Walter Falls

by Gillis, Steven;

  “About Tod asking you to look at an investment? Because I encouraged him to do so. Why shouldn’t he ask? And why shouldn’t you want to help?” She disappeared into the bathroom, leaving me to react alone.

  I stood in the center of the floor, astounded by this latest twist, frustrated and resenting again the way Gee always came so quick to Tod’s defense. The alarm clock beside our bed was digital, the numbers red and lighted, and in the silence of our room I could hear the faint electric buzz that gave the air a fitful charge. I stripped off my clothes and sat on the end of the bed where, ignoring all impulses to the contrary, imagined my wife and Tod having sex. I worried about the physical advantages he might have, the size of his cock—no doubt larger than mine—his muscles supple and stamina superior, his ability to deliver Gee to wave after wave of orgasmic revelry, applying a sort of liberal—ha!—technique in order to fully satisfy her needs. My anguished mind worked overtime, the measure of fear and vanity, and I was staring blindly at a blank space on the wall when Gee returned and slipped into bed.

  I crawled in beside her and resumed an enfeebled state of grousing. “All night long he’s arguing with me, and then he has the gall to ask for a favor. In the grand scheme of things,” I shook my head, and said louder, “do you realize I charge clients a thousand dollars for the consultation I gave Tod tonight for free? On top of that, his idea was insane, and still I volunteered to help invest what minor amount of cash he has. You should appreciate this and yet you’re pissed at me.”

  “I do appreciate your taking the time to talk with him,” she granted me this much. “And I appreciate your offering to help.”

  “But?”

  “You should want to work with someone like Tod for a change, someone whose objective is not limited to increasing their own wealth.”

  “Believe me, Gee, my clients give more money to charity than Tod has ever raised in his life.”

  “I doubt that,” she stared at me until I looked away. “Why can’t you see Tod’s idea to put whatever profit he earns back into the community is a wonderful gesture? You should be flattered he came to you.”

  “There’s no reason for me to be flattered by a man I’ve only met twice. His asking me for anything is presumptuous.”

  Gee glowered. “If you’re determined to go on this way, Walter Brimm, I suggest you let the subject drop.”

  Words of wisdom. A practical truth. I should have taken Gee’s advice and said no more. Discretion would have gone a long way toward earning my wife’s favor, but how was I to stop when I remained so otherwise anxious and unsettled after such a miserable night? I wanted more than a cold, convenient truce, required not compromise but something intimate and indivisible, a sense of assurance I could sink my teeth into. I wished again my wife would hold me in sweet prelude to the moment we put all this nonsense behind us, and desperate to feel her, to possess and be possessed, to have her on top of me so I could rise beneath her and be devoured inside, I slipped under the sheet and reached in her direction. Gee quickly turned away, and when I said, “What? I thought you were appreciative?” she all but groaned and slapped at my hand. “Go to sleep,” she said and rolling further from me, she switched off the light.

  In darkness then. In the blink of an eye-one blink, yes—I was rendered helpless, cast out and transformed.

  CHAPTER 5

  Sunday morning, a few short hours removed from our dinner with Tod, I got up early and retrieved the Renton Bugle from the front porch. My head ached, and sitting inside my den, I read an article about three former executives of the Bankers Trust Corporation—Bruce Kingdon, Kenneth Goglia, and Harvey Plante—who were each indicted for diverting $15.5 million of customer money into the bank’s own accounts as a means of covering shortfalls in their division’s projected revenue and profits. I made a note to mention the piece to Jack Gorne who was friends with both Kingdon and Plante, and flipping ahead, scanned the pages until another article caught my eye.

