Tom leaned forward to settle a gentle hand on Stein’s child-size shoulder. It seemed a practiced gesture. Walter took it to fall within the job description. Wesley plainly regarded it as routine. Tom kept his hand in place as he spoke. “What Nathan means to say is that we need to find someone and we’re not absolutely sure of his identity. We need to find out who he is. Then we need to find him, and then come to a resolution of our problem. We’ve got a problem here, Mr. Sherman, and we’re all a bit stressed. Given your experience with difficult matters I’m sure you’ll agree that that is normal enough.”
“The stress I can see,” said Walter sternly, “but I know nothing about your situation. I can’t agree or disagree until I know what you’re talking about. Why don’t you describe your problem.”
“He’s trying to fucking kill us!” yelled Stein in a voice like troubled gears, his mouth a ragged thing beneath his sharp, vein-crossed nose. “Is that enough of a fucking problem?”
If it was a performance, it was a good one. Walter was inclined to think otherwise, to believe that the little sac of testosterone was genuinely off-stride. Walter let his eyebrows jump and cocked his head to show interest. Then he tried an ironic note, mimicking discovery. “And you’re not sure who this person is? Have I got that right, Mr. Stein?” A muttering sneer came back.
“You got it,” said Pitts unexpectedly, from another county, mouth full of ham and cracker. “But he damn sure knows who we are and the murderous cocksucker’s already-”
Tom cut him short with a twitch of his head, then said, “Maybe we’re getting ahead of ourselves, maybe just a little.”
At least twenty painfully prolonged seconds followed. Nathan Stein turned peevishly toward the water, wrestling no doubt with whatever tiny demons labored to unglue him. Wesley Pitts nodded aimlessly, removed his glasses, wiped his eyes with the backs of his powerful hands, and backpedaled to his appropriate place in the order of things. Walter felt for Tom. As point man he was supposed to keep things together, especially at moments like this. Now, he needed help. Walter reached for a chunk of apple. He chewed it, released a sigh, and applied a mild, mournful tone to his next observation. “Guys,” he said, “This doesn’t really sound like my kind of work.”
Atlanta
After their second or third closing, all these decades ago, Harvey decided to have a photo taken. He had a secretary use a camera he had brought from home. The buyer and seller each got an 8x10 glossy, suitable for framing. It showed happy folks shaking hands on a life-changing deal. This became an extremely popular perk, and soon they had so many closings that Nicholas suggested they hire his gifted nephew for the work. Young Harold cut school when needed and did a fine job for three years, until he left for college. Then they worked out a deal with a large Atlanta studio. The relationship was still in force.
The story of Leonard’s life played out in those thousands of pictures. Over the years they told a graceful tale. The years had transformed this vigorous, handsome, fit young lawyer into a broader, more imposing figure, paunchier to be sure, but never more commanding, never projecting more life and assurance.
Now everything in his life belonged to before or after.
And there were only a handful of after shots, because Leonard soon gave up going to closings. The few pictures that were there were hard to look at. They showed a fat and slovenly man; an unfortunate man who belonged in some other picture. His inner disturbance transformed, disfigured his face. And his weight had ballooned to the point where his suits no longer fit and he could not button his shirts at the top.
Once, trying to make the button work, trying to put himself together for a closing, Leonard thought he heard Scott whisper that grandpa’s belly was fat. He looked around the room and then trembled for several minutes, sitting on the edge of his bed and holding his stomach.
He came by the office once a week, not to work, or socialize-not, it seemed, for any reason that anyone could see. Otherwise, he stayed home and kept the blinds closed. On some hot Georgia days he left the air conditioning off. He told the cleaning people not to come back, and handed each of them three one-hundred-dollar bills. Leonard ate and drank and fell asleep on the couch in the den in front of the TV. Carter came by two or three times a week to reassure himself that Lenny was sane. He’d stay for an hour, tell Lenny to hang in there, go home, and call Nick Stevenson with his report.
