Walter Falls

by Gillis, Steven;

  Despite my objection, Gee went ahead and organized Tod’s dinner. She rented a banquet hall, put together a menu with caterers, ordered flowers and linen, tables and chairs, contacted fellow writers, teachers and scholars, and social activists who made their own calls for support. In the end, more than 300 people put up $250 a plate. Two members of the city council agreed to sit at the head table along with Tod and Gee, the writer Wendy Doniger, civil reformer William Sloane Coffin, and Dr. Janus Kelly of the free medical clinic.

  On the off chance I might yet come around and agree to help, Gee asked if I’d assert what influence I had and persuade a few of my clients to attend Tod’s dinner. How perfect her request. (“My clients, did you say?”) Here was the ultimate irony, for what could possibly be more absurd than turning to Ed Porter and Jack Gorne and anyone else who’d ever made a dime from one of Tod’s ideas—from Happy Meadows, Duroflex, or the collapse of Old Soles—and encourage them to support a dinner meant to bail Tod out of debt? I refused as a matter of principle, but then in a moment of weakness—and in an effort to please my wife—I went ahead and called a few clients, soliciting minor donations to the cause. I expected little to come of this, and was surprised when Nancy McClarin, retired chairman of McClarin Paints, longtime Democratic stalwart and original patron at Porter and Evans, took it upon herself to contact and ultimately persuade eight local companies to underwrite the cost of the entire dinner. (Placecards were printed with the names of each business and left in front of every plate.) I could not believe the amount of cash brought in, and with no way to refuse the donations, went ahead and took full credit, boasting to Gee, “There? You see? Who doesn’t come through in the end?”

  I received for my effort a warm embrace, hastily tendered, my wife stepping in and out of my arms so fast it was hard to be sure she was ever really there.

  The dinner was scheduled for December 15. A Friday night, a week after the latest edition of the Kerrytown Review was put to bed. On the calendar in our kitchen, hung on the wall beside the phone, Gee marked the day inside a neatly drawn blue square. I, too, had referenced the date in my personal organizer, circling 12/15 in red.

  Thanksgiving came and went with little notice while Gee busied herself with all the endless details of Tod’s dinner. I, in turn, found myself alone again each night. (The aches and pains that destroyed my sleep and weakened my already shaky constitution were no longer of interest to my wife, whose application was demanded elsewhere.) I weathered this latest indignity poorly, and sitting with a cold compress posted against my rising fever, cursed my empty house—“Goddamn you, Tod!”—over and over, until my head filled with such a resounding sting I could but barely take the sound of my own breathing.

  The Tuesday before Tod’s dinner, I was in my office when a Mr. Thomas Mumphore called and identified himself as a field agent for the Securities and Exchange Commission, “Enforcement Division.” He was most formal and without once mentioning the anonymous letter the Commission received explained that he was interested in a purchase I made for a Mr. Tod Marcum involving Sun Lytes stock. He said his questions were all routine. “We often conduct random audits of trades made on the eve of large mergers and sales.”

  The record of Tod’s selling Affymetrix stock and acquiring Sun Lytes was registered by law through Porter and Evans and easily traced back to me. I was most cooperative in my responses, and took advantage of certain opportunities to paint the picture of Tod as a man desperate for cash. “Mr. Marcum has a history of approaching me with various proposals,” I said. “I dissuaded him several times from getting in over his head, but finally agreed to help him open a shoe store. It was just after the store closed and left him nearly a quarter million dollars in debt that he called and told me to sell off his only stock, Affymetrix, and buy Sun Lytes. I was surprised, but he insisted I do as he wanted. Why, is something wrong?”

  I was asked a few more questions, queried and quizzed, and eventually let go with no hint from Mumphore that he was in any way suspicious of me. The thermostat on my office wall was set at seventy degrees, but for days now felt considerably hotter. I sat back in my chair and tried to gauge my reaction to Mumphore’s call, wondering if now was the time to play my final card and phone Gee with the news. I hoped such a revelation might at last raise doubts in her mind about her inviolable Mr. Marcum, but the prospect of her providing a less favored response gave me pause. What if I informed her of the SEC’s investigation and suggested—as a consequence of Tod’s debt—he knew exactly what he was doing when he accepted the illegal tip from Jim Catrell and forced me to purchase Sun Lytes stock, and instead of misgivings, Gee came quickly to his defense? (“Don’t be ridiculous, Walter!”) What if I found the nerve to ask, “Yes, but what if he did deceive us? Desperate people, Gee. (And don’t I know!) What if he proved himself less than you think?” and to this my wife answered, “If anyone ever deceived me that way, Walter, I would never forgive him. (There!) Is that what you want to hear?”

