by Claire Adams
“Is there though?” I asked, lifting my head from my hands. I could feel an anger starting to stir in me, anger mixed with frustration, mixed with complete helplessness at my current situation—not a good combination. “Is that what you’d tell a rape victim? Look for the silver lining?”
“No, of course not. But this is quite a different scenario than a rape.”
“I’m well aware of that, but you telling me to look for the silver lining when everything has gotten so completely messed up is bullshit!”
Clara looked shocked, her mouth hanging open, her right hand slowly going to her chest as though she were about to say the Pledge of Allegiance. And yes, people were looking, but you know what? I didn’t care. They could watch me yell at Clara—who was really just trying to make feel better—they could pretend they weren’t looking at my chest and the very obvious fact I’d forgotten to put a bra on, and they could wonder whether or not I’d done it on purpose, I didn’t care. I stood up, left my latte there, and walked out.
5.
Levi
Ah, now, this was the good life.
Devon’s set at Creamfields was completely off the hook. I popped a Lush before I went in (VIP entrance, no waiting in line, thank you very much) and felt the effects of it come on in about fifteen minutes. It was a nice, gradual effect, so subtle that at first you didn’t even realize it. A few minutes could have gone by, maybe half an hour, and then you’d realize, all of a sudden, how fucking fabulous you felt and how fucking wonderful everyone was. I mean, you’d really feel some authentic bona fide gratitude and love for your fellow human.
You could tell the people who were on the pressed pills, the less pure shit; they were the ones with their eyes rolling back in their heads, their skin clammy, jaws grinding away. Don’t feel too bad for them; they might’ve looked like shit but they were having the time of their lives. The thing about Lush was it was such a clean, pure high, with none of the teeth grinding, none of the eye jitters or sweatiness. You looked totally straight—inside though, you’d feel better than you ever could have imagined.
I took a break from dancing, had some water, and decided to call Dad. That’s how good Lush was—it truly had me believing the best thing I could do right now was call my father and try to share some of this most excellent vibe I was feeling. The phone rang, this beautiful melodic chime, over and over, until his voicemail picked up.
“If you care to leave a message, I will return your call at my earliest convenience.” With Dad, who knew when that would be, but I started to talk after the beep, not caring if he actually called me back, only that he heard what I had to say.
“Hello, Dad,” I said. “It’s your son, Levi. Your only son. I know that fact has probably bothered you over the years, since I haven’t really turned out to be the son you wanted, and for that, I am truly sorry. I really am. That certainly wasn’t my intention, you know. It’s not something I’m doing on purpose. I wish that we could be more aligned, you know. That what I wanted happened to be what you wanted, or vice versa. That would make things a whole lot easier, you know? Anyway, that wasn’t the point of this call. I just want you to know that despite everything, I love you. Despite the fact I know you think I’m failing at life, and despite the fact that you basically disowned me, I still love you and I’m not saying this because I’m afraid you’re going to cut me off. You can actually go ahead and do that, if you want, I don’t mind, I’ll be okay. I don’t want you to be doing anything you don’t want to. I know you think I don’t put enough effort into anything, but I’ve got a few things that I do, Dad, and maybe someday we could talk about it, if you want. But that’s up to you. I’ll talk to you later, okay? I’m having a lovely evening, and I hope that you’re doing the same.”
I hung up and slipped the phone back into my pocket, feeling a warm, buzzing happiness spread over my whole body. I bounded back down to the main dance floor, where the floor shook from the reverberations of the bass and the crowd of people moved together like we were one entity.
6.
Isla
It took Tim and his crew a day and a half to get the gym cleaned out. “Well, the good news is that we’ve got all the water out,” Tim said. “And now you need to begin the drying out process. The sooner you start that the better, otherwise you run the risk of mold. Mold growth can start in as little as forty-eight hours, so you’ll want to get fans on, keep the windows open, run the AC if you can. Because once the mold starts . . .” He let his voice trail off, shaking his head.
“Okay, I can do all that,” I said. “What’s the bad news?”
“The bad news is if you have a plywood subfloor, it’s going to be really difficult to dry things out, and you’re all but guaranteed to have some sort of mold issue. And quite possibly structural damage.”
I let out a breath. “Okay.” The news wasn’t totally encouraging, but I began to feel a faint glimmer of hope that maybe this was going to end up being okay. “That doesn’t sound great, but it also doesn’t sound like the worst news. It’s not like this was a total loss.”
“It’s hard to say at this point. I can have one of my restoration guys give you an estimate for any work, but . . . that brings me to the other bad news. I just got a message from my administrative assistant and she said that your insurance company has denied the claim.”
“That can’t be,” I said.
Tim shrugged. “I’m sorry, but they’re not going to pay.”
“What are you talking about?” I said. “We have property insurance. That’s what we got insurance for in the first place, right? To help us in case something like this happened. There must be some mistake.”
