Siegel, James - Derailed

“Me too.”

“What?”

“It’s going to be a busy day for me, too.”

“I imagine you’re getting a lot of angry calls these days.”

“Well, if you consider death threats angry.”

Charles smiled. “You’re kind of funny, too.”

“You think?”

“Yes. Clients must have loved you when times were good.”

“Are you kidding? Then you weren’t making them enough money. They all had a cousin or brother-in-law or grandmother whose stock split sixty-four times. Why couldn’t I sell them one of those? ”

“Well, admit it. It was kind of like throwing darts.”

“Sure. Now they’re throwing them at me.”

He thought he detected the slightest accent. What, though?

“Were you born in New York?” he asked her.

“No, Texas. I was an army brat,” she said. “I grew up everywhere and nowhere.”

“That must have been tough.” The usual platitude one was supposed to offer at that kind of statement, he guessed.

“Well, your best friend changed identity just about every six months. On the other hand, it was kind of neat because you changed identity, too, if you wanted to. If you screwed up in Amarillo, they didn’t have to know about it in Sarasota. You were able to start clean.”

“I can see the benefit of that,” Charles said. The man across from them was pretending to read the paper, but what he was actually doing was the very same thing the conductor had done. That is, taking every opportunity to stare at Lucinda’s thighs. Charles felt a certain pride of ownership — even if ownership consisted solely of the forty-five-minute ride into Penn Station.

“Did that happen a lot?” Charles asked.

“What?”

“You screwing up?”

“Once or twice,” she said. “I was rebelling against authority.”

“Is that what you called it?”

“No. That’s what they called it. I called it getting lit.”

“Who’s they? Your parents?”

“Yeah. And the army psychiatrist they made me go to.”

“How was that?”

“Have you ever met an army psychiatrist?”

“General incompetence? Major malpractice? No.”

She laughed. “See, I told you you were funny,” she said.

Yes, an absolute laugh riot. “Maybe you wouldn’t mind calling my clients up and telling them that.”

“Sure. How are things at the office?”

“Fine.”

“You said you were in what . . . advertising?”

“Yes. Advertising.”

“So? How is the ad biz these days?”

“It has its good days and bad days.”

“And . . . ?”

“And . . . ?”

“These are the bad days?”

“Well, no one’s threatening to kill me.” No, just to demote him into insignificance.

“Come on, I complain about my job — you complain about yours. Fair’s fair. . . .”

And so, what the hell. He did tell her.

Initially not intending to reveal much more than that he’d had a little trouble with a client, but once he started he found himself more or less unable to stop. Listening to himself spill out the details of office Sturm und Drang with genuine amazement at his utter lack of control. Seething Ellen Weischler. Backstabbing Eliot. The unfairness of it all.

He supposed she could have stopped him at any point. She could have said enough, or do you really want to be telling me this, or even begun to laugh at him.

She did none of those things, though. She listened. And when he finished, she said:

“And they think brokers suck.”

“I don’t know what made me tell you that,” he said. “Sorry.” Although he wasn’t, actually. Embarrassed? Sure. But at the same time purged. As if he’d finally thrown up last night’s rancid meal and could finally get back to the table.

And then she did more than just listen to him. She reached out and massaged his right shoulder. More like a soft, soothing pat, a friendly rub, a supportive and sisterly squeeze.

“Poor baby,” she said.

And Charles couldn’t help thinking that certain clichés are belittled out of nothing but jealousy. Her touch felt electric, for instance. A cliché knocked as pure hokum by people unlucky enough not to be feeling it. Which, at any given moment, was most people. Because, well, her touch did feel electric; his body was suddenly humming like one of those power lines they string across the dry Kansas plains.

They blew into the East River Tunnel — the tunnel of love, he thought — and for just a moment he was afraid he was going to lean over and do something stupid. That he’d end up being taken away in handcuffs for this stupid thing on the platform at Penn Station.

Then something happened.

The train car went pitch black, the lights zapping off as they always did when the train burrowed under the East River. It felt as if he were sitting in a darkened movie theater waiting for that phosphorescent glow to come rescue him. Or for something else to rescue him; he could smell her there in the darkness. Lilac and musk.

And then her breath was by his ear, soft and humid. Her mouth was close enough to kiss as it whispered something into his ear.

Then the lights blinked on, blinked off, and settled back into full ghostly fluorescence.

Nothing had really changed.

The unrepentant voyeur sitting directly across from them was still peeking at Lucinda’s thighs. The woman with varicose-veined legs was dozing across the aisle from them. There was the pinch-faced banker, the college kid slumped over his textbook, the court stenographer warily guarding her Teletype.

Lucinda also looked just like she had before, turned face forward like everyone else.

Wasn’t she turning back to her newspaper, checking the Amex and the Nasdaq and the overseas indexes and municipal bonds?

He waited a while to see if she’d look over and resume speaking with him, then looked out the window, where they passed a massive billboard that said, “Lose Yourself in the Virgin Islands.”

When the train settled into Penn Station, he asked her if they might have lunch sometime.

You’re the sexiest man I’ve ever met.

That’s what Lucinda whispered to him on the train.

SEVEN

Okay,” Winston said, “okay. Seven players who hit forty or more home runs with eleven letters in their last name.”

“Yastrzemski,” Charles answered, immediately going for the local boy made good, the BoSox star who’d been raised on a Long Island potato farm.

“Okay,” Winston said. “That’s one.”

Winston Boyko. Mailroom employee. Baseball fan. General raconteur.

He’d been stepping into Charles’s office ever since he’d spied Charles in his faded Yankees T-shirt.

Charles had asked him if he wanted anything, and he’d said, Yes, the starting lineup of the 1978 Yankees, including DH.

Charles had gotten every one with the exception of Jim Spencer — first baseman — and that, more or less, had started a friendship. Of sorts.

Charles couldn’t tell you where Winston lived or what his middle name was, or even if he had a girlfriend or wife. It was a let’s-talk-baseball-trivia kind of friendship, a relationship conducted in the ten minutes a day Winston delivered the mail — once in the morning, once in the afternoon.

Right now, it was morning and Winston was grinning because Charles was having trouble coming up with any additions to the great Yaz.

Killebrew — sorry, nine letters.

Petrocelli — good guess, only ten.

“How about you give me till this afternoon?” Charles asked.

“You mean so you can look it up on-line and then pretend you didn’t?”