by Rich Leder
“No argument there,” Stan said. “You were a partner until an hour ago.”
“And then Judd Martin happened,” Ira said.
“The bank called in his loans this morning at nine o’clock sharp, all his loans,” Stan said. “By eleven, he had lost everything—his buildings, his company, his house, his cars, everything. He was mortgaged to his ears, couldn’t cover a dime of it. The bank came down like a ton of bricks, made an example out of him. He has nothing.”
“Look, I feel bad for Judd, not really, but I had nothing to do with his fall from grace,” Mike said. “What could possibly be the connection between my partnership, my employment, and Judd Martin’s crash landing?”
Stan and Ira looked at each other. They had been friends since the age of eight and communicated without words. In that moment, Mike imagined, they had a silent conversation and decided to tell him more than they had originally intended.
“How much do you know about Judd Martin?” Ira said.
“I’ve had his account for a year. I know his numbers, that’s all,” Mike said.
“Judd Martin is mentally ill and emotionally unstable,” Stan said. “Severely imbalanced.”
“Dangerously volatile,” Ira said.
“He’s been arrested for assault and battery five times,” Stan said. “He’s a serial stalker, and it always ends with extreme violence perpetrated on the person he’s stalking.”
“He went to prison in Nevada,” Ira said.
“And Colorado,” Stan said.
“Psychiatric ward both times,” Ira said. “Walking time bomb.”
“He called this morning to say he was homeless and penniless and pissed off at Wasserman and Waddell,” Stan said. “He said he was coming after us.”
“We assured him that the firm had nothing to do with his bankruptcy,” Ira said.
“We told him you were completely responsible,” Stan said, “and that you acted alone.”
“You told him what?” Mike said.
“We had to for the sake and safety of the firm,” Ira said.
“A violent stalker would be bad for business,” Stan said.
“It’s not personal,” Ira said. “It has nothing to do with your job performance or body mass index or anything of that nature.”
“We had to point his anger and aggression in another direction,” Stan said.
“Yes,” Ira said, “another direction.”
“So you pointed him at me?” Mike said incredulously.
“We did,” Stan said. “That’s true.”
There was no possibility that Mike could corral the thoughts in his brain. If his thoughts were numbers, there would be no way to catalogue them, to codify them, to compose them in columns and tabulate them. The Numbers of Life had become The Numbers of Ruin had become The Numbers of Chaos. He thought of his wife and children, his house and his cars, his insurance and his yearly nut. He had minimal savings, enough to last a month, maybe less than that.
“I have to get another job,” Mike said out loud instead of in his head, where panic was winning the day.
“In some other industry,” Ira said. “Accounting is no longer viable for you.”
“Excuse me?” Mike said, but he slurred the words as if he were drunk.
“Lawyers from the bank got involved, depositions and so on,” Stan said.
“They wanted to know why Judd Martin had a two-million-dollar shortfall in his construction funds account,” Ira said.
“The word embezzlement was bandied about,” Stan said, “and you were the accountant of record.”
Mike’s eyes went wide with terror. “He lied to the firm, to me, to the banks.”
“No one accused you formally,” Ira said. “You’re not going to be charged. But that word is attached to your name now, like a scar on your face.”
“But you’ll fix that. You’ll write me a letter of recommendation,” Mike said.
“We can’t, and we won’t,” Stan said. “We have to enforce an unmitigated break from you in all regards. We can’t be associated with you in any positive, productive way. You went rogue on us; that’s the public position of the firm.”
“You’re a rogue accountant,” Ira said, “unemployable in your field.”
It was too much crazy-bad information for Mike to take in at once. He could feel his heart pounding like thunder in his head. “Jesus Christ, Stan…” he said, his voice fading to nothing.
“It could be worse,” Stan said, rubbing his hands together in an awful way that signified that’s that and looking at Ira.
“If Judd Martin finds him,” Ira said, “it will be.”
ONE-TWO-THREE-FIVE-BY-A-NOSE
It was one hundred seven burning degrees at high noon, and Danny lugged the last load of his stuff up the strip mall steps and into his office and thought, Fuck Mrs. Alemi and all six of her sons.
