The Girl of the Lake

by Bill Roorbach

  “Oh, no, Ducky, come on, you gotta be kidding.”

  “It’s a bad marriage, Ted, nothing to get sad about.”

  “Don’t make small of it, Duk. This is terrible news! This is rotten news. I could cry! I am crying! It’s . . . nuts.” And it was nuts indeed, if he was initiating it: Jilly was brilliant and incisive and rich, too, a predator herself, but devoted to causes, hungry for life, a player of chess, no board required. A perfect wife as seen by the man who had nothing. I dried my eyes—I really had started to tears. “Nuhkmongamong, you idiot, I care about you! Have a seat—please, let’s talk.”

  Duk collapsed into one of my grilling chairs, hands on my desk, leaned at me across the expanse of teak. I saw he’d been crying, too, that in fact he was all cried out: there was that dewy kind of redness at his eyes, his black, deep eyes. His tie was orange that day with the thinnest red diagonal stripes—no concession to sadness there—narrow knot pulled up so tight that his Hong Kong collar was a suicidal garrote cutting his thin neck.

  “How to proceed?” he said businesslike, even rolling his French-blue sleeves.

  “You’re asking me?”

  “You’ve been through it!”

  My own divorce was six years old already, so I guess I was the expert by default. “Ducky, brother, this is a different case. Every marriage is different. You want my advice? You go home and you two work it out, is my advice.”

  “If I could!” Ducky spouted, and lo, he was not cried out after all: here came a gusher of the hot and salty. His hands flew to his face, a guy, honestly, who might never have cried in his life.

  “Talk when you’re ready,” I said. I could just reach his elbow, the veins of his forearms standing up blue. He was so thin. I leaned and reached and tapped his cuff affectionately. He said nothing. I pictured Jilly, pictured her perfectly, and smelled her, too—clandestine perfume, secret sweat. An unkind and suddenly consuming thought came through my brain: Jilly Webster-Nuhkmongamong was available, a brain and a boss, as I have said, but generous and beautiful, too, very tall with a kind of bow to her shoulders from making herself shorter for most of her life, and shorter yet for Ducky, who was five-five in thick soles. I didn’t look down on her, though perhaps she was not quite so tall as I. She was a sylph in earth tones, always in earth tones: dark browns, rusty reds, black sometimes, soft grays, all to offset her paleness, her unhidden freckles. She looked at my mouth when she talked to me, looked in my eyes when I replied. Her hair she dyed auburn, the roots coming in dark, and her hands were always in it: tying it back, untying it again unconsciously, tying it back and out of her face, untying it again, a glorious mess.

  But I put all that out of my head. That was shark stuff, the stuff that made Broadax, Inc., tick, granted, but to be repressed among friends. Beautiful Ducky, let’s get back to Ducky, the Thai stick, we used to call him in college, 120 pounds of imperfectly repressed fury, about as Thai as you or me (but then maybe you are Thai—my apologies), the only vestiges of the old culture after three generations American being his food sense, eleven kinds of basil growing in handsome glazed pots that covered his deck-with-view over at Microsoft, a kind of vague Buddhism of outlook. Instead of stories of Jesus with loaves and fishes—the kind of stories in my head—he had Gotama under the tree about to be enlightened, stories mostly serving the same purpose: reminders to kill the shark, or rein it in.

  In college Ducky and I and our pals talked about this stuff deeply through drunken late nights, big bags of pot strewn on the coffee tables of several communal dwellings, lines of white stuff, rolled up twenties (no hundreds in sight, not yet), talked solemnly, thoroughly, with mutual respect for the faiths of our fathers and mothers, back when we thought how different we two pod peas were.

  Frederick Duk Nuhkmongamong met Jillian O’Reilly Webster during an officers’ retreat at Microsoft before that company was macro and before the whole industry leapt to giant money and, of course, before the whole industry got so limp. Jilly, with all her other talents, was awfully well to do: M-soft stock options played timely, retirement at twenty-nine years of age. And her sticky-app start-up, like a rocket, pure genius, snapped up by Yahoo! for plenty of tens of millions. Ducky had been less timely with his own options, but he was no pauper (prenup agreements: their money separate except for what the Duk told me they called their “grocery account,” joint checking, seven-figure groceries, I guess—maybe they shopped at Whole Foods): twin Jags in the drive, house like a castle, what lacked for happiness in that marriage?

