Con Ed

by Matthew Klein

  “I’m sort of hanging out with friends. Mostly in San Francisco.”

  I swallow, try not to seem angry. “You mean you live right here?” San Francisco is thirty miles away. A half-hour drive without traffic. I’m tempted to show my hurt, that my son has been living so close to me, but hasn’t bothered to come by, or call, or even let me know he lives in the area. But acting hurt with Toby is unproductive. So I say, as happily as I can make my voice sound, “Well that’s terrific.”

  “Yeah, you know, it’s whatever.”

  I nod. Yeah, it’s whatever.

  I say, “How’s the ski instruction business?”

  He shrugs. “You know, it’s kind of . . . Well, I’m sort of done with that.”

  “Done with it?” I conjure a vision of my son carving up the slopes, speeding downhill at sixty miles an hour with a terrified toddler in tow and a doobie hanging from his lips.

  “It didn’t really work out,” he explains.

  “Okay,” I say agreeably.

  “Dad, why do you always have to attack me?”

  I hold up my hands in surrender. “No attack,” I say. “I think you’re great.”

  “Now you’re being patronizing.”

  “No, I’m not. I love you.” Which is true. Who doesn’t love his son? No matter what the son does? And, if Toby is a bit lost in his life, whose fault is it but mine? When he was fourteen years old, I divorced his mother after she caught me cheating with her best friend, Lana Cantrell. Five years later, I was sent to the slammer for mail and securities fraud. Toby’s father is an unfaithful, womanizing, corrupt criminal. What kind of kid can he expect?

  I say, “I’m just glad to see you, Toby.” I walk over to him, give him a hug. He sits stiffly in the chair. As I hug him, I look down at his scalp. He’s balding. Even more than me. Now, in addition to feeling hurt and unloved, I feel halfway dead.

  We cross the street to have beers at the Blue Chalk Café. Toby chooses a table on the second-floor balcony overlooking the diners. He chooses it, I suspect, to ogle the Stanford girls on the floor below.

  The waitress brings each of us a pint. We clink our glasses together and I say, “I’m glad to see you, Toby.”

  “Me, too, Dad.”

  I sip my beer.

  Toby drinks. Not delicately: He gulps—again and again, loudly—until three quarters of the pint is gone. He slaps down his glass and says, “Ahh.”

  I say, “So can you spend the night?”

  Toby tilts his head, looks at me quizzically. For a moment I think I have gone too far and am suffocating him. But he says, “Oh. Well, I was sort of hoping to stay. For a while.”

  “For a while?” I say. “Great.” I lift my beer. Try to drink. I don’t want him to feel like I’m attacking him. I need to slow down. To pause. So I count to myself: one, two, three. Okay. Now: “So how long can you stay?”

  “I’m not sure. Until things, you know, kind of blow over.”

  “I see.” I smile pleasantly. I wait for him to volunteer more information about what needs to blow over. But he’s silent, sipping his depleted beer, staring at a table of cute coeds down below. He finishes the remainder of the golden liquid in his glass and slides it toward the center of the table.

  “Come on,” he says. “Drink up.”

  I drink. When I decide that Toby will volunteer nothing further about the crisis in his life, I say, “So what’s going on? That you need to get away from?”

  “It’s no big deal. I really don’t want to bother you about it.”

  I have a vision of the next six months: Toby sprawled on my living room floor in a sleeping bag, empty beer bottles beside him, and my tripping over him during my thrice-nightly urinations. I say, “You’re not a bother, Toby.”

  “Well, it’s like this. I think maybe I made a little mistake.”

  I nod. I wait. One, two, three . . . Okay: “What kind of mistake?”

  “You know how I’ve been cleaning up on sports? I mean, absolutely rocking. I must have made ten grand during football season.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “Well, it’s not like we ever talk.” He waves his hand to attract the waitress’s attention. When she sees him, he holds up his empty glass and two fingers. Just in case she doesn’t understand, he jitterbugs his fingers back and forth, from me to him.

  He turns his attention back to me. He says, “Anyway, I was doing really awesome. It’s like I have a knack, you know? So I made a couple of pretty big bets.”