Tim gave me a look that suggested he felt quite bad for me indeed. “You may have a limited policy, which doesn’t always cover water damage. We recently dealt with another company—a doggie daycare, of all places—that had a limited plan that didn’t include water damage, which is about as foolish as you could get, if you ask me.”
“But I know we wouldn’t have not gotten it!”
“It might’ve been an oversight. I don’t know. But either way, your insurance company is not going to pay us.”
I closed my eyes, a throbbing headache beginning to swirl at the base of my skull. “Okay,” I said. “Well, you’ll have to wait a minute because the checkbook is upstairs. One of the areas that was probably unaffected, but—”
“It’s okay,” Tim said. “We’ll bill you. Right now I’d just be focused on the place dried out the best you can. And if you decide you want to talk to the restoration guy, just let me know and I can arrange it.”
“Sure,” I said, feeling simultaneously embarrassed and frustrated, and also bad that he was being so nice about the whole thing.
After Tim left, I called our insurance company, only to find out that he was indeed right: we had a commercial property policy that didn’t include water damage. I called Kelly next, and got her voicemail, so I left her a message delivering the good news.
The upstairs offices were basically fine, which hardly even mattered because all that was up there was a desk, a few filing cabinets, a couch, and an old iMac computer. We kept client forms in the filing cabinets, as well as the financial stuff that Kelly handled. I went over and sat down at the desk. I turned the computer on and logged onto our bank’s website. I already knew that there probably wasn’t going to be enough in the account to cover paying Tim and whatever it might cost for the restoration specialist, though maybe we wouldn’t end up needing him. At this point, I was still hopeful all that needed to happen now was the place to dry out, maybe some of the equipment to be serviced or replaced, and then we’d be good to go.
I typed in the login name and the password and then sat back, waiting for the page to load. I couldn’t even really let myself think about what Clara had told me about Fitness Universe. Instead, I tried to think of everything that Tim had said we’d need. Fans, mostly. How many fans? A bunch. Probably big ones.
The bank website fin
ished loading, and there on the landing page was the last hyperlinked last four digits of our account and the balance. There was less than five hundred dollars in the account.
I clicked on the link to get to the itemized list, which would show all the deposits and withdrawals. I scrolled through, trying to make sense of everything.
Kelly and I both drew a salary from this account, and used the rest to pay the mortgage, utilities, advertising, equipment costs, and employee salaries. That was all there, as expected. But there were also half a dozen or so withdrawals, for large sums of cash, in varying amounts. And this was just for this month! Eight hundred dollars, twenty-six hundred dollars, five thousand dollars! My jaw dropped.
I rarely used the business debit card. In fact, I didn’t even carry it on me. Kelly was the only other one who had a card, so, unless someone had stolen it from her, these were all charges she was responsible for. I printed out the statement and stuffed it into my purse. Then I left and got in my car and drove over to Kelly’s. “We need to talk,” I said.
She looked tired, as though she hadn’t slept, and I knew I probably didn’t look much better. “I really can’t believe any of this,” she said sadly. “I just listened to your message. It’s so awful.”
“It is,” I said, “but there’s actually something else that I need to talk to you about.” I pulled the printed out pages from my purse and held them out to her. “You know that I trust you, Kelly, and that I don’t really pay much attention to the bookkeeping end of things because you’ve always handled it. So I’m really hoping that you can explain to me what those withdrawals there are. The highlighted ones.”
She took the pages from me and scanned them, the expression on her face not really changing. She’d have some sort of explanation for me. I knew she would.
“Those are mine,” she said finally, handing the papers back.
“Yes, I know they are, but for what? Why are you taking money directly out of the business account like that?”
She pursed her lips. “Why are you looking at the account in the first place?”
“Why? Because it’s partially mine? Because we own this business together? I’d say any of those reasons are good ones.”
She rubbed her hand over her mouth and let out an exhale. “I know, Isla. And I’m not trying to hide anything from you, either, I swear. I thought I’d be able to put the money back in before you noticed.”
“The only reason I noticed is because I went online to check our statement to make sure we could pay Tim. Because our insurance isn’t going to cover it.”
“Yes, I know, you don’t have to keep reminding me. This whole thing is completely fucked.”
“It was fucked before I found out you’ve basically been embezzling money. Now it’s . . . I don’t know what it is. What have you been using the money for?”
“Wes needed it,” she said quietly.
“What?!” I didn’t bother keeping my voice down. “Wes? Some guy you’ve been dating for a few months? Are you kidding me?”
“He’s going to pay me back and I’m going to put the money back into the account!” Kelly snapped.
“I can’t believe this,” I said. “I can’t believe that you would be so stupid as to do something like that to begin with. You’re stealing money from our business, Kelly! That money isn’t for you to lend to some guy you barely know!”
“It’s not like he’s just going to pull a fast one on me!” she shouted back. She spun on her heel and disappeared down the hall, then came back and threw something at me. It was a wad of cash, and the bills burst out of her hand and then fluttered down to the floor. “See? He just gave me that yesterday.”
“That is so not point! Our business account is not the personal checking account for your boyfriend!”