  I was still digesting the whole of such possibilities when my secretary buzzed through and announced that a Mr. Marcum was here to see me. “I won’t keep you,” Tod apologized as he entered my office, saying that he was across the street at the bank—“Giving blood,” he quipped—and thought he’d stop by.

  I’d not seen Tod for several weeks, and hearing from Gee how he continued to cling vigilantly to the sideboards of his sinking ship even as his financial situation went under, I was nonetheless disappointed to find him looking so well. Where I hoped he might appear haggard, his usually hale frame worn about the edges, his shoulders slumped, and a dark cast encircling his eyes, he seemed, if not unfazed, otherwise unchanged. Still, his voice was somehow off, the inflection behind his words oddly weighted, and while it was the dead of winter, he wore no more than a tweed sportcoat with a thin grey sweater beneath. His hair was moistened by a few flakes of snow, his jeans wrapped stiff around his legs from the cold wind outside. “How are you feeling, Walter?” he extended his hand.

  “Fine, fine,” I had him sit in the chair in front of my desk.

  “Geni tells me you’re still under the weather.”

  “It’s nothing. A bug I can’t shake.”

  Tod nodded. “There’s something going around,” he brushed his hair back with his tight hand. “I won’t keep you,” he repeated, then reached inside the pocket of his sport coat and produced an envelope that he placed atop my desk. I noticed the printed return address, Enforcement Division of the SEC, and picking up the letter read the contents. “Apparently, my quick profit has them curious,” Tod forced a smile, his expression unsettled, absent its usual confidence and verve.

  I slipped the letter back inside the envelope and answered Tod with the same lines Mumphore said to me. “It’s nothing. It’s all routine. Happens all the time. Someone must have traded heavily before the merger and now the SEC’s beating the bushes, looking at anyone who bought in close to the time of the deal. Don’t worry,” I made myself go on, rubbing at the side of my head while I spoke, quelling as best I could the ache of my fever. “The letter means nothing. I get these notices about clients all the time. It’s an inconvenience at worst. Let me make a call and see if I can’t get you out of it.”

  Tod took Mumphore’s letter and folded it back inside his pocket. He thanked me, and for a moment I thought he might leave, but then he sighed and said, “I’m broke now, you know.”

  I made no reply.

  “Oh, I’m sure the banks will let me scramble about for awhile, but eventually I’m going to lose everything. Whatever money’s raised at this dinner Geni has planned won’t help. Those funds can go toward Melstar or some other charity, but not for me.”

  “You know about the dinner?” I wasn’t expecting this, the last I was told Gee hoped to keep things a secret from Tod until the fifteenth.

  “It’s hard to plan a surprise when so many people are involved,” he gave me a strange look, turned away, paused a moment then glanced back. “Sorry. I feel rathe
r foolish under the circumstances.” Tod set his hands flat against his legs. “Just a little more cash, a little more, a little more, and I could save the world, but it seems the emperor has no clothes.” He shook his head, his expression suddenly failing until he was all but unrecognizable to me. “I’m sorry,” he said again, and standing, “I don’t want to disrupt your work. I know you’re busy. This letter from the SEC was just a shock, that’s all. I’ll be fine. A year from now we’ll look back on this and laugh.”

  I remained sitting behind my desk long after Tod had gone. The pounding in my head returned in full force and I grew fearful, waiting nonetheless for a sense of satisfaction to greet me, the knowledge that all my handiwork had hit its mark, but what I felt instead was a raw rasp of error. I grew angry at what seemed a show of weakness, such questioning in the face of Tod’s defeat an unacceptable defect, and grabbing at the sides of my head, I chanted, “Be glad! Be glad! Be glad!”

