“I have to think,” Madeleine said. She looked pale and was patting her cheeks softly, as if this was a way of establishing order inside her head. It was theatrical, he thought. “I just have to be quiet a moment,” she said again.
Henry surveyed the cramped, odorless little room: the cluttered bed with the silver breakfast utensils, the crystal bud vase with a red rose, the dresser and the slightly dusty mirror, the armchair with a blue hydrangea print; two reproductions of Monet’s Water Lilies facing each other on featureless white walls. Nothing here foretold that things would work out perfectly and he would make his flight on time, or that none of that would happen. Here was merely a venue, a voiceless place with nothing consoling about it. He could remember when rooms felt better than this. Coming to Montreal had been peculiarly pointless—a vanity, and he was trapped in it. He thought what he often thought at moments when things went very bad—and this seemed bad: that he overreached. He always had. When you were young it was a good quality, it meant you were ambitious, headed upward. But when you were forty-nine, it wasn’t very good.
“I have to think where he might be.” Madeleine had turned and was staring at the phone as if her husband were inside it and threatening to burst out. It was one of those moments when Madeleine was not how she appeared: not the formal, reserved girl in Gibson Girl hair, but a kid in a bind, trying to dream up what to do. This was less intriguing.
“Maybe the lobby,” Henry said, while thinking the words: Jeff. A man lurking in the hall outside my door, waiting to come in and make mayhem. It was an extremely unpleasant thought, one that made him feel tired.
The telephone rang again, and Henry answered it.
“Let me speak to my wife, cockroach,” the same sneering voice said. “Can you pull out of her that long?”
“Who do you want?” Henry said.
“Let me speak to Madeleine, prick,” the man said.
The name Madeleine produced a tiny upheaval in his brain. “Madeleine’s not here,” Henry Rothman lied.
“Right. You mean she’s busy at the moment. I get it. Maybe I should call back.”
“Maybe you’ve made a mistake here,” Henry said. “I said Madeleine’s not here.”
“Is she sucking your dick,” the man said. “Imagine that. I’ll just wait.”
“I haven’t seen her,” Henry went on lying. “We had dinner last night. Then she went home.”
“Yep, yep, yep,” the man said and laughed sarcastically. “That was after she sucked your dick.”
Madeleine was still facing out the window, listening to one half of the conversation.
“Where are you?” Henry said, feeling disturbed.
“Why do you want to know that? You think I’m outside your door calling you on a cell phone?” He heard some metal-sounding clicks and scrapes on the line, and Jeff’s voice became distant and unintelligible. “Well, open the door and find out,” the man said, back in touch. “You might be right. Then I’ll kick your ass.”
“I’ll be happy to come talk to you,” Henry said, then stopped himself. Why say such a stupid thing? There was no need. He caught himself in the mirror just then, a large man in shirtsleeves and a tie, with a little bit of belly. It was embarrassing to be this man. He looked away.
“So, you want to come talk to me?” the man said, then laughed again. “You don’t have the nuts.”
“Sure I do,” Henry said miserably. “Tell me where you are. I’ve got the nerve.”
“Then I will kick your ass,” the man said in a haughty voice.
“Well, we’ll see.”
“Where’s Madeleine?” The man sounded deranged.
“I have no earthly idea.” It occurred to Henry that every single thing he was saying was a lie. That he had somehow brought into existence a situation in which there was not a shred of truth. How could that happen?
“Are you telling the truth?”
“Yes. I am,” he lied. “Now, where are you?”
“In my fucking car. I’m a block from your hotel, asshole.”
“I probably can’t find you there,” Henry said, looking at Madeleine staring at him. He had things back under control, or nearly. Just like that. He could tell in her expression—a pale face, with bleak admiration in it.
“I’ll be at your hotel in five minutes, Mr. big man,” Madeleine’s husband said.
“I’ll wait for you in the lobby,” Henry said. “I’m tall, and I’ll be wearing—”
“I know, I know,” the man said. “You’ll look like an asshole no matter what you’re wearing.”
