The Hazards of Good Fortune Page 2

  Did the kid mean to say Jewstone? Whether or not it was purposeful was immaterial, Jay concluded, since that was likely how those three referred to him in private. The deterioration in relations between blacks and Jews troubled him, and it was a matter to which he had devoted considerable thought. Jews came to America more or less willingly (insofar as people willingly flee pogroms)—Africans did not. Jay knew black people had a right to be angry, but resented being the target of this enmity.

  “They were out of wine?” Nicole was not happy when her husband handed her the water bottle.

  “That won’t happen in the new arena,” the mayor said and winked at Jay, who gave him a genial slap on the back.

  Nicole unscrewed the bottle cap and took a long pull from the water.

  “What took so long?”

  “Some fans wanted to talk to me.” Why tell his wife what had happened? Nicole occasionally accused him of sensing anti-Semitism where, in her—admittedly gentile—view, it didn’t exist, and he was not primed for that kind of conversation.

  There were seventeen seconds left in the game with the score still tied at 96 when Jay settled into his seat. Church Scott was standing in front of the bench, his face impassive as he watched the point guard, Drew Hill, dribble across midcourt and throw a bounce pass to Dag on the left side where the Celtics’ Kevin Garnett guarded him. Dag began to back Garnett down. A notoriously grinding defender, Garnett leaned on Dag in an attempt to arrest his progress. Dag swiped the hand away and thrust his backside into Garnett. Drew Hill was open at the top of the key, but Dag ignored him. The seven-foot center, Odell Tracy, came over to set a pick and Dag waved him off. He and Garnett banged against each other like a pair of Brahma bulls, muscles taut, eyes blazing. Rivulets of sweat streamed off of the two antagonists as they vied for advantage. The crowd held its collective breath, willing their hero to perform a feat that would briefly enable them to rise above their colorless lives, uninspiring jobs, overdue bills, the east coast winter weather, everything they yearned to transcend, and summon the bliss that victory can release. The loud report of the leather basketball—thunk thunk thunk thunk thunk—as it repeatedly struck the hardwood floor reverberated through the hushed arena.

  Entirely in his element, Dag was ready to display his essential, ineffable, what-made-him-a-superstar Dag-ness. Fifteen feet from the basket with his back still toward Garnett, he dipped his shoulder to the right, getting the big man to bite on the fake, then deftly spun to his left and falling backward hoisted a fadeaway over the defender’s outstretched arm. The ball sailed through the air with perfect backspin, tracing an exquisite parabola against the sea of spectators gaping in anticipation, and fell into the net as eighteen thousand voices erupted in a chorus of joy and deliverance.

  “Bang bang, motherfucker!” Dag roared, his trademarked phrase (TM: BangBangMotherfucker, 2011), uttered whenever he drilled a shot at a crucial moment. The bench players jumped to their feet, clapping and cheering. Church Scott frantically gesticulated for his team to get back and play defense. Dag shimmied his hips then cocked his hands like six-shooters and fired into the air before jamming them into imaginary holsters.

  As Nicole screamed YEEEAAHHH with an exuberance that surprised her husband, Kevin Garnett coolly retrieved the ball, stepped behind the baseline and winged a pass to Paul Pierce at half court. Pierce took two dribbles and, before the nearest defender could close him out, launched a three-point shot from the right side which rippled the net to eviscerate Dag and his teammates—so recently exulting—who suddenly looked as if all of their blood had been drained. One second left, 99-98, Celtics.

  The home team did not score again.

  When the final buzzer sounded, scattered boos rained down. There weren’t many but enough to indicate that more than a few fans were disappointed in how the team had performed. As the arena emptied, a lone voice yelled, “Trade Dag!”

  Jay placed his hand on the mayor’s shoulder. “I wish I could’ve arranged for a win.”

  Despite the loss, House was sanguine. “Heck of a game,” he declared. Then: “I look around this place, and I think how much better the team is gonna play when their home reflects their talent.”