He’d left the hospital at four thirty in the morning, stopped for breakfast on Ventura Boulevard, checked the race report, and then, wanting to shower and change his clothes, had driven to the small yellow house in Canoga Park, where he’d found his mother’s landlord, Mrs. Alemi, and all six of her sons loading the contents of the house onto a flatbed truck parked in the narrow driveway.
He’d hurried to the handsome eighty-year-old woman, whose roots were in Persia, before the Shah fell, and said, “What are you doing in my house, Mrs. Alemi?”
She wore a black pantsuit and a colorful scarf wrapped around her shoulders. Her hair was gray and elegantly styled. Her nails were manicured. Her teeth were white and straight. Her eyes were clear and sharp. She was nobody’s fool, and no one knew that better than her six sons. “This is not your house, Mr. Miller.” Her accent was deep and strong and melodic. “This is my house. And with my blessing, it was your mother’s house on a month-to-month lease for thirty years. And now she has died, God rest her soul, and that lease is ended, and you are out. Your brother called me this morning. I am packing your mother’s things and putting them in storage at my expense. You can pick them up when you find a home of your own.”
“What about my things, my bed and dressers, my couch and TV, all the stuff in my bedroom?” Danny said.
They stared at each other, the heat melting them, the six sons carrying furniture and boxes out of the house. For thirty years, Danny knew, she had never raised his mother’s rent, never levied a late fee, never sent a stern letter when Linda was struggling with school and work and two young boys and would occasionally miss a due date. He knew—because she had told him—that she respected his mother’s work ethic, which was much like her own. He also knew—because she had also told him—that she did not respect him, that his move back into the small yellow house and his three-year stay had made him, she said in not so many words, a flim-flam man and a mooch.
Mrs. Alemi agreed that for three hundred dollars cash in advance she and her six sons would drive Danny’s possessions to the dilapidated strip mall on Reseda Boulevard in the distant northern reaches of the Valley and deposit them in his two-room office. So Danny threw his clothes in garbage bags along with his personal items and a few towels and blankets and pillows and, followed by the flatbed, drove his worn out 1998 Pathfinder to his office, now his home-office since this is where he would be living.
One hour later, the office was a wreck. His bed and dressers and night tables and lamps and flat-screen TV and bags and bags of clothes were unceremoniously dumped wherever the hell Mrs. Alemi’s six sons had felt like dumping them. It looked like a cluttered thrift store, The Salvation Army, maybe, or Goodwill. His Casablanca feng shui was feng fucked. The vibe here was horrible. He would never sign a soul in this place, and he would lose the talent he had. Even Paul the Pervert would desert him now.
He sat on his rattan sofa and looked around his private office. Besides the fact that it looked as if a tidal wave had rolled through, something struck him as wrong, as odd, as offbeat and out of tune, but he couldn’t put his finger on it.
“Love wha
t you’ve done with the place,” Harvey said, coming through Danny’s office door. “Secondhand Shithole, I think they call it. Where did we see that, Omar?”
The giant followed the dwarf into the room. “HGTV.”
Danny made a face accompanied by a sound that said: oh crap.
“I don’t think Danny’s happy to see us,” Harvey said to Omar.
“I don’t think he should be,” Omar said.
They walked to what used to be the sitting area but was now the gerrymandered bedroom-living room quadrant. Omar moved a garbage bag of clothes off the other end of the rattan sofa from where Danny was seated, and Harvey climbed up, stood at his end, and sang, “Oh, Danny boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling, From glen to glen, and down the mountain side, The summer’s gone, and all the flowers are dying, ’Tis you, ’tis you must go and I must bide.”
Danny was blown away. Harvey was an inconceivably remarkable tenor. The startling and stunning voice that emanated from his miniature body was bold and glorious, radiant and passionate. Had he not been a sadistic loan shark, he could have been a client and toured with Placido, Jose, and Luciano—Three Tenors and a Dwarf.
“But come ye back when summer’s in the meadow, Or when the valley’s hushed and white with snow, ’Tis I’ll be here in sunshine or in shadow, Oh, Danny boy, oh Danny boy, I love you so.”
“Impressive,” Danny said. “I had no idea you could sing like that.”
