The Hazards of Good Fortune

by Seth Greenland

  “Church Scott, the coach of your team, was quoted as saying, ‘I don’t know what’s in his heart, but I’m praying for him.’ What would you say to Church Scott?”

  “Church Scott’s reaction to this—” Jay considered his words. “I’m disappointed. That’s my only comment. He’s a friend and I wish him well. Do you know he’s the highest paid coach in the league?”

  “You say that like he mugged you.”

  “He mugged me? He didn’t mug me,” Jay said. “Don’t put words in my mouth.”

  “Are you saying that because you’re his employer, he should suspend judgment?”

  “In this situation, I think he should get the players to stop this silly talk about a boycott, suit up, and go win some playoff games.”

  “When Mayor House of Newark was asked to weigh in on your situation, he had no comment. What would you say to Mayor House?”

  “Mayor House is a fine man who’s a little confused right now.”

  “Confused how?”

  Jay knew he was standing on the edge of a cliff. He took a step back.

  “I’m not going there. Let me just say that our family foundation has given away millions of dollars in scholarships, we’ve funded nutrition programs. Half the charitable organizations in Harlem, Bed-Stuy, and Newark have the name Gladstone on the wall because we want to help. But there’s someone else who’s leading the attack on me, this Imam Ibrahim Muhammad fellow, who happens to be a Muslim.”

  “What does that have to do with the situation?”

  “I want to tread lightly here because it’s a sensitive area. Some Muslims, not all of them, have issues with Jews. Some of them take extreme points of view. Some of them, quite frankly, are worse than Rumanians, who during the Holocaust were worse than the Nazis.”

  “Some of them. Is that code for—”

  “No, no, no! It’s not code for anything. This particular imam has been leading demonstrations against me in front of the arena where the team plays, violent demonstrations in front of my offices, spreading the most scurrilous lies. It’s pretty obvious that my personal situation is being used to advance several agendas that have nothing to do with me. But I occupy a certain position in society so people feel like they can say whatever they want. And you know what? That’s fine. The Constitution guarantees that right. Everyone just needs to be a little less sensitive, but people are extremely sensitive, they’re so sensitive it’s like no one has skin anymore, only nerve endings. So once again, I want to be clear, I apologize to everyone.”

  “You have said that your words have been misinterpreted, misunderstood—”

  “I have.”

  “I want to give you a platform now to say whatever you want to our audience.”

  “Thank you.” Jay turned directly to the camera. He paused, and then said, “Please look inside and ask yourselves whether you have ever done, or said, or even thought something that would embarrass you if it were made public. I would like to say to anyone who hasn’t, you’re a better person than I am.”

  “What happened that night in Bedford?”

  Jay was prepared for this. What further light could he shine on the question that would not doom his chances of exoneration? That he had been cuckolded by Dag and in a spectacularly misguided attempt to—to what, exactly? To discuss what had occurred? To arrive at some kind of rapprochement? He still did not know. Now the door was open and his restless intellect pressed him to articulate all the subtle gradations of intent that had led to the catastrophe and then dive into the waves of remorse that subsequently rolled in and gambol like a seal. But instead, he said:

  “It was an accident.”

  Anderson Cooper let the moment linger. Considering the circumstances, Jay was relatively pleased with how the interview had gone, and would not be lured into a rhetorical trap to be destroyed by his own words.

  “That’s the extent of your comment on the subject?”

  “On the advice of my attorney, that’s all I can say about it.”

  Anderson Cooper recognized the immovable object in front of him and pivoted.

  “Will you sell the team?”

  “When Hell freezes over.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

  Jay believed the insight and distress he had displayed would go a long way toward rehabilitating his image. He believed he had come across as folksy, honest, and repentant. He believed he was on his way back to the sunny uplands of acceptance and admiration. When the interview ended, the panicked look on Bobby Tackman’s face told him otherwise. Tackman took Jay aside and ordered him to not say another word to the host. He watched as the consultant buttonholed Anderson Cooper, who was being congratulated by his now ecstatic producer, a man who knew broadcast gold when he saw it, and begged him to not run the interview, a request that was summarily rejected. The television crew wrapped their gear and vanished.

