I started to drink more after the accident. A year later I still hadn’t slowed down. I was broken, but I wasn’t blind. At least once a week I’d take an oath to start the program. AA. Tomorrow. No more pretending, no more self-pity. And every week I’d break that promise. So easy.
By then my life was pretty well wrecked. Sarah had left, not with bitterness but with tears, and a plea for me to get help. Friends had given up, tired of listening to me reluctantly agree to a “quick drink,” only to watch me rapidly descend into a miasma of liquid amnesia.
At work I’d fallen so far down the corporate ladder that the next rung could only be concrete. Winter-cold, meteorite-solid, hanging-judge-unforgiving concrete. And from there to the bottom of a lightless well, where I would come to rest, bloated and saturated, unwilling to put down the glass and start the climb back up.
I’d only just recently been able to bring myself to sell the house in Rogers Park, the modest home where I’d been born and raised. I was the only child of two immigrant schoolteachers who’d worked so hard all their lives, and saved so much and spent so little, that I became instantly wealthy when they died. At least that’s what I thought. Turns out I was wrong about that too. Not the money. That was real. Well north of three million dollars when you count the insurance proceeds and what I got for the house. And all of it sitting in a low-interest savings account at First Bank of Chicago on Belmont. But the money was tainted, the fruit not of a lifetime of honest labor, but something else entirely.
When my world rocked off its orbit that night a year earlier, when the workingman’s Buick LeSabre left the road in Highland Park after hitting the patch of black ice, when it cartwheeled end-over-end down a steep ravine in an unsurvivable freefall, my former life evaporated. Gone were the two people I worshipped. No siblings, no immediate family in the area. And when I was sure it couldn’t get any worse, when I hadn’t even put my parents in the ground yet, the Tribune broke the story. My father, the brilliant and beloved high school chemistry teacher who professed to have disdained all offers of more lucrative research positions, did indeed have a side gig. Advising the tobacco industry on a new way to deliver poison into the lungs and brains of American youth: vaping.
Fuck me.
***
On that particular night, twelve months after the fiery crash that took my parents’ lives, I’d arrived early at Luigi’s and had already had a few. I was usually content sitting alone in the booth that Grego always let me have to myself, even when Luigi’s was so busy on Friday nights that people waiting to sit somewhere, anywhere, would wonder why I was taking up so much space. The stares bothered me only until I drained my first Glenlivet. After that I didn’t care. I’d get lost in John Irving or Pat Conroy and forget for an hour or two what it felt like to be so infinitesimally small in such a large town. The liquor helped. Usually. But on that memorable Friday night, that night in late June when the Chicago skyline was etched against a flaming sunset before everything went indigo and then black, colors that would match the arc of my own life in a few short weeks, on that particular Friday night, I wouldn’t be alone for long.
Dicky Carter, Richard Collins Carter III by birth, was the new intern at Swank, Gleneden and Hilyard. He’d been on board just a few weeks, assigned to me as a temporary replacement for the legal assistant who’d worked beside me for three years. Despite my initial misgivings about the switch, and even though he’d been hired out of nowhere just because he came so cheap, I liked Dicky. Nice kid, accepted at some no-name law school in New York, willing to work his last summer of freedom for peanuts just for the experience. Green, of course, but obviously smart and cheerful and, so far, capable of handling any task I threw at him. And he’d been suggesting since his first day that we should really go out for drinks after work some night. I finally caved and invited Dicky to join me for a round to salute the upcoming weekend.
I was so engrossed in what I was reading I didn’t notice the figure hovering in my peripheral vision at first. I don’t know how long she’d been standing at the edge of the table looking down at me, but when I looked up, expecting to see Dicky, it was all I could do to suppress a gasp. The woman staring at me had eyes as green as a forest fern and a barely tamed mane of auburn hair that tumbled loosely to her shoulders. She wore a tailored high-throated alabaster blouse which rested beneath a fitted blazer just a shade lighter than her eyes.