“Never judge a book by its cover,” Omar said, sitting in a rattan armchair.
“Unless that book is about a talent agent who owes you twenty-five thousand dollars he bet at the track,” Harvey said.
“Exception to the rule,” Omar said. “Noted.”
“How did your horses do?” Harvey said, smiling. “Did they finish one-two-three-four?”
Danny knew Harvey knew the answer to that question but so enjoyed the pain and suffering the question caused that he couldn’t keep himself from asking it. Danny hung his head and massaged his brow with his thumb and index finger. “One-two-three-five-by-a-nose,” Danny said.
“Only the nose knows, Where the nose goes, When the door close,” Omar said. “Muhammed Ali.”
“This was the bet that was going to pay off all your other bets,” Harvey said.
“My mother died last night,” Danny said. “I was at Northridge Hospital until four thirty. My asshole accountant brother called her landlord first thing in the morning, and she threw me out. It’s been a bad day, Harvey. Can we do this later in the week?”
Harvey walked down the sofa to Danny and said, “You owe me twenty-five thousand dollars. Do you have my money?”
“I had to give the landlord three hundred cash to move me here,” Danny said. “I got seven hundred in the bank and thirty bucks in my wallet.”
Whack. Harvey clocked Danny on the side of the head.
“Ow…shit, Harvey,” Danny said.
“Do you have my money?” Harvey said.
“Things are looking up,” Danny said. “I just signed a pervert clown; he’s going to be huge on the porn party circuit and—”
Whack. Harvey hit him again. “Do you have my money?”
Danny stood up, red in the face, as if he was going to do something about being punched in the head by a dwarf, but Omar stood up at the same second, reached across the bamboo coffee table, and grabbed Danny by the throat with one massive hand and by the belt with the other hand and lifted Danny up into the air, high over the coffee table, above his head like he was a barbell.
Out of reflex, Danny put his hands on Omar’s hand on his throat, which was applying enough pressure to make it difficult to breathe.
“Do you have my money,” Harvey said.
“No,” Danny said, wheezing.
“Omar, progress,” Harvey said.
“Discontent is the first necessity of progress,” Omar said, looking up into Danny’s bulging eyes. “Thomas Edison.”
Harvey nodded at Omar with approval, looked around the office, and shook his head with disappointment. “Pitiful. Even all together, it’s worth nothing.”
“Can’t breathe,” Danny barely said.
“I can see that. How much is your rent?” Harvey said.
“A thousand,” Danny said with a rasp.
“That is the amount you’re going to pay me for the next three years, thirty-six consecutive payments of one thousand dollars. Then your loan will be paid in full and off my books.”
“That’s nine thousand in interest,” Danny said.
“He’s conscious of the numbers,” Harvey said to Omar.
“He’s about to be unconscious of the numbers,” Omar said.
Danny knew Omar was right; he was about to black out. He could sense the sun setting, even though it was the middle of the day. And he could hear Harvey singing the last verses of “Danny Boy.”
“And if you come, and all the flowers are dying, If I am dead, as dead I well may be, I pray you’ll find the place where I am lying, And kneel and say an Ave there for me,”
I’m going now, Danny thought, but something happened split seconds before he lost consciousness, something he knew was important in spite of the singing dwarf and the giant choking the air out of him. It was the thing that was wrong with the room, the odd thing, the offbeat and out-of-tune thing.
“And I shall hear, though soft you tread above me, And all my grave will warm and sweeter be, And then you’ll kneel and whisper that you love me, And I shall sleep in peace until you come to me.”
It was the fern on the bamboo coffee table, the dehydrated-dry-and-shriveled-brown dead fern that Jenny Stone had taken in her hands and breathed on. He was looking straight down right at it. Alive, he said in his head, it’s alive. And then everything went black.
HIS FRIENDS SAID SHE WAS CRAZY
It was Wednesday noon. Donald the Dentist only worked a half-day (one to five), which was a good thing because he had been up all night doing cocaine in his office after Detective Shuler had handed over the garbage bag holding his dead dog. He couldn’t bear going to bed and listening to Carol cry herself to sleep.