“Okay,” Henry said.
The husband clicked off.
Madeleine had taken a seat on the arm of the blue-hydrangea chair, her hands clasped tightly. He felt a great deal older and also superior to her, largely, he understood, because she looked sad. He had taken care of things, as he always had.
“He thinks you’re not here,” Henry said. “So you’d better leave. I’m going to meet him downstairs. You have to find a back door out.” He started looking around for his suit coat.
Madeleine smiled at him almost wondrously.
“I appreciate your not telling him I’m here.”
“You are here,” Henry said. He forgot his coat and began looking for his billfold and his change, his handkerchief, his pocketknife, the collection of essential objects he carried. He would check out later. All of this was idiotic now.
“You’re not a bad man, are you?” she said sweetly. “Sometimes I’ll be alone, or I’ll be waiting for you, and I’ll just get mad and decide you’re a shit. But you really aren’t. You’re kind of brave. You sort of have principles.”
These words—principles, brave, shit, waiting—for some reason made him feel unexpectedly, heart-poundingly nervous, precisely when he didn’t want to feel nervous. He was not supposed to be nervous. He felt very large and cumbersome and almost frantic in the room with her. Not superior. He could just as easily start shouting at her. The fact that she was calm and pretty was intolerable.
“I think it’s time for you to leave,” he said, thinking again and suddenly about his suit coat, trying to calm himself.
“Yeah, sure,” Madeleine said, and reached to the side of the blue chair for her purse. She felt inside for keys without looking and produced a yellow plastic-springy car key loop, which seemed to make her stand up. “When will I see you?” she said and touched the bushed-up back of her hair. So changeable, he thought. “This is a little abrupt. I’d pictured something a little more poignant.”
“It’ll all be fine,” Henry said and manufactured a smile that calmed him.
“Setting aside the matter of when I’ll see you again.”
“Setting it aside,” he said, keeping the smile.
She flipped the yellow, springy key loop back and forth once across her fingers and started for the door, going past where Rothman was waiting for her to leave. No kiss. No hug. “Jeff’s not violent,” she said. “Maybe you two’ll like each other. You have me in common, after all.” She smiled as she opened the door.
“That may not be enough for a friendship.”
“I’m sorry this is ending this way,” Madeleine said quietly.
“Me, too,” Henry Rothman said.
She smiled at him strangely and let herself out, permitting the door to shut with a soft click. He thought she hadn’t heard him.
Waiting in the elevator vestibule, where a cigar aroma hung in the air, he began now to contemplate that he was on his way to meet the irate husband of a woman he didn’t love but had nevertheless been screwing. It was like a movie. How was he supposed to think about all this? This would be a man he didn’t know but who had every right to hate him and possibly want to kill him. This would be a man whose life he had entered uninvited, played fast and loose with, possibly spoiled, then ignored, but now wanted out of, thank you. Anyone could agree that whatever bad befell him was exactly what he deserved, and that possibly nothing was quite bad enough. In America, people sought d
amages in this sort of disagreement, but probably not in Canada. He thought about what his father would say. His father was a large man, gone bald, with a great stiffened stomach and an acerbic manner from years of treating Virginia-cracker anti-Semites with lung cancer. “At the bottom of the mine is where they keep the least amount of light,” his father liked to say. Which was how he felt—in the dark without a reasonable idea for how to go about this. But not frantic now. More like engaged. He’d never been able to stay frantic.
But just blundering in as though he understood everything and letting events take place willy-nilly would certainly be the wrong course. He didn’t need to know much about Jeff—it had never been necessary. But knowing nothing was unlawyerly. On the other hand, there was something so profoundly unserious about this whole debacle, that a sudden urge he recognized as similar to derangement made him want to break out laughing just as the mirrored elevator slid open. Still, as long as Madeleine was out of the hotel, and as long as Jeff hadn’t kicked in the door and caught them in the middle of something private—which hadn’t happened—then who cared who knew who? The lawyer Henry Rothman said this was all about something a man he didn’t know might dream up, versus what he himself would never admit to. Nothing added to nothing. He would simply tell as many lies as necessary—which was lawyerly: a show of spurious good will being better than no show of any will. Actual good will would be represented by the trouble of inventing a lie to cancel out the bad will of having an affair with Madeleine in the first place. And since his relationship with Madeleine was now over with, Jeff could claim the satisfaction of believing he’d caused it to be over. Everybody gets to think he wins, though no one does. That was extremely lawyerly.