  “Tell me,” I said, patting that long, elegant hand.

  My own divorce was no matter for tears: Myra wanted to get back to set design, wanted to do it in New York, where set design would mean genuine theater work. And that was pretty much it. We liked each other fine, had a nice, long lunch after the final court date, boomeranged home and made love two hours—we’d never lost our lust for each other, a kind of proof of the divorce: it wasn’t about your everyday death-of-sex issues but about a lack of love between us. I don’t remember being sad, though I must have been.

  I’d had two fairly wonderful (but in the end faulty) romantic connections since, no tears in parting, no one at the moment of Ducky’s visit, though quite recently a couple of pleasing dates, and a particular and particularly painful make-out session, about which more shortly. I was forty-one and certainly successful, if not so gorgeous as a certain Thai American roommate I once had. I was enjoying playing the field, deep center, as I pictured it, Dodgers Stadium, the big-time, seldom a hit my way, but still I was tense, my mitt oiled and ready, waiting to keep that one big home run of a love ball from going over my head.

  But that was not the thing to tell Ducky. Ducky belonged with Jilly. Heart in my throat, I said, “What precipitated this? I mean, it’s sudden, isn’t it? Can you say?”

  “Something I did.”

  I breathed, relieved, and waited—this was painful for our boy, and I had never seen his brow knit so tight. It was not I who was at fault, that was just my narcissism talking. Jilly hadn’t confessed. That one brief encounter, like nothing. Ten minutes urgent osculation on a friend’s balcony drunk, dinner-party aftermath, already a year past. Okay, maybe more like a half hour: one kiss. And you’ll blame me, blame my inner shark, but it was not only mine, Jilly’s got one too, some fish, a killer whale, black and white and spouting, all mammal, plenty of teeth, eerie song one hears for miles. Oh-ho, wow, toot, bleat, some kiss.

  Duk stopped his crying, looked at me square: “Something serious.”

  I said, “Okay,” keeping my face open, nonjudgmental. He’d an affair, so what? Jilly was no angel: to that I could attest.

  He said, “Do you remember Monkey Six Internals?”

  “That chip outfit? The ‘biological chip’ debacle?”

  “I was in on the ground floor.”

  “Ugh.”

  “Lost all.”

  “And you didn’t tell me?”

  Ducky: “Ashamed.”

  “And, what, you didn’t tell Jilly?”

  “Worse.”

  “You told her?”

  “No, no. Okay, dude. Here it is. I’ll tell you what. Here we go, Broadax. I invested, got cocky, quit M-soft, as you recall, watched my money falcons ride the thermals, bro, put the works in Monkey Six, every cent I could leverage, from their APO to the crash last month: one hundred thirty-two dollars a share Thursday the fifteenth, fifty-nine cents Monday late.”

  “Monkey Six was a shell game.”

  “Well, dude, we all know that now.”

  “No, we talked about it then, Duk. We talked about it at length. When did you stop listening to me?”

  “I’m listening to you now.”

  I stood, went to the window, the world out there, just a moment to breathe, then sat close beside my old friend, no thick desk between us, put a hand on his back, like a plank with ribs, his heart beating in there, ragged breaths.

  I said, “So. You’re saying Jilly is going to leave you over Monk
ey Six. But I’m here to tell you: no way.”

  Long silence, then: “Way, dude. I was overextended and needed big money very fast and couldn’t ask her so I just went into her account and took it: one million, first sweep, so easy, then the rest, total eleven million.”

  “You can’t just withdraw that kind of money!”

  “Full scam, Broadax. Suffice it to say, I pulled it off, her brokerage account to our joint account, simply—listen to this—imitating her voice on the phone”—this last in a perfect Jilly voice—“and, um, using her signature, number of other simple tricks, joking with Mitch Markham, you know, the loyal broker. Of course he did whatever she asked, commented on her sore throat. And the cash was mine. But it was good money after bad and, within three weeks, gone.”

  “Gone!” I cried.

  “Unforgivable,” my man moaned.

  “Stupid, too,” I said. “Monkey Six!”

