Barry had an immediate panic attack. He hated surprises and actually spent five minutes in the bathroom, recalibrating his friend moves for this new development, running new lines and scripts. But as time passed and he acclimated to the party, he felt gratitude. No one had ever thrown him a surprise birthday party before. Layla would have scoffed at the very idea, its unnecessary subterfuge and waste. But Seema had done this for him. She could not afford to hire waitstaff on her public salary, so she had single-handedly transported two hundred Taiwanese bao from a place in the East Village and then matched the little vegetarian and pork buns with tubs of chicken tikka and slightly soggy paratha from a joint on Lexington. She had spent hours if not days planning this with no help whatsoever, even while working an eighty-hour-a-week job. All of the attendees seemed to understand the effort involved and looked at Barry with a newfound respect. Sure, he had a lot of friends, but Seema’s obvious commitment crossed the line into the unexpected. Barry was loved. There were still little dabs of residual love between some of the couples in the “aircraft hangar,” but most of it was in the service of duty and dynastic wealth. “You gotta marry this girl,” Akash Singh was yelling into his ear. “Remember when you told the whole team we had to stop seeing skanks and get married? You gotta do this right!”
In the conference room, Barry had the sudden feeling that everyone was looking at him. He noticed his fingers were fidgeting just the way Jonah’s did, thumb lightly touching his other four digits in quick succession, back and forth, back and forth.
* * *
—
HE MET with Seema two weeks after the testimony. He had been staying at the Mandarin, trying to soak up every bit of Central Park’s greenery out his window in case he had to spend the next ten years in prison. Maybe he should have fled to Belize on his fake passport. They were going to get him. How could they not? Princeton, Goldman, hedge fund. What jury in at least four of the five boroughs wouldn’t convict? One insider-trading conviction involving the pharmaceutical industry had led to a nine-year prison sentence for some lowly portfolio manager. Barry ran the whole fund.
But to his surprise, nay, his shock, the SEC settled for 4.5 million dollars and the Justice Department decided not to bring any criminal charges.
He didn’t even have the wherewithal to laugh when they told him. He wanted to hug everyone at Paul, Weiss. Four and a half bucks was nothing, even if This Side of Capital was close to done, with lawsuits from investors still on the horizon. And the SEC hadn’t banned him from associating with anyone at his fund, not even for a year or two. He didn’t even have to admit any wrongdoing; he had only had to plunk down the cash. What had saved him? His reputation? The fact that he looked like an especially miserable basset hound in that government conference room? The fact that his lawyers stressed, over and over, that he was raising a “special-needs child”? He was not going to prison. He was not going to fucking prison! Barry Cohen was free. He went back to his room at the Mandarin and collapsed onto a daybed. They couldn’t touch him. He was a respected member of society, and anyone who thought otherwise didn’t understand how this country worked. That very same night, drunk off room service, he sent Seema an e-mail with the heading: “Let’s talk.”
* * *
—
THEY MET in Central Park’s Sheep Meadow. Barry had remembered a scene set in the meadow from the movie Wall Street, which he had watched over and over as a kid, begging his father to take him to the movie theater because the film had an R rating. “A good lesson on what can happen when you don’t obey the lore properly,” his father had said after the Charlie Sheen character was arrested. This was back when his dad was still a Democrat. In the movie, the two main characters met in the Sheep Meadow in the waning daylight. Then they got into a tussle. Michael Douglas hit Charlie Sheen and drew blood. Barry remembered watching, breathless, every time the punch was delivered.
Barry stood in the middle of the empty field, eyeing the new pencil-shaped ninety-story residential towers that had gone up around Billionaires’ Row to help Russians and Malaysians launder their money. Mist was rising off the meadow from a recent sun shower.
Seema made her way across the grass. A new Burberry trench coat was cinched tight around her waist. Clearly she had lost weight. Barry immediately recognized that their second child was no longer with her and suddenly, unexpectedly, he felt a profound sense of loss.
She was beautiful. A small beautiful woman, all of her bundled so efficiently into her pale raincoat. The shock of her glowing skin, the patina of her dark brown eyes, the mist rolling beneath her feet, the end of the long hot season. They were in a movie and she was its star.
They surveyed each other in silence. “Hey, Barry,” she said finally. “How are you?”
“Did you get the rabbit-in-the-box?” he asked.
“Yup,” she said. “Thanks.” Her voice was husky, as if she’d been drinking the previous night. Could she be as nervous about this as he was?
“The rabbit pops out of the box too fast,” she said. “It scares him.” Her voice shook a little. He was sure now: she was nervous around him. He wanted to say a hundred million things to her, but didn’t know where to begin.
“You have to hold the lid and let the rabbit pop out slowly,” he said, finally. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be giving you parenting advice.”
“The rabbit is cute,” Seema said. “Shiva likes his orange carrot. If you want to get him something next time, maybe get a toy with the letter W.”
There was more silence. The wind blew little pinpricks of moisture into their faces. “If our therapist was here,” Barry said, “she’d ask, ‘Where does this land?’ ”
“Where does it land?” Seema asked.
“Why did you do it? The video.”
