Trouble Read online

  He’d never replied in any way more profound than yes and no and sorry. Now everyone in the room stared at him.

  “True,” said Eisen. “And that’s why I left my wife.”

  The patient on the table was a twenty-nine-year-old M with sympathetic ophthalmia. He’d lost one eye when a moving van plowed into his gypsy cab. In one of the body’s great tragicomedies, the other eye, though unscathed, had started to die—an autoimmune response that, if left unchecked, would leave him blind. To save the good eye, they enucleated the injured one. The patient would have to settle for blurry, nonstereoscopic vision. On the plus side, he’d have a prosthetic eyeball that would make for a good party trick (watch this).

  Eisen had a basset-hound face and a dreamy voice. He pimped Jonah languidly about the Rube Goldberg apparatus of sight: the optic nerve, the ciliary ganglion, the straps of controlling recti muscles.

  “Here’s a toughie. If you can answer this, the team will remark on the high quality of med student we’re getting. What writer’s blindness was the result of sympathetic ophthalmia?”

  Jonah couldn’t remember too many blind writers. James Joyce. Wasn’t Homer blind? He gave up.

  “James Thurber. A surgeon told me that when I was a third-year. And now I’m passing it on to you. Don’t say you didn’t learn anything practical. Have you ever read The Secret Life of Walter Mitty?”

  “In high school.”

  “You should reread it,” sighed Eisen. “It means a lot more once you get older.”

  AT SEVEN THIRTY he left work. On the way to the train, he checked his voicemail.

  Kiddo, how ya doing. Do me a favor and give me a buzz. I’m at the office until seven, after that you can get me at home, 212—

  He stood near the entrance to the 50th Street subway station and called. A puberty-ravaged squawk answered.

  “Hi, Jonah Stem for Mr. Belzer.”

  “Daaad.”

  Another extension clicked on. Jonah heard canned laughter from what he imagined to be a superb 7.1 surround-sound audio system channeling a plasma-screen TV opposite a leather recliner and an end table with a tumbler of Macallan, neat.

  “Evan? Hang up.” The first receiver tumbled back into place. “Yallo.”

  “Chip, it’s Jonah.”

  “Oh hey kiddo. Lemme”—the TV piped down—“thanks for getting back to me. Everything all right? How’s school?”

  “It’s fine.”

  “You got tests coming up?”

  “Soon.”

  “Must be rough. You work too hard, kiddo.”

  The earnestness of small talk jangled his nerves. “Is something up?”

  “Up?, no. It’s more a question of what hasn’t happened.”

  “…okay.”

  “You remember we talked about the weakness of their case.”

  Jonah sensed that he was supposed to answer in the affirmative.

  “Good,” said Belzer. “I told you at that time that I was going to file a motion to dismiss. Now, before I say anything, you need to understand something about the nature of that kind of motion, what it is not. What it’s not is a motion to have the case thrown out on the basis of a lack of substantive merit. That is to say, what I mean is, there’s no law says you can’t file a case full of holes. With me so far?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Now that you understand what it’s not, I can explain to you what a thirty-two-eleven motion is. What it is, it deals with whether an argument has any legal merit. Not factual merit. You see the difference. Meaning, if and only if there is a technical objection to it. Despite the fact that it’s a shitty case, which our friend Roberto Medina knows it is. So a thirty-two-eleven will sometimes get denied if the judge feels that the plaintiff has any legal legs, no matter how bad, to stand on. It depends on how their case is worded, and what kind of judge we’re talking about. And in our case, the two of those happened to coincide in a particular way, and the motion was denied.”

  Belzer sipped. “I can’t emphasize enough that this is a minor setback. It’s not a setback. For all we know they may give up the ghost once they figure out that they’re actually gonna have to go to trial rather than get a quick settlement.”

  Somebody shouldered past him to get into the subway. Distantly, Jonah heard her say people need to get by here.

