Invisible Boy

by Cornelia Read

  “I’m astonished.”

  “How so?” He smiled again, eyes all crinkly.

  “Well, haven’t you forgotten something?”

  “Forgotten what?” he asked.

  I leaned across the table to pat his hand. “I could have sworn this is the part where you’re supposed to leap up out of your chair for a rousing chorus of ‘ Deutschland Über Alles.’ ”

  Christoph pursed his lips, brow furrowed.

  “Certainly not,” he said. “I am Swiss.”

  Back at the office I kicked a bottle cap off the parking-lot asphalt into the border of scrubby weeds.

  “ That went well,” said Dean.

  “I’m sorry.”

  He sighed.

  “Look,” I said, “I was raised by feral hippies in California. The only pointers I got on how to act wifely at a business lunch came from Bewitched reruns.”

  I elided over the summers with my grandparents. It’s not like I picked up many important safety tips at the yacht club. They never mentioned money, much less actual work. Mealtime conversation consisted mainly of Jew-bashing and requests for more cocktails; thankfully, children weren’t expected to weigh in on either topic. Or on any other.

  And besides which, am I the only one here who was nauseated by today’s lunchtime conversation?

  “For God’s sake, Dean, you didn’t even speak up when Christoph announced he could always spot someone Jewish because their ears are lower.”

  Dean looked away from me. “I’m not asking for Samantha twitching her nose here, Bunny. I just wish you’d dial down the Jane Fonda routine a bit.”

  “Jane Fonda?”

  “Whatever.”

  “Are you fucking kidding me?”

  “Look, I’m just as much behind the whole ‘I am Woman, hear me roar’ thing as the next emasculated liberal-arts guy, but why do you even care what someone like Taliaferro thinks? So he’s a north-Jersey redneck misogynist. Big fucking deal.”

  “And what about Christoph’s contribution? I didn’t exactly see him soliciting contributions for UNICEF.”

  “I still don’t see the point in you going all mano a mano over the antipasto platter.”

  “The point?”

  “You heard me,” he said.

  “How can you even work with these people, Dean? You’ve got Christoph blathering on about how we should ship all the ‘niggers’ back to Africa, and his henchman Vinnie ready to push everybody onto the boat with German shepherds and a firehose.”

  “Bunny, it’s cold out.”

  “What d’you guys do for office meetings?” I asked. “Break out the white sheets and big pointy hoods and do a kickline?”

  “Exactly. Then we gang-rape the secretaries and go burn a cross down by the river.”

  “That’s not funny.”

  “Oh, please. It’s fucking hilarious. Let’s go inside.”

  He put a hand on my shoulder.

  I shrugged it off. “Dean, do you even get why this matters to me?”

  “Right now? What I get is that I’m standing in a parking lot freezing my ass off.”

  “I’m serious.”

  “Me too.”

  “Don’t fuck with me,” I said.

  “I’m too fucking cold to fuck with you. Or anyone.”

  “Dean, for chrissake,” I said. “Christoph and Taliaferro back up to me, rain down an entire dump-truck load of shit on my head, and you don’t say one word?”

  He looked away, jaw clenched.

  “I mean, what the fuck?” I continued. “Did they, like, hide some psycho-alien Reagan-pod under your desk and suck your brains out?”

  He lifted his chin. “It’s a job, all right? It’s a fucking job. With a fucking paycheck. Not to mention the health insurance.”

  He looked at my cast but was nice enough not to mention that I’d been doing even less to augment his salary lately, given all those hours I hadn’t been on anybody’s clock for out in Queens—or down at St. Vincent’s so they could keep breaking my damn arm.

  And I was the one who’d talked him into moving down here in the first place, not to mention meeting up with Christoph.

  But these guys are still assholes.

  I shivered.