  “How big?”

  He answers another question. “The point is, I didn’t even have to put up the cash. They knew I was good for it.” He looks at me, as if I should be impressed.

  “How much did you lose?”

  “Well, it’s not just how much you lose.” His voice suddenly quiets. He leans forward in his chair. His eyes focus on mine. His face and posture take on a new seriousness. I’ve never seen him like this. He’s so . . . adult. If we weren’t talking about his impossible gambling debts, I might even be proud of him. He says: “When you can’t pay what you owe on the first bet, they let you borrow and put it on the next bet. The idea is to win and then pay back everything you owe.”

  “But that didn’t happen.”

  “No.” He shakes his head. “No it didn’t.”

  “How much do you owe?”

  The waitress appears and puts down two more beers. My first glass is still full. She lays my new one beside it, and replaces his empty. Cheerily, she says, “Would you like to hear about our specials? We have delicious chicken fingers!”

  “Chicken fingers,” Toby says, with sudden childlike enthusiasm. “That sounds great.”

  The waitress says, “Would you like an order?”

  Toby looks to me. “I’m starving. You mind, Dad?” He’s not asking if I want to share them; he’s asking if I’ll pick up the tab.

  I say, “Sure, go ahead.”

  “Anything else?” the waitress asks.

  “That’s fine for now,” I say.

  The waitress nods and disappears. I wait for Toby to continue talking about his gambling debt. But he’s looking around the restaurant, scoping the women.

  I say, “Toby, how much do you owe?”

  For a moment, it’s as if he doesn’t know what I’m talking about. Then it all comes back to him. He focuses, snaps to attention, bears down in his chair. “Sixty,” he says.

  “Sixty thousand dollars?”

  He shrugs and makes a little What can you do? smile.

  I ask, “Who do you owe?”

  “Well, it’s these guys. Like I said, they trusted me.”

  “Toby—”

  “I think they’re mob guys. The one I deal with is named Sergei Rock.”

  “Sergei the Rock?”

  “No ‘the.’”

  “I’ve never heard of him.”

  “Well why would you?” He feigns sudden realization. “Oh, of course. Because you’re a master criminal. A con man, turned TV star, turned con man again.”

  I ignore him. “Who does this Sergei Rock work for?”

  “Andre Sustevich.”

  “Oh,” I say. I have heard of Andre Sustevich. After La Casa Nostra was decimated by RICO and federal prosecutions, the Russians from Brighton Beach moved into California. Now they run the state’s prostitution and loan-sharking business. They are smarter and more ambitious than the Italians—and a thousand times crueler. Italy, after all, was the heart of the Roman Empire. Some of that civilization rubbed off, even on the crooks. Sure, the Italians are tough, but at least they have rules. The Russians are from the cold and brutal steppes, land where civilization never alighted, where evil is a long dark season, where you can be killed simply for looking at the wrong person at the wrong moment, where your son, and his son, and his son after that, can be sentenced to death for an intemperate remark, or a thoughtless gesture.

  The leader of the Armenians—or khan—in Northern California is Andre Sustevich. Sustevich is Russian-Arm
enian—and so able to command the loyalty of both groups. He’s known as the Professor—either because of the Ph.D. in economics he earned from Budapest University, or because of his lifelong study of the effects of torture on the human body. I’m guessing more of the second.

  I ask Toby: “Did they threaten you?”

  Toby waves his hand dismissively. He smiles brightly. “Who? Guys like Sergei Rock and Andre Sustevich? Threaten? Just because I owe them sixty thousand dollars? Come on, Dad, get a grip! What kind of guys do you think they are?” In case I miss his sarcasm, he says, more quietly, through clenched teeth, “Of course they threatened me. I think they were going to mess me up, big-time. I got out of town just in time.”

  “You’re only thirty miles away. You’re not out of town.”

  “But they don’t know I’m here.”

  I shake my head. I know my son. Within twenty-four hours, everyone—even people who have no idea who he is—will know he is here.

  “What’s your plan?” I ask.

  “My plan? I’m coming to you.”

  “That’s your plan?”

