The Hazards of Good Fortune

by Seth Greenland

  “Are you doing all right?”

  “Yes, thank you, Mrs. Wessel.”

  “Were you wearing a seat belt?”

  “I was,” he lied.

  Jay got on the elevator and pressed 20. The encounter with Mrs. Wessel had jangled his already frayed nerves. Which details had made it into the news reports? He could only imagine, along with the degree to which the entire metropolitan area was chattering about it. At least she hadn’t asked about Dag.

  The Gladstone apartment was the only one on the floor. The elevator opened on to a vestibule decorated with two Currier and Ives prints, an antique side table where the mail appeared, and a copper stand from which several furled umbrellas protruded. Jay stepped off and absently picked up the pile of mail that had accumulated since his last visit. About to insert his key into the lock, he thought: What if Nicole is here? They had not connected since the incident and Jay had no idea where she was. He had not responded to her texts and right now, he realized, she could be waiting for him on the other side of the door. He hesitated while he considered this possibility but his intense desire for a hot shower overrode any discomfort at the idea of confronting her and he warily entered the apartment.

  Closing the door quietly behind him, Jay peered around and braced himself for an encounter. Furnished in contemporary style with king-of-the-world views to the south, east, north, and west, the dwelling reflected Jay and Nicole’s taste and, for all of its refinement, looked like actual human beings lived there. On a table in the entry area was a framed photograph of Jay, Nicole, and an unsmiling Aviva at her high school graduation. In front of him the spacious living room where an Anselm Kiefer canvas took up most of a wall. Across from the painting, custom-built bookshelves crammed with hardcovers that looked as if they had been read. To the right was the formal dining room with its Gustav Klimt portrait of a Viennese socialite, and seating for twelve, and beyond that the kitchen area. To his left a den/screening room and a hallway that led to the bedrooms. In all directions, an expanse of unobtrusive rugs.

  Jay listened for the sound of the television, a running tap, the click of heels against parquet. He called her name as neutrally as he could, considering the welter of strong emotions he was experiencing, and waited. He wondered how he would react when he heard her voice. When there was no response, he repeated her name. Again, nothing. Satisfied he was alone, Jay entered the master bedroom. He half-expected to see his wife waiting for him demurely in a chair, legs crossed, nonchalantly perusing a magazine, but there was no sign of her. The bed was immaculate.

  Jay’s phone rang. It was Boris, who informed him that Dag was alive and now being treated at NYU Medical Center. Jay sat in a chair and gazed toward Central Park. It was sunny, and there were high clouds in the western distance. He gave a loud sob and placed his head in his hands. Jay remained in that position for several minutes.

  When he regained control of his emotions, Jay shed his clothes. He stood in the steam-shower, careful to keep the bandage covering his nose dry, and let the scalding water course over his tired body and open his pores until it washed the last vestige of jail from his mottled skin. Although the three-ring circus in his head had prevented any rest, nerves rendered him wide-awake, and as he toweled off, he tried to formulate a plan for the remainder of the day. There were messages from Bebe, Franklin, Church Scott, Mayor Major House, his ex-wife Jude, and a litany of business associates including Renzo Piano, calling from Italy (the story, unfortunately, was international), all of whom expressed concern for his health. Several conveyed sympathies for the legal predicament he was in, although no one seemed to understand quite what it was.

  Naked, Jay examined his face in the bathroom mirror. He gently peeled the bandage off his nose. It was not a bad break and, although there was some swelling and it was tender to the touch, the fear that he would look like a proboscis monkey had not come to pass. The bruises under his eyes resembled small mussel shells. It would be possible to appear in public without a bag over his head. He would need sunglasses, though. Where had he left them? He glanced down at his nakedness. For a man in his fifties, he didn’t look terrible. Jay sucked in his modest paunch then let it out. He shaved and dressed. Crisp, pin-striped suit, red patterned tie.

  Earlier, Jay informed Boris that he wanted him to familiarize himself with the family’s Asia holdings—he did not say why—and since this might require that Boris travel there, Jay would be breaking in another driver. This had been duly arranged.

