Drafts of a Suicide Note

by Wong, Mandy-Suzanne

  I’d hung around about a half hour, pacing and wondering what would happen if I threw back my head and howled, when a door opened under the eyelid-like overhang.

  It was the very man I needed and didn’t want to see. Of course it was. The man who’d buggered me, maybe for life. One of two people in the world who could terrify the shit out of me. That morning I finally had the sense to let him. Not a pleasant feeling, I assure you.

  Sunlight struck him in the face. A soft, golden color like a half halo. In the face of his new dawn, he blinked stupidly, the bastard, having no idea what it was. Instead he had the audacity to feel sorry for himself. His collar was open. Wrinkled shirt, no tie. Guess he’d spotted me from the top of the binoculars. Judging by his forlorn look, I surmised that he’d been there awhile, and this astonished me.

  After cutting short an all-important business trip to scurry home and wag his bruised finger in Nabi’s face, Martin was at work? At something to seven in the morning? I wondered if he’d bothered going home after all. Maybe he’d been already and they’d had it out with each other, and then he’d left, left her for good—and when I thought about that I felt a chill because Nabi hadn’t called me once he’d left her alone.

  The consternation showed on my face, I think. Martin’s seemed to turn to stone. “You dare to show up here,” he said.

  “We need to talk about this.”

  “I beg to differ. You and I both know I’m under no obligation to make you privy to our plans. Neither is Nabilah.”

  For a fraction of a moment, his caginess summoned a phantom of hope. Martin Furbert, luckiest idiot who’d ever walked the earth, clung to BRMS like an overachieving intern, hanging onto the crystalline doorframe like it belonged to a strength-giving Fortress of Solitude. Was my best option really a Mexican stand-off with this guy or a sprint to his harborfront condo, where even as we gaped, Nabi might have been all alone in tears, waiting for me to rescue her? All this passed through my head in that fraction of a moment which, when it was gone and Martin shook his head in scorn, left me weak in the knees.

  “No, you’re right,” I said, though it almost toppled me. “But there’s another problem. I mean, for Nabi.”

  When I beckoned, Martin frowned. Distrustful, sure, that was his right; spies were everywhere. But he shuffled to my car, all rounded shoulders and limp arms like some kind of refugee.

  Seeing him so sorry for himself—when his net loss would be nothing, nothing, because of Nabi’s Nabiness, Nabi who signed a contract with the bastard in a church—this literally brought a cry into my throat. It landed heavy and rancid in my stomach when I swallowed it. I had to look away when Martin folded his arms; the two of us side by side, him looking at the ground, me fighting to hold my own against shivers.

  I said, “You need to understand about this photo.”

  “No, I don’t. I never understood what she sees in you, and I don’t want to.”

  “Yeah, the feeling’s mutual.”

  “Say what you’ve got to say and leave. I have work to do.”

  Stiff upper lip while my world ended. Martin didn’t smell of liquor, smoke, or perfume. Team leader was haggard, but he planned to get himself through this like a wounded GI dragging himself up onto the beach, steel eyes riveted upon the fray ahead.

  “Well, look, they sent the picture because—”

  “They being a couple of actors who so happen to look exactly like you two, I suppose.”

  “No, we—”

  “Or perhaps a Hollywood animator.”

  “No. Nabi—no.”

  Pretending the picture was a fake, the thought of denying Nabi, the idea that Nabi might deny we’d ever happened—it just never occurred to me until that moment. It brought a thick wave of nausea and hunkered down in my stomach to thrash around until I was alone and could wig out about it properly. Right now the point was Nabi in trouble because of what I’d done. I thought I remembered her saying it was Martin who’d told her where the picture came from. But maybe that wasn’t what Nabi said, maybe I’d hallucinated everything Nabi said, I mean for years. Assuredly not wigging out (I had my forehead in one hand, my belly in the other), I said, “Martin, a vice president from Clocktower sent the photo.”