  “Trials like these—assuming there ends up being one—don’t happen for months. Medina ain’t the type to bill by the hour, he takes fifty percent of the client’s award. Since I know, and he knows, that that number’s going to be zero, or close to it, he’d be shooting himself in the foot by pressing further. My prediction, we’ll hear from them within a couple of weeks, whaddaya know, they want to negotiate—”

  “Chip?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Zero, or close to it. Which one.”

  “Whassat?”

  “If we lost,” Jonah said, “then it wouldn’t be zero.”

  “I can’t make predictions,” Belzer said. “I’m not God.”

  “Then why did you say ‘close to it’?”

  “It’s a figure of speech. Look, I can’t deliver it to you sealed in wax. But based on my extensive experience with the justice system, I see no reason to worry. Zero is an extremely educated guess. Would I bet my mother’s life on it? No. But I’d bet mine.”

  Jonah wondered how many civil suits Belzer had tried. He thought back to the glam trials of the last ten years: O.J., Michael Jackson, Scott Peterson. Not a group he wanted to have dinner with. They all had separate criminal teams and civil teams. Why hadn’t Belzer passed the baton? Immediately, Jonah inferred the answer: because he thought the whole thing was a big joke.

  “They could be trying to bully you, get you scared about damage to your reputation, so forth.”

  “I am scared of that.”

  “There’s no reason to be. You got to trust me.”

  “You said before it was going to be dismissed.”

  “I never said that. I never said that, outright. I said that the case is weak, and that it should be dismissed. But if the judge looks at what’s being presented and believes that there’s enough ground to stand on—statutorily—then he has no choice but to let it through. That’s the law. The ruling says absolutely nothing about the specifics of our case. Now we lean on them that much harder to get them to stop messing around.”

  As Belzer continued to talk, Jonah’s throat constricted to the diameter of a pencil, a swizzle stick, a needle, a thread. “…yeah,” he managed when Belzer asked You okay?

  “Don’t sound so depressed, kiddo. This too shall pass. You have more important things to deal with. The world needs more people like you. Good Samaritans.”

  THE BROOKLYN-BOUND was a colloid of hipsters suspended in minorities. The girl on his left, her heavy houndstooth jacket no longer, he realized, unseasonable, used a pen cap to pry a scab from her thumb. One out of every three passengers wore white earphones, an army of drones remotely controlled by Steve Jobs. People got off, got on, trod patterns in the floor grime. A pair of teenagers in knee-length T-shirts entered the car via the end door, carrying boxes of candy bundled with duct tape.

  Ladies and gentlemen we are selling candy today not for any basketball team or any charity but for ourselves to keep out of trouble off the streets and to put some money in our pockets today we are selling M&M’s M&M peanuts Snickers for one dollar

  Whatever debt Jonah had felt toward Simón Iniguez and his dead brother was rapidly fermenting into a sour hatred. Who did they think they were? He kneaded the fabric of his backpack, unsticking the Band-Aids covering his wounded knuckles.

  Shucking, jiving Second Avenue carried him past a loud Mideastern takeaway where he stopped to order falafel. While waiting for his food he wandered out onto the sidewalk. Astor Place and its turning cube; two Starbucks, one block apart. He imagined himself on trial. His only point of reference was Law & Order; he kept hearing that duh duh noise, seeing white titles and an establishing shot of his neighborhood.


  APARTMENT OF JONAH STEM

  AVENUE A AND 11TH ST.

  Duh duh.

  Alone, he sat on the sofa, studying to no avail. He noodled on his computer, discarded his sodden pita, got up for a soda. He hooked his fingers round the fridge handle, did not pull it open.

  My love was that so bad

  Actually, it was. Actually, he did not like it, at all. The need to head things off at the pass seemed far more pressing than it had before.

  He stood there dreaming up worst-case scenarios, failing to notice how much time had passed until the downstairs buzzer shrieked. He glanced at the microwave’s LED display; he had been standing in place for nearly thirty minutes.

  He went to the intercom. “Hello?”

  In singsong: “Jonah Steeeem.”

  He let her up.

  While she climbed the stairs he formulated his plan: tell her. Honesty the best policy. Whole truth and nothing but. No time like the present. He hoped she appreciated his candor.