The partners were profoundly distressed, as were the associates, paralegals, and office staff whose affection Leonard’s consistent kindness had earned over the years. One afternoon, Nicholas Stevenson, with Harvey Daniels in tow, strode into Leonard’s office overlooking I-285. He had been there for over an hour, quietly stinking of alcohol.
“Time’s up, Lenny.” Nicholas said. “Get yourself professional help. Go every day of the week if that’s what it takes. Take a leave of absence. Take as much time as you need. Harvey and I talked it over. Your share goes in the bank every month, whatever you decide. Spend some time in Paris or Rome. Hilton Head maybe, or Mississippi. Go sit in a cafe in Amsterdam. Fuck your brains out. But don’t keep doing what you’re doing. It’s killing you and it’s killing us, my friend.”
Leonard Martin took his leave of absence.
But he didn’t go to Biloxi, to the beach, or to Europe. And he didn’t go for help. He stayed in his house and kept drinking and eating. He screened his calls and returned very few. Barbara called him. She left messages. As quickly as he recognized her voice, he stopped the tape. He erased them all without listening. If not for her where would he be? The answer made him sick. Still, she called. And after the last few messages from Dahlonaga, he got Carter to buy him a phone without an answering machine. Eventually it stopped ringing.
One weekday morning in February, eight months after the death of his family, Leonard awoke on the couch in the den after a fitful night of sleep. He turned off the TV and stumbled into the kitchen to find there was nothing there. No soda or beer, no coffee, no crumbs or even sour milk. Eating was now his vocation, and Leonard favored junk: doughnuts, cookies, chocolate cake, greasy take-out chicken, ribs, cheeseburgers, fries, blizzard shakes, pizza. He’d been strikingly fat when he made his last closing. Now he was seriously obese. He got into his car and drove to a shabby diner on Alpharetta Highway. He hated eating in public but this place was almost always empty- for excellent good reason. Along the way he bought a New York Times from a vending box.
“Could you bring me some coffee please?” he asked, “and eggs and bacon, and ham, and toast… whatever you’ve got is fine.” He glanced at the headlines, skimmed the first section, turned to the sports, checked the hockey and basketball scores, didn’t recognize some of the teams: Wizards, Avalanche, Thrashers.
When he got his hands on a paper now, he always read the obituaries. Before he never looked at that page. But after, it seemed to matter. He started with McKinley James Houston, seventy-eight. After lengthy illness. Architect of some renown in England. Pronounced How -ston. Lester Shapiro, fifty-three. Heart attack last night at a charity dinner. Owned office buildings in New York City. Survived by his wife Sylvia, five children, three grandkids. Dr. Ganga Roy, forty-one. Noted research scientist/teacher. No survivors. Apparent suicide. Suicide. The word stopped his eye. He read the piece twice. Found by cleaning woman. Died by taking poison. Born in India. Colleagues praised her work at the Rockefeller Institute. Well-regarded at Albert Einstein College of Medicine. Victim of unsolved hate crime seven months earlier. Apartment burglarized and burned. Anti-terrorist slogans painted on walls. Leonard stirred his coffee till it was cold. Suicide.
Two days later Leonard squinted into the bright Georgia morning, and set a course for the end of his driveway. He picked up a batch of local papers lying there and opened his overstuffed mailbox. He hadn’t done that since… sometime last week? He brought the mail inside and tossed it all, unopened, onto a kitchen counter, knocking several other envelopes onto the floor. One of these caught his attention: a brown six-by-nine with a Postal Express label on it. In the upper left-hand corner, gracefully scripted in blue ink above a New York address, was a name he thought he recognized.
The envelope contained a single computer disc. A paisley-patterned notepad page fluttered out of it, to the floor. He picked it up. Across it were written the words “Forgive me,” and at the top Leonard read: “From the desk of Dr. Ganga Roy.”
St. John