  There in the extreme, I read an account of love’s labors lost: Yesterday the body of one Franco DeLima, age twenty-seven, was found in a field in Long Island by a woman out walking her dog. Pathologists determined from the injuries that Mr. DeLima had fallen from a passing plane, the speculation being that he was a stowaway and took his fatal tumble when the landing gear was lowered during the flight’s final approach. Police said foreign coins and stamps were found among his possessions, along with a postcard from a woman named Maria who wrote, “Yo te amo,” a dozen times, surrounding the one line printed in English: “Hurry to me, please, my love.” Poor sap. Such a sad story. What a precarious entanglement. How often the most ill-fated acts were performed in the name of Love; the pairing of Eros and Amor producing the ultimate paradox. “Love, love, love,” as the Beatles sang. (“All you need is...”) But who can ever understand the risk one takes and the lure of such immoderation?

  I put the section down and picked up another, finding by chance an article that quoted my wife. The piece addressed the suicide rate among teens and the knee-jerk response of certain conservative groups to blame popular music. (“What sort of faulty reasoning is it that condemns musicians for our social ills?” Professor Sharre wrote. “If music is so potent, and not merely a manifestation of more pervasive cultural concerns, why not fill our schools with soothing choral arrangements and inculcate our youth with a palliative calm?”) Under normal circumstances, I would have agreed with my wife and felt her logic well conceived, but this morning I was querulous, and put off still by the events of last night, couldn’t bring myself to agree with Gee on anything.

  I dropped the paper, and pushing the heel of my hands against the side of my head, got up and retrieved a pad and pen from my briefcase in order to jot down the information Tod provided regarding the land on the south side of Renton. I reviewed the details in black and white, assessed my findings objectively, and concluded once more that his idea was nothing but a wish list, speculative and contingent upon ifs and whens and events which may or may not happen. I scribbled out a few more notes and set the pad and pen back in my case.

  The day passed languidly. I took Rea to the park while Gee went to the library and researched her newest article. (The piece was tentatively titled “The Misconception in Cultural Objectivism and the Ethic of Community” for whatever that meant.) By evening, Gee and I managed to avoid the topic of Tod Marcum altogether. Such evasion, administered with deft efficiency, allowed us to bypass any further quarrels, yet the cooperation we effected was itself strained and we monitored our dialogue as if one false word would forever shatter the watchful calm I at least was struggling to preserve.

  I left for work the next morning and was inside my office no more than an hour when Gee phoned to let me know, “There’s a mailing I promised to help with tonight.”

  “Tod?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me before? Why wait until now and over the phone?”

  “We won’t be late,” she said without answering, informing me of her intent to take Rea and suggesting I treat myself to a night on the town. “You’ll like that, I’m sure,” her tone was bright in an effort to persuade me.

  “Fine,” I grumbled, and said no more than, “go on then. Yes. Goodbye.”

  I spent the rest of the morning consulting with clients eager to invest in the Pacific Rim, and returning to my office after lunch, initiated a preliminary investigation into the property on the south side of Renton. I treated the task no differently than any other business venture, was most diligent and professional in my study. I had a clerk do a title search, and making several queries on my own, found out about the status of the metro rail. Everything seemed as Tod said, right down to the last detail. Shortly before six, I got in touch with the owner of the land, a widower who’d held the acreage for years and was anxious now to sell in order to relocate out west. To my surprise, I discovered no one had entered a bid.

  I ate by myself that night at Talster’s Bar, had a porterhouse and three w
hiskeys on the rocks. I realized I was drinking too much of late, and driving home, assured myself I’d take control of the situation before it got out of hand. Once inside my den, I poured a fresh whiskey and sat down in my chair. Gee and Rea were already upstairs, though I didn’t go to see them, and when I did at last crawl into bed just after midnight I lay at a distance from my wife. Restless, I rose before dawn, showered and shaved and drove to my office where I sat at my desk and reviewed once again the information compiled yesterday. I still had no clear idea of what I was doing, no sure way of saying what I would or would not have done had Ed Porter not stopped by my office that afternoon and mentioned that he was looking to put an investment together for a select group of clients. I wasted no time and suggested a purchase of real estate, specifically several acres of land on the south side of the city that was undervalued and ready to be developed.