  Ten minutes later, my secretary informed me that Jim Catrell was on the line, but I was feeling much too ill and in no mood to talk. My response was the same an hour later when I received a second call from Jim. “He says it’s urgent,” though sick as I was, I insisted, “I can’t talk now. Tell him that. Tell him I can’t, I can’t, I can’t!”

  The night of Tod’s dinner the sky was clear. Gee had reserved the Fenimore Banquet Room at the Imperial Hotel on Waverly Boulevard, not four blocks from my office. The plan was for Gee to pick up Tod at the Kerrytown Review sometime after six and drive across town where—as pretext—I was supposed to meet them for a drink at the Imperial Bar. The dinner was scheduled for seven p.m. with people instructed to arrive no later than six forty-five. At ten minutes to six, I was still at my desk at Porter and Evans, the aching in my joints and raw stinging in my head unabated. I shut off my computer, loosened my tie, and fishing out my keys, removed Tod’s file from my locked bottom drawer.

  I’d no idea what I was looking for, but spread the papers across my desk just the same and studied the accounting for Happy Meadows, the profits made on Duroflex, the purchase and sale of Adam’s Eau, Affymetrix, and Sun Lytes, along with each transaction involving Old Soles. Eventually I went and stood at my office window where I could see from the fourteenth floor nearly all of west Renton and a section of the Mitlankee River. (How cold the water must be this evening, I imagined.) I brought my hands up to the window, set my fingers flat against the chill of the glass, and thought of Gee. Last night, as she prepared to dash off on some last minute errand for Tod’s dinner, a sense of urgency and sorrow swept over me and I grabbed for her in the hall, catching hold of her arm and drawing her close, surprised as she permitted me this, allowed me—yes—one brief embrace which caused me to suffer the unfamiliarity of her touch and unmistakable depth of our estrangement. A second later, she and Rea were running out to the car. I stood on the porch and watched them depart, then returned inside alone.

  I went down to the washroom and readied myself for the night. Few people were in the office at six thirty on a Friday evening and I left my door open, surprised to find Ed Porter waiting for me as I came back. He was standing behind my desk, several sheets of paper from Tod’s file in his hand, a grim look on his face. “Close the door, Brimm,” he said.

  Confused by his presence, unsure how to react, I took two strides then stopped and composed myself as best I could in the center of the room. The snow outside fell in flakes of fractured white. Ed Porter maintained his position behind my desk, having pushed aside my chair. “I received a call,” he said. “Two calls, in fact. Do you know a Liddi Faine?”

  “We’re casually acquainted.”

  “And Thomas Mumphore?”

  “From the SEC.”

  “Enforcement,” Ed passed his hand through the remaining papers on my desk. “I don’t like getting calls from Enforcement, Brimm. And I particularly don’t like hearing that one of my senior associates has placed a suspect trade. What’s going on here? What is all this?” I took another half step forward, terrified and dizzy, and struggling not to panic while straining hard to think. “It’s just old records, Ed.”

  He bent over my desk, picked up a sheet of paper with Tod’s name on it. “Is this Marcum a client?”

  “No. That is, not technically.”

  “What the hell does that mean?” the old man’s face was red, the corpuscles in his cheeks rushing to the surface. “If there’s something going on here, Brimm, if you’re screwing with the reputation of Porter and Evans...”

  “It’s nothing like that, Ed,” I did my best to answer.

  “No? This Liddi person seems to think you’ve committed a series of frauds. She paints a rather detailed picture, in fact, and all these documents appear to back her up. How is it you were involved with Marcum to begin with? What’s Marcum have to do with Duroflex and Happy Meadows? What the hell is his relationship to Old Soles, and why is Jim Catrell phoning me and screaming in my goddamn ear?”

  I muttered, “I’ve no idea what you’re talking about,” but this simply caused Ed Porter to throw the papers back down on my desk and shout, “Quit bullshitting, Brimm’”

  I was by this point pleading, warning him off with a bleak, “Stop, please. You don’t understand,” my voice anxious and suddenly loud, “Stop!” as I lunged forward and grabbed up the papers, holding them against my chest as I fell back, groaning, my hands flailing, the papers scattering in the air, my head dizzy as a violent heat cut through me and I stumbled again, balling my fists that I waved high in the air, the angle of my arms unmistakable even to someone as otherwise impervious as Ed Porter.

