Joshua Ferris - The Unnamed

“I must be crazy,” he said.

“Crazy?”

“I’m the only one, Jane. No one else on record. That’s crazy.”

“You’re not crazy,” she said. “You’re sick.”

“Yeah, sick in the head.”

He was a logical man who believed, as the good lawyer, in the power of precedent. Yet there was no precedent for what he suffered, and no proof of what qualified as a disease among the physicians and clinical investigators: a toxin, a pathogen, a genetic disorder. No evidence of any physical cause. No evidence, no precedent — and the experts could give no positive testimony. That left only the mind.

“I wish you would call Dr. Bagdasarian,” she said.

He didn’t reply, and they reached the house in silence. She took the driveway slowly as the garage door pulled up. She put the car in park and opened the door. She turned to him before stepping out. He stared through the windshield. Tears fell down his face into his day’s growth of beard.

“Oh, banana,” she said.

She turned in her seat and placed a hand on his chest. She felt his staccato breathing, the resistance as he inhaled to letting himself go further than he already had. He didn’t like to cry. He was fighting it the way a boy fights sleep, the mind pitted against the body and proving weaker. He cried so seldom that tears instinctively sprung to her eyes, too, the way they had when she was a girl and sympathy was as natural as breathing.

That night in bed she made him an offer. She would dress according to the weather, follow him as he walked, and watch over him as he slept. To make it possible she was going to quit her job. How could she be at work with any peace of mind when he might be anywhere at any moment, lost in the city and scared as a child?

“I know you won’t go back in the cuffs,” she said. “So the only solution is for me to quit.”

“I don’t want you to quit,” he said.

She had been able to take care of him when he required cuffing to the bed only because she wasn’t working. Then — poof! It disappeared. Her relief was enormous. She looked back on those barren days in the bedroom with a hazy feeling of house arrest. Once or twice she drove Becka to her violin lesson after too much wine. But her efforts had been so consuming that his life, his sickness, had in many ways become her own, and until she started selling real estate, she was at sea.

“We don’t need the money,” she said.

“But you enjoy your work. You’ve made a life for yourself these past couple of years.”

“You’ll find this hard to believe,” she said, “but you and Becka, you are my life.”

He was quiet in the dark. A peeled, flat moon cast some light through the bedroom’s open windows, just enough to make their breath visible. He was on top of the bed; she huddled beneath the covers. “Why would I find that hard to believe?”

“Because your life is your work.”

“Is that what you think?”

There was silence. “Listen to me,” she said. “You need someone to watch over you. You’re going farther away than ever before.”

She had no idea, no idea , how badly he wanted to consent. He was scared. He wanted someone to safeguard him.

“It’s too much to ask,” he said. “I don’t want it to be like last time when I recover and go back to work and you get depressed.”

“I wasn’t depressed,” she said. “I just had a hard time finding my old self again.”

“It’s too much to ask,” he repeated.

And she was silent then because she was relieved.

Mike Kronish appeared in Tim’s doorway. Even from that distance the man seemed to hover. Proximity to him felt like sudden contact with a grizzly bear risen up on its hind legs. His broad suited figure was an American corn-fed miracle. He made his own weather in hallways and conference rooms and was legend for screwing paralegals.

Kronish was the managing partner of the litigation department, a five-year position to which he’d been elected. He assigned new business to the other partners, set policy for the department, and ran the caucuses and litigation committees. He also served internally as the voice of the firm. There were no official hierarchies among partners at Troyer, Barr, but the managing partner had certain political obligations that involved keeping important matters under control. “Knock knock,” he said.

“Hey hey,” said Tim.

Kronish came in and sat across from him. A delayed tide of aftershave, masking any hint of flaw, floated over the desk. “So let me just come right out with it,” said Kronish. “R.H. called. He’s unhappy.”

“He called you?”

“You missed a meeting with him yesterday.”

“No, no,” said Tim. “I talked with Peter. Peter should have met with him. Where the fuck was Peter?”

“Tell me, Tim.”

“What?”

“Who’s the partner on the case? Is Peter the partner?”

“And whose case is it, Mike? If I want Peter to take the meeting.”

“Your case, your case. But when I get a call — me — from the client.”

“Then if it’s my case, I take the meeting or I tell Peter to take the meeting.”

Kronish pinched his nose twice quickly and then resettled his hand on his folded leg. He sat back in the chair. A moment passed.

Kronish was famous inside the firm for once having billed a twenty-seven-hour day. This was possible only if you plied the time zones. Kronish worked twenty-four hours straight and then boarded a plane for Los Angeles, where he continued working on West Coast time. When he filled out his time sheets later that week, he rightfully attributed more hours to that day than technically possible. This made Tim want to leap across the desk and eat his lucky, healthy heart. “Fucking guy needs a babysitter,” he said, breaking the silence.

“Fucking guy needs an acquittal,” said Kronish.

“Which is my entire fucking point as to why I wasn’t in that meeting. Why am I working this hard? And it wasn’t a meeting, it was a hand-holding. Look, Mike, butt out, with due respect. I can handle my client.”

“You know all he brings in on the corporate side.”

“I need reminding?”

“So you skipped the meeting to work the case?”

“Butt the fuck out, Mike.”

There was a momentary stare-down between the two men. Then Kronish’s eyes wandered. Tim followed them over to the wall, where the backpack leaned. “What’s with that?”

“What?”

Kronish gestured with his chin. “The backpack.”

“What, it’s a backpack.”

“Have I seen you walking the halls with that?”

For a moment he thought, I’ll just come clean. I’ll show Mike The New England Journal of Medicine article and I’ll detail the frustration of fighting the label of crazy and I’ll say, ultimately, Mike, they don’t know if it’s a medical condition or a psychiatric disorder. I’ll be honest, and Mike will respond in kind with a show of sympathy he’s never demonstrated because we are both human beings slated to fall ill and die. “All right, all right,” he said. “Look.” He was quiet, letting the moment build. “We’ve had some bad news.”

“Who’s ‘we’?”

He took a deep breath. “Jane’s cancer’s come back.”

Kronish’s demeanor changed. He leaned forward in the chair and steepled his hands as if to pray, never letting his eyes stray from Tim’s. Soon he wore a duly woeful and theatrical frown. “Shit,” he said.

“Yeah.”

“That is bad news.”

They sat in respectful silence.

“Anything the firm can do?”

That’s what he wanted to hear. He let the pause linger. “Just let me work my case.”

Kronish put up his hands. “Your case,” he said.