and resistance. There was a hopeless rattle to her breath. He looked away when he saw her hand start to twitch, her eyes go blank. His annoyance resided at first in the back of his throat, then became an ache just above his brow line.
A slow unraveling occurs when one thread separates from the fabric; it can’t help but catch on something. One tiny pull, then another, and eventually the whole garment comes apart. He’d broken the first rule he’d set for himself: Leave at the first sign of trouble; cut your losses, take what you can, and change that garment before you’re left half naked in the cold. It was attachment and arrogance that brought him to this place. Sara’s earlier admonition rang in his ears.
He moved over to the couch and sat, put his chin on one fist, watched her. There was a time when he thought he could love her. But when she’d given herself to him so easily and served her purpose, his passion for her cooled quickly.
HE’D MET MARCUS Raine at Red Gravity, where they were both programmers. Though they’d been raised in the same country, just miles apart, Marcus Raine didn’t want to be friends-not with his fellow countryman, not with anyone. Their colleagues laughed about Raine behind his back, joked that he just powered down at the end of the day, sat slumped at his desk until morning. He was there when everyone arrived, there when they left in the evenings. He seemed to have five sets of nearly identical outfits-black pants and Rockport shoes, button-down shirts in some shade of brown or gray. The receptionist took notes-brown on Monday, charcoal on Tuesday, slate on Wednesday, chocolate on Thursday, gunmetal on Friday. He didn’t often acknowledge the weather, wore the same three-quarter-length lightweight black jacket, rain or shine, summer or winter. Sometimes he wore a stocking cap when it was very, very cold. Sometimes, in the blistering heat, he didn’t wear the jacket at all.
He didn’t join in the laughter. He was only slightly more sociable than Marcus Raine. But even this was design, part of his invisibility. Friendly enough not to stand apart but never intimate, never revealing. As a result, he was fairly certain that none of his Red Gravity colleagues would even remember his name. Sometimes he forgot it, too, would go days without thinking of himself even with the name his mother had given him. Now, after so many years, the name Kristof Ragan seemed to belong to someone else, someone who’d lived a meaningless life and been forgotten.
Beneath their jokes about Marcus Raine was a current of resentment. Marcus had been hired early, before any of them. He’d been paid a very low salary and given a large number of company shares to make up for it. When the company went public, Raine became a very rich man. The company rewarded his loyalty and hard work by raising his salary on top of it. Rumor had it-and in a small company there were always rumors-he made nearly as much as the CEO. But he didn’t begrudge Marcus Raine his success; it didn’t make him angry or jealous. It made him curious. What was it like to be Marcus Raine?
Isabel got a certain look on her face when she was working-and she didn’t have to be sitting at her computer to be working. It was a faraway glaze to her eyes, a kind of thoughtful cock to her head. He could almost see synapses firing in her brain as it struggled to
It was Camilla, Raine’s girlfriend, who impelled him to action. Raine, apparently, had forgotten his lunch. He brought the same lunch every day. Some type of meat on whole wheat bread and an apple. He drank water from the cooler, in a cup he kept in his desk and washed in the break-room sink when he was done. He was so precise, like an old clock, so predictable and self-contained. He never could have imagined Raine with a woman like Camilla. She breezed into the office, wearing a flouncy, printed dress, extraordinarily lean, delicately muscular, outstanding legs ending in dangerously high heels-red. She had an electrifying energy, white-blond hair, a voice that sounded like a singing bird to him.
“Can I just leave this for Marcus Raine?” she asked, holding up a brown bag.
“Oh, I’ll call him,” the receptionist said with unmasked enthusiasm. She wanted to see him interact with his girlfriend. “Can I give him your name?”
She hesitated, looked around. “Camilla,” she said finally.
The reception desk stood directly in front of the door; behind that was the field of cubicles where everyone sat. One by one, people found a reason to look over the walls, like prairie dogs popping quick, curious heads up from their holes. From where he sat, he had an unobstructed view as Marcus Raine strode up to the front and took the bag from her hand. He watched Camilla’s face brighten at the sight of him. Her smile widened-no, deepened-as Raine wound a strong arm around her waist and kissed her. He whispered something to her in Czech and she laughed, a tinkling, musical sound like ice in a glass.