  “Dean, look,” I said, “I’m sorry—”

  He shook off my hand this time. “Here’s an idea: the next time you want to go all Angela Davis on my ass, all oppressed by the patriarchy? You pay the rent—”

  “I said I’m sorry. Jesus—”

  “Because on your pay we can live in a cardboard box, on top of a fucking subway grate.”

  We stared at each other, livid.

  I dropped my eyes first.

  The wind picked up, making dead leaves skitter across the asphalt.

  The rush of air was cold and dry, and we were both standing here in this stupid parking lot because I’d asked for it—because I’d thought it was what I wanted.

  Maybe he could work here for a year or something and then move on. Preferably without requiring denazification.

  “I am sorry, Dean. Really. Look, we’ve both been under a lot of

  pressure—”

  “ Some of us have work to do,” he said, cutting off my attempt at conciliation.

  “Hey, I just wanted to—”

  But he’d turned away and started walking toward the building’s front door.

  I followed three paces behind, willing his silent back to rot in hell.

  41

  You’d tell me if Christoph were sleeping with other women, wouldn’t you?”

  Astrid and I were sitting in an empty office on the first floor. I could hear Dean and Christoph talking, upstairs, apparently having a fine old time.

  “I think he is,” she said. “I think he’s cheating on me.”

  “Maybe we should crash the Christmas party. In disguise.”

  “I’m not joking.”

  “Astrid, it’s not like Christoph would tell me if he were sleeping around. I mean, he knows I’m your friend.”

  She still hadn’t taken off her dark glasses. Or the hooded coat.

  She smelled perfectly fine so I figured she at least had to launder it occasionally—unless she had six of the things and just rotated.

  “He hasn’t said anything to Dean?” she asked.

  “Why would he tell Dean? That would be incredibly stupid.”

  “Because you think Dean would tell you?”

  She was sitting in a desk chair on wheels, twisting it back and forth slowly. I don’t think she’d even noticed my broken arm.

  “Dean would tell me,” I said. “And Christoph knows that, so he wouldn’t tell Dean.”

  “So you do think he’s cheating on me but hiding it from Dean.”

  “Astrid. I will say this one more time: I do not think your husband is cheating on you, nor does my husband think your husband is cheating on you. End of story.”

  “But Maddie—”

  “And if you ask me again I’m going to walk upstairs and invite Christoph over for brunch and a threesome tomorrow morning just to get this the hell over with.”

  She rocked the chair faster, but at least that had made her smile a little bit.

  Okay, so it was more of an “Oh please, like he’d sleep with you?” smirk.

  Well I’d rather blow Eichmann, honey, so I guess it all evens out.

  “Take your sunglasses off,” I said.

  “What?”

  “Your shades,” I said. “They’re giving me the creeps. ‘Madeline, I am your father….’ ”

  She put them on top of the desk.

  “Way better.”

  She started rocking the chair again. “He’s cheating on me, Maddie. I know it.”

  “Astrid, look,” I said. “Can I be honest here?”

  “Of course.”

  “You’re sounding a little crazy. Like, the DSM-III Revised kind of crazy.”

  She stopped rocking. “How do you mean?”

  “We’ve known each other sin
ce we were fifteen, right?”

  She nodded. “Yes.”

  “You remember the first night we got to be friends?”

  She looked away.

  “It was around the end of November,” I said. “Sophomore year. A bunch of us were hanging out in Randy and Pauline’s room, even though they were both away for the weekend. Just a random Saturday afternoon, a while after lunch—I forget why we were all there. You guys were probably doing bong hits in the closet or something, hiding from the dorm parents.”

  “You never partied with us back then,” she said. “You were such a straight arrow. Didn’t even smoke cigarettes yet.”

  “Randy and Pauline’s beds were shoved together, like a gigantic sofa with piles of pillows. Typical dorm room: Indian-print tapestries on the walls, big posters from Fiorucci. All of us just lazing around on our stomachs talking shit, you know? What boys we liked and did they like us back, and which of us had lost our virginity already, how much school sucked, and how there was never anything to do on the weekends.”