  Before leaving the apartment, Jay went to the kitchen where he filled a glass with filtered water and swallowed an Oxycontin left over from the previous winter when he had tweaked his knee skiing in France. Sunglasses on, he pulled a Yankee cap low over his forehead. Thus disguised, he took the elevator to the lobby.

  In the passenger seat of the SUV, Jay stared through the tinted window as Second Avenue blurred past his bloodshot eyes. The driver was a skinny young man from the mailroom who was the son of one of Bebe’s friends, and he had the presence of mind to not ask questions. The black bodyguard Doomer had produced at the courthouse, Dequan Corbett, kept vigil from the backseat. Jay observed the pedestrians striding purposefully along the sidewalks singly and in pairs, deliverymen, business people, students, all in their worlds, and he wondered how many of them were aware of his plight. He believed that most people who had heard about the story viewed it through the prism of a famous athlete’s hard luck, and that the general public would perceive him, Jay Gladstone, as a supporting player.

  Jay had brought Dag to the team hoping to link their names through a championship trophy, the unassailable seal of NBA greatness and the longed-for apotheosis of both of their sporting lives. He could not give into negative thoughts now, much less despair. Despair was for people who did not have enough to do. Jay Gladstone had plenty to do. Plenty! To leap back into his life he had to believe a full recovery was possible for Dag. Yes, it was! Medical science had reached inconceivable heights. Dag was still alive, and because he had survived such a horrific accident, it was evident to Jay he was not going to die. Yes, he had suffered a traumatic brain injury, but the best brain surgeons in the world could be summoned. Just a few years earlier a madman had shot a member of Congress in the head, and she had survived the bullet! A bullet! People said it was a miracle, but that was science. If that brave member of the House of Representatives had recovered, so would Dag. He had to! The idea that Jay could one day be in the situation where he had caused the death of another human being, much less one as prominent as D’Angelo Maxwell, was too unbearable even to contemplate. He had to exile that thought from his consciousness. If his father had bequeathed a single quality to him, it was optimism. He thought of Bingo’s birth date, March 4th, a direct order.

  But then Nicole invaded his thoughts and, as the car sailed across 42nd Street, his stomach twisted. Although he knew their marriage was beginning to fray, it hadn’t occurred to him that it could come undone quite so impressively. But had it? Had he not already decided to revisit the question of a child? He had intended to let her know about his change of attitude as he entered the pool house in Bedford less than twenty-four hours earlier. By any objective standard—if it were not for one unfortunate detail—the Gladstone marriage had not disintegrated; rather, it was experiencing some turbulence. But that detail, oh that detail. And how to deal with that detail? There were representations of the wronged husband in the arts from the time of the ancients, and they were nearly always farcical figures, older men with randy young wives who sought the company of more virile partners, in other words, exactly what had happened. Jay could not abide the role into which Nicole’s behavior cast him. But he was a modern man with a high degree of psychological acuity. Could he not see past his emotional response and reach a decision based on careful cogitation? Jay might look his wife in the eye, acknowledge the betrayal, the underlying tensions that had caused it, perhaps even take ownership of his part in what had occurred, and a
gree to move forward. Or he could let her know he wanted to dissolve the marriage as quickly as the State of New York allowed. Either way, he would have time to formulate a plan before confronting her.

  A throng of about a hundred loitered on the sidewalk in front of the hospital. Gawkers with camera phones, media members, and a Senegalese vendor selling T-shirts with Dag’s smiling visage all jostled for space. Church Scott had caused an uproar fifteen minutes earlier when he got out of a cab and entered without answering questions. Several of Dag’s teammates were already there.

  The SUV rolled up and Dequan jumped out to open the door for Jay. The sunglasses and Yankee cap threw no one off the scent, and the mob immediately converged, microphones, cell phones, cameras pointed like guns.

  WHAT HAPPENED LAST NIGHT, JAY? WHAT DO YOU KNOW ABOUT DAG’S CONDITION? HOW SERIOUS IS IT? WERE YOU AND DAG AT THE OBAMA DINNER? WHAT HAPPENED TO YOU? WILL THE CHARGES BE DISMISSED? CAN THE TEAM MAKE THE PLAYOFFS NOW?