Seema shrugged. “I don’t know,” she said. “It was the one time in my life I did something without thinking it through. People like me, people like you, all we think about is consequences. Practically from the day we’re born. And look at our fucking lives.”
“That four-point-five million could have gone toward Shiva’s care. It could have been much worse. I could have gone to prison.”
“I had a feeling you’d get a slap on the wrist,” she said.
“You’re an expert on securities law now?”
“I’m an expert on how this world treats Barry Cohen.”
“He could have had a daddy in prison.”
“How often do you see him when you’re not in prison?”
Barry sat down on the wet grass. “Point taken,” he said.
“You’ll get grass stains,” she said of his expensive trousers. He had dressed in his best for her.
Barry warmed to the gentle, almost motherly reminder about the grass stains. “Do you remember,” he said, looking up at her, “when you threw that surprise party back on Franklin Street? It was the kindest thing anyone had ever done for me. You must have loved something about me back then. You must have thought I had an imagination. A sense of humor. Something.”
She sat down next to him, draping her sharp naked knees with her raincoat in a way that made him long for her. Everything she did had an echo somewhere back in their past five years together. “My therapist said I shouldn’t get pulled into this kind of conversation with you,” she said. “But yes, I loved things about you back then.”
“Like what?”
“I loved that you wanted to be alone,” she said. “You were always social, but you just wanted to be by yourself, or maybe with your watches. I thought maybe you wanted to retreat to a quiet world with me. Because I’m kind of a loner, too.”
Barry liked where this was going. She was a loner, too. He had never articulated that thought, but it was true. She had, what, maybe one good friend? The rest were more by way of Facebook and Instagram. They were talking so quietly, so peacefully. It was hard to believe that one of them
had almost sent the other up the river.
“I took a bus across the country and I met someone,” Barry said. The way she looked at him, her eyes narrowed, told him she still cared. “A boy,” he explained.
“Oh?”
“A nine-year-old. He reminded me of me so much. He’s into trains and maps. Have I ever told you about Lake Success?”
“My parents moved in with us,” Seema said.
“That’s okay.”
“My mother hates you.”
“Do you hate me?”
“I do,” she said. Suddenly she reached up to touch his red, overshaven cheek, as if trying to understand the depth of his stupidity and his sincerity. “But that’s just one part of it,” she said, drawing her hand back. “I mean there’s more I feel for you. And, anyway, you must hate me, too.”
Barry contemplated the warmth of her brief touch. “I hate what you did,” he said. “Why didn’t you tell me? Why did you have to go to the feds?”
“I wanted you to acknowledge something. Someone.”
“You?”
“Someone else.”
“We were in counseling.”
“That’s just a form of breaking up.”
“And you didn’t want us to break up.”
“I wanted you to be a father to Shiva.”
“I think I can do that now. I think maybe this trip has made me into a father.”
Seema laughed. “Man takes a bus across the country and discovers he’s a father. You’re such a fucking weirdo.” That reminded him of one of the first things she had ever said to him at that Bloomberg party, when she had caught him checking her out. Okay, weirdo.
“You know what’s crazy?” Barry said. “I’m kind of having fun right now.”
“Well, you shouldn’t,” she said. “We have to figure out a way to split things up.” She saw the look on his face. “No, Barry, it wasn’t always about your money. You people are so sensitive about that stuff.”
“You people?”
“You have an imagination, Barry. I’m sorry I said that.”
“Why don’t you have a drink with me?”
“Terrible idea.” The way she had said that, free of rancor or disgust, the way her glistening knees kept popping out from under her raincoat, the way they were sitting on the wet grass next to each other, their bodies almost touching—Barry was awash in hope. He wasn’t going to jail. And now he was going to get his family back.
“Just one drink,” he said. “We’ll go up to the Center Bar in Columbus Circle. Wasn’t that one of our haunts?”
“Haunts? We had ‘haunts’?”
“Just one drink. I know you’re capable of stopping at one.”
She laughed. He thought he saw a red-wine stain on one of her front teeth. Was she a little soused already?
Up in the Center Bar, they drank three Blood and Tears each to eulogize the end of summer, their mouths awash in citrus and spice. In the square below, Chris Columbus stood on his plinth at eye level, gazing down at the hedge-fund offices to the south as if, in addition to a quicker passage to India, he was also seeking alpha. They laughed and tried not to look at each other for too long, but they were getting smashed. He talked about his trip, omitting Layla; she talked about her time in New York, omitting Luis. As the sun set on Columbus, as more overtly romantic territory approached, she claimed she had to take Shiva to occupational therapy, which he knew was a lie this time of day. She gave him a goodbye peck on the cheek. It was November 16, 1987, all over again, the first time he had ever been kissed. Rosalie Lupo at the eight-fifteen showing of Three Men and a Baby at the Douglaston Mall, his father angrily waiting up on the porch along with Luna the sheepdog, maybe wondering what it would be like if his son left him for good.
