Siegel, James - Derailed

The silence was loud enough to split eardrums.

Then: “She likes to do her homework herself,” Deanna said. Ending it. And finally, mercifully, insinuating herself between Vasquez’s arm and Anna’s head, physically and decisively ushering our daughter out of harm’s way.

When Anna padded out of the living room, she glanced back at me with an expression that seemed to admonish me. Apparently, her face said, she’d been looking to the wrong parent for help.

I heard her footsteps going up the stairs at double speed.

Quiet again. Then:

“So . . . ?” Deanna said, clearing her throat. “Maybe you want to think about this, honey?” Apparently this was one hired help she wasn’t going to befriend after all.

“I wouldn’t take too long,” Vasquez said, still smiling. “You don’t want to take chances with your family’s safety, right?”

I felt something acidic deep in my guts, something ice cold and broiling hot at the same time. I thought I might need to throw up.

“No,” I said. “I’ll get back to you soon.”

“Okay, you get back to me, then.”

“Yes.”

“Why don’t you see Raul out,” Deanna said, evidently eager to get him out of the house.

So I walked him to the front door, where Vasquez turned and put his hand out, just as you’d expect from your friendly neighborhood chimney cleaner.

“Know what they taught us in the army, Charles?” he whispered. “Before I got kicked out?”

“What?”

Vasquez showed me.

Leaving one hand exactly where it was, proffered in friendship, but using the other one to grasp my testicles. Crushing them in his fingers.

My knees buckled.

“Grab ’em by the balls. Their hearts and minds will follow.”

I tried to say something but couldn’t. I wanted to cry out but couldn’t. Deanna was not twenty feet behind me and completely oblivious to the excruciating pain radiating down my legs and threatening to make me scream.

“I want the money, Charles.”

I felt my eyes begin to water. “I’ll . . .”

“ What? Can’t hear you. . . .”

“ I’ll . . .”

“ I’ll never hang up on you again? That's cool, apology accepted. I want the fucking money.”

“I can’t breathe. . . .”

“A hundred thousand dollars, okay?”

“I. . .”

“What?”

“Plea . . .”

“A hundred thousand and I give you your balls back.”

“I. . .pl. . .”

And then he did.

He did give them back. At least temporarily. He opened his fingers, and I slumped against the doorjamb.

“Honey,” Deanna said, “can you bring the recycling bin out to the curb?”

TWENTY

I was looking over the bid for the aspirin job.

Think of this as a kind of avoidance therapy. If I was looking over the bid for the aspirin job, I couldn’t be asking myself

What was I going to do? How was I going to survive this?

So that’s what I was doing.

Meticulously going over that aspirin bid; something was wrong with it, but I didn’t know what. What was wrong with it?

This avoidance strategy was only partially successful.

In the middle of scanning down a line of neatly typed-in figures, I saw Vasquez with his hand on my daughter’s head.

If he didn’t get one hundred thousand dollars, he would be coming back.

I thought about telling Deanna.

But as much as I tried to say, She will forgive me, she will. As much as I told myself that Deanna loved me, and wouldn’t that love survive an indiscretion? As many times as I postulated the theory that every marriage has its ups and downs and that okay, this down might be subterranean, but wouldn’t it naturally be followed, after much anguish and restitution, by another upswing? As much as I rationalized, ruminated, debated, and what have you — I couldn’t quite convince myself that I could for one minute withstand that look in Deanna’s eyes. The one that would inexorably come immediately after she found out what I’d been up to.

I’d seen that look before. I’d seen it the morning they’d diagnosed Anna in the emergency room. The look of being utterly and hopelessly betrayed. I’d had to stare it full in the face as the news slowly sank in and she’d fastened on to me like a swimmer being pulled off by an undertow.

I didn’t think I could bear to see it again.

Back to the sheet in front of me. It listed every expense associated with the commercial.

Director’s fee, for instance. Fifteen thousand dollars day rate. Which was about average for a B director, A directors being somewhere up at twenty or twenty-five. Then there was set construction. Forty-five thousand — pretty much the going rate for one suburban kitchen on a New York stage set.

All these thousand dollars reminding me of the thousands I myself didn’t have. Why was I looking at this estimate, anyway? There was something wrong with it. What, exactly? I didn’t know.

There was editing. Film-to-tape transfer. Color correction. Voice-over costs. And there was music. Yes, T&D Music House; that was the name all right. Forty-five thousand dollars. Full orchestra, studio record, mix. Seemed okay.

I called David Frankel.

“Yep,” David answered.

“It’s Charles.”

“I know. It says your extension on my phone.”

“Right. I’ve been trying to call the music house, but I can’t seem to find the number.”

“ What music house?”

“T and D Music.”

“Oh. What are you calling them for?”

“What am I calling them for? I wanted to talk to them about the spot.”

“Why don’t you talk to me about the spot. I’m the producer of the spot.”

“I’ve never heard of T and D Music,” I said.

“You’ve never heard of T and D Music.”

“No.”

“Why are we having this conversation, exactly?” David sighed. “Did you talk to Tom?”

“You mean ever?”

“Look, what do you want the music to be? Just tell me.”

“I’d rather talk to the scorer.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because I want to convey my feelings directly.”

“Okay, fine.”

“Okay, fine, what? ”

“Convey your feelings directly. Go ahead.”

“I need their number. ”

Another sigh now, the kind of sigh that said he was dealing with an idiot here, a complete and utter moron.

“I’ll get back to you on that,” David said.

I was going to ask why David needed to get back to me since all I was asking for was a number. I was going to ask him why he was acting as if I were brain-damaged. I was going to remind him that a producer’s job was to produce, and sometimes that meant producing something as simple as a phone number.

But David hung up.

It was only then, as I heard that familiar question whispering in my ear again — What are you going to do, huh, Charles? — that I realized I was a little brain-damaged after all. That I’d been a little slow on the uptake here.

T&D Music House.

Tom and David.

Tom and David Music House. Of course.

I followed Winston for five or six blocks in subzero temperature.

Winston smoked a cigarette. Winston window-shopped — a Giuliani-ized video store — once plastered with triple-X-rated posters promising the raptures of the flesh, now plastered with kung fu posters promising the pulverizing of it. Winston leered at two teenage girls in miniskirts and woolen leggings.

I hadn’t intended to follow Winston. What I’d intended to do was walk right up to him at closing time and ask him if he wanted to have a beer with me. But I’d felt strangely reticent about doing it.