gone scared her. She wasn’t far from forty. It seemed all over at forty. That was ridiculous. She looked good! Somebody would want her. She deserved better. Better than panties in a drawer. If her marriage died, or continued to die, as it seemed to be, until it was nothing but ash, would she be like her mother? Alone? She tried the label on to see how it felt. Widow. I am a widow. Her mother was now this word and would be for the rest of her life. And what would it be like? To be divorced? Like Josef. Or if she and Rey pulled it out? Did she even want to? That was the question. When she uncovered his cheating, when she finally got him to admit it, would she be strong enough to leave him? With or without Enabletal?

  They drove to the gas station with the urn resting in Ana’s lap. Charlie was behind the wheel; Abbott was strapped into his car seat in back. The line of cars was four blocks long.

  “Why so many?” Ana asked.

  “I think they’re rationing gas,” Charlie said. She snapped on her blinker and pulled the Forester over to queue behind the last car.

  “Pretty box,” Abbott said.

  They crept, car by car. Charlie looked back to see if Abbott was headed toward meltdown status. Twenty minutes was about as long as he could sit in an unmoving car before he lost control. She lucked out, though; he’d fallen asleep.

  An hour later they were at the pump. The station attendant told them they were limited to twenty dollars’ worth. “Sorry,” he said.

  When he walked away, Ana said, “What now?”

  “I guess we go home and wait for Josef.”

  “I mean, for me. I’ll be alone.”

  “You won’t be alone. We’re all here. Armie’s here.”

  “But eventually,” her mother said. “Eventually I will be.”

  “Well, I don’t know,” Charlie said. “Maybe we’ll stay.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Me and Abbott.”

  “Is everything okay?”

  “Yes. No. Well, nothing that hasn’t been wrong. Oh, Mom, I don’t know!” She hit the steering wheel and the car let out a short chirp-honk and she looked back to make sure Abbott hadn’t woken up. “Did you and Dad ever go through any rough patches?”

  “There were times it felt like one big rough patch.”

  “Yeah, but . . . did you ever think he wasn’t faithful?”

  “Your father was a lot of things. But he never cheated on me.”

  “How do you know for sure?”

  “I didn’t. I trusted him. Don’t you trust Rey?”

  “I don’t know anymore.”

  * * *

  The exact words he typed into Google were Bunny Rocket Sex XXX Video, and this was because he was trying to find a particular clip of the porn star Paige Rocket dressed in a rabbit tail and ears. He found the clip and along with it links to websites pertaining to the old Estes model rockets he’d built and launched as a kid with his father. He hadn’t thought about them in years but there they were, right in front of him. Having come of age during the tail end of what was apparently now known as the Golden Age of Rocketry (according to the Estes website), the early ’80s, Josef had experienced a brief but passionate infatuation, at ten, with acquiring and launching these model rockets. Paperboard tubing and flimsy balsawood fins. He recalled distinctly (but with ZERO nostalgia, mind you) painting, gluing, and assembling while Armie (who, in typical four-year-old fashion, had without fail wanted to be a part of everything Josef did) looked on but was not allowed to touch anything. Even at that young age Josef had been obsessed with statistics and would demand that George log estimated flight heights, drift times, chute deployment, and landing radii. The data were recorded in a spiral-bound notebook in George’s immaculate handwriting for Josef’s later analysis.

  Twenty-eight years later, on www.estesrockets.com, he learned that not only did the company (Estes Industries, aka the Estes-Cox Corporation) still exist, but that in the ’90s it had bought out its competition (Centuri Engineering, as well as the smaller North Coast Rocketry) and that the rockets themselves, along with the launching hardware, had steadily improved. And then he saw the Loadstar II. Its technical specifications were astounding:

  * * *

  * * *

  Skill Level 2

  Length: 23.3 in. (59.2 cm)

  Diameter: 1.64 in. (42 mm)

  Estimated Weight (without payload): 2.8 oz. (80.1 g)

  Laser-cut Wood Fins, Clear Payload Section, 18 in. (46 cm) Parachute Recovery

  Recommended Engines: Single Stage: B4-4 (First Flight), B6-4, C6-5

  Two Stages: First Stage: B6-0 (First Flight), C6-0; Second Stage: B6-6 (First Flight), C6-7

  Projected Max Altitude: 1000 ft. (305 m)

  12 rockets per pack

  Estes model rocketry is recommended for ages 10 and up with adult supervision for those under 12. Unless otherwise specified, all models require assembly. Tools, construction, and finishing supplies sold separately. In order to launch, a launch system, model rocket engines, igniters, and recovery wadding are required—sold separately—unless otherwise specified.

