Moments of Clarity - 1. Chapter 1

Over the last two or three years I've had this recurring dream, where I’m placed in a witness relocation program. The causes and details vary. Sometimes it’s because I’m a mobster flipping on my boss, and sometimes it’s because I possess knowledge that will expose a corrupt but powerful congressman. Sometimes I end up in town somewhere in middle America, living in a house with a small yard and a picket fence. Others I’m in a large metropolis, anonymous in the crowd and working as a bike messenger. Sam is never with me; she’s safe, but I must never see or contact her again.

I have no connections to crime, organized or otherwise. As the sales director of a floundering B2B marketing company, my chances of coming across compromising information on anybody I’d need protection from are slim to none. Outside of TV, I don’t think I've ever seen a picket fence, and I’d have to be nuts to try and bike in city traffic. Sam and I have been married – for better or worse – for eighteen years now.

My interpretation of the dream had been that I subconsciously yearn to make a difference, to do something heroic, even if it required a personal sacrifice, but, after hearing it, RT said in his slow, deliberate way that I obviously wanted to escape my life without taking responsibility for doing so.

“No, I don’t,” I hastily protested, but he just looked skeptical.

*******************

“I’m sorry, Carl. We rode this wagon as long as we could, but it’s time to get off.”

Schuyler is 30 years old, the founder of M@sterM@rkets. This is the second company he’s founded; the first made him a millionaire. He speaks in mixed metaphors, parables, similes and clichés. He summoned me to his office a good 20 minutes ago and he’s been talking non-stop since then. I think he’s trying to tell me that we’re about to file for bankruptcy.

“Nothing we can do, right? We just need to dust ourselves off and get back on the horse.”

I’m confused.

“What horse?”

He sighs. He hates it when he has to explain himself. You’d think he’d be used to it by now.

“Look for other opportunities.”

“And by ‘we’ you mean…”

“All of us, Carl.”

That sounds promising.

“Together?”

He leans forward, an earnest expression on his face.

“It’s important to have the right people on the bus.”

Now he’s quoting Jim Collins at me. I briefly wonder whether he’s actually read the book, but I suspect he just picked up the quote from somewhere. Schuyler often likes to mention that he graduated from the business school of life.

“So am I on your bus?”

He leans back and steeples his fingers, obviously disappointed that I’m being so obtuse. He gazes dreamily up at the ceiling for a few moments, then, as if having received some divine confirmation, jumps to his feet and thrusts out his hand.

“HR will discuss your package with you, Carl. I’m sure you won’t be disappointed. Good luck to you.”

The meeting with Schuyler is over at 9:25 a.m. on Monday morning. I’m escorted off the premises at 11:32 a.m.

“It’s SOP to walk all fired people out, Mr. Norwood,” the rent-a-cop assures me. “Nothing personal.”

I arrive at the bus stop just in time to see my bus pulling away. Way to drive home a point, MTA!

*******************

I should call Sam and let her know; after all, she’s made a vow to stand by me for poorer, and it’s looking like it might shape up that way. Instead, I call RT.

“I can’t talk right now,” he whispers the moment he picks up.

Despite my mood, I smile. It never seems to occur to him that he can simply let a call go to his voice mail. After one particularly unfortunate incident, he no longer reaches for the ringing phone when his dick is up my ass, but it’s clear from the faltering rhythm that he gets distracted. And RT gets oh, so many calls.

“Is there any way I can see you right now, RT?”

“Are you okay, hon?” he asks at a more normal volume. “You sound terrible.”

I didn't think I was doing so bad, all things considered, but now I have to swallow down a sob. “No. No, I’m not,” I say thickly.

“Hold on.” I hear him lying to somebody about a family emergency and apologizing, then he’s back on the line. “I can meet you in about 30 minutes.”

“Your place?”

He hesitates, evidently surprised by this unexpected development, then finally agrees.

*******************

Although we’re both in sales, RT and I don’t move in the same circles. We have no common friends or business associates. Our paths crossed nine months ago, while Sam was on a business trip. I decided to go out for a drink and ended up in a small bar that I’d heard of in the Village.

Later, RT told me that he’d known right off the bat that I’m married. Observing my skittishness, the only questions in his mind were whether I’d done something similar before and how far was I prepared to go. He found the answers were no and far enough.

RT is Brooklyn born and bred; he lives in a converted brownstone in Carroll Gardens and sells cameras in an electronic goods superstore in lower Manhattan. His real name is Arthur Thomas Puglisi; his parents called him Artie, but he changed it to RT in college. As he tells it, he hated Arthur but when he tried AT, his real initials, he kept on looking around to see who people were talking to. Unlike me, he’s outgoing and interested in others. At first I mistook his willingness to hear about my childhood as an army brat or about quitting my job with a Fortune 500 company to join M@sterM@rkets as a sign that he felt something deeper for me; I soon realized that it’s simply how he relaxes. Instead of watching TV or reading a book, RT listens to people’s stories. He occasionally interjects a comment – he once remarked amusedly that if I didn't occasionally say ‘her’ and ‘she’ he’d have thought Sam was my promiscuous gay partner – but mostly he just lies on his side, his face rapt, as if he’s a five-year-old listening to a bedtime story. Perhaps that’s why I find myself telling him things about me that I've never told anyone else.