  “Stupid is not the word. Criminal. Is the word.” He was my brother and his despair was mine. I patted that back, surprised as he collapsed the rest of the way onto my desk, even more so as he wept hard, five minutes like that, time to absorb all my man had laid out for me and time enough to structure a rescue. I got it all straight, got it all planned in my head, easy to find the heart to help a genius of Duk Nuhkmongamong’s caliber.

  Gently, almost a whisper, I said, “Ducky, I can fix this. Here it is. We put you to work here. Obviously, this is not charity. We need you here at Broadax as much as ever, or more. I can preempt our international meat patrol with a call right now. You, sir, are now chief executive for Programs. Adjust the title to suit over time. Partner four years. Signing bonus: eleven million all-American dollars. Which will represent an advance on your yearly bonuses for three years hence, if recent payout is any indication. And we will disburse now. Today. You leave here with a cashier’s check. You show that to Jilly over dinner—in fact, you give her the check, that’s what you do. And tell her exactly what went wrong—how scared you were. She’ll know the feeling! You tell her you start here next week, and in the meantime, maybe the two of you snatch a little trip—jump over to Maui? Use my place?”

  The beauty of it hit him, you could feel it: “Fuck, Broadax.” And that was plenty for thanks.

  I recircumnavigated my desk, took the commodore’s chair, flagged a quick note TOP URGENT to Human Resources, cc: contracts, cc: Marie. “There. It’s done.”

  Nothing to do then but wait. The Duk pulled out his phone, and I pulled out mine—two captains of industry getting back to work. But I found I couldn’t: fondness for my friend. After a ponder I said, “Do you remember when we hiked into the caldera at Yellowstone? All those hot pots and miniature geysers and miles of wild lands, not a soul to disturb our communion?”

  He finished typing whatever message into his phone, then, still distracted: “College guys.”

  “I was terrified, remember? I was terrified of the bears. Complete surprise how afraid. We saw that mother and cubs. I mean, we saw them after lunch. Very nice. But then we’re camping that night and I’m freaking out, Duk, I’m in my tent and I’m quaking and panicked and you, you heard me whimpering in the dark. And what did you do when you heard me? No words, only action. You collected your sleeping bag and backed out of your fancy-pants REI solo tent and eased on over to my silly Eureka pup tent and you wriggled in there and you held me. Not a joke, no teasing. You just held me all night, and let me quake. Some kind of panic attack, never before or since. And you were there, you were there all night.”

  Duk nodded, “I still have the key chain, bro. I still use the key chain.” He dug in his pocket, and there the thing was, too big to be practical, the little gift I’d had made for him in lieu of ever mentioning that night again, this heavy bronze grizzly bear, true ruby eyes, key ring through its nose, even nicer than I recalled.

  Marie buzzed and I buzzed her back and she brought in the instruments. Duk signed them, page after page, and then I wrote my old friend his advance-on-bonus right there, handed it over. He looked at the check a long time—small change here at Broadax—finally folded it, tucked it in his pocket. And gave a little bow, the likes of which I’d only seen him perform once, in the direction of his wizened father at his wedding to Jilly. God, the gesture meant everything: my investment was sound. I dug through my top drawer (new desk, everything neatly arranged by Marie, thus impossible to find item one), tossed him the keys to the beachside condo, Maui. King bed. Old cognac. Housekeeper/cook (Leda Loa is her name, $36,500 annualized, pre-benefits, and worth every penny). Volcano views, top surf. Another marriage saved.

  BUT YOU CAN’T LEAVE love to chance, or to guys like Ducky, so Saturday from home I called the condo, got my own voice, beep, said, “Mr. and Mrs. Schlebster-Dukmongamong, greetings, Broadax here,” very cheerful, confident of the best, and sure enough the Duk picked up, jovial, full of good jokes.

  “Yes, yes, Boss Broadax! We are here! Life is good! Leda Loa says aloha. You are a lovely man, she says! Jilly says mahalo, Broadax. Your cook can sure cook! We haven’t left the place yet!” And so on, many a warm phrase. The guy was back on his game, and I was glad to hear it. In the background, Jilly giggling, shouting something out, and Ducky shushing her comically. “Kind of caught me in the middle of something, here, Boss Broadax!”

  “I’ll let you go! Or come! Or whatever you’re up to! And see you Wednesday. They’re putting your office together right now! Opposite corner from mine, the power precinct. Tell Ms. Loa I will see her down there in two weeks time, guests in tow. Those clowns from American Express. Gonna be a deal, Ducky, and you’ll be selling-point one.”