  This got him to look at me. I watched the investigator’s relentless curiosity do battle with the studious indifference of the maimed ego.

  “Clocktower,” he said. Curiosity won.

  “They sent the picture to put pressure on me by threatening Nabi. Look, they want to burn Bull’s Head Shreds, they want to make it look like BRMS is going to investigate us for something they’re going to cook up, and that’s going to kill our reputation in the—”

  “Wait, what? What? Hold on. Now, Clocktower. You asked Gavin if there were pending investigations, and there weren’t.”

  “That doesn’t mean nothing’s going on, Martin. Look, I can’t explain it all right now. The point is they’re stealing money from their clients and investing it, they think I’m hiding someone who could testify to it; and even though I’m not, this VP they sent, Char Richards, doesn’t want to believe me, so she sent the photo, right? So now you have to stop anyone at BRMS from thinking there’s anything that Clocktower could accuse us of at Bull’s Head Shreds and ruin everything Nabi’s worked for all these—”

  “This is all very dramatic,” said Martin.

  “Well, it’s true.”

  “Gavin thought he was doing me a favor, talking to you. Somewhere he got the idea that you and I were friends.” A cutting look as if, during all those strained dinners, crowded holiday gatherings, he’d ever believed it.

  New tactic. “Look, even if there aren’t any official investigations, cops or whatever, Clocktower’s an open case for you, right? You’ve had your eye on them, right?”

  I still had no proof of this. I only whipped it out during my plea for help because, Jesus, I don’t know, it was a plea for help.

  “You and I both know I can’t tell you that,” said Martin.

  But when I pressed, Mr. Integrity threw up his hands and cried, “The answer’s no! I have no interest whatsoever in this totally nondescript insurance company. You don’t know anything about practicing business, so you’re in no position to suggest that someone in my position ought in an ideal world to be interested in their, well, their position. In fact I can’t make heads or tails of what you’re saying. Someone wants to undermine my wife’s little confetti-making enterprise because you don’t like how a well-established insurance outfit handles insurance? Is that what you’re telling me or not?”

  I felt like pinning Martin to the ground and sitting on him and growling out everything, which only goes to show how mutilated it all was. “Should’ve known better than to think you’d have a clue.”

  “Oh, so I don’t have a clue. I don’t have a clue what goes on in my own house; that must mean I don’t have a clue how to tell an insurance company from a lawnmower dealer. You think you can take me for some kind of idiot just because you dazzled Nabilah with whatever it is she thinks you bring to the table of life? Let me tell you something, Kenji, I checked out that company, you know why? Because if someone at the confetti counter needed something checked into, that person should’ve come to me from the get-go, not gone around me to my staff. She tells me you’re writing a novel? About insurance? I’m supposed to believe that? And now what, with this photograph? Blackmail? The two of you shred paper for a living!”

  Now Martin stuck out his finger. I’d always envisioned him as a finger wagger but only in the way you imagine monks to wear sandals even in the dead of winter. It was really true, however. The man wagged his finger at me. And I let him.

  “Clocktower is clean,” he said. “You two, however, are a different story. I asked myself why this little backatahn outfit keeps raking in high-profile clients.”

  “Because Nabi’s good at her job?”

/>   “I knew if anything besides paper-ripping went on there, I shouldn’t ask. I wouldn’t have to. The truth would out. And I was right!”

  “Oh god,” I said. “Martin, it’s not—”

  “I know that,” he said witheringly. “You two turned out to be capable of nothing more than rank adultery, as if that wasn’t enough. You get caught, and you have the impertinence to try to mask what you did as something bigger, some conspiracy in which of course you are the victims.”

  That’s right. He didn’t believe me either.

  “Don’t go trying to turn what you did into something else. Adultery’s adultery and betrayal is betrayal.”

  “It’s more than that, Martin.” Deep breath, and I said, “We love each other.”

  “Spare me. This is the two of you trying to find ways to laugh at me behind my back, just like always. This is about the fact that you’re professional nobodies while I have an important, international career in which I actually accomplish things in the service of society, and you two just can’t stand it.”