She was out of my league. I’m not the guy who ends up with the magazine-model girl. I know what I look like. I own a mirror. I’ve got a healthy head of dark brown hair, thick and full-bodied. After that though, pedestrian might be the most complimentary adjective for the rest of my face. Eyes that are a touch too squinty, a prominent nose with a mildly projecting bridge. A mouthful of teeth that are strong and healthy while revealing gaps and angles that three years of braces couldn’t quite correct. I am neither short nor tall, neither fat nor slim. I am Everyman, with looks so ordinary that I’m well suited for bank robbery.
“I’m sorry,” she offered. Her voice was deeper than I’d expected. Confident enough to carry easily over the background din of the crowd of young professionals who made Luigi’s second home on the weekends. “But I’ve been on my feet all day and I’m going to collapse if I don’t sit down. I don’t mean to be rude or interrupt, but if you’re not waiting for your girlfriend or your wife, might I sit down for just a moment?”
Just for a lifetime or two, I thought. “Of course,” I blurted, aware my voice was an octave higher than usual. “Buy you a drink?” Hardly original, but I’d never thought to prepare some snappy one-liners in case a woman so beautiful approached me.
“That’s OK, this round’s on me.” She signaled Grego, who’d been watching nothing else. He arrived at our booth so quickly it seemed she’d jerked hm by a leash. “Another Glenlivet rocks for my new friend” she said to Grego, flashing a smile that lit him up like a science experiment. “Same for me but make it a double. You can start a tab,” and like a magician she produced an Amex Gold Card.
Grego left, reluctantly, and the woman extended her hand over the table. I took it in my own, aiming for just the right amount of firmness, hoping my palm was dry. She wore no ring, just an expensive looking gold bracelet on her right wrist and what looked like a Rolex on her left. Nothing flashy, the simple, classic Oyster Perpetual, black dial, no date. Clean, elegant. Which told me she was probably rich, or had a lot of class, or both.
“Tracey Gulden,” she introduced herself. “Forever in your debt.”
“Once my free drink arrives, we’ll call it even,” I said. I took a moment to study her further. I found no flaws. By the light of the electric candle at our booth her green eyes looked darker and deeper, flecked with points of aqua blue. Her hair wasn’t solely auburn; there were a few highlights of a brighter copper color subtly running through. Her skin was olive colored and as flawless as her movie-star teeth. I put her age at 30 or so, a year or two younger than me.
“I don’t drink with strangers, so maybe you’d introduce yourself?” She was smiling when she said it, so I didn’t feel like a full-blown idiot, just half-blown maybe.
“I’m sorry. Tom Merrill.”
“Well hello Tom Merrill. I won’t ask if you come here often, because I can tell you do. This place is jamming and you’re alone in a booth that could take four easily, maybe six. And the bartender seems to know you, and you seem entirely at home here. Of course, some of that might be the scotch.”
Grego brought our drinks then. I drained my old one and accepted the new.
“You’re right, I said. “Home away from home. I work 60 or 70 hours a week and I find a drink or six helps me get the precious few hours of sleep I enjoy each night.”
“And what do you do for a living that keeps you awake at night?”
“I’m a tax lawyer.”
“Be still my heart,” she joked, bringing a hand to her breast. It was funny the way she said it, the way she obviously meant no harm. I laughed along with her.
“Yeah, it’s a pretty sexy lifestyle. You?”
“Nothing of importance.”
We volleyed back and forth for a few minutes, enough to convince me I’d like to see more of Tracey Gulden. I didn’t sense Dicky approach, but I noticed Tracey’s eyes follow him as he drew up to our booth.
“Hi Tom. Bad timing? Should I take a rain check?”
He was looking directly at me, as though he hadn’t even noticed Tracey, which seemed odd, as Dicky was a man.
“Certainly not,” Tracey explained, standing and moving sideways so she could exit the booth. “I was just leaving. But this is a coincidence. We’ve actually met.”
Dicky redirected his attention then, studied her for a moment, then shook his head. “I don’t think so. I’d remember.”
She smiled, then extended her hand for the second time. “Tracey Gulden. You’re Richard Carter, though you go by Dicky. Your parents are clients of mine. And you attended a planning session at my office with us several years ago.”
“I’m so sorry. Of course. Is Tom. . .”
