Rafael Yglesias - Fearless

“Sure you’re insecure,” Max agreed. “But that’s not why.” The fire seemed to die out — a warm breeze reached him from the water and it wasn’t polluted or stale. Its touch was gentle. “You’re angry. You want to impose yourself on everyone. You want them out of your fucking way. Why? Where are you going? What train are you late for?”

Brillstein turned off the extension at Twenty-third Street. That was an error, since Jeff’s apartment was on Eighth and Broadway and they could have continued down to Fourteenth before exiting the highway. Surely, with an ex-cabdriver’s knowledge, the lawyer knew that. Had Max messed him up with self-examination? Max wondered if that was why Brillstein had to be on edge: perhaps unless the lawyer was nervously alert, his skills deteriorated. “I dunno, I dunno, I dunno,” Brillstein said rapidly three times, with the haste and emotional conviction of an adorable children’s character. “This is sounding like a sixties conversation. Let’s drop it.”

“What’s wrong with a sixties conversation?” Max asked.

“I hated the sixties.”

They lurched on the streets. The city had left a repaving half-accomplished, which meant that they had to ride on a rough striated undersurface, vibrating their feet and teeth. They also had to swerve around manhole covers placed at the higher level of the now demolished paving. Driving over one would involve a hammering drop into the surrounding moat of underroad. Such a fall would probably destroy even Brillstein’s Volvo. “If you hated the sixties that means you supported the Vietnam War and never got laid,” Max said. The words were hummed out of him by the rumbling tires.

Brillstein smirked, not looking Max’s way, and swung them onto Seventh Avenue heading downtown. “That’s right,” he said in a singsong. “And I didn’t help destroy our educational system with open admissions and I didn’t give kids the idea that taking drugs is okay and I didn’t get AIDS and I—”

“—didn’t die trying to kill gooks either. College deferment and then what? High lottery number?”

“Fuck you,” Brillstein said in a sweet tone. He was back in the flow again, shoving his fenders in the way of other cars, daring them to choose: have an accident or let me go first.

“National Guard probably. You didn’t give up your career to stop people from dying and you didn’t risk your life fighting.”

“No one should have had to fight. We could have won the war in weeks—”

“Yeah!” Max’s heart was thumping. Why do you care? his head complained to him — it’s the dead past. “We lost the war,” he said sarcastically, “and now communism is overrunning the world!”

“Okay. Take it easy.” Brillstein chose Twelfth to go cross-town, a wise decision since Eighth or Tenth would be slower. “It’s been a tough day. All I wanted to say to you, all I wanted to emphasize is that Mrs. Gordon and her children’s future is at stake. You get the partnership insurance. You’re sitting pretty. I think you owe her anything that would improve her settlement discussions with the airline.”

Max opened the glove compartment and again the flashlight rolled out. He tossed bottle after bottle of pills onto the seat.

“What the fuck are you doing!” Brillstein yelled.

“I’m admiring how well you discourage me use of drugs.” Max rattled the bottle of Valium in the lawyer’s ear. “Your children will be impressed!”

“Those are my wife’s! They’re her pills.”

“Oh, I see. So it’s okay to marry drug addicts!”

“This is ridiculous! This is a ridiculous fucking conversation.”

“And the Percodan?” Max demanded, shaking the appropriate bottle. “Your wife is the one who’s passing kidney stones?”

“Jesus!” Brillstein steered the car curbside and stopped. He grabbed the bottle. “Don’t talk about kidney stones! You’ll jinx me.” He was sweating. “I feel like I’ve got one coming…all night and day since Nan Gordon called. I’m telling myself it’s psychosomatic.” Brillstein pointed out the window. “We’re here.”

Max was disheartened by the news. The lobby to Jeff’s building imposed itself on his vision and he realized how frightened he was to face Nan.

I’m alive and he’s dead . He felt cold in the hot smelly air.

Then, as clearly as though he were leaning forward from the backseat, Jeff talked in his ear. “ You’ve fucked us with Nutty Nick for good. A professional would have made that meeting .”

“She’s going to get money from American Express,” Max told his ghost.

“Well,” it was Brillstein who answered. He carefully replaced the bottles, studying each label. “This is expired,” he commented about one and put it aside. “Does Dramamine spoil?” He flashed a smile and then lowered his head to read another label. He mumbled, “The American Express insurance was something I wanted to bring up later with you.”

“You know about it?”

“Even though I’m not an aviation lawyer, the family asked me to look into things and I had all night and day…”He seemed to apologize with a shrug. Max didn’t know for what. “I’d better put the car in the garage and come up with you.” Brillstein steered them past the entrance to Jeff’s high rise. Through friends of his parents, Jeff had gotten a deal on a three-bedroom rental in one of Greenwich Village’s few tall modern residences. The cheap rent was Jeff’s excuse for living in a structure that ugly and out of character with its surroundings. The orange brick tower rose forty-four stories above the area’s Federal houses and nine-story loft buildings. The tall monster’s synthetic façade was pockmarked with cantilevered slabs that were supposed to be terraces. Each slab shadowed and boxed in the terrace below, lending them the inviting gloom of a cave. The building’s parking garage was in the subbasement. Brillstein turned into it. “You made the original plane reservations with your company’s American Express card?”

“Right.”

“And then Mr. Gordon changed the reservations?”

“When our meeting in LA was changed.”

“You gave him permission to act as your agent in changing the travel arrangements?”

Max remembered Jeff’s anger at the check-in counter when Max wanted to delay and go on a different flight. He also remembered Jeff’s surprise when Max included the credit card insurance in his running total of the benefits Nan and Debby would receive. No, Max whispered to himself. He couldn’t believe his partner was that much of a loser. “What is it? What did Jeff do?”

“Well, evidently Mr. Gordon got a different deal on the second reservations. He took a credit from American Express and paid in cash.”

“Jeff made a cheaper deal on the tickets and pocketed the difference?”

“Well, we don’t know that. He probably restored the money to the firm’s petty cash account or business checking account. Or intended to. It’s unfair to assume a petty theft. And it would have been petty. The refunded money was a couple hundred bucks.”

“Not to Nan. To Nan it’s a half a million dollars. Our wives are beneficiaries on the credit cards. That idiot!” Jeff haunted him all right. He was still a burden to be carried.

“I know,” Brillstein said, presumably referring to the information about who benefited. “That’s why I wanted to stress that what you say about the crash may be important.”

Max felt something he hadn’t since the explosion: irritation at the mosquito bite of the morally confused world. He had been free of it since the crash. Max hadn’t measured the relief of its absence until now as he felt the itch of its return. Why was this choice imposed on him? He was so near to freedom.