  Jay was in the kitchen sipping a glass of water when Tackman barged in. He made it clear that the opportunity had been outstandingly botched. Jay listened as the consultant enumerated his sins:

  “You can’t apologize and then disparage your daughter’s black girlfriend, why did you express any opinion at all about Church Scott or the mayor of Newark? How would you feel if some well-meaning black man spouted off about Jews? And don’t get me started on what you said about the Muslims. I’m not even sure you and I can work together anymore.”

  Tackman ordered him to not engage in further direct contact with the media until they could formulate a new plan.

  As Jay absorbed this litany of transgressions, the apartment, which seemed to have cooled with the extinguishing of the television lights and disappearance of the crew, felt like it was heating up again. A mule was trying to kick its way out of his skull. He was about to respond to Tackman when he noticed the vision in his left eye had become occluded and the entire room lost definition, straight planes bending, becoming curvilinear, vibrating, melting, the floor rising and the entire space beginning to disintegrate. Tackman had stopped talking and was looking at him strangely. Jay lost his balance and crumpled, his head striking the floor. Indistinct voices rose and fell. There was so much to do and undo, and yet as consciousness slipped away, what he felt, oddly, was release.

  An ambulance brought Jay to Mt. Sinai Hospital where doctors determined that he had not had a coronary or a stroke. He had fainted, the resident who examined him concluded. Probably from stress. He ordered Jay to remain in the hospital under observation for the night. A nurse inserted a needle into his arm for hydration.

  Jay had been born at Mt. Sinai. Although his parents lived in Queens at the time, his mother had insisted on it because she wanted her son to be able to say he had been born on Fifth Avenue. When thoughts of his death inevitably arose, he marveled at the symmetry. Staring at the ceiling Jay felt the weakness and frustration that had become his constant companions, but, more than anything, there was the growing sense that he had slipped on some cosmic banana peel and was now in a continuous state of imbalance. From Dag to Nicole to Aviva, the ability to make things conform to the way he wanted them to be had deserted him.

  Although Dag had shown slight improvement, the doctors had hinted that a full recovery might not be possible, something that would forever haunt Jay. Additionally, although it paled in comparison to how he felt about the havoc he had wreaked, he feared losing his NBA franchise and not receiving permission from the city to begin construction on the Sapphire, because those endeavors represented a significant part of his future. But what overrode all of this, casting a shadow the size of the world itself, was death. It wasn’t so much that he dreaded the prospect of nonexistence, although he had a healthy terror of that. What concerned him was that he would die now, with his reputation not just deteriorating but seemingly in free fall. How long was he going to live if stress landed him in a hospital bed? Long enough to salvage his reputation and avoid the ignominy of
dying in disgrace?

  It was not difficult to locate Dag’s room and because he was wearing a hospital gown, the night nurses assumed Jay was just padding along the crypt-quiet halls on a late walk. When he peeked in and saw Dag was alone, he entered and sat in the chair next to the bed.

  Dag’s long, lean frame lay still. His chest rose and fell. Clear fluid ran from an IV drip into the soft flesh of his wrist. An oxygen mask covered his features. His eyes were closed. Someone had arranged for a shave, and his cheeks were smooth. Jay glanced at the squiggly green lines of the monitors.

  Leaning his head back, he said to the ceiling, “I don’t do this often, but please God, save this man. Please, please Yahweh, Jesus, Allah, whoever is listening.” Humble and emotionally naked, he felt like he was performing a sacred duty. “Little help here, okay? I’m begging.”

  Tentatively, he reached his hand out and laid it on Dag’s bicep. It was warm. There was a hitch in Dag’s breathing which caused Jay to start, and he removed his hand and watched Dag’s face for signs of distress. When steady breathing resumed, Jay gently returned his hand to the big man’s arm.

