Chapter 11

Where I find out that my circus always had a clown.

I went to the office around eleven. My head still throbbed. I damned my stupidity — the drinking too. Charlotte was her own sparkling self. She smiled and her voice sang. There was a plastic quality to her that I had never noticed before.

But it was a well-known kind of plastic.

"Is Onslow in?" I asked. There must have been sandpaper down my throat.

Her face lit up even more.

"Yes, Bruce! He is even expecting you," she exclaimed.

Onslow looked worse than I did. His skin was pudgy, like half-baked dough. He hid his eyes behind sunglasses.

"Hello Pierson," he said, half-rising from behind his desk.

"What the fuck is going on, Onslow?" I had no intention of wasting any of my hard-won energy in small talk.

"Aah, well, Bruce," he sighed, his hands up in the air. "Sit down. Sit down, please."

I did. It was hard to study his face with the damn glasses in the way. I guess he was too vain to take them off. Or he just didn't want me to see his eyes.

Charlotte came in with coffee. When she left, her hand was on my shoulder for a second. It sent a jolt of repulsion down my body.

"Sugar?" Onslow asked.

"Fuck the sugar!" I growled.

He grinned an uncertain grin.

"Actually, Bruce," he went on. "You should be grateful. I got you off the hook. Lighten up, man. You were up to your neck in trouble. Law suit, jail, losing your job."

I just stared.

"I saved your ass, Bruce!"

"Why?" I said. "Why save me? Since when did you become a saint, Onslow? And since when did you suddenly decide that I am stupid?"

That made him take his glasses off. He shouldn't have. Compared to him I drank milk last night.

"Okay," he said. "Sorry, Pierson. I should have told you. But believe me, when I am through with this story, you'll agree with me that I should have left you in the dark."

This time I said nothing because I didn't know what to say. There was a gloomy cloud hovering over me. Someone had written "doom" all over it.

"Take that coffee and another one," he said. "You'll need it as hard as I do."

Then he picked up a blue, plastic-ringed report and threw it at me. There were just two numbers printed on its cover: 2002 - 2007.

"Look up page 23," Onslow said, trying not to burn his lips on the coffee.

I saw that the page contained a list of transactions. They were some serious amounts, none of them smaller than seven digits. It seemed that money had been sluiced to numbered accounts. I knew what they were and where they led to. Switzerland, maybe. Or the Caymans. Or both.

I looked up at Onslow, eyebrows raised.

"Enthwistle and Daniels," Onslow said. "It stinks to heaven." Daniels was the CEO of the company we coveted.

I leafed through the report. There were balances and more transactions. I saw the names of all kinds of companies. Some of them I knew from my explorations in the last few weeks; others were new to me.

"This secret report nails them both, Pierson," Onslow went on. There was a crowing quality to his voice. "I got them by the balls and yesterday I twisted those balls. It made them drop all charges. It also made them more than willing to sell. And at our price."

I threw the report back.

"How did you get it?" I asked. "And why didn't I know?"

He smiled a crooked smile. I had seen it often on his face when he pulled one over on a business partner. "I didn't get it," he said. "You did."

I was puzzled. Then it started to dawn on me.

"The girls," I said. I remembered his drunken remark.

His smile was wide now. He glowed.

"But..." I stuttered. A feeling of vertigo washed over me. I had to grip the armrests of my chair.

"Yes," he said.

He waved the report as if it were a fan.

"This is why you went to the mansion, Pierson. Or rather, it is why Erica convinced you to accompany her."

I could have said "but" again, but I didn't. I didn't want to look as stupid as I was, I guess. His grin never left his damn face. The stale air buzzed and swirled around me.

"Bruce," Onslow said. "Erica and I go way back. She is a shrewd lawyer, amongst many other qualities. Since quite a long time ago, I had gotten wind of the foul play inside Enthwistle's and Daniels' companies. I knew that I would get the business for a song if I could prove it. It was a godsend that you could smuggle Erica in. She got the report. And here we are!"

He clapped his hands and laughed his cackling laugh.