  Hoo boy.

  “So don’t go trying to hide behind whoever took the picture. I don’t care why it was taken, Kenji. That’s beside the point and it’s disgusting that you’d think otherwise. Don’t do it for her either, I mean quit trying to conceal her share of the blame. Neither of you deserve that. There’s been enough lying anyway.”

  One guy could cancel out Char’s threat. And here’s the bugger telling me that I don’t deserve to protect Nabi. Maybe that’s true, but Martin was too wrapped up in himself to see that the threat was real, leaving Nabi without allies. That made me desperate to find her, wrap her in my arms, and swear, if she would stay, that I’d take on anybody and I wouldn’t care what they did to me, I’d quit being afraid because at last I’d learned that terror was just the possibility of her being like me: hurt and furious and cruel. And if that happened to you, Nabi, you’d despise me and loathe yourself forever. You’d learn to hate, and Nabi, no—no, I couldn’t bear it.

  “Look again, dammit!” I said. “If you found something on Clocktower, they wouldn’t dare go public.”

  And you know what that bastard said? “You even lie to yourself.”

  Again the throwing-up of hands. But listlessly. He turned away to his fortress of virtue, reducing me to begging.

  “Please, all right? Please, Martin. Listen to me, man. This could be the biggest case of your career.”

  “I beg your pardon. This company is not some little corner-store-back-office gumshoe outfit. We do not go looking for ‘cases,’ as you call them. Clients come to us, thank you very much.” Persuading a stone wall to lie down would’ve been easier.

  “What if you could make the first move this time, Martin? Think about it. Clocktower—look, they’re faking suicide notes so they don’t have to pay death benefits.”

  “What? Are you crazy?” That got a whirl out of him.

  “The evidence is there, Martin. You can find it yourself, you don’t have to take it from me, you don’t even have to tell me anything. Just get proof and tell Char Richards. She’s behind the whole thing, sort of, maybe. At least, she’s trying to cover it up, I think. Aetna Simmons. She’s the key. If we can show Char that anything she dreamed up about us wouldn’t hold a candle to the truth about Clocktower—”

  “Threaten them yourself if you’re so sure about all this.”

  “I can’t! You’re the one who’s team leader, you could find the kind of evidence I could never get my hands on, and people would believe you! Don’t let Nabi lose it all because of me.”

  “And have you ever considered maybe she deserves a lesson? Maybe you both do. Why should it just be me who gets hung out to dry? Humiliated, ridiculous. Because I wasted a decade of my life believing in a—in a joke.”

  The sun was out now. Front Street filling up with cars. A security guard came and unlocked the building from inside, calling a greeting to Martin, whose benevolent hand lifted as he pasted on a grin: “Morning, Will, how are you?” And I couldn’t stand it, I grabbed him by the arm.

  “That’s what you think of her? A joke?”

  “No, that’s what I think of you.”

  I let that one go. I was shivering. My voice sounded like it had gone through a colander, leaving all gumption behind.

  “Martin, don’t you get it? Don’t you know her at all? Besides a little bit of pride, you’ve lost nothing. She won’t—”

  Couldn’t bring myself to say it though it stared me in the face. My chest cramped, my eyes blurred like windshields in the rain. In a broken voice I said—shit, I’ll always remember; afterward I just wanted to die—“Martin, Nabi chose you. As her—the one she depends on—she chose you. Not me. If you think she won’t stand by it, then you’re stupid, and don’t you dare let her down, you hear me?”

  I threw myself into my car and roared out against the traffic. Ripping down East Broadway and then I couldn’t breathe. Found the nearest parking lot and stopped and doubled over.

  My panic attack was coming along nicely when she texted. You ok? Like she could sense my anguish from afar.

  I called instead of texting back. “Nabi.”

  “Where are you?”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “Where are you, baby? At home?”

  I was in a tiny lot on a hill near the city. My MG listed where a bulbous root had broken up the asphalt under one of the tires. Nose in a bunch of cherry bushes.