  Astrid didn’t say anything, but she’d slowed the chair’s motion, listening to me like I was soothing her fears with a bedtime story.

  Maybe I was.

  “Everyone else kind of drifted out of the room, eventually,” I continued, “wandered down to the common room to smoke a butt, or to the dining hall for dinner, but you and I stayed, just kicking back, still talking. We didn’t even turn on the lights when it started getting dark outside. We had too much to say, couldn’t be bothered to walk across the room.”

  “We must have left to sign in by ten, but I don’t remember getting up, even then.”

  “The Lewises were on duty,” I said. “Two doors away, right at the end of the hall. We ran there and back, babbling the entire time. You never even went downstairs to smoke, just leaned out the window with a Marlboro in your mouth every hour or so, fanning the smoke away, insisting nobody’d be able to see you through the trees.”

  “You were terrified of getting busted, but I was right.”

  “We were still talking when the sun came up.”

  Astrid put her feet up on the desk and leaned her chair back on its axis. “Our first all-nighter.”

  “Of many,” I said.

  “We must’ve talked for eighteen hours straight.”

  “At least, before we finally passed out from sheer exhaustion.”

  “And we didn’t even have a term paper to blow off writing, at the time.”

  “It made me really happy, that night. I think it was the first time I ever truly felt like I belonged there. Like maybe it was going to turn out okay.”

  She poked me in the thigh with her toe. “Like what was going to turn out okay?”

  “My life? I don’t know.”

  “Bullshit,” she said. “We had the world by the balls and you knew it, even then.”

  “ You did. You were this cool kid, and suddenly out of the blue we had all this crap in common, and after that, everything was just easy.”

  “Bullshit,” she said again.

  “Whatever, okay? That’s not what matters right now.”

  “And what does?” She sounded so tired, so lost.

  “ You do. Shut your eyes and forget about Southampton and Christoph and Cammy and all the bullshit whirling around your head right now.”

  “I can’t.”

  “None of it means shit,” I said. “None of it changes the fact that you, Astrid, fucking well matter.”

  She shook her head.

  “Have I ever lied to you?” I asked.

  “That I know of?”

  “In twelve years, have I ever fucking said even one thing to you that contained so much as a single iota of bullshit when it was about something important?”

  She didn’t answer.

  “I haven’t,” I said. “Ever. So when I say that there’s no fucking way in the universe that Christoph is fucking around on you, you should believe me, okay?”

  “Mad—”

  “Shut up. You are the most beautiful woman I’ve ever met. And damn close to the smartest. And we’re still the balls, okay? We are the fucking balls.”

  I looked up and saw Dean standing in the doorway.

  “Can I talk to you for a minute?” he asked.

  I followed him out into the hallway. “What’s up?”

  “I think we should leave your car here.”

  “How ’bout we just leave?” I whispered.

  “I still have a lot of work to do. Christoph will give us a ride back into the city.”

  “I’ll wait. I don’t think I could handle being trapped in a Jeep with the two of them.”

  “I still think you should keep the Porsche out here.”

  “Maybe you can drive it back out tomorrow morning?”

  “Sure,” he said.

  “I owe you big-time.”

  “You sure as hell do,” he said, grinning as he snaked an arm around my waist and leaned down to kiss me.

  “All is forgiven?”

  His breath tickled my ear. “If you really want to leave now, Bunny, I can catch a ride with them solo.”

  “No way,” I whispered back. “I wouldn’t wish that on a dog.”

  I drove Dean back into the city myself, long after dark. He went to bed right away but when the phone rang just after midnight, I was still lying alone on the living room sofa, wide awake in the urban semidark.

  I grabbed it up quickly, before it could ring a second time. Everyone else in the apartment was asleep.

  “Mad?” Astrid’s voice.

  Oh great.

  It’s not that I wasn’t concerned about her, it was just hard having the same conversation over and over again. My reassurances never seemed to stick.