  Two months later the property was ours. I contacted architects, city planners, and building contractors in order to lay the groundwork for erecting a subdivision we’d eventually name Happy Meadows. In November, the mayor’s office announced its plan to construct a new southern line for the metro rail. The value of our property tripled overnight. Ed Porter’s group of clients, including Jack Gorne, whom I brought in on my own, could not have been more pleased. They applauded my resourcefulness and the brilliance of my vision. I was cheered in the most affluent of circles. “Walter Brimm! Walter Brimm!” (Brimming, indeed!) I accepted their accolades with a modest shrug, and mentioning nothing of my success to Tod, informed everyone that I was only too glad to help.

  We broke ground on the first block of houses in Happy Meadows the following spring. I drove over with Rea, and together we watched from a hillside as a large yellow bulldozer moved heavy mounds of earth, while men wielding shovels and long poles jumped into the hole, measuring its depth, smoothing out the base and sides in preparation for pouring the foundation. Tod had learned by then of the property’s sale, and called to see what I knew. “Nothing,” I said. “Not one word.”

  I lost little sleep as a result of my deception, convinced I’d committed no crime, that if Tod was fool enough to bring me information on deals he could not otherwise afford to enter into, then certainly I was free to take them on. That my deed entailed a certain amount of deceit, and in this way varied from the firm ethic I tried to uphold ever since my parents’ crimes, was true enough. And yet I had excuse for my behavior, and had only to look at Gee as she continued to slip away from me to feel vindicated and deny the reality of what I’d done.

  That winter, in the months before construction began at Happy Meadows and no one suspected a thing, Gee continued spending far too much time with Tod. They met and phoned and otherwise arranged their encounters two and three nights a week, serving together on committees, civic boards, and community councils, cochairing fund-raisers, petition drives, and benefits held at the Appetency Café. Additional social evenings were scheduled for the three of us, invitations extended and accepted against my complaint. More and more, I grew to detest the man’s presence, the way he spoke and smiled and touched my wife with familiar fingers reaching, caresses cast as insignificant, yet soft and telling. It was not uncommon for me to come home and find him sitting in our kitchen, a series of crayon-colored pictures laid out in front of him drawn by Rea.

  I suffered those months in a sort of disabling fog, without ever once knowing what I should do. As a consequence of our conversation that first evening on the porch, Tod was more judicious in pressing me about matters of business. He picked his spots and let me know from time to time how he still hoped to become part of a deal with profits reinvested back into the community. Once, at a reading by Lawrence Weschler, he cornered me during the reception and told me of a conversation he had with a man looking for investors to buy into the midwestern distributorship of Duroflex Watchbands. He described the profitability of Duroflex over the last few years, how it was an American-held corporation, with manufacturing on the east coast, a union shop that treated its workers fairly and ran its operations without a hint of scandal.

  I shook my head, explaining again that such an investment required tens of thousands of dollars, which Tod didn’t have to risk let alone lose. “Watchbands are one of those luxury items,” I said, “with a finite market base. The biggest mistake small companies make is trying to expand. Duroflex does alright in minor regions, but if they try to cut into markets controlled by larger companies such as Timex, they’ll get eaten alive. An investment isn’t supposed to be a gamble, remember that, Tod.”

  The next morning, I drove down to my office where I started a thorough review of Duroflex. My research could not have gone better. Every aspect of the company proved sound. I was impressed by their past performance, their liquidity, and patient plan for growth. Within days, I began contacting potential investors. I spoke several times with Mark Hillard at Duroflex who forgot about Tod the minute I mentioned the availability of my cash and the firm I represented. The deal went through without a hitch. Ed Porter came into my office and chimed, “Good for you, Walter. Watchbands, indeed! It’s the sort of business I cut my teeth on. You’re becoming a very clever fellow.”