  “I need your help, Dad. Please.”

  I sigh. “Toby, I don’t have sixty thousand dollars.”

  “Mom says you do. That you squirreled it away.”

  Celia is convinced that I have sequestered a fortune in Swiss bank accounts, that I have secret real estate in Florida, phantom yachts on the Riviera. I wish I were half the crime lord she thinks I am. Maybe if she entered my apartment and stepped into my bathroom, with the crap-crusted toilet bowl; or if she saw that my TV remote is missing the Lower Volume button, forcing me to listen to everything at the same deafening loudness; or if she spent a few tedious hours with me at the dry cleaners, shrink-wrapping shirts and slacks, then she would know that I have nothing, that I am nothing except what I appear: an honest man, trying to get by. And not succeeding.

  I wish she would stop telling Toby otherwise. The poor kid is doing cartwheels across a high wire, counting on a safety net that doesn’t exist.

  I say, “Your mom is delusional. I don’t have anything to give you, Toby.”

  “Then what should I do?”

  There is only one thing Toby can do to avoid having his brains knocked out of his skull by Russian goons. He must build a time machine in my garage. When he has done so, he must travel backward in time and then erase his bet with the bookies that work for Andre “The Professor” Sustevich.

  Precluding that unlikely option, Toby must run like hell.

  “You need to go somewhere,” I say.

  “Where?”

  “I don’t know. Someplace far.”

  “Dad, I can’t run. You and Mom both live here.”

  For a moment, I am touched. Then I realize that ten seconds ago, Toby was asking for sixty thousand dollars. His love for me is erratic.

  “Toby, if you stay here, they’re going to find you.”

  “I was thinking maybe you can talk to them.”

  “Who?”

  “Andre Sustevich. The Professor.”

  “And say what?”

  “You know, that I’m good for it.”

  “Are you?”

  He looks to me as if to ask: Are you?

  I say, “I don’t really know Sustevich.”

  “He knows you.”

  “Oh?”

  “He says you were a classic.”

  “You talked to him?”

  “Not really,” Toby says, quickly. “I just heard. The thing is, I need your help.”

  “I want to help you, Toby. I just don’t know how.”

  “At least let me stay at your apartment.”

  “Of course you can stay,” I say. But I’m wondering: For how long?

  I’m expecting some sort of thanks, but the kid is looking around the room for the waitress. “You want another beer?” he asks me. I’m surprised to see that he has finished his second. Before I can answer, he locks eyes with the waitress and makes a series of hand gestures like a trader in the Chicago futures pits. In seconds, another round is on the way.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  When I wake at five in the morning, I have suddenly become the Amazing Largo, the World’s Greatest Mentalist, and all of my predictions have come true.

  Start with: Toby is in the living room, sprawled across the floor in a sleeping bag, snoring. Next: that I am forced to jump over him in the dark, to empty my bladder. That when I return from the bathroom twenty minutes later, having showered and shaved, Toby has not moved. For a moment, when I hear no snoring, I fear he is dead. I imagine explaining to his mother that Toby passed away on my watch, after drinking four beers and ogling Stanford girls in a bar. But his snoring starts up again, and, relieved, I decide that, if the time ever comes, I will invent an alternate story for Celia—that Toby passed away after an edifying night at the opera.

  The sun won’t rise for a half-hour yet, but I must leave for work now. The competition for space on the highway has become so brutal that a narcoleptic arms race has broken out. People in California leave their homes ever earlier, just to beat the rush. Which in turn makes the rush start sooner. Which makes people leave earlier. It’s a maddening cycle that has spiraled out of control. We need a UN mandate of some kind, or humanitarian intervention by Jimmy Carter, to stop this insanity, or else soon the entire Peninsula will be forced to rise at two in the morning.

  In the darkness, I stumble to the kitchenette. I sweep my hand across the fridge until I find the pad of notepaper. I scribble: “Toby— See you here at six. —Dad.”

  I leave the apartment quietly. I don’t bother locking the door behind me, because I want Toby to sleep. Jingling keys, snapping deadbolts, testing doorknobs—all will make too much noise. So, instead, I leave the apartment unguarded, accessible to anyone who cares to enter, with my son asleep inside.