I was stunned. I was also enormously pissed off for having been played in this humiliating way. But most of all I felt hurt. Erica had been the closest friend I had had in these difficult years. And she had gone behind my back — using me. She had left me totally in the dark. She had lied to me. She had deceived me and played me for a fool.

"Since a long time, you say," I said. "How long?"

"Ah, a year. I don't know, maybe longer," he said, throwing the thought away with his hand. "Does it matter? It paid off. We did it, Bruce. We goddamn did it!"

I have never been a victim of this ever-spreading disease called paranoia. I guess I was too naïve for that. On the other hand, never having been infected may have exposed me more readily. I guess I was wide open.

"Erica never had the time to search for it, Onslow," I said. "And certainly never the opportunity. Not on her own."

Onslow pooed. "Whatever!" he crowed. "She got it and now we have it. The boys are history."

A worm nagged at the base of my skull. And it wasn't the hangover. "Girlzzz," he had slurred, yesterday. Not girl, girls.

"Myriam," I said. "Myriam was in on it, too."

He shrugged his shoulders.

"What do I know? What do I need to know, Pierson? Neither do you. They did it and we got it."

I rose from my chair. The floor felt as if it were covered with plastic air bubbles. It made me wobble, but I went on. I reached out over his desk and grabbed his jacket. I shook him.

My voice came from a distance.

"You godawful bag of shit," I said. My words were clipped and controlled. "You sent Myriam there to fuck her way up into the Enthwistle empire. You used her condition, so you could get your greedy hands on that company. You knew how vulnerable she was. And you knew how I still felt about her. You knew how it would kill me. And you just went on and did it — even using me!"

By then a red haze blurred my vision. The claws that started to throttle Onslow's throat were not my hands anymore. I just watched what they did — with deep and sincere interest.

Then two heavy hands pulled me away. A deep voice told me to let go. And I did. I turned my dizzy head and saw an immaculately clad woman and a big black man. The woman smiled. The man had me in a vice.

I fell back into the chair, panting.

Onslow's head looked quite red, I saw. I had no idea why he gagged all the time. My whole attention was focused on getting my heart under control.

Security led me out of the building. A cab took me home.

There I sat down in my leather club chair, staring out over the Park. It looked like an anthill. Only these ants were on roller blades and bicycles. They were playing ball and pushing prams. They were just having a great time in the sun.

I wasn't.

My head felt like the attic of a barn, filled with bales of moist hay. Something was brewing, smoldering inside. They say that hay can easily go up in flames that way. It sure was how I felt.

The tiny lead that Onslow had given me with his drunken slur of "girlzz" had by now grown into the most fantastic paranoid nightmare I had ever heard of.

Over the last hour my mind wandered backwards over tiny stepping-pebbles of suspicion, just to see them grow more plausible with every step into the past.

Onslow knew Erica. He had known her for years, he'd said. Was it purely business? Was it even true? I had never heard her talk about Onslow — or him about her, for that matter. To be sure, she had never even hinted on knowing anyone at the company — or shown the slightest interest in what we did.

If she was a long time business adviser, I ought to have seen her at least once or twice at the offices, shouldn't I? Onslow and I had almost adjoining offices.

Even her name had never been mentioned, as far as I knew.

Erica must have known Myriam too — not just through my stories. Maybe Onslow brought them together in his plan to get at the Enthwistles? But how. And when? How could he even have gotten in contact with her? She was in Texas or wherever, wasn't she?

My mind buzzed as I tried to look back at what exactly had happened — and when. "A year, maybe longer," he said. A year ago I had told Erica all about Myriam and her problem. She had been very understanding and helpful. Loyal too.

"Bruce," she had said. "Forget the bitch. Please do me a favor and forget her. Promise me. She isn't worth it."

She had been very convincing.

I went further back. Erica had very quickly detected the cause of my distant attitude, back at the tennis club. We had only met each other a few times, by then. I remembered being impressed by how accurately she described my problem.

"I hope the woman behind you will stop controlling our conversation," she had said. At that moment in time she had never heard of Myriam or my divorce. Should I still be impressed with her feminine intuition? Or did she just know? Had she already met Myriam? Or Estelle, for that matter?