Stepping out into the wide, bright lobby, Henry refocused his eyes to the light and the new, congested atmosphere, a throng of hotel guests pulling suitcases on wheels toward the revolving doors and out to the street. Many were smiling, slow-moving elderlies with plastic cards strung around their necks and little fanny packs full of their valuables; most were speaking indecipherable French. He felt, he realized, absolutely calm.
The lobby otherwise offered a pleasant, inauthentic holiday-festive feel, with big gold-and-glass chandeliers and humming activity. It was like a stage lighted for a musical before the principals came on. He strolled out toward the middle, beyond which showcase windows of the expensive clothing stores and gift shops lined the street side, and the people gazing in the windows looked pleased and well cared for, as though they were expecting something happy to occur soon. It felt like the Mayflower in Washington, where he used to meet clients. And at the same time it felt foreign in the comfortable, half-mysterious way Canada always felt; as if the floors had been tilted three degrees off from what you were used to, and the doors opened from a different side. Nothing you couldn’t negotiate. America, run by the Swiss, Madeleine said.
From the crowded middle-lobby, he observed no one who might be a Jeff. A group of small American-sounding children trooped past in a ragged line, all wearing quilted white tae kwon do uniforms and holding hands. They too were headed toward the revolving doors, followed by some large, middle-aged black ladies, eight of them, all dressed in big quilted fall frocks with matching expensive-looking feathered hats. Southerners, he realized—the ladies all talking far too loud about their bus trip down to Maine this afternoon, and about something that had happened in the night that had been scandalous and was making them laugh.
Then he noticed a man watching him, a man standing beside the entrance to the English sweater shop. He couldn’t be Madeleine’s husband, Henry thought. He was too young—no more than mid-twenties. The man wore black jeans, white sneakers and a black leather jacket; he had rough crew-cut blond hair and was wearing yellow aviator glasses. He looked like a college student, not an architect. If the man weren’t staring at him so intently, he would never have noticed him.
When Henry again caught his eye, the man abruptly began walking straight toward him, hands thrust inside his black jacket side pockets, as if he might be hiding something there, and Henry realized this man was in fact Madeleine’s husband, could only be him, despite looking ten years younger than Madeleine, and twenty-five years younger than himself. This would be different from the rendezvous he’d anticipated. It would be easier. The husband wasn’t even very big.
When he was ten feet away, just at the edge of the crimson carpet, the man stopped, his hands still in his pockets, and simply stared, as if something uncertain about Rothman— something unassociated in his identity—needed to be certified.
“I’m probably who you’re looking for,” Henry said across the space between them. He noticed again the tae kwon do kids still filing out toward the street, still holding hands.
Madeleine’s husband, or the man he thought was Madeleine’s husband, didn’t say anything but began walking toward him again, only slowly now, as if he was trying to give the impression that he’d become intrigued by something. It was all too ridiculous. More theatricality. They should have lunch, he could tell the man a lot of lies and then pay the check. That would be good enough.
“I saw your picture,” the young man said, actually seeming to sneer. He didn’t remove his hands from his pockets. He was much smaller than expected, but very intense. Possibly he was nervous. His aviator glasses emblemized nervous intensity, as did the black jacket zipped up to his neck so you couldn’t tell what he had on underneath it. Madeleine’s husband was handsome but in a reduced, delicate, vaguely spiritless way, as if he’d once failed at something significant and hadn’t altogether gotten over it. It was odd, he thought, that Madeleine could find them both—himself the big cumbersome Jew and this small, insignificant French-seeming man—attractive.