  Dequan cleared a path into the hospital. To the volley of questions, Jay held his hands up, said, “Nice to see everyone. I hope you’re all having a terrific day,” to which Mayumi Miyata, who had driven down from Northern Westchester Hospital with her Lynx News crew, called out, “It’d be a better day if you answered a couple of questions.” Jay said, “You get around, don’t you?” before entering the revolving door and disappearing into the hospital lobby. Several reporters attempted to follow, but hospital security stopped them.

  Three young black men huddled outside the room. Jay recognized one of them as Dag’s brother, who he had just seen at the hospital last night. He assumed the other two were part of the player’s retinue. Neither looked at Jay, unlike Dag’s brother, who stared down at him from his imposing height. Jay nodded at the brother, who blankly returned the greeting.

  Jay was visibly upset by what confronted him in the room. Pulleys in casts suspended the long legs above the surface of the bed. The head wrapped in bandages, face obscured by an oxygen mask. Wires ran from the torso to monitors where bright green lines and numbers quantified the misery. A bag containing an inch of urine hung to the side. Afternoon light poured into the room and conferred an almost religious aspect on the broken body. The abstract nature that the situation had assumed for Jay instantly coalesced back into a reality whose sheer awfulness throttled him. He had a vague awareness of enormous figures looming over the bed, but could not look away from what he had wrought.

  “Don’t worry, Jay. God only makes happy endings,” a tired-looking Church Scott said from a chair in a corner. “If it’s not happy, it’s not the end.”

  The coach rose, and they exchanged comforting pats on the shoulder. Jay looked back toward the bed, and the behemoths revealed themselves to be spindly Odell Tracy and the Lithuanian, Giedrius Kvecevicius. Between them Drew Hill, the point guard. The players respectfully acknowledged Jay and did not mention his physical appearance.

  “Thanks for coming,” Jay said as if this were an event he was hosting. The words felt wrong as soon as they emerged from his mouth.

  “Praise the Lord, D’Angelo survived,” Church said.

  “Praise the Lord,” Jay echoed. He did not as a rule say Praise the Lord but this was Church Scott’s room, and right now Jay was happy to cede power.

  “Truth,” Drew Hill said. Giedrius and Odell nodded their assent.

  The coach placed a soothing hand on Jay’s back and said, “We all know this must be incredibly hard for you.”

  Hard for him? The statement amazed Jay. As the author of this disaster, he had anticipated, at best, a neutral response to his presence. The owner had incapacitated the team’s flamboyant cornerstone in ambiguous circumstances. No one would expect the coach to show sympathy for anyone but the injured party. After the quick calculation that occurred when he realized the coach was present, Jay anticipated matter-of-factness employed to disguise, at the very least, suspicion. But Church was a champion, a motivator, an athletic icon, and he had offered understanding.

  “It’s terrible, just terrible,” Jay said. Then, because sometimes even the most composed individuals keep talking when they should not, “but a lot worse for Dag.” The players murmured agreement and looked at their coach. What were they thinking? Jay could only hope they would follow their leader and extend him the benefit of the doubt.

  Church had spoken with the surgeon and filled Jay in. The situation had not changed: Medically induced coma, uncertain prognosis, watch and wait. While Church was reporting what he knew, Jay’s eyes roved from the coach to the injured player and back. The universe had shrunk to the three of them. Then his perception narrowed to just Church, a deeply sympathetic individual whose ministerial qualities shone in situations like this one, and Dag, a flawed man whose misery at this moment far exceeded anything he deserved. Jay’s attention pivoted from one to the other, then—

  “Hello, Jay,” Nicole said.

  Was this an aural hallucination? He wheeled around and—alarm and dismay mingled with a brief resurgence of vulnerability, a spasm of—what the hell? What was his wife doing here? Had she been in the bathroom? Wherever she had materialized from, her sudden and startling arrival was an unwelcome intrusion. In her absence, she was less a person than an idea. Wife distorted into Betrayer. Nicole’s presence obliterated the atmosphere of benevolent healing created by Church Scott, and forced Jay once again to confront the ur-story that had led them all to gather in this hospital room, not the accident but what had preceded it, and the memory of the previous evening burst the thin membrane that held it at bay, momentarily flooding his consciousness.

