David Duffy - In for a Ruble

“Ask your secretary if this is another meeting you turned down.”

He started to respond, thought better, and picked up the phone.

She had no memory of Lindley & Hill either. That was interesting. I would have given long odds on Stern receiving a visit.

“It’s not my business,” I said, “but your wife was in bad shape when I left her this morning. She’d put away half a bottle before lunchtime.”

“I suppose you blame that on me.”

“I’m not assigning blame,” I said untruthfully as I got prepared to be thrown out. “I’m telling you what I saw.”

He stood and returned to the window. He had a view westward across Midtown and north to the Upper East Side.

“You’re right,” he said turning back to face me, “about not your business. But I don’t need any more enemies out there than I already have. I can’t get Sebastian or anyone else in the lunatic asylum they call a family to listen. You seem to care—you brought up Marianna and her drinking. Maybe they’ll listen to you.”

I should have kept my mouth shut and left. I’d already learned what I could.

“I’m not going to explain or apologize,” he said. “The credit card charges were stupid, I’ll admit that. And I’ll reimburse the company for all of them. But the women…

“My marriage has been an empty shell for years. Not my doing. I worked hard to get Marianna to look at the cause, to get help, to hold things together—if only for the kids’ sake. I got no goddamned help from her family. When all that failed, I tried to bring it to some kind of rational end. I failed at that too. So, yes, in the last couple of years, I have sought… call it what you want—solace, companionship, just plain sex—I don’t care. I’m not proud, I’m not particularly sorry either.”

There are at least two sides to every story—it always pays to remember that. The truth usually lies somewhere in between. It can be difficult to pin down the exact point on the continuum, and often it doesn’t matter. This time, something kicked my curiosity into gear.

“What happened, if you don’t mind my asking?”

He shook his head. “I wish I knew. It wasn’t an all-of-a-sudden thing. I was probably slow to realize we had a problem. I was traveling even more in those days, trying to get the company off the ground. Strictly solo, by the way.”

I nodded. He was being truthful, I believed him.

“Anyway, it finally dawned on me that we were growing apart—all of us, Marianna, me, the boys—and about the same time that we were spending a lot of money on booze. I cut back on my schedule, spent more time at home. That just seemed to make it worse—put Marianna on edge. She was drinking more than was good for her. I tried to talk about it. She wouldn’t listen. She didn’t want to face it. I tried to get Sebastian and the others to help. He made an attempt at least, but she kept him at arm’s length. She’s good at that. The others? To be honest, they were no help at all.”

“How long ago was this?”

He looked out the window for a moment.

“Two years, give or take—when I woke up to something happening, I mean. If I’m honest, I’d say the drift started two years before that.”

Right about the time Daria Leitz shot herself.

He said, “It was two years ago when I made my big mistake. I was in Chicago, it had been a bad day, a bad trip, I got to talking to a pretty woman at the hotel, we had dinner, one thing led to another and… I saw her a few more times, and she assumed things were more serious than they were. When I tried to explain, she threatened to call my wife. She knew her name and number—she’d done her research. I didn’t believe she’d follow through, but I was wrong. Marianna flew off the handle. We had a horrendous fight, I kept telling her to quiet down, but she just kept screaming. No way the kids didn’t hear. That’s when I decided it was over. I was wrong about that too. You know that expression, ‘Takes two to tango’?”

I nodded.

“Also takes two to break up. She refuses to discuss it. But every time I show up in Bedford, she berates me with language no one should have to listen to. Certainly not children. So I’ve taken to staying in the city. I can’t go forward, can’t go back. I’m at my wits’ end, I don’t mind telling you.”

“That why you cut off the money?”

“She told you that?”

I shook my head.

“Then how…?”

“I told you, I know lots of things.”

“I don’t want to hurt her. But it’s the only way I can think of to get her to face reality.”

The reality I’d witnessed was downgrading from Rémy to Presidente.

“Tell me one thing,” I said. “These so-called lawyers who went to see your wife—if they asked her to help with Leitz’s computers, if they offered her money, do you think she’d go along—in her current state, I mean?”

He came back to the desk and sat down, head in hands. When he raised his eyes, I could see the emotional exhaustion they held. That’s tough to fake. He’d been telling his story straight.

“I wish… I wish I could say no, no way. But these days, to be honest, I have no goddamned idea.”

It was 2:30 P.M. when I put the Potemkin back in the garage. I stopped at a gourmet deli a block from the office and bought a designer smoked salmon sandwich. They were pushing a new brand of gelato, one of whose flavors was tiramisu, so I took a small container of that too. Upstairs, I put a spoonful in Pig Pen’s bowl.

“Try this. Frozen tiramisu.”

Pig Pen took a long, skeptical look before sticking his beak into the bowl.

“No tiramisu,” he announced.

“It’s gelato,” I said. “Tiramisu flavor.”

“No tiramisu. Gigolo.”

“Not gigolo. Gelato. Italian ice cream.”

“Gigolo. Russky bull.” He retreated to the backmost perch, where he goes when he’s pissed off, and gave me his hostile, one-eyed stare.

Foos was in his office, the last bites of a cheeseburger and fries on his desk. My designer salmon seemed less appetizing.

“I bought Pig Pen some gelato. He thinks I tried to trick him with Russian tiramisu.”

“Pig Pen has a very discerning palate.”

I doubt parrots have palates, but there was no point arguing. I opened my sandwich. Foos eyed it with bemusement. “Diet?”

“You are what you eat.”

“Personally, I never aspired to be a fish.”

“I spent the morning with Marianna Stern, Jenny Leitz, and Jonathan Stern. That family’s got nothing but trouble.”

“What did Jenny have to say?”

“She told me about the ALS.”

“Life’s not fair. She’s way too nice a person for that.”

“Agree. You didn’t think it worth mentioning?”

“She asked me not to talk about it.”

And that, of course, for Foos, was the end of it.

“What do you know about Marianna and Stern?”

“Not much. Only met them once or twice.”

“Their marriage is all washed up, she’s a lush and won’t consider divorce, he’s chasing other women.”

“Shit happens.”

“You didn’t know?”

“Nope.”

“You are aware that Andras is a computer whiz?”

“Kid’s pretty swift. I wrote him a couple of college recommendations.”

“You didn’t think that worth mentioning?”

“He’s Leitz’s son.”

“You’re the one who pointed out that the strange computer activity corresponded with school vacations.”

“Never thought about it that way.”

Mathematicians and psychology. There’s just a disconnect.

“You know anything about a woman named Alyona Lishina?”

“She’s a knockout.”

Knockouts were something he had experience with. “You’ve met her?”