  “The Arboretum,” I said, mystified. Can you think of anywhere less relevant to my panic attack?

  “Okay, ten minutes,” said Nabi. She hung up, and I dug in my pockets for the painkillers I’d left at home. I checked the glove box, the cigarette lighter, the secret compartment under the radio, the other secret panel I’d rigged under the floormat in the trunk. I had my ass in the air, trying to infiltrate the secret spot of last resort behind the gas pedal, when it occurred to me a little old man was having his lunch in the car beside me, a woman unloading a perambulator from the next car over. I thought of asking her for Advil, Midol, anything, women are always ready for every eventuality. I said, “Good afternoon” to the little old man, “Excuse me” to the woman, and then a truck pulled in.

  Big red truck with a familiar logo, empty bins knocking around in back. Nabi left it crooked in a couple of parking spaces. She was dressed for work, but her hair was loose and she’d forgotten her makeup. Her frown was the kind that makes a habit of itself. I knew it from my mirror, but it had no business on her face. I rushed to her and she wouldn’t look at me, just said, “Let’s walk, come on.”

  We went into the park. The grass was no good for her heels. I wanted to take her arm. But she hugged herself like it was freezing, not eighty-odd and humid. The sky was almost white. Bright sunlight seeping through thin sheets of cloud, trees too far apart to cover us. We walked in silence over a wide stretch of lawn, heading automatically for the copse we used to play in. The bench, the graveled path, shaggy palmettos draped over a little bridge. At a break in the clouds, sunlight bore down and startled her, our hands came reflexively together. But when our fingers touched, we were too chicken to hold on as we’d done for years; daunted by our lifelong comfort, we withdrew as if from fire, and I thought about returning to East Broadway, lying down somewhere in the middle; and then she said, “Kenji.”

  We stopped walking. Nabi started to say something, couldn’t go through with it. Her forehead fell onto my shoulder, I threw my arms around her, Nabi hugged me tight, tight, and then it was like we heard something huge shattering above our heads. The instinct seized us both at once: run—but too late, there was nowhere. Just that copse, a miniature rainforest huddled around a bench, where Nabi’s mother read as we played “Bagheera and Baloo.” We arrived there breathless, I touched her tangled hair, Nabi stroked the black hollows underneath my eyes.

  “I got so scared,” she said.
“After we fought. What you might’ve done.”

  We kissed for a long time. Like people in a desert stumbling on an oasis, dying of thirst and trying to make the water last.

  “I’ve got to tell you something, baby.”

  I knew she’d say she’d left Martin, and I knew that was exactly what she wouldn’t say. The hope in my expression demolished her control; tears sprang out of her eyes.

  “I’ll always love you, no matter what you think,” she cried.

  That wasn’t it. I mean, it wasn’t what she meant to say. It scared me. “Why would I think any different?”

  “You don’t know what I’ve done.”

  “You mean about Martin?”

  “No, not Martin,” Nabi snapped, “I don’t mean Martin. That man and I couldn’t find two words to say to each other. What is it with you anyway? The both of you think everything’s only about you! Aw baby, you look terrible, you really should be home lying down.”

  Having bitten my head off, Nabi fussed over the sweaty sheen on my cheeks. I didn’t know what was going on, I was well in range of another panic attack, beginning to wonder if I’d finished the first one. Then I started worrying that if I didn’t speak up, she’d get angry and leave, so I started babbling: never meant for this to happen, she was right all along, my life is so pathetic that I just etc. But she cut me off.

  “No, baby. No. Look, most of this is my fault.”

  “Yours? How? For what? For loving me? Is that really so shameful?”

  You can tell I was freaking out.

  “Kenji, of course not. Baby, you’re freaking out.”

  She sat me down on the bench. “Look, this isn’t easy—” But I interrupted, told her I’d been to Martin and begged. When I finally shut up, Nabi looked at me like I’d stepped out of a coffin.