Lights Out

Eddie looked out the window. Jack had a view of Central Park. The landscape was brown, with a few gray patches of snow here and there. Rain was falling again, billowing past in long curving patterns. Down below, dull- colored people beetled along like characters in a computer game.

Warm and dry, all city sounds muffled, Eddie watched them for a while. This was nice. He opened the minibar, found beer and wine and a carton of orange juice at the back. “Not from concentrate. Shake first for better taste.” He sat in a gilded chair, shook the carton, drank from it. Delicious. One of the computer screens flashed a message about Vestron dividends. The fax machine slid out another sheet. Eddie got up and looked at it. This one was from the Mount Olive Extended Care Residence and Spa in Darien, Connecticut. “Dear Mr. Nye: Please call re your account.” Then came another fax full of numbers and abbreviations.

A copy of the Financial Times lay on the couch. Eddie picked it up and started reading. In this room it began to make sense. Eddie recalled El Rojo poring over Business Week. He and Jack could probably have found a lot to talk about. Eddie couldn’t imagine Jack at the steel table in the prison library, but he could easily picture El Rojo in a room like this. El Rojo probably had whole houses like it in Colombia, or on the Riviera, or some other fancy place Eddie had encountered in his reading. That would make living in that cell in C-Block all the more unbearable. Eddie recalled the picture of El Rojo’s son, the dead shot in the cowboy outfit-Gaucho, wasn’t it, and hadn’t he had some other name too? — and found himself admiring El Rojo’s stoicism, his self-control. Of all the inmates Eddie had known, he’d had the most to lose; and he’d lost it.

At that moment, Gaucho’s real name came to him: Simon. After the Liberator.

Jack entered the room. “What’s that?” he said.

Eddie realized he’d spoken “the Liberator” aloud. “Nothing.”

Jack had a check in his hand. He stuck it inside his jacket pocket, gazed at Eddie, shook his head. “This is something,” he said. “Really something. I’m having trouble believing it’s true. That you’re here, and everything.”

“Me too.”

Jack laughed. “The same old Eddie.”

“No.”

“No, of course not. Sorry. How are you, really?”

Before Eddie could reply, the fax produced another document. Jack went over, scanned it quickly-more than quickly, almost with the speed of a character in a silent movie-checked the other faxes in the tray, checked the computer screens, turned.

“Hungry? I’m going to order up some lunch. Or do you want to go out?”

Eddie wasn’t hungry. The bookstore boy’s little three-cornered pastry had somehow filled him up. “Whatever you like,” he said.

“Let’s eat in,” Jack said. “Give us more time. There’s so much I want to ask you. This is just so …” Words failed him. He smiled helplessly, then flipped Eddie a menu and sat down at the desk. “Just one sec.” He began tapping on a keyboard.

“What are you doing?” Eddie asked.

“Hedging.”

Eddie studied the menu. Many choices, many foreign words, prices he wasn’t prepared for. “I’ll have whatever you’re having.”

“Pasta salad okay?” Jack asked, reaching for the phone. It buzzed before he could pick it up. He answered, listened, then rose and began pacing back and forth as far as the phone cord permitted, as though it were a leash. “That wasn’t our agreement,” he said. “They’re asking the impossible.” He listened, paced. “You’d better not be,” he said, his voice rising. Eddie could hear a tiny voice protesting on the other end. Jack hung up.

He glanced at Eddie, stopped pacing, composed himself. “Everything you’ve read about those pricks is true,” he said. “Just like bloodsuckers except they do it for pleasure. The money has nothing to do with it.”

“What pricks?”

“Wall Street pricks.” Jack snapped off his tie. He quickly undressed down to boxer shorts and knee-length socks, threw open a huge closet full of clothes. His body had grown top-heavy, his legs thinner. They were trembling slightly. He selected a new shirt, new tie, new suit, all of which looked almost identical to what he’d had on before, and began putting them on. Eddie followed every move, fascinated as a neophyte allowed in the master’s studio; or like a boy watching his father.

“Got to pass on lunch,” Jack said, knotting his new tie in a quick fluid pinwheel of navy and crimson. “Just order up whatever you want. Or call Hector, he’s the concierge. I’ll be back as soon as I can.” He hurried through the bedroom door, came right back. “It’s great to have you here,” he said. “Just great. We’ll celebrate tonight.” He left, returned again. “Sorry I have to run off-I’m so excited about this I can’t tell you.” He went, came back once more. “Don’t bother answering the phone-the machine’ll take it.” Then he was gone.

Eddie sat on the gilded chair in Jack’s bedroom. He didn’t order food because he wasn’t hungry, didn’t drink from the minibar because he’d drunk too much at L’Oasis, didn’t go out because he was afraid he might have trouble getting back in. To make himself useful, he picked Jack’s suit off the floor and carried it to the closet. He folded the pants, hung them on a wooden hanger, slid the jacket on top. He was about to hook the hanger over the rail when he remembered the check Jack had stuck in the inside pocket. He reached for it out of curiosity, just wanting to see.

It was a check drawn on the Banque de Geneve et Zurich, made out to Windward Financial Services, signed by Karen de Vere. The amount was $230,000. Eddie put it back.

The phone rang. Eddie didn’t pick it up. A voice said: “Mr. Nye. This is the billing department. Please call to discuss your account at your earliest convenience.” Eddie returned to the closet and looked at the check again.

He went into the sitting room, sat down on the couch where Karen de Vere had been. The cushions were still warm from her body; very slightly, but he could feel it. There were a lot of papers spread out on the coffee table. Some bore the letterhead of Windward Financial Services, some were the prospectuses of companies listed on the stock exchange, some had nothing on them but more numbers and abbreviations. Going through them, Eddie discovered a glossy brochure with Jack’s picture on the cover.

Jack was standing in front of 222 Park Avenue: the number was visible behind him. His hair was a little darker and thicker, his face a little darker and thinner, and he was smiling his smile. Eddie opened the brochure and began reading.

He learned a lot about his brother: how he was the president and founder of Windward Financial Services, one of the top-ten small financial consultancies in the nation, according to Crain’s New York Business (1990); how before that he had been the president and founder of J. M. Nye and Associates, a private investment firm that had specialized in trading high-yield bonds in the eighties, and had been acquired by a Belgian conglomerate (1988); how he had houses in Connecticut and Aspen; how he and his wife were skiers and golfers; how he’d graduated from USC with a degree in engineering.

Eddie stopped right there. He checked the graduation date: three years after the summer at Galleon Beach, which was when Jack would have graduated had he stayed in school.

But he hadn’t, had he? He’d left during his freshman year. Maybe he’d gone back, somehow made up the work he’d missed, graduated on schedule. Then Eddie recalled that Jack hadn’t left USC, exactly. He remembered the letter he’d found in Jack’s cabin at Galleon Beach, remembered what he hadn’t understood at the time and had almost forgotten: Jack had been expelled, permanently.

Meaning what? He didn’t know; didn’t know enough about how the world worked to even guess. He flipped on the TV. Wile E. Coyote lost his balance and fell off a cliff.

16

Although he had never been to France, Eddie dreamed he was in a French cafe. The elements of the dream: a little cup of the type Karen de Vere had held in her lap-in his dream he remembered it was called demitasse; snails dripping with garlic butter; blue smoke. He smelled smoke- even as he smelled it wondering if the smell had triggered the dream: didn’t dreams pass in seconds? — and