  In April I was at a fund-raiser for the re-election of Senator Nancy Shelton and somehow wound up standing alone with Tod. “I’ve been thinking,” he said, and went on to pitch another proposal for purchasing unsold tennis, basketball, running shoes, and cleats from warehouses around the country. His plan was to establish a new middle market for footwear. He envisioned a chain of stores that sold old model shoes at a discount, all the usually expensive brands marked down, the high-tops and training shoes no longer as chic as the current year’s styles but just as useful and priced to sell. “Manufacturers are always looking to clear out old lines in order for outlets to carry the company’s most recent items. Major chains only want to push what’s new, but people want good deals.”

  I listened as always and once Tod was through said, “Your idea, for what it’s worth, has several serious problems that I don’t think you’ve considered. In the first place, the availability of your product will always be limited to last year’s stock. You’ll have no control over manufacturing, and therefore no say in what you might otherwise wish to order. This in itself is a negative. Then there’s the cash you’ll need to raise, which will again present you with problems. As for venturing into the retail trade, the risk is unacceptable as a rule. The odds against survival are just too great. Once more, I’m going to pass.”

  I was ready to walk away, only my attention was diverted then by a large mirror mounted to the wall behind Tod. (We were in the Fenbrooke Banquet Room of the Renton Skylark Hotel) The position of the mirror captured Gee’s image as she stood across the room conversing with two other women I didn’t know. The distance between us elevated her figure inside the mirror so that she appeared painted in as part of some beautiful mural. I was struck at once by how handsome she looked, and wanted only to invite her to come and reserve a room with me upstairs so we could lay together and cling to one another tightly until all the harm that had otherwise accumulated and complicated the connection between us was drawn out and put to rest. No sooner did the thought reach me however, than Tod shifted and blocked my view.

  I was certain his interference was committed on purpose, and vexed, resorted to asking, “While we’re on the subject, Tod, are you still interested in having me help you invest what money you have in the market?”

  “Walter, yes. I thought you’d forgotten.”

  “Not at all. I’ve been keeping an eye out for just the right stock. I know you’re only interested in socially conscious firms and finding the right fit takes time. I think I have something, however. A new company on the verge of developing a state-of-the-art water purification system. Cutting edge. Their stock is holding steady now, but as soon as they get FDA approval, well you just watch.”

  “Water purification, you say?”

  “All new, affordable, and efficient.”


  “That sounds excellent, Walter.”

  “The company’s called Adam’s Eau.”

  “They’re French?”

  “Some French money, but it’s an American operation. If you’re interested,” I continued, “I can get you a block of shares first thing tomorrow.” Tod had four thousand dollars to invest. I told him I’d front him the money, that he could send me a check in the mail. “You’re a player now,” I said. “How does it feel?”

  “Outstanding. This is very generous of you, Walter.”

  Generous, indeed. I was clever this time and refrained from boasting of my gesture to Gee, waiting instead for Tod to tell her. Let her come to me, I thought, and thank me with the appropriate appreciation. Later, in the next month or so when Adam’s Eau crashed—as I was sure it would, having already conducted my research and knowing the company’s struggles to satisfy the FDA placed it on the brink of permanent disaster—I’d have my reward from Gee in hand and could blame Tod’s troubles then on the market. I didn’t have to wait long. The very next evening, as soon as I got home, Gee expressed her thanks for my helping Tod. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  I shrugged as if informing her was not important.

  “It was very kind of you.” She said this with a curious look on her face, her eyes half squinting as if there was something she was trying to see in me, a glimpse of what she otherwise wasn’t quite sure was there. That night in bed, I tried to take advantage of her gratitude and presented myself with a keener sense of humility, pleased by her receptiveness, yet rather than rejoice in the spectacle of her company—as I longed to do!—I found after but the briefest of embrace that I was struck—how shall I say?—unresponsive to further celebration. Two nights passed in which I could neither sleep nor rouse myself to the task I desired. Resentful of such an ignominious interruption, I struggled for answers and after several vain attempts to reconcile my conduct, I began questioning the wisdom of misappropriating Tod’s cash.