  He leaned toward Dag’s ear and whispered, “I have no idea if you can hear me, probably not. But, listen. I’m so deeply sorry for this. With my hand on a Bible, I will tell you I didn’t mean for it to happen. I was angry, and because you humiliated me, I wanted to scare you. I admit that. I wanted to put the fear into you in a way you would never forget, and then I did the most unimaginable thing I’ve ever done. I will regret my behavior as long as I’m alive, Dag. I will pray for your recovery each day, and when you recover, I hope you can forgive me.”

  Dag’s eyes opened. Jay was dumbfounded, tried to talk, but his tongue would not obey.

  “I’m going to be all right,” Dag said.

  Jay was crying, tears streaking his face. The mixture of relief, shock, and gratitude paralyzed him. Again, he tried to talk but his tongue expanded to fill his mouth and words would not come.

  “How are you feeling?”

  Whose voice was that? He still could not get words out.

  Swimming to consciousness, he saw Doomer and Tackman at the foot of the bed. Next to them was his sister Bebe. He had been dreaming. It was morning. Through the fog, he realized the tears were real and he wiped them away with the back of his hand. He hoped his visitors didn’t notice. It was Bebe who had spoken. Her voice was soft and solicitous. Once more she asked how he was feeling.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

  A nurse arrived to administer another round of intravenous hydration. The hospital would discharge him as soon as she checked his vital signs. The only thing the attending physician prescribed was blood pressure medication and a few days of rest.

  Jay tried to concentrate as Tackman related the extent of the damage. This took several minutes. True to Tackman’s postgame analysis, the Anderson Cooper interview did not serve the purpose Jay had hoped. The reaction, on television and the Internet, was predictably merciless. “Self-indulgent,” “non-apology apology,” and “insensitive” were leitmotifs, as were “slanderous,” “anti-Muslim,” and, of course, “racist.” Jay was a whipping boy, caricatured, lampooned, dismissed, and the consensus was that his time was over, what he represented was an abomination to right-thinking people, and the acceptable repentance, according to public opinion, was to self-immolate in the middle of Marcus Garvey Boulevard. Tackman concluded by saying, “The only surprise was that no Rumanians complained.”

  “There’s still time,” Jay said. The rattle of his laugh had the gallows in it. Everything had gone so transcendently wrong it had begun to seem perversely funny.

  “I spoke with the commissioner this morning,” Doomer reported. “He wants to know if you’ve reconsidered. The team is still refusing to play.”

  “I’m not selling,” Jay said.

  “You’re certainly within your rights to maintain that position,” the lawyer said. “However, we’ve been notified that if you don’t sell the team, he’s going to ban you for life. They can go to court and force a sale. They can get a judge to issue an injunction removing you from day-to-day management of the team by asserting that the rights of the other owners now supersede yours. We can challenge it, but they’ll win.”

  “This is America,” Jay reminded them. “The government can’t seize your property because you said something stupid.”

  Tackman suggested they explain the interview by saying Jay was “pre-stroke.”

  “I stand by every word,” Jay said.

  The consultant looked at the lawyer, imploring him to intercede.

  “Jay, I think Bobby is right. You can help yourself by embracing the stroke.”

  “I didn’t have a stroke.”

  “Pre-stroke,” Doomer said.

  “It makes you a victim,” Tackman pointed out. “The equation changes. We can suggest the entire episode, going back to the car accident, was a result of physical deterioration.”

  “There could be significant ramifications for your legal defense,” Doomer said. “It’s a persuasive mitigating circumstance.”

  Bebe had heard enough. “My brother didn’t get to be who he is by bending to the prevailing winds,” she said. “As long as he’s in possession of his faculties, I think we can all depend on him to make a sound decision.” Bebe held Jay’s hand. Their eye contact excluded Doomer and Tackman, who knew not to intrude. “Jay, you need to wait until you’re out of the hospital and you’ve gotten some rest. Don’t make any decisions today.”