“Tom Merrill is nothing more than a lovely, gracious man I’ve only just met. Perhaps I’ll get to know him better (she flashed a brief but brilliant smile at me here), but I do not wish to intrude any further. Good evening gentlemen.” She glided across the crowded floor toward a group of chattering women who’d just entered.
“Wow,” said Dicky when he sat down. “Quite a looker.”
I hated Richard Collins Carter III at that moment. Until then, I’d hoped I might be fortunate enough to win a date with Tracey Gulden. All I could do now was pump Dicky for every bit of info he might have about her. Which I did. But very little enlightenment was forthcoming. The meeting Tracey had referred to had taken place several years earlier, just after he’d started college, Dicky recalled. Tracey Gulden was a financial advisor. Back then she’d been with Charles Schwab. Now, he thought, she’d branched out on her own and had a small office downtown somewhere.
“She’s pretty savvy, I guess,” he remarked. “And my parents go way back with her. They trust her, which is more important to them than her financial acumen.”
“Because?” I prompted.
“Money,” he replied. “My family’s. Old money. Lots of it. What are we drinking?”
I signaled Grego.
***
I waited three days to call her. I didn’t want to appear pushy or desperate. But on Monday afternoon, with my office door closed, I dialed up the number I’d found on Google and got a receptionist. “Yes Mr. Merrill,” she said once I’d identified myself. “She’s expecting your call. Please hold for just a moment.”
“Hi Tom. I’m glad you called.”
“But not surprised, apparently.”
“Let’s just say I was modestly hopeful. And the nature of your call? Business or pleasure?”
“Which do you prefer?”
“Oh, the latter, definitely. I’ve got more than enough business these days.”
“Then let’s say social. I was hoping to continue our conversation. Perhaps over dinner this time.” That was my first chance to inject a line among the many I’d previously rehearsed. “Friday if you’re free. Or if you’re already booked, maybe—”
“How about tonight? Say seven o’clock?”
That caught me off guard, but my social calendar was as blank as an unpainted canvas. I suggested the restaurant I’d found on the internet, a French café on Michigan Avenue, near her office, upscale but not too formal or fancy.
“Tom. It is Tom, isn’t it? Please tell me you’re not a Tommy.” It was meant as a joke, and I chuckled.
“It’s Tom. I left Tommy behind in eighth grade.”
“Good riddance. Tom, I appreciate the suggestion, but let’s skip the fancy French chow for now. I’m thinking Uno’s. Or Gino’s East if you prefer their corn meal crust.”
In the city that created deep dish pizza, the woman I was quickly falling in love with had named two of my favorites.
“I do. Gino’s East. Seven o’clock.”
***
Anyone with half a brain and a functioning heart knows that no amount of booze or recreational drugs can compete with the high of a new romance. Whether you’re thirteen or thirty, nothing beats that emotional summit. Everything in my life got better, fast. I didn’t give up the sauce, but I cut way back, frequently substituting a couple of local micro brews for a half-bottle of scotch. I replaced the well-worn dress shirts in my closet with newer ones: crisp, tailored versions in soft pastels. Even Dicky noticed the change, guessed the reason, and ribbed me mercilessly. The partners at Swank who’d been looking past me recently were again assigning me more complex engagements, and I allowed myself to believe I might actually be asked to share in profits and ownership someday.
When I look back on that period—which I do, frequently, because who wouldn’t want to relive the best days of their life—it’s like I’m looking at myself through a large piece of gauze. It’s hard for me to see clearly everything I was experiencing. I do recall feeling as though I was on some sort of carnival ride, a carousel perhaps, and the painted ponies were going faster and faster, accelerating madly from walk to trot to canter to wild gallop. The saddle was slick, and I was constantly slipping, holding on to the plastic pole before me as though it was the only thing anchoring me to the planet.
The one constant was Tracey Gulden, because our first date was followed by a second some 48 hours later, which led to a third the following night, which culminated in us being together every night and most of the weekends.
Like me, she was alone in the world. Her father had suffered a massive stroke when she was still an infant and died within a few weeks. She was raised by her mother in Chicago’s western suburbs, far from my north side home, and went to college downstate at University of Illinois while I was at Northwestern. She’d done her time at Charles Schwab before opening her own office, losing her mother to breast cancer about the same time.