  As her tea steeped she smiled to show him the new tooth she’d gotten to replace the missing one. “They did a smashing job, didn’t they?”

  He walked to the window, preparing his opening.

  “Jonah Stem, are we moody?”

  He said nothing. She came up behind him and hugged his chest, her thin arms tightening like an écraseur. He pried free and stood facing her.

  “We need to talk.”

  She appeared paralyzed. Then she reached for his crotch.

  He arrested her. “Wait.”

  Behind her eyes flared something greenish, chemical, rotten. She reached for him again; he grabbed her other hand. His fingers hurt, and he wanted to let go, but as soon as he loosened his grip, she made another go for him. She smiled, and he smiled, too: a contrived exchange signaling either the onset of détente or the circling of beasts.

  He could throw her out. He didn’t want to because—because he wasn’t like that, a guy who threw women around, and also because he was worried that she might enjoy it.

  “No,” he said.

  “Why not.”

  “I don’t want to.”

  “Then why,” she said, grinding her knee into his groin, “are you hard.” Backed against the kitchen counter, their arms cruciform, he shying away and she curving in conformity, like a bimetallic strip, compressing his erection with her pelvis and saying Jonah Stem You can’t say no I can feel it I can feel that Are you going to tell me that I’m imagining I can feel it in my hands I can taste it

  She dropped to her knees, gnawed him through two layers of fabric. Still he had her by the wrists; she couldn’t open his pants; then she opened his pants using her teeth and found her way inside, why hadn’t he worn a button fly.

  Stop

  He grasped at world health statistics and open chest wounds and any other repellent image capable of leaching his desire: thought of his mother, of his mother having sex with Lance, thought of Hannah, of the black crud he washed from her armpits, thought of the time she threw her shit at him, he thought of the time please stop

  Raymond Ramon Iniguez, the dying sough, he thought of cancer and AIDS

  st sto s

  To the couch, straddling her chest, in her mouth; she began bobbing back and forth, doing crunches attached to his penis. He closed his eyes. One last time and then no more. Get it over. Fast as possible. Enjoy it, not too much, but enjoy it. It is happening. He wanted it to be over. Out. Out. Out. Out. Out

  At that moment he heard several loud thumps. He opened his eyes: Eve, bobbing, with each descent banging the base of her skull against the armrest.

  He reached out to cup her head, but she batted him away bang bang and kept bang bang going. Although initially worried about her bang bang bang head he fast began to fear for the bang sofa, and the floor, and the building, as though she could bang bring the whole City bang down, crack its foundations, bang bang bang bang drop it bang into the sea, replace it bang with a smoking crater of bang bang rage and lust bang bang bang BANG BANG BANG BANG he couldn’t help it couldn’t help himself.

  Sweat from his forehead dripped on her nose. She blinked rapidly, as though seeing double; wiped her mouth with her hand; smiled dreamily. “You never fail me.”

  While he stepped into his pants, she crossed to the kitchen sink and drank two glasses of water, returning to the sofa with excessive poise, as though demonstrating sobriety for a highway patrolman. She sat and tugged her skirt down over her knees.

  “What do you see,” he said. “While it’s happening.”

  She looked out the window. “Stars.”

  HE RINSED HIS FACE, then reemerged, twisting the washcloth.

  “I don’t think we should see each other anymore.” He waited. “Eve?”

  “We can see the people across the street. That means that they can see us in here. We’re in our own Museum. Have you ever considered that, Jonah Stem?”

  “I’ve been thinking about it and I’m sorry it has to end like this, we can talk about it if you’d like, but that’s what I feel and I hope you can respect that. It’s only been a couple of months, we can pretend like it never happened.”

  She looked at him. “But it did.”

  He said, “Do you want to talk about this?”

  “There’s nothing to talk about,” she said.

  “All right, then.” He crossed to the front door and held it open. “Good-bye.”

  She smiled. “No. Not good-bye.”