  “Yeah, it’s me,” I said.

  “I don’t know what to do.”

  She sounded horrible. “Hey, are you crying?”

  “Christoph pushed me down the stairs.”

  “Jesus… what?”

  “At the office,” she said. “In New Jersey.”

  “It’s like, midnight. You’re still out there?”

  “No. It all happened this afternoon. After you and Dean left.”

  “All what happened? Are you okay?”

  I heard her take a drag off a cigarette, then exhale.

  “Astrid? Talk to me here, for fuck’s sake—”

  “I called the police.”

  “Did he hurt you?” I sat up. “Where are you?”

  “They came and I filed a report and everything and now I’m back in the city.”

  “ Where in the city?”

  She took another drag. “You believe me, don’t you?”

  “Of course I do,” I said, but the fact that she had to ask left me feeling uneasy. “Has anything like this happened before?”

  “Maddie, should I leave him?” She was whispering now.

  “Where are you?” I whispered back.

  “The apartment. Our apartment.”

  “Is Christoph there with you?” I asked, a little shocked.

  “Of course. But I don’t want him to hear me.” She coughed into the phone.

  “Do you want to come spend the night here?”

  “It’s all right now. I just have to go to court next week.”

  “I can come right now and get you if you want. Really.”

  “I’ll call you later,” she said, and hung up on me.

  Staring at the dead phone in my hand, I half wanted to call the police and send them racing to her apartment, and half didn’t believe a word she’d just said.

  Dean padded out into the living room rubbing his eyes. “Who was that?”

  “Astrid.”

  He yawned. “What’d she want?”

  “She said Christoph pushed her down the stairs today after we left your office.”

  He sat on the sofa at my feet. “On purpose?”

  “She told me she called the cops.”

  “You talk to him?”

  “Are you kiddin
g?”

  “Astrid’s okay, though?”

  “I guess. I mean, it didn’t sound like she was bleeding to death or anything. She said she’d call me later and hung up on me.”

  “I don’t want to cast aspersions,” said Dean, “but Christoph just doesn’t seem like that kind of guy.”

  “I know, but still.”

  “Astrid,” he said, shaking his head. “Nutty Buddy.”

  “No, I can’t believe she’d make something like that up. I mean, Jesus, Dean—what the hell should I do?”

  “Not much you can do. Besides coming to bed and getting some sleep.”

  “You sure?”

  “I think it will all blow over by tomorrow.”

  Dean stood up and started tugging on my hand.

  “Let it go,” he said. “It’s after midnight. Call her in the morning.”

  “Okay, just promise you’ll call me, from work.”

  “I solemnly swear you’ll get the full report on whether or not Christoph’s acting like a mad wifebeater and/or foaming at the mouth.”

  I let him pull me up off the sofa. “First thing?”

  “Cross my heart.”

  “Listen, I’m sorry I was acting like a bitch today.”

  “That’s all right. You’re probably just getting the monthlies.”

  I punched him in the arm. “Don’t be a dick.”

  “You love it,” he whispered. “You know you do.”

  I phoned Astrid three times before I left for work the next morning, but no one picked up.

  The whole thing seemed unreal after a good night’s sleep. Not just her midnight call, but Taliaferro being so obnoxious, Christoph going all sieg heil, and my parking-lot fight with Dean on top of everything else.

  I pulled on my coat, which still took some doing, one-armed, and wondered whether it was worth dialing her number one more time before I left for work.

  Maybe she was just sleeping in.

  And why the hell shouldn’t she? It’s not like she has a job she’s got to show up for, right?

  All the same, there was a flicker of uneasiness in my belly.

  Or maybe she’s dead. And wouldn’t you feel like a creepy bitch for dissing her in your head then , Maddie Dare?

  I went back into the living room and punched in her phone number one more time.

  The machine picked up again, her voice saying, “You’ve reached Astrid and Christoph. Please leave a message.”