Andrew Gross: Everything to Lose

I waved thanks and hurried back up the slope, feeling like hell that I’d taken advantage of such a nice man.

On the street, a car going in the other direction slowed to see what was going on. I averted my face and waved him on like everything was okay.

Suddenly I heard the wail of a siren from behind. I turned and saw flashing red and blue lights through the trees, heading my way. Shit. I hurried to my car, climbed in quickly, and started it up. For a last second I questioned whether I should stay. Admit what I’d done now. Anyone might have been tempted. Probably nothing would even come of it.

I heard myself say inside that I could always follow it up. I could track it and see if the money was ever reported missing. And if it did end up rightfully belonging to the guy, I could send some kind of note, anonymously, to his family, about where it could be found. They’d be happy to get it back. No one would even have to know what happened. Or care, ultimately.

Right?

The siren grew louder.

I pulled away just as the police car came around the bend. I accelerated and looked back at it in the rearview mirror as the police car slowed.

A hundred yards ahead, I passed a poster on an electrical pole. An election poster that hadn’t been taken down. BRENNAN FOR CONGRESS. In bold underneath his photo, COMMITMENT. INTEGRITY.

If I ever needed to come back, I could use it as a marker.

This time, Slick won out.

Jim and Janice lived in a colonial on a couple of acres with a pond in back.

Janice’s house actually, whose CFO ex-husband had come through for her slightly more supportively than mine had for me.

Clearly, Janice had gone in the opposite direction when it came to Jim, who was, at heart, a big-shouldered, overgrown teenager. The truth is, there’s not much not to like about him: he’s always happy, usually finds the fun in life; always the last one to ever figure out that anything’s actually gone wrong. Other than maybe he’s way more of a dreamer than he is a provider, and a little light on the scale when it comes to family responsibility.

I met him when he’d just turned a couple of torn-down sixties ranches into brick and glass McMansions at the height of the housing boom. He took me sailing to Nantucket and up the coast of Maine on his motorcycle, things I’d never done in my life, having grown up in the Bronx and majored in cultural anthropology at NYU. He was kind of a furry brown bear to me; that’s even what I called him—Bear. No one I knew ever understood the match.

There was nothing particularly acrimonious about our split. We just grew apart. We still remained friendly mostly. I didn’t even mind that as his business declined, the alimony and child support payments gradually petered out. It was just Jim being Jim, in my view, until he got back on his feet. The thing that was hard to swallow was how he seemed to enjoy being a dad to Janice’s boys a lot more than he did to Brandon, who tried hard when it came to sports, but let’s be honest, we were talking a different league. Janice’s kids played squash and did moguls. At Milton Farms, the varsity basketball team was co-ed.

Not to mention, I didn’t come with a couple of mil in the stock portfolio … And her kids didn’t beat their heads against the wall until they turned blue when you took away their Xbox.

I pulled into the driveway and noticed the gleaming blue new Carrera parked in front of the garage. Jim’s old Targa was like a relic compared to it. I parked, still reeling a bit from what had just happened on the road. Jim must have heard me drive up because he met me at the door on the wide front porch with his arms wide, as if I was bringing the beer to a Super Bowl party. “Hey , Hil …” He shot me that walruslike, everything’s-cool-here smile through his thick brown mustache. “You’re sure looking nice.”

“Thanks.” He put a hand on my arm, and we stood there awkwardly before he leaned in and gave me a kiss. “Thanks for letting me come by.”

“Come on in.” He was in painter’s pants and beat up Cole Haans. He looked like he’d added an extra ten pounds. “You sounded anxious. The boys are upstairs doing homework. Pinot …?”

I would have loved a glass of wine. Shit, a couple of them would have gone down smoothly about now. My heart still hadn’t calmed a beat. “No, it’s okay,” I said. “Thanks.” I didn’t want to be any more relaxed than I had to be.

“Come on in the study.” He shuffled through the foyer that had a perfectly polished Biedermeier table and antique candelabra, framed pictures of the boys and Janice.

Who suddenly appeared as if on cue from the kitchen. Her blond hair in a short ponytail, in a form-fitting fuchsia lululemon yoga outfit, holding one of the boys’ crested Brunswick jackets. “Hil …”

“Hi, Janice. Been a while.”

“It has.” She came over and gave me a kiss. “Sorry the place looks like it does …” I noticed a couple of suitcases at the bottom of the stairs. “The kids are on break Friday if we can get through exams and squash practice, and then we’re headed out to Vail.” She blew out a weary breath and wiped her brow as if she’d been shoveling the driveway. “Crazy, right?”

Other than the suitcases, the place looked like it was being photographed for Architectural Digest in the morning. And it was nice of her to frame so vividly how differently our lives had vectored. Brandon and I had gone to Epcot in Orlando two springs ago.

“Yeah, crazy.”

“Well, I’ll let you two go over whatever it is you’re here to discuss …” As if she had no clue in the world about what that might be or why I would be here. “How’s Brandon, by the way?”

“He’s actually doing great, Janice. Thanks. He’s almost caught up to grade level in math and you ought to see what he’s drawing these days. The place has really had such an amazing effect.”

“That’s so inspiring. We’ll have to have him for a weekend when we get back.”

“I know he’d love that,” I said. Actually he’d hate that. He always felt like an outsider, unable to compete with her boys at almost anything. And over the past two years, those invitations had become fewer and fewer, always revolving around the boys’ sports practices and family trips. Jim rarely even showed up at school on parents’ day anymore.

Janice held up the jacket and sighed. “Doesn’t anyone ever hang things up around here … Always nice to see you, Hil. Let’s be in touch.”

“C’mon,” Jim, said, mercifully pointing toward the study, “let’s go in here.”

We went down a step into the sunken wood-paneled room with a brass-hearth fireplace that looked like something out of a Martha Stewart catalogue. The wall with the windows was painted a textured green, with two brass sconces bracketing each window. In between them hung a painting of a guy in an ornate Chinese robe with a Fu Manchu mustache down to his waist.

“Janice’s side of the family?” I asked. Truth was, I couldn’t find a single trace of Jim in the entire house. Except maybe in the back, in the McMansion of a play shed he had built, where I knew they kept a couple of small ATVs for the boys to race around the pond, the lacrosse nets and sticks, the pool rafts.

“Distant cousin.” He chuckled. “You never met?”

“Somehow, no … Of course we didn’t get invited to the wedding …”

“C’mon, Hil, you didn’t drive all the way up here to take shots at me. Anyway, you sounded worried on the phone.” He leaned forward, his beefy forearms on his knees. “You want to tell me what’s up?”

“Listen, Jim, something’s happened. I need to go over a few things with you.”