RT doesn't want for dates, so I don’t really understand why he hasn't already moved on. It’s not as if I’m an outstanding lay. Maybe it’s the prospect of hearing more installments in the Carl Norwood soap opera, which contains plenty of pathos: the mother dying of breast cancer when Carl was only eight, the emotionally absent father, the revered older brother, who confused Carl by suddenly turning into a sullen and withdrawn teenager, the relocations every two to three years, and all that before we even get to Carl’s traumatic college years, to his meeting Sam and to his ill-advised marriage to her.

“I really don’t get you guys,” RT said once. By ‘you guys’ he meant closeted married men. “Once you figure things out, why don’t you just do the right thing for everybody involved?”

I don’t know how to answer that. A sense of duty and loyalty, even love, to the woman that we led to the altar under false pretenses? Or is that simply a rationalization for cowardice and taking what we fondly think is the easy way out? Maybe I’d have a better answer if I knew other men like myself, but I don’t think I do, and I avoid introspection -- especially introspection that might show me up in a negative light -- as much as possible.

*******************

I wait for RT outside his home, and watch him walking towards me. He’s only a little taller than my own six feet, but he outweighs me by a good twenty pounds of muscle. He keeps his brown hair so short you can see his scalp; it looks bristly, but feels amazingly soft whenever I touch it.

“Hi, hon,” he says, when he sees me. “What’s the matter?”

I shrug. “I’m sorry I got you out of work.”

“That’s okay. Rafi’s a good guy, he didn't mind.”

I follow him up the stairs and into his apartment. He turns to face me, cups my cheek with his hand and kisses me.

“This is way better than my normal lunch break,” he tells me appreciatively, as if I’m doing him a favor, rather than the other way around.

Afterwards, we lie together on his bed catching our breath. I've never been here in the daytime before. Late at night, the apartment feels isolated and remote, the only thing tying it to my usual world the occasional siren of an ambulance or fire truck. Now I can hear the voices of children, a ball bouncing. I lean over to look out the window, and realize there’s a small park right outside. I never knew that before.

“So what’s wrong, hon?”

“I was fired. Schuyler’s shutting down the company, starting something else, and he doesn't need a sales director in the meantime. Or afterwards, for that matter.”

“Ouch.”

He doesn't ask me what I’m going to do or offer any false comfort, and I don’t really expect him to. Now that I’m calmer, I wonder that he’s even here. We don’t have that kind of a relationship. We get together when Sam is on an overnight business trip, and even then, only if he doesn't have prior arrangements.

“I guess you need to be getting back,” I tell him and he shrugs.

“I can hang out for a while, if you want me to. Have you told Sam yet?”

“Not yet.”

“Let’s go have a drink, hon. You look like you could use one.”

*******************

I’m having difficulty inserting my key into the lock. RT went back to work after one drink. I’m not sure how many more I had after he left. I must be drunk, my failed attempts to complete one simple move I've repeated millions of times before are a sure indication of that, but I feel stone cold sober.

Sam is sitting cross-legged on the sofa, working on her laptop. At 43, she’s still slender and athletic, and her face is only now starting to lose the roundness of youth. I don’t think she’s aged a day from the freshman girl I studied Introductory French with in college all those years ago, but whenever I tell her this, she laughs and points out that she stopped getting carded a long time ago.

Children that change schools every two to three years often learn how to fit in and make friends real fast, but I never seemed to manage, and things didn't work out much better for me in college. My only real friend was Sam. Home-schooled and tom-boyish, she was as awkward in a new environment as I was, and we escaped our loneliness together. By sophomore year we were sharing an apartment, and in slow degrees we moved from friendship to a more physical relationship, although it was never a passionate one, even then.

One evening Sam invited Gilbert to dinner. “You’ll like him,” she told me, and then: “He’s gay.” I wasn't quite sure if I was supposed to hear the word ‘although’ or ‘because’ between those two sentences, or if it was one of her usual non-sequiturs, but she was right. I liked him. I liked him a lot, and in ways I had never liked a guy before. It wasn't the first time I’d had a crush on a guy, but at 20 I could no longer deceive myself that what I felt was simply a meeting of minds, or the chaste bond of brothers-in-arms, if for no other reason that I hardly knew Gilbert and that we had almost nothing in common. At the core of my feelings lay lust, a lust I’d never felt for Sam or any other woman. It took me a few months, but I finally admitted to myself that I was, as my dad would put it, a curl of distaste in his voice, ‘a homosexual’. As far as Walter Norwood Senior was concerned, homosexuality was simply a lazy propensity, perhaps even a slight illness, and it could be cured if only the afflicted exercised self-discipline. Maybe I wouldn't have bought into his theory, if he’d been more vehement about it, but really, my dad expressed no more disapproval of homosexuals than he did of drunks or high-school drop-outs, and a hell of lot less than he did of communists or deserters. So I decided he was right; the answer to my boners whenever Gilbert was in the room was self-discipline.