  Jay shrugged like a man who was accustomed to overcoming insurmountable obstacles. The Mayor wanted a new arena for his city and all of the ancillary economic development that would follow. But he had the usual and seemingly intractable urban manager’s dilemma of union contracts, pension obligations, and a shrinking tax base. Inconveniently, the price tag for these life-giving structures had risen to stratospheric heights, so funds of this scale could not be obtained from the hemorrhaging coffers of Newark. This is where Jay Gladstone came in. If Jay achieved the arena deal, New Jersey would hail him as a patron saint, and it would cement his position as a key player in the world of professional sports ownership, something that had great resonance for him as a lifelong fan. He reveled in his role as the potential savior of a fallen city.

  “It’s going to be the most impressive arena in the league,” Jay told the mayor.

  Oblivious to the business being discussed, Nicole joined the conversation and said, “Dag was fantastic.” Despite having attended countless games with her husband, she remained blind to certain basketball nuances such as the one that indicated Dag was supposed to be guarding Paul Pierce at the end of the game.

  “That was some shot he hit with Garnett draped on him,” Jay said. Nicole liked Dag personally, always chatted with him when she attended team functions, and Jay saw no advantage in pointing out that his blown defensive assignment had cost their team the win.

  Mayor House thanked Jay for the ticket, turned to Nicole, and pecked her on the cheek. Apparently unsatisfied with this, Nicole wrapped her arms around him and pulled him close in a way that, to her husband, seemed overly friendly. Jay could see the mayor’s spine straighten. When she released him, House looked at Jay with an awkward grin and walked off to greet a prospective campaign donor on the other side of the court. Nicole air-kissed women but any silverback male found himself enveloped in her embrace. Jay had spoken about it to her, but she dismissed his concerns as generational. Tonight, he chose to say nothing.

  An hour later, the two of them lay next to each other in bed, Jay on his side facing Nicole who was on her back, eyes closed, a biography of Spinoza resting open on her chest. He wore pajamas and she a camisole, yoga pants, and an eye mask. After a “rocky patch” in the marriage he believed to have been caused by too much business travel, the couple had been getting along better lately. Professional basketball was a hobby for Jay, a diversion. He was the co-chairman of the Gladstone Group, the family-held real estate company founded by his father and uncle. Recently, he had started a massive construction project in South Africa. Nicole accompanied him once but had declined to go back. Although she kept busy with charity work and her horses, Jay believed his absences had worn on her. She was distant when he returned, and even if he had been away less than a week, it took them several days to get back on an even keel.

  It was just after midnight, and he had the stirrings of an erection. It had been weeks since they had had sex and it was his firm belief that a healthy sex life was an important component of marriage, a philosophy that occasionally necessitated having sex when sleep might have been more desirable. He removed the Spinoza biography, placed it on the nightstand, and pressed himself against his wife’s hip. She murmured something he could not make out. Choosing to interpret this as encouragement, he slid his hand over her breast. When this did not produce the hoped-for reaction, he slipped his hand beneath the camisole and gently rubbed her nipple with his thumb and forefinger. She swatted his hand away and rolled on her side with her back to him.

  “Tomorrow,” she mumbled. Her voice had a raspy quality that was magnified by fatigue. She adjusted her pillow.

  Because his attempt to make love had a desultory aspect, it was without much disappointment th
at Jay retreated, rolling on to his left side, his back to her. In this position—back-to-back—he thought about his relative lack of ardor. His wife was still a lovely woman, her body youthful and fit. Her intelligence restless and undiminished. When they had first met the sex was seismic and revelatory. So, what was it that made this night’s attempt feel perfunctory? Jay had the usual worries of a man who ran a multi-billion-dollar empire, but he had become an expert at managing the stress commensurate with that level of responsibility. If the real estate market cratered and the value of the Gladstone family holdings dipped by a hundred million dollars no one would miss a meal. He worried about his health but, physically, he felt hale and strong. He had thrown himself into the basketball team’s business with a fervor that seemed to surprise his wife, whose own life lacked a similar passion. Nicole had worked as a model and then in government but left the workforce when she married Jay. A year ago, she informed him she wanted to resume a more active professional life (a small Kabbalah-themed jewelry business—available in Barney’s, Bonwit Teller, and I. Magnin—had briefly occupied her), but as far as Jay could tell this meant having a lot of lunches with friends to talk about her options. As he considered whether his reaction to Nicole’s full-body embrace of Major House reflected anything other than a projection of the dissatisfaction he had been feeling, Jay decided he needed to engage her in some way that would reflect enthusiasm for the marriage. But what to do? Buy her another home? They already owned five (Bedford, East Hampton, Manhattan, Aspen, London, St. Kitts). Perhaps a work of art would charm her, a painting or sculpture? But Nicole was not materialistic, and while she would appreciate the quality, it would not move her. What then? She was a woman who sought to devour life, who craved exhilaration. What fresh thrills could he provide? He began to enumerate a list of possibilities but caught himself. Was that his role, he wondered, to create endless diversions? There was too much else that required his attention.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The ragged quilt of dirty snow that covered the ground in front of the red-brick apartment building was considerably enlivened by the presence of a naked man doing push-ups on a patch of frozen grass. It was just after seven o’clock the following morning.