Tracey Gulden was a stunner. She was also intelligent and funny, sensitive and compassionate, and drawn to the same things I was: books, movies, blue-collar gourmet food like pizza and burgers, and Chicago’s wealth of world-class museums. Yes, there was more than a little rebound effect taking place. Tracey filled a void created by the death of my parents, the absence of Sarah, the steadily creeping inner decay of too much drinking. But I knew, beyond doubt or reason, that I was meant to be with her. And after a few weeks—nineteen days, to be precise—I was preparing to suggest we move in together. Which for me would be nothing more than a precursor to my marriage proposal.
It was important to me by then that I convey to her how much I trusted her. I had a pile of money sitting around doing nothing and she was a financial advisor, So one night, lying beside her in the bedroom of my condo, our breathing returning to normal, I jumped in.
“I’d like to invest my money with you.”
And this memory is clear, not like some of the others. She’d been on her back but now she rolled toward me, propped her head on her hand and looked down at me. I was reminded of the first time she’d gazed down at me from above, at a booth in Luigi’s, a lifetime ago.
“Absolutely not.”
“Why not? I could use the advice, and I don’t know anyone more qualified.”
“No. Not now, probably not ever.”
“Because?”
She dipped her head then and a velvety wave of her hair fell across my forehead just before she found my lips with hers, opening them with her probing tongue. Tracey never kissed halfway; there was always a deep hunger present that I met on equal terms. So we stayed like that for a long moment, until she released and met my gaze again.
“Because Tom, what we have is too important. I don’t want to do anything to muck it up. It’s something I don’t want to risk. I understand the risk and reward formula of investments. I accept those. But I’m not going to risk this. Not when I might. . .you know. . .
“Might what? Know what?”
“You know. I know you know.” And she brought her lips to mine again, and this time dropped her hand to my midsection, and I abandoned any attempt at further conversation for a while. A good, long, slow while.
***
I didn’t let it go though. And I finally wore her down.
“It’s not just about the money,” I told her. “It’s about something bigger. Something better. Something forever.”
We were at dinner then, the French place she’d once chosen to forego. She’d just brought a forkful of steak au poivre to her mouth. Her eyes were closed, and I wasn’t sure if she was just savoring the flavor or seriously considering my proposition.
“OK,” she said. “But I’m not doing this for you. And it’s not for me. It’s for us.”
Perfect answer.
***
By now maybe you see where this is going. I transferred my entire balance to her the next morning. And instantly she was gone, in the wind. My calls yielded a recording about the number no longer being in service. Her office was vacant. Ditto her apartment. Dicky, of course, had disappeared as well; he’d obviously been in on the con the whole time. Once my reason returned, things became clear. They’d found the newspaper articles when my parents died, identified me as a likely mark, done their research, and found my weak spots.
I never suspected. Not till the end, the very, very, bitter end. By then it was too late.
So I’ve told you just about everything worth telling. Except this: I’d like to disabuse you of that smug notion of yours that something like this could never happen to you. I know what you’re thinking. You’re too smart. You’d see the signs, recognize the dissembling, see through the pretense. You’d never risk everything, as I did. Maybe you’re right. But chances are you’re wrong. And if you want to take anything away from all this, one thing that might help, well then, admit to yourself just one simple truth.
We’re all suckers.
***
I’m drinking again. More than ever. I haven’t told anyone my tale, never will. No one’s gonna trust a tax lawyer who got swindled. So I spend a lot of my free time reading at Luigi’s, where Grego always makes sure I have my own booth. (He gets his tax return preparation free, in case you haven’t guessed.) And when I step outside, unsteady on my feet and grateful that my condo is a five-minute walk, I’ll pause sometimes, sometimes when the orange in the sky is about to go indigo and then black, and I’ll wonder what I miss more: the money or Tracey Gulden.
*****
Larry Jaffe was born in Chicago and graduated from the University of Oregon with a degree in journalism. He served as a magazine editor for almost seven years and has been published in newspapers numerous times. He lives just outside Eugene, Oregon.