Suddenly Marcus Raine didn’t seem so laughable. He watched the faces of their colleagues, mocking smiles dropping in surprise, resentment waxing like a moon, cold and hard.
HE HADN’T THOUGHT about the way he met Camilla in a long time, about the desire he’d had from the first moment he saw her. It was different from the desire he’d had for Isabel, which was cooler, more intellectual. His love for Isabel connected him to the higher parts of himself, the better man inside. His hunger for Camilla had been primal, a raptor ripping meat from a carcass on the jungle floor.
He saw her again later in the week. This time it was no accident. He worked at his station until he saw the top of Raine’s head float by his cube. He quickly gathered his things and ran down the stairs while the old elevator slowly carried Raine toward the street. He arrived on the ground floor just in time to see the other man exit through the glass doors onto Canal Street. It was summer, still light at nearly eight P.M.
The humidity in the air raised an instant sheen of sweat on his brow. From a distance, he followed Raine through the chaos of the busy street, beside the garish electronics shops, just gaping holes in buildings, loud with booming speakers, and stands loaded with knockoff bags, the air smelling of exhaust and crispy duck.
Camilla, resplendent in shades of blue, a simple blouse and flowing skirt, flippy sandals on her feet, was waiting for Raine by the subway station. She was like a breeze of clean air in the filth of the city around her. Raine kissed her quickly and together they descended below the street.
He rode between two cars and watched the couple through the thick, dirty window that separated them. They were oblivious, totally wrapped up in each other, one of Raine’s arms around her shoulder, the other holding her delicate hand. She looked up at him with that wide-open smile. Raine seemed like a different person, animated, laughing, relaxed, not like the gargoyle he usually was, staring joylessly at his screen, skulking over his sandwich in the break room, grunting his replies to questions, issuing terse one-line e-mails. To look into Camilla’s face, you’d imagine he was the most charming, charismatic bastard who ever walked the face of the earth.
When they exited uptown, he followed them again, watched as they entered a beautiful prewar building on the Upper West Side. A doorman in a navy blue uniform pulled the door open for them, and they disappeared. Left behind on the street, a terrible current of covetousness rushed through him. It literally caused him to feel nauseous when he thought of the hovel he lived in out in Williamsburg, shared with his disgusting slob of a brother. Even earning the kind of money that would make him a king at home, he lived like a pauper in this whore of a city, where everything he’d ever wanted was right in front him but always out of reach.
He’d learned quickly that the only certain way to succeed in this country was as a thief. The wealthy Americans of everyone’s dreams hadn’t worked their way to the top, hadn’t gone from rags to riches through hard work and good morals, as they would have everyone believe. The wealthiest had either gotten lucky-like Marcus Raine-or gone crooked, stolen and cheated and killed to earn their riches. They were pirates. This didn’t make him angry. It made him hungry. It made him creative.
Ivan, unlike Marcus, had had no interest in getting an education and a job, had already aligned himself with an unsavory element. Almost as soon as they arrived, Ivan connected with two brothers who ran with the Albanian mob. Their crimes were petty-ATM heists, transporting Albanian girls who thought they were going to be models and wound up addicted to meth, wrapping their lithe bodies around poles in filthy strip bars. But Ivan was making more money-much more-even though he had a limited intelligence, wasn’t much more than a child in some ways. Ivan was always the one who treated at clubs and dinners out.
On the long ride home to Brooklyn, he’d thought about why he’d come to this country, what he’d hoped to accomplish here. He didn’t want to be a paycheck player, someone who lived by another man’s rules. He hadn’t imagined himself a slave to a company, asking permission to take time off for sickness, his only free hours squeezed in between grueling work days and the two weeks a year he was allotted for holiday. Suddenly, it seemed to him that Ivan, whom he’d always regarded as slow and essentially lazy, had been right all along.
When he got back to their apartment, Ivan was lying on the couch surrounded by a field of fast-food wrappers.
