Siegel, James - Derailed

Charles laughed. And thought how that was something they used to do a lot of. The laughing Schines. And he looked at his wife and thought, Yes, she’s still beautiful.

Dirty blond hair — with a little help from Clairol, maybe — tousled and curly and barely constrained by a white elastic headband; dark brown eyes that never looked at him without at least a modicum of love. Only there were tired lines radiating out from the corners of those eyes, as if tears had cut actual tracks into the surface of her skin. Like those lines crisscrossing NASA photographs of Mars — dry riverbeds, the astronomers explain, where torrents of water once surged across the now dead landscape. Which is sometimes the way he thought about Deanna — all cried out.

After dinner they both went upstairs. Charles attempted to help Anna with her eighth-grade social homework—the separation of church and state, something she was trying to do with MTV tuned to the volume of excruciating.

“What steps did the United States take to separate church and state?” Charles said, only he mouthed the words so that maybe Anna would get the point — that there should be a separation of homework and TV.

She refused to take the hint. When he finally stood in front of the television so she’d stop sneaking peeks at Britney or Mandy or Christina and concentrate on the business at hand, she told him to move.

“Sure,” he said. And jerked his arms and legs in a reasonable facsimile of the funky chicken. See, I’m moving.

At least that elicited a smile, no small accomplishment from a thirteen-year-old daughter whose general demeanor ranged from sullen to dour. Then again, she had good cause.

When he finished helping her, he gave her a kiss on the top of her head and she grunted something that sounded like Good night or Get lost.

Then he entered his bedroom, where Deanna was lying under the covers and pretending to sleep.

The next morning he ran into Eliot by the elevators.

“Can I ask you something?” Charles said.

“Sure.”

“Did you know they were coming in to ask me off the business?”

“I thought they came in to complain about the advertising. Asking you off the business was how they registered the seriousness of their complaint.”

“I just wondered if you knew it was coming.”

“Why?”

“Why?”

“Why do you want to know if I knew it was coming? What’s the difference, Charles? It was coming.”

When the elevator doors opened, Mo was standing there with two legal pads and the new head creative on the business.

“Going down?” she said.

SIX

Lucinda,” he said. Or yelped.

That’s what it sounded like to him — the noise a dog makes when its tail is stepped on.

She was back on the train.

He hadn’t seen her when he sat down; he’d opened his paper and immediately burrowed into the land of the Giants: “Coach Fassel lamented the lack of pressure by his front four this past Sunday. . . .”

Then that black pump, the stiletto heel like a dagger aimed at his heart, as he looked up and bared his chest for the kill.

“Lucinda . . .”

A second later, that perfect face edging out into the aisle to peer at him, eyes sheathed in black-rimmed spectacles — she hadn’t worn glasses before, had she — followed by a full-wattage smile. No, more like one of those soft-glow bulbs, the kind of light that takes the edge off and makes everything look better than it actually is.

And she said: “Hi.” Such a sweet “hi,” too, as genuine sounding as they come, a woman who seemed glad to see him. Even though she was four rows and three days away from their scheduled assignation.

“Why don’t you come over here,” she whispered.

Yes, why not.

When he reached her, Lucinda pulled her impossibly long legs off to the side to let him pass.

“Just in time,” she said. “I was ready to call the police and report the nine dollars stolen.”

He smiled. “I looked all over for you the other day.”

“I’ll bet,” she said.

“No, really, I did.”

“I was kidding, Charles.”

“So was I,” he lied.

“So,” she said, hand out, impeccably manicured fingernails polished bloodred, “pay up.”

“Sure.” He reached for his wallet, opening it up to a picture of Anna and hiding it immediately, as if it were an admonishment he didn’t wish to hear. He placed a crisp ten-dollar bill in her hand, the tips of his fingers grazing her flesh, which felt slightly moist and hot.

“Your daughter?” she said.

He blushed, was sure he blushed, even as he answered, “Yep.”

“How old?”

“Too old.” The wise - guy - ish you - wouldn’t - believe - the - travails - of - fatherhood tone. The good-natured I love her and all, but I wouldn’t mind wringing her neck on occasion.

“ Tell me about it.”

So she had children, too. Of course she did.

“Daughters?” he asked.

“One.”

“All right, I showed you mine, now you show me yours.”

She laughed. Score one for Charles, the cutup. Then she reached into her bag, one of those cavernous things you could’ve gone camping with if it wasn’t made of such obviously expensive leather. She fished out her wallet and flipped it open for him.

A very photogenic little girl of about five, blond hair flying in all directions, caught in midair on a playground swing somewhere in the country, maybe. Freckle faced, knobby kneed, and sweet smiled.

“She’s adorable,” he said, and meant it.

“Thanks. I forget sometimes.” Mimicking his tone of parental weariness. “Yours looked lovely, too — what I could see of her.”

“An angel,” he said, then immediately regretted his choice of words.

The conductor asked them for their tickets. Charles was tempted to ask him if he remembered the woman now. After all, he was doing everything possible to sneak peeks at her legs.

“Here,” she said to Charles after the conductor managed to pull himself away and move on. She’d put a dollar bill in his hand.

“I thought I owed you interest,” he said.

“I’ll let you slide. This time.”

He wondered about this time .

“I didn’t remember you with glasses,” he said.

“Getting new contacts,” she said.

“Oh. You look great in them, by the way.”

“You think?”

“Yeah.”

“Not too serious for you.”

“I like serious.”

“Why’s that?”

“Why do I like serious?”

“Yes, Charles. Why do you like serious?”

“Seriously . . . I don’t know.”

She smiled. “You’re kind of funny, aren’t you?”

“I try.”

They were passing Rockville Centre, the movie theater where he often took Deanna plainly visible from the train car. And for one surreal moment, he imagined he was looking out on his past life. That he was firmly ensconced in this new universe of his—snug as a bug in Charlesville. Just Lucinda and him, newly married and on their way to work. Still chitchatting about their recent honeymoon — where had they gone, exactly? Kaui — yes, two weeks at the posh Kaui Hilton. Already starting to think about having kids, too — after all, they weren’t getting any younger, were they? One of each, they’d decided, though it didn’t really matter. As long as they were, of course, healthy. . . .

“Busy day today?” she asked him.

“Busy? Sure.” Busy fending off disgruntled clients looking for his head and bosses looking to betray him. And for a second, he felt like telling her exactly what had been going on there and finding a nice soft spot on her shoulder to cry on.