  The man was wiry and young, and his muscles flexed as he lowered his torso then pushed hard and straightened his arms. Jagged noises emerged from his throat. It was impossible to tell if he was counting since the guttural sounds were indecipherable. After a series of push-ups and accompanying grunts, the man bounded to his feet and, pink soles flashing, dashed into the apartment building past a startled woman who was emerging through the glass doors carrying a 2’ x 2’ cardboard box. The woman blinked as if to make sure what she had seen was not an apparition, delicately placed the box on the ground, reached for her cell phone, called the police, and reported what she had just witnessed. Then she picked the box up, walked a hundred yards away from the building, and waited.

  Less than a minute later she watched as the man materialized on a second-floor balcony where he climbed on to the metal railing and, hands on hips and still resplendently exposed, surveyed his domain. On the short side, he looked to be about a hundred and forty pounds without an ounce of fat. Unkempt hair clung to his head in uneven clumps. His penis was flaccid and unexceptional. A tattoo on his arm displayed two crossed M16 rifles cradling a skull crowned by the words U.S. Army. His eyes were hectic, and he did not appear to be taking in the tableau in front of him, a row of identical apartment houses known as Gladstone Village, constructed in the 1960s, or the bystanders gaping at him. The marble stillness of his pose was compromised by the twitching of his left eye.

  A staccato SQUAWK!SCREE!SQUAWK! emerged from his throat, bizarre and otherworldly, and like a superhero, arms spread wide and chest thrust out, he leaped to the ground where he landed on his feet, thighs flexed, knees absorbing the impact, and sprinted back to the spot where he had been doing push-ups. Then he threw himself face down on the ground and resumed his routine.

  The woman—her name was Gloria Alvarez—had lived in the building for nearly ten years. She was a school teacher in Harlem, and this guy’s shenanigans were going to make her miss the train. The cardboard box in her arms was the prototype of a device through which her students would be able to view a solar eclipse the following week.

  It wasn’t the first time she had observed this man acting strangely. A few weeks ago, he was muttering to himself at the mailboxes in the lobby. In the basement laundry room, she encountered him wearing boxer shorts and staring at the window of a dryer that was not running. She had seen him around before that but hadn’t noticed anything unusual about his behavior. Maybe something had happened to him. She knew a sweet guy in the Queens neighborhood where she grew up who killed a neighbor’s dog because he said it was talking to him. Sometimes people bug out. It was a fact of life.

  Gloria Alvarez lived with her husband and daughter, a fifth-grader. Her daughter’s bus had taken her to school half an hour earlier, so the little girl had missed the freak show this morning—thank you, Jesus! But what if the naked guy started making a habit of parading around like this? Gloria was not inclined to put anyone in the crosshairs of the system, but this naked cabron appeared to be in serious need of professional help. She figured the authorities would send the appropriate representatives who would take him to a safe environment and get him sorted out.

