“Is everything right by you, Jack?”
“Far from it, Collins.”
“Is there anything I can do to ease your troubles, sir?”
“Yeah, can you pull over here? I’m feeling sick.”
“It’s a rough part of the old town, Jack. Are you sure you can’t hold-”
“Pull over!”
“Sorry, Collins.”
“It’s nothing personal, but some shanty prick beat my father to death with a baseball bat down an alley not too far from here.”
“I figured we owed you cocksuckers one.”
“Shit, Collins, if I didn’t know better, I’d swear you were smiling at me. Fuck you, asshole!”
Like I say, I hate Americans, arse-licking cops worst of all.
THE BEST PARTBY PETER SPIEGELMAN
For Jimmy Lowe, this was the best part-the two of them just out of the shower, wrapped in hotel terrycloth, smelling of expensive shampoo, heat clinging to their bodies like another skin, and his head in her lap. He wasn’t sober-he’d more or less given up on that-but for the moment the world wasn’t sliding away beneath him. He wasn’t rested either, but neither was he wired, or nodding out, or stupid drooling. What he was was balanced. It was all about the mix, Lowe told himself, and right now his recipe was near perfect: caffeine matched against the jet lag, pint of milk against the burning patch in his gut, reefer and John Jameson against the coke and those pills that Margot gave him. It teetered on a knife edge, and Lowe knew that it could get away fast-but not just now. Now, in the best part, he was riding an exquisite soap bubble-drifting, warm and light, through a damasked, luxury-suite landscape. He looked up and saw Margot’s hair in blue-black curls around her pale face. Her robe fell open and he saw her small, round breasts, still pink from the shower. He stretched his legs on the sofa. Sex had rubbed him raw and he settled himself gingerly and closed his eyes.
Besides the weightlessness and Margot’s slender thighs under his head, Lowe’s favorite part of the best part was the disconnection. Balanced this way, past and future held no dread and he could reflect on both with serene detachment. He reached up and dragged a lazy hand across Margot’s breasts. She batted him away and picked up a fashion magazine. Lowe smiled to himself. Floating in his bubble, even Margot didn’t scare him much. He could think about their time together calmly now, without the dizzying mash of lust and fear she’d filled him with almost from the start. Christ, was it only ten weeks since personnel had sent her?
It was January but she’d been bare-legged. Her calves were white and shiny, and the little tattoo on her ankle was penny-green. Lowe thought it was a bruise at first, but it turned out to be some kind of braided cross. She’d worn a black leather coat that day, and her black hair tumbled past the collar. Something about her 1980s do and her slanted eyes and the way she talked reminded Lowe of Sheena Easton-though he didn’t know if Sheena Easton’s eyes were blue like Margot’s, or if their accents were the same. They weren’t.
That was a hellish month in the back-office-a new computer system, the trading room churning out twice the usual number of deals, and half his staff out with flu-but Margot had pulled her weight and then some. He remembered how quick she was reconciling payments, and how accurate. The other clerks didn’t like her much but there was no question she knew her shit. After a day or two they were following her lead, and so-in his way- was Lowe.
She was like a tune stuck in his head, and all of a sudden his morning train ran too slow and the workday went too fast. Overtime was a gift and he relished every second, down even to the lousy takeout meals-anything that got him alone with her, and got him close enough to smell whatever made her smell so good.
When he was close, he couldn’t stop looking. He was cautious at first-careful not to stare-but as time went by his eyes grew hungrier. If she noticed, or minded, Margot gave no sign, and after a while Lowe didn’t give a damn. He pored over her from follicles to fingernails, and memorized every inch. Once, late on a Thursday, he’d had to stop himself from touching. He left her in his office and walked the halls and wondered what his forty-eight-year- old brain was thinking. Looking was one thing, he told himself, but his palm on that white calf… By comparison, the talking seemed so harmless.
Drifting, Lowe smiled at the thought. How long before she’d known all about him-ten days, maybe? Two weeks? From his high school varsity letters and his dropping out of b-school, to his twenty years at the bank and his promotion, five years ago, to manager of the back-office-he’d told her everything. To which she’d nodded and looked into his eyes and said next to nothing about herself.
Not that Margot was the silent type. When it came to crude humor she held her own with the other clerks. She toned it down a little for him: some deferential teasing- subtle flattery, really; jokes about the size of the trades they were processing-how any one of them would make a nice lottery prize; and, inevitably, her favorite game-
Her daydreams were of travel-first class all the way. “And none of this nature shite, thank you-it’s cities only. Trees are fer parks, and animals fer zoos or eating.”
Lowe’s fantasies were more modest, but Margot coaxed him along.
“Would’ve gone easy on the pitching in middle school- saved my arm for later.
“Wouldn’t have majored in accounting.
“Would’ve traveled more-London maybe, or Paris.”
And then, on another Thursday, she’d coaxed him farther. Even as the words left his mouth, Lowe knew there was no going back.
“I wouldn’t have married so young, I guess… or maybe not at all.” His face burned and his eyes bored into the carpet. Margot didn’t answer, but when he looked up she was staring at him.
From his bubble, Lowe could see that sex was inevitable after that. Which isn’t to say that he wasn’t surprised when it happened, or that he didn’t nearly burst an artery when he saw that hard white body for the first time. A word had popped into his head then, something from high school English-what was it?
It was a Tuesday and there were accounts to balance and Lowe thought she’d be working late. He was surprised when she appeared in his doorway at 5:00, coat on her arm.
“I’m through those accounts and if there’s nothing else, I’m off,” she said. Disappointment hit him like a sandbag. Margot looked at him and at her watch. “You want a coffee before I go?” she asked. It blunted his upset a little and he nodded. But when they got to Water Street, Margot headed not for Starbucks but for a taxi. Lowe followed.
“There’s a place uptown you’ll like,” she said, and she said nothing else for the rest of the ride. The place was a sleek hotel in Murray Hill, where the desk clerks dressed better than Lowe. They nodded at Margot as she crossed the lobby. The room was large, and Margot kept the lamps off and opened the drapes and let the city light in. She pulled her shirt over her head and stepped out of her shoes and skirt.
“Look all you like now, Jimmy,” she whispered. “Fer as long as you like.”
Her body was limber and smooth in a way that his wife’s had never been, even before the kids. Every time was better than the time before, and every time left him gasping and starving for more. The mattress was on the floor when they came up for air. Margot hit the minibar and brought back tumblers of John Jamesons. Lowe hadn’t