Part of the cure I devised for myself was to deepen my relationship with Sam. It did occur to me that I was pursuing her non-informed consent to a commitment where I stood a lot more to gain than her, but, in my defense, I really believed I could be what she needed me to be. I loved her.

I still do.

“Hey,” she smiles. “Where have you been? I left you a bunch of messages.”

I check my cell phone. I turned it off when I reached RT’s apartment and forgot to turn it back on.

“Ran out of battery,” I enunciate carefully. Worried about the alcohol fumes, I keep my distance from her.

“Where have you been?”

“Work.”

Her face changes and I immediately realize my mistake. If she couldn't reach me on my cell, the next number she’d try was work.

“Peter and I were in his office, going over some numbers for next quarter,” I say in a rush, rather pleased at how fast I’m thinking on my feet, and then, in sudden inspiration: “We went for a drink afterwards.”

I move forward to give her a peck on the lips, now that the smell of whiskey on my breath has been explained. I stumble a little.

“Looks like it was more than one drink,” she remarks, but she doesn't seem to mind.

“Did you need something?”

“I wanted to remind you to pick up a couple of bottles of wine for tomorrow night. The dinner at Jason’s house.”

Jason is Sam’s business partner. Together they own a management consulting firm, specializing in issues of organizational behavior; how to manage people through change, how to maximize their performance, that kind of thing. Jason is divorced, and I’m almost positive that he is Sam’s off-and-on lover.

Not that he’s the only one. One of the beliefs I had clung to when I asked Sam to marry me was that sex wasn't that important to her, so I wasn't cheating her out of anything. Out of college, Sam found that there were men, who appreciated her tomboyish style and sharp mind. Her growing self-confidence translated into wanting a more physical relationship than I was willing to participate in. I started avoiding touching her, never sure anymore what a casual hug or cuddle might turn into. I guess I thought rejecting her at the outset was better than rejecting her when things were well underway. Even so, it was probably a good five or six years before she had her first affair.

I only confronted her once, when we ran into a client of hers at Lincoln Center and she introduced us. I don’t know how, but I knew. She didn't deny it. She didn't apologize either, just told me it wasn't important. She’s been more discreet after that incident, but I know her too well. We might not have a physical bond, but the emotional one is strong.

“Do you want me to go to the wine store now?” I offer.

She shakes her head.

“We can take care of it tomorrow.”

*******************

“We need to talk.”

I look up from my pile of Sunday papers. I still haven’t told her about losing my job and my heart jackhammers at the determined tone of her voice and the thought that she somehow found out.

She takes a deep breath and looks me straight in the eye.

“I want a divorce.”

I stare at her dumbly. Our marriage isn't perfect, but it’s worked for nearly two decades.

“Carl. Say something.”

“I was fired on Monday,” I blurt out.

“What? Oh, Carl.”

Her eyes soften and she looks like she’s about to give me a hug, then her spine stiffens.

“I’m sorry to hear that. I didn't know.”

We stare at each other, neither of us with a clue as to how to continue this conversation.

“Where have you been going every day?” she asks curiously.

“Just to the diner for breakfast. After you leave, I come back here.”

I spend most of the day staring at the TV and sleeping on the couch. While I was still working, nine times out of ten I was home before her, so she never saw anything amiss.

“Why?” I ask her.

She gestures helplessly; if she’d known about the job, she probably wouldn't have said anything about the divorce, at least not now. She’d have waited at least a couple of months or until I found something else.

“We’re too young to settle,” she says finally. “I love you, but we both need something more.”

“Is it Jason?”

She shakes her head. “It isn't anybody.”

“Well, then?”

She sighs. “I don’t want to do this anymore, Carl. Neither of us is happy.”

“I’m happy,” I protest.

“Stop it. I had to start the ball rolling. Fine. But don’t make this out to be something you don’t want. Don’t push the whole responsibility onto me. You owe me that much, at least.”

“I need to go for a walk,” I tell her. She protests, tells me we need to finish our discussion, but I’m already out the door.

*******************

RT climbs onto the stool next to mine.

“Hey, hon. You’re not usually here on a Sunday. How’ve you been?”

“She wants a divorce. She told me an hour ago. Apparently neither of us is happy.”

“This hasn't been your week, has it?”

I laugh shortly. “You could say that.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Other than get drunk, you mean? I have no idea.”

“Kinda sounds like that dream of yours, doesn't it?” he muses after a while.

“What?”

“You know, the witness protection one. No job, no wife. You can start over someplace else.”

I gape at him.

“Doing what? Where?”

He shrugs. “Wherever you want. Nothing to hold you here, is there?”