  In Sunnyvale, my day begins with a donut and cup of coffee at the bakery near work. I linger with a San Jose Mercury News, then wipe my fingers on a paper napkin. I leave a quarter as a tip. I hope that, like karma, it comes back around.

  When I get to work, it’s a little before six. I unlock the door and jam the doorstop to air out the perc fumes before Imelda arrives. I rotate the paper sign in the front door so it says “Come in, we’re OPEN,” and then retreat behind the counter.

  After I serve the morning rush, Imelda arrives at ten. She wears a yellow floral dress that accentuates her facial hair. She waves a big hand at me and says, “Hello, my love!”

  “Good morning, Imelda,” I say. “You’re perky this morning.”

  “Am I?” She touches a hand to her face, turns red. “I can’t hide a thing, can I?”

  “I guess not.”

  I haven’t asked, but she volunteers anyway. “I’m in love.”

  I don’t want to encourage further conversation. Imelda’s sexuality—indeed, her biological sex—are her own business. Like so many other things in life, here ambiguity is delicious, certainty suffocating. I say, “I see.”

  “He’s a terrific man,” Imelda continues. “A dancer.”

  I try to picture a lithe Russian ballet dancer, in bed with Imelda.

  She adds, “A tap dancer.”

  Now Imelda’s lover turns black. Gregory Hines in tights.

  “We met at the Bay to Breakers. Did you know that I ran all seven miles?”

  “There’s a lot about you I don’t know, Imelda,” I say, hoping to keep it that way.

  I’m relieved when the telephone rings. It’s a rare occurrence at a dry cleaning shop. Customers have little reason to call. No one dials to ask, “Do you do shirts?”

  Imelda places the phone on the counter. She wraps her massive hand around the receiver, as if a trinket, and lifts it to her ear. “Hel—lo,” she sings into the phone. She listens to the voice at the other end. She says, “He’s right here.” She turns and hands me the phone. Her face is ashen. “It’s for you.”

  I take the phone. “This is Kip,” I say.

  “Mr. La
rgo?” a woman’s voice says.

  “Yes.” I have a bad feeling. “What is it?”

  “Mr. Largo, this is Stanford Hospital Emergency Room. Your son, Toby, has been injured. We’d like you to come see him.”

  I fly up Highway 85 and cross over to 101. When I get to Palo Alto, speed limit signs become suggestions. I take Lytton across town, to avoid running over venture capitalists, who this time of year dart across Palo Alto roads like squirrels with nut on the brain.

  I get to Stanford Hospital, follow the signs to “Emergency,” and leave my Honda jacked on the curb in the entry circle. A black man whose job is to allow parking only for real emergencies decides, from my pallor and sweat, that I qualify. He lets me pass.

  I run through the automatic sliding doors and am hit by chilled air that smells like pine oil. Before I get far, I come to the nurses’ station.

  “Can I help you?” a nurse asks.

  “You called me. My son has been hurt. Toby Largo.”

  She types something into a computer, looks up. “He’s okay,” she says. It’s as much a relief to her as to me. And I thought I had a lousy job. Shrink-wrapping slacks is nothing compared to telling fathers that their kids are not okay. “He’s in room 108. Down the hall, to the left.” She points.

  I go to room 108. Toby is lying in bed, with his leg in a cast, raised in traction, and an IV drip in his arm. He has a huge black eye. He’s awake. My ex-wife, Celia, stands over him. Somehow she always manages to beat me to Toby’s side. It was the same when we were married. Even though she was the emotional and erratic one—throwing tantrums, tossing guilt like plates at a Greek wedding—Toby always remained closer to her. I was the rock, but he loved her softness.

  When I enter, Celia looks up at me. I would prefer that she ignore me instead of the face I get: a combination of anger (that I let this happen to Toby), disappointment (that I’m late), and familiarity (that I’m late as usual). There is no empathy, that we share a love of our son. Only bitterness.

  I go to Toby’s side. He says in a weak voice, “Hi, Dad.”

  “What happened?”

  “I got visited.”