  * * *

  * * *

  The payload area measured an enormous (by model rocket standards) 5-inch length by 1.4-inch diameter. It could store and deploy one giant money shot. He did not get quixotic about anything, and he didn’t wish to relive or recapture or rekindle any faded or lost sense of wonderment his childhood rocketry endeavors had fostered. But what he did have was an idea. An awesome idea. He pictured it in his mind and the plan started to take shape. Even Armie had a part to play.

  He jerked off to Paige Rocket (partially as a tribute to her for inadvertently turning him on to the rocket idea and partially because he had tried and failed to get Nora to send him pictures of her ass).

  The cut on his non-jerk-off hand hurt. He’d cocooned it in a swath of random gauze he’d found in his bathroom. He impulsively fired off a text to Natalie and told her he was going up to Hudson to be with his family and that he would be “thinking of her.” He hoped this might increase the chances of her joining him and bringing the girls and that when she did, he’d get her alone and explain his desire to be close to her again.

  The problem was that because of the storm, the earliest the rocket would arrive was Monday. This would not do. He’d think of something. He always did. He put some clothes in a bag and called a car service and spent five minutes arguing twenty-five dollars off the price.

  The trip took three hours. Traffic out of the city was heavy. When he finally arrived and lifted the brass knocker and then let go of the brass knocker, he was not altogether conscious of the fact that he hadn’t spent a night at the Warren Street house in almost a year or that he had not seen his father in thirty-eight days and now his father was dead and he would never see him again, and he wasn’t thinking about what was going to happen once they were all together or how the familial death-collective would say its joint goodbyes to the man who’d fathered/husbanded/raised them (and “grieving,” as a concept, felt particularly sappy).

  What he asked himself as the door swung open and his sister clasped her arms around his neck with genuine excitement, crying out, “Look who’s here!,” was a simple question that he’d just recently started internally debating, and the question was this: had he, without re
alizing maybe, refallen in love with Natalie Karzhov not because of any deeply human or spiritual connection but rather because she possessed one of those exquisite asses that are, like, supremely dimensionally in proportion and apple-shaped; the kind that when he saw a woman with one on the street (particularly when it was so perfectly sheathed by a nice tight pair of jeans), he swore to himself that he would give up everything and commit himself fully to that particular stranger as long as he had access to that perfect ass for the rest of his life?

  “Little sis,” he said.

  They were in the doorway hugging and she might have been crying, he wasn’t sure. He had a soft spot for Charlie. She exuded such earnest pride in him. She always had. When he graduated from Yale (with honors) she told basically everyone nonstop for an entire month. He saw over Charlie’s shoulder his mother on the couch and his brother. Armie was wearing some sort of transvestite-style pink Daisy Dukes. His mother turned her head slowly as if registering things at a lapse. He set his bag down and embraced her. “I’m sorry it took me so long.”

  “You’re here now,” she said.

  He turned to his brother. They shook hands.

  “What’s with the jorts?”

  * * *

  Armie retired to the basement. Charlie and Abbott prepared for bed in Josef’s old room. Ana helped tuck Abbott in while Charlie inflated the blow-up mattress. She set Josef up on the pullout in the library on the second floor, Charlie’s old room.

  Ana felt utterly and horrifically alone. When they were all set she went to her bedroom (could she still think of it as her and George’s bedroom?) and lay atop the covers and stared at the ceiling. It was after midnight, so technically this was day two of widowhood. He’d been dead for x hours. She didn’t want to tabulate how many. And now he was ash, in a box.

  - THURSDAY -

  Six years was long enough that he didn’t have the supremely fucked-up nightmares as frequently. He downgraded the label. Now he classified them as supremely fucked-up dreams. Albeit these dreams incorporated the precise, unforgettable moment when, right as he was sitting down to dinner with his parents in the dining room, two men in dark suits arrived to arrest him. He’d gone to a holding cell in Albany. Two days he’d been gone. At first they hadn’t told him why and then he’d spoken to his parents, who’d told him about PG-Micnic being all over the news. They contacted a lawyer they knew who met with him. He learned that PG-Micnic had falsified their field reports to inflate their stock and somehow, since Josef had gotten him the job working in their New York office, he had been implicit in their crimes. Or so the FBI had concluded. They let Armie go, of course, since he had nothing to do with anything, but he’d been rattled to the core. He was convinced everyone in town knew. Even if he’d done nothing—he knew they judged him.