“I’m Henry Rothman.” He extended his large hand, but the husband ignored it. What picture had he seen? One she’d taken, he supposed, and rashly kept. A mistake.
“Where the fuck’s Madeleine?” the young man said.
These were like the words he’d said on the phone, yet he didn’t seem like a young man who would say such a thing, or whatever he’d said. Cockroach. Sucking your dick. He didn’t seem that vulgar. It was absurd. He felt completely in control of things now. “I don’t know where Madeleine is,” he said. And it was true, which made him relax even more. He was prepared to offer a quick trip up to the room. But Madeleine had a habit of leaving earrings, toiletry essentials, articles of underclothing wherever she’d been. Too risky.
“I have an eight-year-old son,” the intense, bespectacled young man said, and seemed to set his shoulders inside his bomber jacket. He blinked at Henry and leaned forward on the balls of his feet, making himself appear even more reduced. His eyes behind his yellow lenses were the blandest uninflected brown, and his mouth was small and thin. His skin was soft and olive-tinted, with a faint flush of emotion in his cheeks. He was like a pretty little actor, Henry thought, clean-shaven and actorishly fit-looking. Madeleine had married a pretty boy. Why indeed ever have a Henry Rothman in your life if this boy appealed to you? It made him feel his most human qualities had been appropriated for purposes he didn’t approve. It wasn’t a good feeling.
“I know you do,” Henry said about the business of the child.
“So, I don’t want to fuck with you,” the young man said, reddening. “I’m not about to let you fuck up my marriage and keep my son from having two parents at home. Do you understand that? I want you to.” His soft boy’s mouth became unexpectedly hard, almost snarly. He had small, tightly-bunched square teeth that detracted from his beauty and his anger and made him seem vaguely corrupted. “If it wasn’t for that, I wouldn’t give a goddamn what you and Madeleine did together,” he went on. “Fuck in hotel rooms all over the planet and I couldn’t give a shit.”
“I guess you’ve made your point, then,” Henry said.
“Oh, am I making a point?” Madeleine’s husband said, widening his eyes behind his idiotic lenses. “I didn’t realize that. I thought I was just explaining
to you the facts of life, since you’re way out of touch with them. I wasn’t trying to persuade you. Do you understand?” The boy didn’t remove his eyes from Henry’s. An aroma of inexpensive leather had begun wafting off the black jacket, as if he’d bought it just that day. Henry began to consider that he’d never owned a black leather jacket. In Roanoke, well-off doctors’ sons didn’t go in for those. Their style had been madras sports coats and white bucks. Jewish country club style.
“I understand what you mean,” Henry said in what he assumed would seem a fatigued voice.
Madeleine’s husband glared at him, but Henry realized that he himself wasn’t the least bit more serious about this. Merely less engaged. And he would be willing to bet money Madeleine’s husband wasn’t serious either, though he perhaps didn’t know it and somehow believed he felt great passion about all this baloney. Only neither of them was truly up against anything here. Everything they were doing, they were choosing to do—he was choosing to be here, and this Jeff was choosing to put this unconvincingly ferocious look on his face. They should talk about something else now. Ice hockey.
“I admit I may like Madeleine more than I ought to,” Henry said and felt satisfied with that. “I may have acted in some ways that aren’t entirely in your interest.”
At this, the young man blinked his lightless brown eyes more rapidly. “Is that so?” he said. “Is this your great admission?”
“I’m afraid it is,” Henry said, and smiled for the first time. He wondered where Madeleine actually was at the very moment he’d admitted to her boy husband, in his own fashion at least, that he’d been fucking her. He’d only done it so that something that passed between himself and this young man could have a grain of substance to it. “What kind of architecture do you do?” he asked companionably. Some people were speaking French close by. He looked around to see who. It would be so nice just to start speaking French now, or Russian. Anything. Madeleine’s husband said something he wasn’t sure he understood. “Excuse me.” He smiled again tolerantly.