Eddie Joyce - Small Mercies

When he arrived in front of Gina, he clasped his hands together like an old-world maître d’ heralding the return of his favorite customer. She hadn’t noticed him weaving through the crowd or his arrival. Her gaze was fixed down at the floor. He took another step closer.

“Gina,” he said, almost breathless. “You look…”

She looked up at him, startled, and he could see the moist panic in her eyes.

“Peter, nice to see you,” she said, in the most anodyne way possible. Her right hand lifted like a crane and she tapped a man on the shoulder, someone who had been procuring drinks.

“Peter, this is David, my fiancé.”

An open hand swung aggressively toward Peter’s stomach. He shook it weakly.

“David Geithorn. I’ve heard a lot about you.”

“Peter Amendola, nice to meet you, David.”

His voice sounded like water dripping from a faucet.

“C’mon, Peter. Don’t sound sooo disappointed.”

“David,” Gina whispered.

He was shorter than Gina. His hair was already receding and a cluster of baby acne had decamped in the middle of his forehead. His glasses magnified his eyes, made it impossible to ignore the rage in them. He wasn’t at all what Peter expected. He’d pictured a tall, blond lacrosse player with washboard abs and rocks in his head. David was a nebbish.

“Well, I think we’re sitting at your table, Peter. Won’t that be fun?”

He stormed away, pulling Gina with him. Peter drained his flute, ordered a vodka tonic. Later, it would occur to him that he should have left right then.

* * *

Dinner was held in the grand room of the library, thirty odd tables scattered in haphazard fashion. Without the prospect of spending the night with Gina, the party reverted to what it always had been for Peter: a boring, self-congratulatory banquet, with frequent, long-winded paeans to the singular excellence of the firm of Lonigan Brown. On top of that, he had to contend with David’s incessant glaring from across the table and the drunken nattering of Jennifer Jansen, a thirteenth-year litigation associate who, despite repeated and pointed explanations to the contrary, still held out hope that one day she too would be made partner. He refilled his wineglass frequently and by the time Truman Peabody staggered to the lectern to give his annual report on the firm, replete with personalized commendations for partners who had done outstanding work in the past year, Peter was drunk and miserable and half hoping that David would stop glaring at him and just throw a punch already so he could kick the shit out of him.

Truman cleared his throat dramatically and launched into it.

“In the winter of 1894, two young men — James Lonigan and Lionel Brown…”

A low groan passed through the cavernous room. A flurry of hands reached for wine bottles around the tables. At least his table was tucked in the back, out of sight. Peter considered the uneaten piece of pink beef that sat on his plate. His mind turned to the countless affairs he attended growing up on Staten Island: CYO awards dinners, Little League banquets, Christmas lunches. Their combined cost was probably a fraction of the tab for this event. He dug his fork into the cold slab of beef and lifted it off the plate. He waved it at Gina across the table.

“Hey, Gina, at least at the Staaten, they gave you chicken francaise. Am I right?”

Gina stifled a giggle and David’s glare narrowed and his temples clicked. The rest of the table looked around in confusion. Peter dropped the beef back to his plate, took another long pull of wine. He excused himself and wandered off in search of the bathroom. When he got back to the table, David was absent and Truman had moved on to the individual citation portion of his speech. He tried to catch Gina’s attention, but she wouldn’t look at him.

A wave of applause went up as someone from a nearby table rose to acknowledge Truman’s laudation.

“Gina,” Peter whispered low across the table. Her eyes pivoted to him briefly, her chin trembling as she shook her head. Another partner rose to accept his round of weak clapping.

“Gina.”

Peter scanned the nearby area. No sign of David. Jennifer was snoring lightly beside him, waking only to join the intermittent applause. The other people at the table — two retired partners and their spouses — were either sleeping or riveted to Truman’s speech. Peter scurried around the table and slid into David’s empty seat.

“Gina, what happened? What’s going on?”

“I don’t know, Peter. I don’t know.”

“Did David leave?”

A final burst of applause drowned out her answer. People stood to clap this time, a standing ovation signifying that the speech was over. A high-pitched drone echoed through the room as Truman brushed against the microphone while exiting the lectern.

“Did David leave, Gina?”

The rest of their table was rousing. The party wasn’t over, but a large chunk of people started heading for the coat check. The associates in attendance would flee for hipper quarters to finish their night; the tippling partners would continue their debauchery in a dark-paneled bar at a private club. Peter put his hand on Gina’s knee.

“Gina.”

“Oh, shit,” she said and stood. “What the fuck is he doing?”

Peter rose, confused. He heard a noise all around him, a finger tapping on a microphone. He followed Gina’s gaze to the front of the room. David’s milky face lingered above the lectern, the picture of calm determination.

“Ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen.” The microphone squealed in protest and two hundred heads turned in confusion. Peter looked around. A few people had leaked into the vestibule, but the mass of the party was still standing there, dumbfounded. Terror flooded through him. He wanted to run, but his legs were stone.

“Sorry, a little feedback.” David paused, looked down at the floor, seemed uncertain for a second, and Peter felt the tiniest flicker of hope. Then David looked up, his nerve gathered.

“I wanted to make one special addition to the list of noteworthy accomplishments this year. I wanted to single out Peter Amendola, litigation partner, for repeatedly fucking my fiancée, Regina Giordano. Well done, Peter.”

He pointed to their table, laid the microphone on the lectern, and started clapping. Two hundred heads swiveled in Peter’s direction. He could already sense David’s revelation being condensed into tiny arrows — texts, e-mails, even the quaint old-fashioned phone call — and fired in Lindsay’s direction. No chance one wouldn’t find its mark.

He lurched backward, put a hand on his chair, and vomited the better part of two bottles of red wine onto the marble floor.

* * *

After Peter abandons the pay phone, he wanders out to the Promenade and leans against the railing. At least the whole thing didn’t hit YouTube, didn’t go viral. No, at least that didn’t happen. Small mercies.

He looks over at Manhattan, imagines the quiet lapping of the harbor’s black water against its bulk. It’s still there, unconquered, unbowed. A sliver of rock between two rivers.

We owe the dead our sins.

He was downtown when it happened, at one of the Wall Street firms that never made the leap to midtown. A joint defense meeting. He can’t even remember which case. Some associate wandered into the conference room, vague on details, a small plane had crashed into one of the towers.

He was outside in the street when the second plane hit. When he knew. When everyone knew. His first thought was Franky. He was worried about Franky, not Bobby. Franky with the new job that he’d pulled strings to get. The mailroom job at a trading firm in one of the towers.

What floor, Peter? What floor?