  He appreciated his sister’s advice and neither Doomer nor Tackman contradicted it. They arranged a conference call for the next day to discuss subsequent steps. Boris arrived and, after a few minutes, the others departed. While they waited for a doctor to sign the discharge papers, Jay complained: He had believed in the legal system his entire life, and now it was gearing up to steamroll him.

  But he had another idea.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

  On a summer day about a month after Jay graduated from college, his mother invited him to accompany her on a roots trip to her old haunts. They visited her modest home on a quiet street in Bensonhurst. Several members of the Italian-American family that lived there were home and when Helen explained that she had grown up in the house, she and Jay were invited in to look around. The rooms were neat and small and Jay remembered thinking that it could not be possible that his mother, who explored multiple continents, hosted sophisticated dinner parties, and lovingly smoothed the jagged edges of her coarser husband, could possibly have grown up in such mundane circumstances. To be able to witness the distance she had traveled was to be reminded of his own astonishing luck. After lunch at Nathan’s in Coney Island they went to Brooklyn College where Helen had graduated, although did not attend the ceremony because she had to work that day and so never collected her diploma. Miraculously, it remained on file decades later:

  Helen Shirley Goldstein, BA

  Brooklyn College, 1952

  Jay was aware that his mother existed in a whorl of parents, siblings, aunts, uncles, and cousins before she married her husband and eventually became Helen Gladstone of Scarsdale, but his mental image of her earlier identity remained unformed. This tangible evidence, first her house, and then the degree, and the pride that filled her as she held it in her unwrinkled hands, enabled him to complete a vibrant picture. She seemed younger than he had ever seen her that afternoon, and so vivid. Now he was glad she could not understand what was happening to him because it would utterly violate the sense of propriety she had worked so hard to cultivate.

  A wedge of purpling clouds roiled over Sheepshead Bay and by the time Jay and Boris arrived in Brighton Beach the sky was sloppy with rain. Boris slid the SUV into a parking space down the street from the Rasputin nightclub and he and Jay jogged along the sidewalk through the deluge. They breathed the salt air and heard the rough surf batter the deserted beach a
few hundred yards away. Boris pounded three times on the door. A pierogi-shaped woman with six inches of teased black hair waddled past them holding an umbrella and smoking a cigarette. She was walking a small dog with the muzzle of a lion. When the dog sniffed Jay’s leg the woman said something to it in guttural Russian and jerked the animal’s chain without stopping. A moment later the door opened revealing a huge man in a tracksuit. Unkempt brown hair and a mustache the size of a pickle. He, too, was smoking a cigarette. In a borscht-flavored accent he asked what they wanted. Boris told him whom they were there to see. The man ordered them to wait and closed the door. The rain intensified. After all Jay had accomplished, after reaching the dizzying heights he had, socially and in business, he was standing on a rain-splattered sidewalk in front of a nightclub in Brighton Beach. He almost laughed at the wildly improbable nature of the situation but was interrupted by the return of the bearish man, who waved them inside.

  The words were being sung in Russian but the big, sultry voice was unmistakably that of a black woman, or a white woman who was trying to sound black. The unseen chanteuse was belting the disco anthem “I Will Survive” in the language of the Moscow trials. The place smelled like a mixture of sea breeze, disinfectant, and stale cigarettes. Jay had to adjust his eyes to the shadowy darkness. The nightclub was a large, multi-tiered space ringed with tables surrounding a dance floor. On a small stage, the singer, a statuesque black woman with a huge Afro, belted the Russian lyrics as if she had been raised on the banks of the Dnieper. A laptop that stored her backing tracks rested next to her on a high stool.

  The mustache motioned for Jay and Boris to wait. He approached a table where two men in suits sat listening to the performance. When the song ended, the men conferred. In English, the singer asked if they wanted her to sing another song and one of the men replied that she should audition for one of those talent shows on television, but meanwhile, they would like her to perform in the club starting this weekend. The diva thanked them, gathered her gear, and hustled off the stage. One of the men rose from the table and escorted her out a side door. The mustache beckoned Jay and Boris to the table.