  But success in the business world at Jay’s level does not come to the fragile, and in the startling arrival of Nicole, he was able to draw on deep reserves of mettle.

  With calibrated sarcasm, he said, “Nice to see you.”

  “You, too.”

  Sleep had been a stranger to Nicole as well. Makeup, lightly applied, barely covered the dark circles under her eyes. Although she was putting up a strong front, the nervous tension was evident in the tautness of her jaw.

  “How are you feeling?”

  She seemed genuinely concerned. Jay noticed her voice was scratchy. Was she getting a cold? And why, why, why had she come to the hospital?

  “Terrific,” he said, still searching for his bearings.

  Did anyone else in the room have any idea what had happened last night? Might Church have figured it out? Why did the coach think Nicole was here? One of the monarch’s favored warriors was wounded, and the queen wanted to pay her respects? Or did the coach discern a motivation more disconcerting? When not in a vegetative state, Dag exuded an ineffable grace that, combined with his athletic prowess and charm, made women all over the world want to inhale his pheromones. Church might have connected that to Nicole’s presence. Would he speculate that the two of them not only had sex the night of the Obama dinner, but were currently engaged in an ongoing violation of marital vows? And Jay didn’t know? Or, worse, Jay knew. Is that what Church thought? That Jay was aware of their behavior and countenanced it? What did the players think the owner’s wife was doing at Dag’s bedside? They must be aware of what had happened and if they did not know exactly, certainly they had some idea. But did they know? Could they even suspect? Dag’s behavior was so reckless as to be almost incomprehensible. From time immemorial, locker rooms were torn apart by one player dallying with the wife or girlfriend of another, but that kind of conduct, while reprehensible, was a hazard of the modern workplace. What had occurred here was beyond the pale. It was like visiting the White House and having sex with the First Lady. What kind of person would even think of it? Could these young men remotely apprehend the events of last night? Jay glanced at the players positioned at Dag’s bedside with bowed heads. He looked at Church Scott. Who knew what any of them were imagining?

  “I’m glad you’re all right,” Nicole said. Jay could barely tolerate being in the sa
me room with her. What was she implying? I’m glad you’re all right after you nearly killed this man for doing what you had no interest in doing. Is that what she meant? Or was she genuinely concerned? She placed a tentative hand on his arm but he tensed at her touch and she removed it. The sizeable diamond she wore on her ring finger in tandem with her gold wedding band glinted impressively even in the dull light of the hospital room. He wondered if she had taken her jewelry off last night before—but his thoughts were interrupted by the voice of Church Scott.

  “Let’s pray.”

  Although Jay’s belief in a Supreme Being wavered, he was aware of studies about the efficacy of prayer in situations like this one and, while beseeching the Supreme Being might not have occurred to him had he been alone, he was happy to try. A further benefit of prayer was that he would be spared having to make small talk around Nicole for a while longer and so could collect the febrile thoughts ricocheting around his skull.

  “Please join hands,” Church said, grasping Jay’s right hand in his left.

  Join hands? Jay had not anticipated this. It would be impossible to avoid physical contact with Nicole without making it clear that that was what he was doing. From across the bed, Odell Tracy gave his big left hand to Giedrius Kvecevicius then reached his right across Dag toward Nicole. With her left hand, she took Odell’s right and extended her right hand to Jay. There it was, hovering in the air between them. Waist high. Manicured and ringed, her fingers extending outward. Waiting for his. There was no way he could not take it. Jay moved his hand toward hers but rather than grasp it naturally as he ordinarily would have done, instead he took her fingers lightly in his, taking care not to intertwine them. It was as if he held a brittle autumn leaf, or a fragment of papyrus that might disintegrate on contact. From her response—she mirrored the airiness of his touch—Nicole seemed to understand, and was not going to pretend the circumstances between them were unchanged.