I fast-forwarded in my mind, hearing them giggle and sigh in the shower stall after we returned to the city. And of course in hindsight it was remarkable how fast Erica fell for Myriam's tongue at the rape in Enthwistle's mansion. Was it rape at all?

I moaned loudly, frustrated by the ongoing paranoia. Was I going insane? Or was I at long last starting to see the painful truth? Was it dawning on me? Or was I just plodding on, deeper and deeper into the gathering dusk? I took a cold shower and went out for a pizza. I chased it with a bottle of cheap chianti and two grappa's.

That stopped the treadmill in my head — for a few hours.

The next morning I called in sick.

It was partly true. I knew I would get sick the moment I saw the lying smile of Charlotte and heard Onslow's treacherous voice. I also knew that I would call in again, maybe the next day and give him my notice. Getting a new job wasn't the biggest of my problems.

Right now my priorities were getting out and getting sane.

I was shaving when the phone rang. I thought I heard close-up breathing and distant sounds of beaches and seashores. Then I was disconnected.

It proved the first of several calls during the next hour. At the third one I asked whom it was — just to be cut off once more. At the fifth I took a gamble. "Myriam?" I said. "Is that you, Myriam?"

The beeps of disconnection were instant.

I started collecting things and packing them in cardboard cartons. I don't know why. The apartment was mine and would be after I left the firm. But I guess I just didn't want to stay. Living in a hotel room suddenly seemed attractive. Maybe it was the anonymity — or the sheer shallowness of that kind of life. I don't know, but I started packing.

I threw away most of the things Erica and her French girlfriend had helped me buy. They seemed stained with betrayal. I wondered about Marlene. Was she ever really her lover? Was she really in Paris now? Had she even been French?

I shrugged and smashed a vase.

The seventh call I had planned to let go to voice-mail. But I couldn't.

"Bruce?"

It was she. The same background sounds were there. Sea surf, clear children's voices. Even some music.

"Yes," I said. "Myriam?"

"I love you, Bruce."

Either the connection was poor or her voice broke. Did I care? Yes, I did. I knew I shouldn't, but I did.

"Why call, Myr?" I asked.

Silence. Then:

"I am dying."

Icicles dripped down my spine. Was it the utter sadness of her voice? Or the theatrical content of her words?

"Are you ill?" I asked. "Where are you? Tell me what's wrong, Myr. Tell me."

"I am ... on this island. I don't know. Some tropical island. St. Kitts. Blue sea, beaches. It's Erica and me ... you know?"

"I know nothing, Myriam. Why should I? You left me. You went away, remember?"

There was silence. Children screamed and I heard the distant hiss of the surf. The horn of a boat, too, maybe.

"I woke up this morning, Bruce," she went on. "My body was sore and tired. It's very tanned too. I was in a bungalow at the seashore, all alone. Nobody here, Bruce. Don't know where she went. Lots of empty glasses and things."

Deep irritation started eating away at my patience.

"What about this dying, Myr? Are you serious?"

Was that a sob? I guess so.

"I am almost gone, Bruce. They got me. They used me, you know. All the time. I never knew before what she did to me. But this time she made me see it all. What they did to you. What I did with Enthwistle, with Erica. Please believe me, Bruce. I could not help it. And soon I shall never be myself again. I love you. I could not help it! You must believe me, Bruce."

I felt my lungs empty with a sigh. I must have held my breath. I guess it was relief at hearing she did not mean physical death. It made me angry — why should I care for the bitch?

I must have been silent for a bit.

"You there, Bruce?" she asked. I grunted.

"I know," she said with a whine in her voice. "You don't want me anymore. And I guess I deserve that. I just ... wanted you to know that I am still here. And that I love you."

The connection died.

I threw the cell phone across the room with a cry of frustration.

There were a few bungalows in the shadows of a clump of trees.

Their fronts were to the beach and the sea. It had taken a few hundred dollars to find out which one was theirs. I took off my shoes and waded through the hot white sands. The breeze was salty with a tang of flowers and pine. It brought back memories of numerous vacations I'd had with Myriam. They were sweet memories with a lining of cruel bitterness.