“I’m sorry! I fucked up, okay? I’m really sorry. If I’d had any clue that this shit with the flooding was going to happen and that we’d need that money, there’s no way I would’ve lent it to him. But how was I supposed to know?”
“You weren’t. It’s one of those things that no one could actually know beforehand, and that’s why you need to have money on hand for when these unexpected things do happen! And now we don’t and we’re screwed. I can’t talk to you right now, Kelly. I have to go.”
I turned and left, leaving the money there on the floor. She could pick it up and deposit it into our account; I wasn’t going to.
I went home. I was tempted to stop by the grocery store first and buy everything I could fit into a cart, but I resisted the urge and instead changed into my running outfit and went out for a run. I pushed myself hard enough that my lungs were burning and my legs felt like they were going to give out, but I knew what was waiting on the other side of that. If you can push through that resistance, you get that high that you can only get through exercise, and I needed that right now more than anything.
I took a long shower when I got home, and after I dried off, I figured I’d eat a salad and hope there was a good movie on TV. Something I could just zone out to.
But as I stood at the counter chopping vegetables, my mind kept spinning. What was I going to do now? Everything that I’d worked so hard for had basically just gone to shit. My business partner was stealing from the business. Fitness Universe was supposedly going to be opening up one of its mega locations less than five miles from us. I’d always held the belief that if you worked hard at something, if you really gave it your all, it would work out, because that’s just how it was supposed to go. That made sense, that was fair. What I was realizing, though, was that nothing was fucking fair. Because if life were actually fair, this whole past week wouldn’t have even happened, starting off with that asshole Brian fucking Shannon and me having to walk in and see it.
I could be a good sport about all of this. I could try to put on a brave face and say that I’d soldier on, no matter what. I thought about all the encouraging sorts of things that I’d say to people at the gym, people who were struggling, who felt like they couldn’t run another step on the treadmill, or make it through the end of a spin class. I’d have all sorts of positive encouragement to throw their way, yet I was having a difficult time mustering anything for myself.
I sat on the couch with my salad and ended up watching a nature documentary. It was about the animals on the African Serengeti, and there was a worse-than-normal drought. For those animals, their only focus was finding water in their dry, dusty environment. It seemed a hopeless task, and many of them died from dehydration, vultures picking over the carcasses that lay rotting under the hot sun. Maybe it should’ve made me feel a little better about everything—at least I wasn’t a dying animal on the plains of Africa—but really, it just seemed to confirm that life could really just be complete and utter shit.
7.
Levi
I’d just gotten back from Privilege’s Monday nights No Xcuses and was thinking about maybe trying to get a little sleep when the phone rang. And by phone, I mean the landline that had originally been in the villa that we’d decided to keep because Alfie was horrible about remembering to charge his cell phone. I almost let it keep ringing, but then, at the last second, decided to pick it up. It could lead to something interesting. The last time I’d answered this phone on a whim, it had been a wrong number, but the caller had turned out to be the lovely Sonja, who I met up with later that day for a beach-side rendez-vous. I was tired, yes, but I certainly had enough left in me for another rendez-vous with a gorgeous woman if that’s what this was going to lead to.
“Hello?”
“Levi, is that you?” a male voice demanded.
“It’s me,” I said uncertainly, my brain frantically trying to place the voice. It’s hard to tell voices over the phone in the first place, but I certainly knew this one.
“It’s Cal.”
My jaw dropped. How the ever-loving fuck did Cal get this number? I didn’t think they even knew about this place. But it was too late to hang up or to start saying no hablo ingles over
and over again. I swallowed.
“Uh . . . hey there, Cal” I said. “Sure wasn’t expecting a call from you. How’d you get this number?”
“I tried calling your cell phone, probably a dozen times, but you didn’t pick up.”
“I left it at home; I didn’t have it on me. If I did, I certainly would’ve picked up if I’d known you were calling, Cal. What’s up?”
“What’s up is that I have some very bad news, Levi. Your father dead. He had a massive heart attack right before he left the office today. He was dead by the time the EMTs arrived; there was nothing anyone could do. I’m sorry.”
I could suddenly hear a high-pitched trill in my ears. “What?” I said.
“You heard me. Your father is dead. And you need to make arrangements to get on the next plane out of there and get back here to New York.”
“Is this a joke? I just called him the other night.”
“And did you speak to him?”
“No, he didn’t answer the phone, so I left him a voicemail. This is a joke, right? Dad’s just pissed at me that I came out here when he said he didn’t want me to and now you’re trying to get me to come back. And I’ll rush back there and once I walk in the door, there’ll be Dad, right? Right, Cal?”
Cal sighed. “No, Levi. This is not a joke. And your father is not going to be here when you get back, because he’s dead. Should I say it again, just so you can get it through your head? I wouldn’t joke about something like this; you should know that. Now, I don’t think I need to tell you again to either call Anders and see if he’s available or to buy yourself a plane ticket and fly commercial. Call me when you’re back in New York.”