He had finally dozed off somewhere around six and was awakened by the sound of music—literally; The Sound of Music was blasting in the living room—Julie Andrews, Christopher Plummer, and all the various Von Trapps singing “So Long, Farewell” as they slipped into the night and across the border.
He rubbed his index finger through the white dust on the mirror on the coffee table, ran the finger across his gums, got out of the armchair, picked up the garbage bag that held Chachi’s carcass, and walked out of his office. He went down the hall, intending to grab a shovel from the garage so he could dig a hole in the backyard behind the trees beyond the pool and bury the bag, but he arrived at the large living room just in time to see his wife kick the chair away from her feet—the chair she was standing on, so she could hang herself with the rope she had looped over the rafters that spanned the room beneath the twenty-foot, tongue-in-groove, cathedral ceiling painted Dr. Seuss red.
Donald didn’t even have time to blink in disbelief. He dropped the garbage bag, ran into the living room, grabbed Carol around the legs, and lifted her up so that there was slack in the rope, so she wouldn’t break her neck or asphyxiate herself or both.
“Jesus, Carol,” he said, holding her up for dear life—hers.
“I can’t live without my beautiful boy,” she said.
“Yes, you can,” he said.
“I loved him so much, and now I’ve lost him and have nothing to live for.”
“You have me.”
“Too much water under the bridge. Let go, Donald. Let go…”
For a moment, it occurred to him that he should let go, that they would both be better off if they were out of each other’s lives (even if that meant one of them was hanged to death, gallows like, from the living room rafters). She had not loved him for many years, and he had not loved her, but they were snarled together in the Web of Life and could not be disen
tangled. Let go, he told himself, let go of her legs and walk away; you can do it. But he could not do it because he remembered.
They had been undergrads at SUNY Plattsburgh in might-as-well-be-Canada upstate New York. He was from Albany; she was from Oswego. They fell in love, or he did, at freshman orientation. She was eccentric and peculiar, whimsical and weird; he was serious and studious, earnest and eager to please. He was attracted to her mercurial energy like a kid to candy and couldn’t explain why. His friends told him she was crazy. He knew it was true but didn’t care. “I’m stuck to her,” he said to them, kidding at the time, “and she’s stuck to me.”
“I can’t let go,” he said.
“Chachi is dead, Donald. Eaten by a coyote somewhere in the wild, wild woods.”
After four years in Plattsburgh that felt like four decades in Antarctica, they had dreamed dreams of a life in the sun. He was accepted into the UCLA School of Dentistry, and they drove across the country to start their new life in LA. They rented a two-room apartment in Laurel Canyon and lived on ramen noodles, Corn Flakes, and Campbell’s Soup. He carved teeth out of wax. She became an interior designer. Her muse was Dr. Seuss. His muse was her frenetic aura, which gave him the high-wire sense that his life could turn down any goddamn street in the world—the adrenalin of her was a rush. They married in Santa Monica and honeymooned in Barbados, where, when they were playing in the blue Caribbean, he accidentally smacked her in the face with a forearm and broke her nose. They returned from the island, she had a surgeon make her a new one, got addicted to Percocet, and then did her nose again for the drug. His friends said she was crazy. He knew it was true but couldn’t quit her. She was in his blood.
“There are no wild woods in the Valley,” he said.
“Then he’s dead in the aqueduct, drowned like a little white angel. Let me go, Donald. He needs me now more than ever. Let me go to him in heaven.”
He bought a small practice in the Valley and worked hard and long to make it go. She never got pregnant and turned to her Dr. Seuss reading group for support. The bigger his business grew, the further away she seemed to get, and the deeper she slipped into her addictions. As hard as it was to live with her—the terrible cycle of surgery and pain pills and vodka and Dr. Seuss, over and over, ad infinitum—it was even more painful to think of living alone. And alone he would be because he’d discovered gin and cocaine, and no one worth living with would live with a cokehead, alcoholic dentist wasting away to skin and bone because his appetite for life had died with his wife. His friends said she was crazy. You have no idea, he’d thought, but he couldn’t stand to see her in so much pain. In the end, she was still the girl he fell for in Plattsburgh, the girl who excited him so.