  All pleasantries, right to the click.

  And then a Saturday stroll amongst ’em. The pleasures of the single man: no one to inform, no one to call, just an aimless Saturday alone, glowing with my coup: Ducky was the best systems man in the known universe, a security guru as well, and everyone knew it industrywide, knew he’d been employed by M-soft preemptively—they didn’t use him well, but no one else could have him. His hobby there had been busting into every program they had running the place and offering up groundbreaking cures, you know: fifteen minutes on a Friday after lunch and he’d be into the bowels of Systems, say, or flashing smiley faces on Big Bill’s most private screens. At Broadax, Inc., we’d been trying nine years to hire him, with offers far more garish than the new one. I was fairly skipping.

  Down to Santa Monica, maybe a latte, maybe a bite of octopus with the folks at Hinterland, take a little walk down to the beach after . . . springtime, hell, you might see someone you know. And it might be a woman. And of course I did: Jilly. Something was rotten in Hawaii.

  THE LIES IN FRIENDSHIPS are generally small: Can’t make your party, sorry, I’m so sick. Can’t take your dog, sorry, my houseman is allergic. Didn’t kiss your wife a long half hour on the master-bedroom deck at Lorraine Lemoile’s. Well, come to think of it, they can get pretty big, but tell me, are they really lies having gone untold? Yes? No? Not even to one another did Jilly and I ever mention the kissing, not in one conversation after, of which we had ten thousand.

  Jilly, Jilly. She rushed up to me on the hot Santa Monica beach walk, all adither, cried, “Ducky’s gone!” Said, “Have you seen Ducky?” Said, “He’s been acting so oddly!”

  There was nothing in her face of a woman who’d lost millions. After a hug, after some gentle reassurances from me that I’d just spoken to him, after yet another lie (“He’s taking a little thinking time in Hawaii alone”), I said, “Have you checked your brokerage accounts lately? Talked to Mitch Markham? Been to the bank?”

  Jilly is good looking—did I say that? It’s her self-possession, so like Duk’s, the centered being behind those smoky green eyes. She’s about to laugh at all times, and is about to laugh now, looking into me practically twinkling to see what is the joke. At thirty-five she could be ten years younger sometimes, ten years older other times, her beauty protean. She’s got the maturity. She’s got the legs. She kicked
me sharply in the shin, ha-ha.

  My reply was this sad and sober face: no jokes here.

  And on a beachside bench I finally convinced her to dial up the twenty-four-hour account access Markham is so proud of. She poked in a dozen numbers, barked a dozen commands. Her mother’s maiden name was O’Reilly—I hadn’t known this. The freckles are Irish, the precision English, the passion rising from the fires in between. Real beauty, it doesn’t fade in the face of bad news: her face dropped, yes, her mouth drooped, sure, her posture sagged hard—of course—a naked hand flew to her forehead in shock. But the thousand passersby to a man and to a woman turned their heads to see her anyway: she looked an actress, movie star, box-office gold. The role here was tragic. She moaned back in her throat, moaned with each piece of the electronic news: lots of small numbers where the big ones had been. Mitch Markham she found on the golf course, private cell. We shared the earpiece, heads together.

  Markham was all pro: “That’s right, doll. Right. We left the seven accounts active, yes, as discussed. And as per your call the other day, we’ve drawn ’em each down to minimums, account transfer; yes, honey, as you requested, and don’t forget I fought you: fascinating move, I still say so, going real estate and munies in this crazy market? I just wanted to know what you’ve heard! All the figures are on my desk. All the paperwork available in your portal. Is there a problem?”

  Very cool, our Jilly: “Mitch, thank you. And yes, there is a problem. I will call you Monday to explain.”

  Eleven million bucks, her personal money, broken into seven chunks and fired over to their joint grocery account. We hurried up the palisades stairs to the ATM at the bank on the corner of Santa Monica up there and found the rest of the news: no grocery money, fifteen dollars only.

  Next call, of course, was to Hawaii.

  Leda Loa rather sings when she talks, lovely deep voice, and it was she who picked up: “I drove him to the airport. His wife, she got off in town.”

  “Where was he going?”