The Crimes of Jordan Wise

The words stung, even though she was speaking in a low, matter-of-fact voice. I could feel myself wincing under the lash of them.

'What do you want, Annalise?'

'I told you I was ambitious, didn't I? I want to be a fashion designer, live in New York or Paris. If I can't have that, I'll settle for enough money to live well and dress well and travel, and I don't much care what I have to do to get it.'

'You don't mean that—'

'I do mean it. I've already done things that would shock you if I told you about them. You see? I know you, but you don't know me at all.'

'You've never let me know you, never even hinted at any of this before.'

'I should have. I came close more than once.'

'Why didn't you?'

'I don't know. It doesn't matter. The point is, now you know what a greedy bitch I am. And you might as well know what else I want that you can't give me: thrills, excitement. You may not believe this, Jordan, but a lot of the time I don't really feel alive. I feel like I'm on hold, or caged, or worst of all, as if I'm running in a wheel like a goddamn hamster. I ache to go places, do things that are exciting and dangerous—live on the edge so I can feel alive all the time. Can you understand that?'

'Yes.'

'I mean really understand. I don't see how you can.'

'I may be dull, but I'm not insensitive.'

'No, you're not,' Annalise said. 'And you're not stupid or self-deluded, either. You're as aware as I am of what you are—a nice, quiet, unexciting accountant who'll never be anything else. That's your future, and I don't want any part of it. Now, is that enough for you or should I say more?'

I hated her in that moment. The hate flared hot, a white stabbing brilliance like a matchhead struck in a dark room. It burned bright for three or four seconds, flickered, went out and crumbled away into ashes. Left me feeling numb.

She finished her glass of wine. I heard her say, 'We'd better leave now.' I got up when she did and followed her outside, two paces behind like a dog at heel.

On the cold, windy sidewalk she said, 'My car's just down the block. We might as well say good-bye right here.'

I said, 'Annalise, I love you.'

'Oh, God. I don't want to hear that. You're only making it more difficult.'

'I can't help how I feel. Please, won't you just—'

'I won't because I can't. We can't. There's nothing more for us, can't you just accept that?'

'I don't know, I can't think right now.'

'Well, you'd better accept it, because that's the way it is.' She took my face between her hands and leaned up and kissed me on the mouth, a cold dry kiss that left no taste of her at all. 'Good-bye, Jordan. Have a good life.'

I watched her walk away, thinking it might be the last time I would ever see her.

The thought was unbearable.

You hear a lot about love. All the psychological and physiological interpretations, the mystique manufactured and built up by Hollywood, fiction writers, ad agencies, greeting card companies. It's sexual attraction and raging hormones and the mating urge and the need to perpetuate the race. It's God's will. It's Cupid's arrow and hearts and flowers and Valentine's Day and sweet-sad songs and sappy movies. It's daydreams and night sweats and long-range plans and lavish weddings and paradise honeymoons. It's feeling as though you'd been hammered and walking around in a daze, or waking up some morning and grinning at yourself in the mirror and saying out loud, 'Jesus Christ, I'm in love.' It's being unable to eat or sleep or work. It's thinking you'll die or go crazy if what you're feeling isn't returned by the other person. It's this and that and a hundred other things.

And most of it is crap.

The simple truth is, you can't define love or put labels on it. It's an individual experience. You really have no idea of what it'll be until it happens to you, and even then you might not recognize it for what it is for a long time. I didn't. Neither the word nor the concept entered my head until 'Annalise, I love you' popped out of my mouth on that cold sidewalk outside Perry's. Before then, she was just a woman who'd gotten under my skin a little deeper than most, a woman I yearned to sleep with and who would eventually pass out of my life whether I got into her or not. I thought about her a lot, I liked being with her and wanted to be with her more often, but that was as far as it went. I didn't walk around in a daze. My appetite was the same, I slept my usual seven hours almost every night, I crunched numbers at my desk with the same precision as always. Love? No way. I wasn't in love with Annalise Bonner.

Except that I was.

And that night I said it, and that night I admitted it to myself.

I'll tell you some of the things love was and is for me. The voice of my experience, the gospel according to Jordan Wise.

Love is that intolerable feeling of loss.

Love is as much suffering as it is joy.

Love is forced self-analysis, having to peel away the outer layers of self so you can see who you really are.

Love is dying and being reborn as something more and something less than you were before.

My rebirth didn't come immediately. I moped around all that weekend, still numb and hurting, and when I went in to work on Monday I must have looked pretty bad because two coworkers asked whether I was ill. I hid from them and the others in the office in columns of numbers and mathematical computations. I'd always been able to do that; mathematics is an orderly world, clean and simple, one in which I functioned supremely well. My retreat, my safe haven.

The fact that Amthor Associates' annual internal audit was scheduled for the next week made it even easier. The firm's fiscal year ran from September to September, the thirtieth of that month, and preparations for it and then the audit itself made for an extra busy time. The audit was mostly a routine procedure, conducted exclusively for tax purposes. The accounting department ran at a high level of efficiency, so there was never any problem aside from a few minor errors and discrepancies. No errors or discrepancies had ever been discovered in my records. My reputation as a skilled and completely trustworthy employee was the primary reason I had been promoted at a relatively young age to assistant chief and why I would be in line one day for the chief's position.

The idea came to me while I was preparing for the audit.

Every day in the office, I was responsible for the disbursement of thousands of dollars to subcontractors and suppliers, yet I'd never thought of stealing any of it. Never thought seriously, I should say. Once in a while a vagrant thought had crossed my mind. You know the kind I mean. Everyone has them, even people born without a dark side. Momentary impulses, little imps of the perverse that appear and disappear so quickly you hardly realize they're there. All that money going out and I'm the one controlling it. Good thing I'm an honest man, because it would be easy enough to turn dishonest. That sort of thing.

This time it wasn't just a stray thought. The idea came suddenly and clearly, not as idle speculation but like a revelation.

I could take some of the firm's money . . . a lot of the firm's money. A staggering amount, in fact, if it were done slowly and with great care. And it wouldn't be all that difficult to accomplish, given my position.

Enough money to do all the things I'd yearned to do.

Enough money to give Annalise everything she wanted.

I could still have Annalise.

It was a mad notion—I told myself that a dozen times. Siphon off thousands of dollars, embezzle it, steal it? I'd never stolen anything in my life. I was honest, I was loyal, I was too damn timid, I'd never be able to go through with it.

You're a nice, quiet, unexciting accountant who'll never be anything else.

Annalise had been right. No matter how much I rebelled against it, that was who I was and that was my