  A maintenance worker named Gustavo Solis was at a bachelor party the previous evening and as a result of too many beers had overslept. It was a Thursday, the day he checked all of the interior lights in the public spaces of the apartment complex and replaced any bulbs that might have burned out. He clutched a large black coffee as he emerged from his truck and blearily made his way toward Building #1. This was when he noticed the naked man doing pushups. Gustavo was about the same age as the naked man and had seen him around the complex fully clothed, skateboarding with the teenagers, singing to no one in particular but not causing any problems. This clothing-optional look was new. Gustavo looked around for the security guard who was meant to be patrolling but didn’t see him. He didn’t want to deal with this nonsense. His head was pounding from last night’s revels—the coffee had barely started to work—but he was the only official representative of Gladstone Village who seemed to be around, and he felt some responsibility to hold the fort until help arrived.

  Gustavo called out to get his attention, but the man continued the up and down of his push-ups. The intense physical exercise was causing his sternum to expand and contract and from a distance of fifty feet Gustavo could see clouds of breath visible in the cold air. Cautiously he moved closer. Then the man jumped to his feet and whirled on Gustavo. Assuming a martial arts stance, Gustavo prayed the man would not charge him. He did not want to wrestle anyone who was naked. Gustavo was relieved when the man turned and sprinted into the building.

  “He’s gonna jump off the balcony,” a woman’s voice said. Gustavo turned to see Gloria Alvarez standing a safe distance away. “I called the police a minute ago.” He knew her from around, but they had never spoken. Keeping the box balanced between her elbows, she offered that trans-ethnic New York, palms-up, aayyywhaddyagonnado? Gustavo tried to smile, but his head hurt. He wished he had stayed in bed. A birdlike sound emanating from Building #1 drew his attention. When he looked toward the source, he saw the naked man standing on the second-floor balcony.

  A pot-bellied, fiftyish white man and his sallow adult son emerged from a van with a faded McCain/Palin sticker on the rear bumper next to one that read Obummer. They were carrying a tarpaulin and several cans of paint toward the building when they observed what was going on and froze in their tracks. The sight of public nakedness was transfixing. The combination of aggression and vulnerability a human in this state manifests will exert a hypnotic pull. So, they stared. The man, again perched on the railing, pirouetted as if on an exercise bar. Rather than beholding his cold-shrunk maleness, the onlookers were now treated to an un
obstructed view of his backside.

  Two hours earlier, in a small apartment in Port Chester, Russell Plesko was avoiding a fight with his wife, Crystal. The previous night they argued about who was doing more for their young family, comprised of the two of them and their baby daughter. Russell had been watching one of the local professional basketball teams lose to the Celtics. After a trying day at work, he didn’t want to deal with Crystal. It was the usual beef couples at that stage of life get into, hardworking people who labor long hours, don’t get enough sleep, and can never seem to attend to all their mundane obligations. Russell had spent a fitful night on the living room couch where he got no more than two hours of solid rest. Lately, he and Crystal had been scrapping like weasels, and he was beginning to wonder whether their union was built to last. For the past hour, he had been thinking about checking into a motel to teach his wife a lesson. Let Crystal try to raise their daughter on her own, see how she liked that. She had called him lazy. Lazy! Russell Plesko lettered in two sports at Port Chester High School, spent summers as a teenager working in his uncle’s landscaping business with a crew of Central American immigrants, earned his associate’s degree in criminal justice at Westchester Community College, and became a police officer at twenty-five. Now, at twenty-seven, he was poised for his first promotion. Lazy? Officer Russell Plesko did not think so.

  When Crystal entered their small kitchen that morning, Russell didn’t glance up from his bowl of cereal. He kissed his daughter and left without saying goodbye to his wife. The desk sergeant told him it looked like he hadn’t slept. Russell prided himself on his professionalism. However volubly he might behave at home, at work he was known for his unflappable demeanor. Was the rough night that visible? Now the cold snap was aggravating an old sports injury, one he had strategically chosen not to reveal when he filled out the forms for his job application to the White Plains Police Department. He carried prescription painkillers for when this happened, and although he had popped one twenty minutes earlier, the pain had worsened. Driving his patrol car west on Post Road when the call came over the radio—unidentified black male, approximately thirty years old, acting erratically inside and in front of Building #1 at Gladstone Village—Officer Plesko was in no mood.