“You two aren’t in love and you never were,” you said.
I felt like the wind had been knocked out of me. “That’s not true.”
“She never loved you, Simon. She needed someone to take care of her. And you did. And now she’s eyeballing that trust money that’s so close she can taste it. She’s put in nine years and eleven months.”
I stepped back, almost falling over the bed. “You make it sound like a prison sentence.”
You walked over and took my hands. “You deserve so much better,” you said. “You want to do right by Vicky, then fine. Pay her alimony off your professor’s salary. But don’t give her millions of dollars. That’s your money.”
You kissed me, first softly then deeply, my internal thermometer ratcheting up. “You mean our money,” I said.
“You know I don’t care about the money,” you whispered, reaching for my belt buckle.
“I know.”
You dropped to your knees and worked the zipper on my pants.
“Promise me you’ll file now,” you said.
42
Simon
I decide to go for a run in the morning, a version of my Five at Five that I’ve abandoned since I started running at nights from the law school to Wicker Park. I miss jogging on the west side of Chicago, but today is not the day to make up for that. This morning, I run instead the other direction, west from my house, toward Grace Village. Toward Lauren’s house.
I’ve driven my car over there in the mornings enough. If I am too regular in doing so, one of those nosy neighbors might start to notice. That’s the last thing I need.
I drove over here yesterday morning and parked down the street from Lauren’s house, arriving at 5:30 a.m. It was the first time in a few weeks.
I was waiting for Conrad’s town car to pick him up at six sharp and drive down to the East Bank Club for his morning workout. But no town car ever came.
Now here I am, jogging up, down, and near Lathrow Avenue, crossing streets, switching directions, trying not to stand out as the sun begins to show its face on a Friday morning, as five-thirty becomes five-forty-five, as five-fifty becomes six o’clock, as six o’clock becomes ten after six.
Once again, no town car arrives to pick up Conrad Betancourt.
Maybe he’s out of town on business or took a long weekend with some buddies. Maybe that’s it.
Where’d you go, Conrad?
—
I stop a half block down from Lauren’s house and look back at it. It’s not too late, I tell myself yet again. It’s not too late to put the brakes on everything and just forget that I ever saw Lauren on Michigan Avenue last May. God, it feels like so much more than five months ago that she re-entered my life. Maybe that’s because, to me, she never really left.
—
“I hear someone has a big birthday coming up,” Lauren whispered in my ear, the smell of beer on her breath, more than nineteen years ago. Times were good that summer at my dad’s law firm, after Teddy had scored that enormous settlement in the electrical-injury case and the place was flush with cash. Happy hours every Friday night. I never stayed long; I usually went straight home after work and spent the evenings with my mother, who by then was in a wheelchair and spent her days at home with her caregiver, Edie.
But my father always let me have one beer, despite my being seventeen, his way of showing me the cool-parent thing, and the happy hours always started at four o’clock, so I usually hung around for the first hour before taking the Green Line home.
Lauren had been nice to me that first month of the summer, joking and complimentary and maybe, in hindsight, even flirtatious. But I hadn’t thought much of it, as I was the boss’s son, and pretty much everyone treated me with kid gloves—a lot more pleases and thank-yous when I dropped off a package or delivered a message than the other staffers presumably received.
But that night, that last Friday in June, Lauren looked at me differently. A couple of beers down and the atmosphere loose, she smiled at me in a way that made me feel like an adult for the first time in my life.
“I have a present for you,” she whispered.
I’d never been with a woman. My experience to date had been a few awkward kisses my junior and senior years of high school, a couple of painful dates that left me feeling inadequate and anxious.
I met her that Sunday, at her house in Old Irving Park, at 3:00 p.m. I got there early, parking my mother’s Honda along Kedvale, nervous and tense.The truth was, I was dreading it. I was scared, not aroused. Queasy, not excited. I wanted to turn the car around and drive back to Grace Park before I had the chance to disappoint her.