  On the way out she pressed something soft and square into his palm. It was a jewelry box. He waited till she was gone, then opened it. Set in silver, on a silver chain, was a human tooth.

  • 16 •

  HIS MISTAKE, he decided, had been one of tone.

  Several shades of meaning lurked inside the phrase I don’t think we should see each other anymore. It might embody a backhanded attempt at self-analysis, a reaction provoked in order to see how that reaction provoked you. Or some sort of perverse romantic refresher: let’s fight and then do it on the bathroom floor. I’ll get the chardonnay. Or else a dignified camouflage for solicitation: you have done wrong, crawl back with apologies and all will be okay.

  Or: Go away.

  He could not shake the sound of her calling Not good-bye. As though she could speak and have it be, a God-of-Genesis mastery, commands lobbed from the heavens to resurface the world on her whim. Her confidence awed him. No way could he compete with that voice, in which every word carried the sweet pompous vinegary sting of inevitable victory. By comparison he stood not a chance, especially when the animal part of his brain still desired her, still wanted to submit, no matter how much he instructed it otherwise.

  Really, though—who was submitting to whom? He thought about the broken teacup; about the MRI tunnel wall, the armrest; and he saw a pattern that he did not like. She’d looked bored on the video because she was bored. And while he had encountered plenty of people, plenty of girls, who liked being controlled, even pushed around—Hannah came to mind—there was a big difference between faux rough stuff and what Eve wanted. He perceived a clear escalation, headed toward…where. He did not care to find out. She needed what he could not provide, and in her demands he felt strong-armed, both top and bottom, master and servant.

  He looked at his own injured hand, palpated the scab on his elbow. Take the bandage off in one quick rip. Tugging gently helped nobody.

  Still, he worried about how she would react when she really did get the message. Then what? Was he obligated to prevent her from harming herself? Killing herself? She had already demonstrated a willingness to act where most would stop at threats. He did not want the responsibility but, as usual, fate had failed to seek his permission.

  All next day he tweaked his speech. A train-stopper, Churchillian in its grandeur, mercifully swift and thorough, leaving no room for misinterpretation. Women were the most captious creatures in the universe, Eve a credit to her gender.

  That was the idea, anyhow. What little he’d readied glided out
of his consciousness, dissolving in the wake of an arm, as he came up the block.

  “Jonah Stem. Yooooo-hooooo.” She was on his front step.

  Be a good Scout. Earn your courage badge.

  “I’m glad you’re here,” he said, stopping on the second step, cocking his elbow jauntily. He hoped he looked cool. He felt not cool. He felt like a poseur extraordinaire.

  “Right-o.” She smiled expectantly. “Upstairs?”

  He said, “I understand how you’ve been feeling.”

  Her face changed. “Not this again.”

  “Hear me out—”

  “Jonah Stem, you are not going to regargletate that tired hash. Please, spare me the trouble of having to correct you in public.”

  “I understand that you’re put off—”

  “What puts me off is having to have a fatuous conversation twice.” She leapt at him, began kissing his neck. “This is lovelier. My my. Hello down there, Jonah Stem.”

  He backed out of her arms, bag swung round to conceal the front of his slacks. Eve covered her mouth and laughed. “Oh my.”

  “Don’t say anything. I want to say something. And don’t touch me.”

  “But I like to.”

  “I don’t.”

  “You never seemed to complain before,” she said. “You seemed quite content to stick your ding-dong into my hoo-hah, and never a peep out of you. This attack of qualms I find extremely suspect, and rather upsetting.”

  “Can I talk, please.”

  “Go right on.”

  “Without you interrupting me.”

  Eve made a lotus flower, bent her head. “As you wish.”

  He took a moment to marshal his thoughts. Part one, concession and acknowledgment of fun had. Part two, semicolon HOWEVER comma. Part three, amplify rationale, drawing attention to unfeasibility of long-term involvement, scheduling conflicts, lifestyle incompatibilities, etc. Part four, anticipate rebuttals; dispatch. Four-A, in response to hurt, console and support. Part five, conclusions.

  “You look pained, Jonah Stem.”