* * *
—
THEY STARTED “dating.” He knew it was provisional, and the proviso was that he had to be a father to Shiva. For a little while they took it slow, just some strong and bitter 7:00 A.M. macchiatos among the media and start-up crowd at 71 Irving, Barry being the oldest guy in the coffeehouse by far, or strolls along the autumn swells of the Hudson River, or a hot dog at this new place Seema had discovered called the Old Town Bar, which was both gloomy and romantic. He checked out of the Mandarin and in to the Gramercy Hotel to be close to her, but he nonetheless had to keep avoiding her mother, which added a kind of sexual frisson to the whole thing. They were sneaking around. Except that Seema did not let him have sex with her. Again, he had the feeling that she wanted him to first prove he could be a father to Shiva. On the other hand, she never brought Shiva around. “I want to see my son,” he had said once, passionately, even though a part of him was too scared to reconnect with the boy, to witness all of his frailties. Soon, she had promised him. And then another goodbye peck on the cheek. At least she let him hold her hands. Sitting at that Old Town place with their hands intertwined, empty beer glasses in front of them, they were as happy as they had been for years. Barry talked in streams about the nonsexual parts of his Greyhound trip, she talked about galleries and restaurants and politics, making sure she didn’t just go on about Shiva’s many therapies or the indignities of living with her mother for the whole evening. Sometimes he caught her looking at herself in the full-length mirror behind the bar, her face dreamy and young.
In October, the Republican candidate for president was overheard on an old videotape saying that he liked to grab the genitals of attractive women. The common wisdom was that this had to be the end of his candidacy. Seema and Barry went out to their favorite Italian restaurant, which also happened to be at the Gramercy, and ordered a suckling pig in celebration and three bottles of Barolo. They felt brave enough to sit at a table by the window, even though Barry had once seen Seema’s mother running by Gramercy Park in her sweats, screaming something into her phone.
“Grab my pussy,” Seema whispered as he was paying the bill, and they both cracked up, but there was something dangerous and sexy about it, too, and her eyes were liquid and needy, so he decided to do as she asked, and moved his hand under the table, but she stopped him at the last moment. “Please,” he said. “Just come up to my room for a minute. We don’t have to have sex. Just let me go down on you.” Seema looked thoughtful, like she was considering it, but she still held his hand in check beneath the table. “I really want to see Shiva,” Barry whispered, pressing his case, although what he really wanted to see was her ass high up in the air, but, in the end, all she let him do was kiss her on the lips for a good ten seconds (he counted). After all of his sexual adventures that summer, Barry could find nothing more sultry than kissing his wife on the lips.
Finally, she arranged for him to see his son. They met in Gramercy Park, to which Barry had keys, since he was staying at the hotel. Barry was holding a giant silver balloon with the letter W prominently displayed on both sides. His son looked exactly as he had left him, his expression vacant, otherworldly, uncomprehending. Rabbit, Barry started projecting into his mind as the child ran toward him. I love you, my little rabbit. Come to me. But Shiva was not focused on his father at all; rather his eyes were tracking the giant W floating above him. “Here you go,” Barry said, bending down to his level. “Daddy’s back. Daddy’s back and he got you a W.” Shiva grabbed the string of the balloon, but it floated away from him in the autumn wind and he began to give chase through the tiny park. Barry had not expected a hug, but the fact that Shiva did not even register him after a three-month-long absence was difficult to take.
“Look at how well he runs now,” Seema said as they followed the boy around the manicured shrubbery, dynastic oaks, and oversize birdhouses of the private park. “Yes, that is something,” Barry said, concealing his hurt. She laced her fingers with his and looked up to him with a smile. They were, suddenly, a unit. The summer had been hard, but after Trump’s pussy grabbing, FiveThirtyEight showed the odds were vastly in Hill
ary’s favor. It was all going to work out for the country and for the Cohens. Barry ran ahead and fetched the balloon for Shiva. His son smiled at the W and traced the letter with his finger. Barry imagined that the smile was meant for him as well.
The next week he was invited to visit his own apartment. He wore his best suit for the occasion, the windowpane with the double-vented back in case he started to sweat from nerves, and spent half an hour getting his hair to drape over a slight but expanding bald spot. He was sick of staying at the hotel and wanted to reclaim his home. He knew what he had to do. He was going to teach the little rabbit how to swim.
He bought Seema’s father the most expensive version of Talisker he could find, the thirty-year-old limited run. He went to Kalustyan’s on Lexington where he bought a gift basket of Indian-like spices for Seema’s mom. Entering his own apartment was strange. The lights were dimmed in the usual way, per Shiva’s sensitivities, but something new hung in the air, the closeness of three generations, the sharp tang of Seema’s mother’s cooking. He understood that Mariana, their chef, had been fired.
Seema’s father hugged him and seemed overjoyed by the present of whiskey. His mother wordlessly lifted up the basket of Indian-styled spices as if it were better to weigh it than actually deploy in her cooking. Seema’s dad wore his old This Side of Capital vest; the mom had put on a sweater from the last millennium. “Hello, Mr. Barry,” Novie said, without looking him in the eye. “I’m going to get Shiva for you now.” The “Mr.” part was new and depressing. He was no more than a visiting dignitary.
Lake Success Page 32