  I don’t remember how I got from my office out into the street, coatless and cold, running as best I could through the wetted chill. Despite the evening’s wind and the blowing snow—clinging to me as if I was a heated coil trying to pass through an icy obstruction—my fever remained. I tripped twice and fell to my knees, panting and feeble as I climbed back to my feet and made my way the four blocks to Waverly Boulevard and the Imperial Hotel.

  The carpeting inside the lobby was a dark orange cut across blue mosaic tiles. A chandelier hung in the middle of the ceiling like a giant crystal squid, with dozens of tentacles surrounding a blazing white light. The banquet hall was to the left, a large antique clock set between two oil paintings of ducks and dogs swimming in a marshy pond read seven thirty-five. I ran as best I could, the soles of my shoes soaked through and caked with ice, the front-desk clerk, two bellhops, and the concierge giving chase as I stormed past them, my shirt untucked and plastered white against my chest. I smelled freshly baked chicken, the perfume of cut flowers, and the smoke of a nearby cigar as I shot through the doors, charging in with such force that everyone jumped and several people close by fell out of their chairs, bone-white plates and finely polished silverware spilling. Gee and Tod were at the main table, though as I tried calling out, my voice became caught in my throat, knotted and useless against all I wished to say. Panic appeared in a series of colors—gold and violet, blue and orange and green—as I staggered on, sending even more chairs and one entire table crashing.

  People remained far back long after I collapsed, the room reduced to a narrow strip of light, the periphery of all I could see a thick, woolen grey with Gee and Tod now kneeling beside me, their voices mixed and muffled inside my head. (“Walter? Walter?”) I tried once more to speak, still gasping, begging them with my eyes to understand—“Please!” and “Sorry. Sorry.”—though in the end my every effort failed. (Of course.) At some point someone slipped their hands beneath my arms and I was loaded into the back of a car, driven soiled and sweating, stretched out like a bony fish broiling in its own juices to the emergency room at Renton General.

  PART II

  “When a lot of remedies are suggested for· a disease, that means it can’t be cured.”

  ANTON CHEKHOV

  The Cherry Orchard

  CHAPTER 12

  I woke the following afternoon hooked to an IV, my mouth dry and head achin
g, the inside of my throat so unforgivably raw that when I tried to speak, I produced only a soft, hoary “Gaahhrr.” I looked about for Gee but there was no one else inside my room. A nurse informed one of the doctors that I was awake, and after an hour he came to see me. I had my reflexes checked, a light shined into my eyes, my back and stomach pressed. (“Tender? Tender?”) “We’re waiting on your lab work,” the doctor said, convinced that I was incubating a serious sort of virus that infected my kidneys. (My coloring was jaundiced and I’d passed a bit of blood.) “Another week and you’d have done yourself permanent damage,” he gave me a judging look, then left without saying another word.

  I spent the rest of the day alternating between the coldest chills and convulsing with fever. I felt the effect all over, on my lips, in my joints, between my legs, and even in my hair. I shut my eyes for a time and when I opened them again the room was dark.

  Eight days into my stay at Renton General and my muscles have turned into a sort of lumpy pudding, sloshing beneath my flesh as if I was nothing but six feet of waning bone and tissue. A weakness ruins my grip and when I pee, sometimes in the plastic bowl and other times stumbling to the john, my stream comes out dripping and truncated like an old man. I fault the drugs and am quick to admonish my doctors, insisting their treatment is only making me worse, that my decline is rooted in external factors and I can’t be cured with traditional medicines. Each time my nurses come with pills I weep and shout, “What is this? What? What? What? Why can’t you understand what I need?”

  Gee doesn’t visit, has sent word instead that she wants a divorce. (She insists she knows everything and slams down the phone when I call.) Yesterday, I received a stack of papers from her lawyer setting out the terms and conditions of our separation. I won’t be permitted visits with Rea until the doctors are satisfied with both my physical and mental health. The monetary figures are of no interest to me—she can have it all, it doesn’t matter—and after being asked several times by her attorney to sign the papers, I have an orderly buy me a blank mailing folder and send Gee’s requests on to my own lawyer with the briefest of instructions.