Noah Pellegrino, erstwhile Nobel hopeful, gifted elucidator of the dismal science, and irrepressible host of BBC2’s The Money Tree, is, at this hour—at this late hour—to be seen squatting, as if in supplication, on the frigid floor of his ex-wife's guest bathroom. His buttocks wiggle in generous gabardine trousers. A healer of markets, he has been summoned to stanch a leak. He is fifty-seven next week and his damp knees ache.
Sacha, his truculent ex, paces the hallway outside. As he squeezes his portly frame around the stand of the offending washbasin, his face is pressed to the floor, filling his beard with scratchy grout chips, the guilty legacy of a botched retiling. A brass valve hisses boiling water, as if in reflexive defense. He strains to reach it, and the unaccustomed exertion makes his nostrils flare wide—wide enough to register olfactory evidence of a recent evacuation. Yet Sacha lives imperiously alone. He is overcome by a combination of revulsion and jealousy.
An hour ago he threw on a coat and scribbled a half-honest note to Angela, his pretty new wife, then launched into the clear February night, car keys clutched like a stubby baton. Guilt rode shotgun as he wheeled his Mercedes down the driveway and onto Brook Lane.
Leaving Hampstead Garden Suburb, he took a short cut under a bridge, down to the sprawling Archway roundabout, then came into London, getting his first glimpse of the city’s baleful core. Driving south he headed back in time, past Angela, past the divorce, the book deal, and the TV contract, back to the crepuscular Battersea flat that he and Sacha had shared for the final years of their scabrous marriage.
 * |
“Lovely. Just here’ll do.” Angela Pellegrino, neé Waterman, is returning from yoga with her American friend Dee. Dee’s car passes through the baronial gates of the Hampstead manse, glides up the driveway, and comes to a halt with a satisfying gravel crunch.
All evening, they've avoided the topic of Noah. But now the absence of his Mercedes conjures his presence. Dee sees Angela glance anxiously at the empty patch of gravel, and tries to puncture the tension. “So how’s the great talking head?" she asks. "Still bringing Ricardo to the unwashed?”
“Oh, he’s fine. Everything’s fine really.” Angela feels she owes it to her friend to be more honest. But she's preoccupied, still processing today’s news.
“Call if you need anything, o.k.?” Dee stretches a supportive hand across the gear box. But already Angela has unbuckled and levered herself from the car. The brisk night air rushes in to take her place. Angela closes the door, then studies Dee’s taillights as they snake back down the driveway.
| * |
On arriving, he caught a glimpse of his ruddy, round face in Sacha’s bathroom mirror. Blue eyes still vital, nose protuberant but sculpted. Thinning hair combed modishly forward for TV. It was thought that he had a wise face. Certainly his face had not prevented him bedding a string of pliant young research assistants. Afterward he would lie naked, heart racing, next to some Mandy, Suzy or Debbie and ask, with mocking self-deprecation: “What do you see in an old man like me?” Looking into his eyes, her answer would be some variant of: “You looked kind and clever and I think that you will not hurt me.” They all knew the score. A tenured professor, a man of the mind, would grant them but a taste of adulthood, of gravitas and achievement. He would never leave his daunting wife of twenty-three years.
Three years ago he met Angela checking into a research conference in Manchester. They had adjoining rooms at the Hilton and a key mix-up generated just enough jocularity that he chanced a dinner invitation. She accepted with a straightforward smile. Girded by pasta and Chianti, they shared the bed with his unpacked suitcase and grappled self-consciously on the shiny coverlet. In a rehearsed tone, he explained the marital facts of his complicated life. To his astonishment, she snapped “No, love, this will never do,” then scooped up her clothes and bolted for the connecting door.
Next morning, late as usual for registration, he was surprised when his chest tightened at the sight of her nametag, alone and unclaimed, on the trestle table. He was even more surprised to find himself slipping it into his trouser pocket. There followed a hangdog courtship of rejected entreaties, flowers, letters and phone calls. Diplomatic foreplay, emotional barter, climaxing in his divorce. Sacha, bitter at the molecular level, cited adultery and he copped a plea, even as the impregnable Angela kept him at bay. The next time they made love—how he had yearned—they were in the honeymoon suite of the Dorchester. That was eighteen months ago.
| * |
Angela Pellegrino is unquestionably attractive. But her face is almost too serious to be beautiful. Her dark eyebrows slope sharply inward, drawing attention to the indented brow above her long, straight nose. Always she seems in deep concentration. Her black hair is cut boyishly short, but the look is stern rather than playful. Hugging her gym bag like a life vest, she takes a last look at Noah’s absent car and walks up to the lifeless house.
She remembers that bright Sunday afternoon. Late October. Newlyweds, they brunched with Dr. and Mrs. Weintraub at D’Amicos on Hampstead High Street. Crotchety old farts, the Weintraubs. Noah squeezed her palm under the rickety table as he debated monetary policy with his septuagerian rival. She nodded admiringly as he made florid gestures with his free hand, and emphasized points with squinty-eyed stabs of his fork. Between exhortations he scooped gobfuls of eggs florentine, chewing with vigorous efficiency. She drained two glasses of white wine, but it was the heady cocktail of virility and intellect that made her drunk.
Afterwards Noah, eyes ablaze with marital pride, bear-hugged her on the teeming pavement, his beard sandpapering her flushing cheek. She expressed tipsy delight when he suggested they work off their meal with a walk. She trailed behind him, showy heels ill-suited to the Heath’s rutted pathways. He was the coltish schoolboy, racing ahead to point out some obscure landmark. She was the cardigan-draped mother, head angled, indulgently feigning interest.
Boozy euphoria yielded to the mournful throb of an afternoon hangover. They left the Heath and turned the corner onto Brook Lane. Her shoes pinched and she began to feel chilly. The press of untended chores crowded her mind like late afternoon rain clouds. He tugged her, now a recalcitrant puppy, into the driveway of Number 33.
“No—” A half-word. It was odd, her choice of soubriquet for her new husband. An affectionate truncation of his name. But also a command. Or perhaps a plea.
“No.” This time she meant it as such—weren’t they trespassing? But then he pulled away and bounded on, leaving her on the driveway’s pebbly apron. Crunch. Crunch. Crunch. She can see him now: spinning around, eyes wide, grin broadening, arms outstretched like a Monopoly tycoon.
It turned out the house was her wedding present. Opulently renovated within, an architectural marvel without. She stood there, mouth agape, and silently listed the reasons why this could not be—the expense, the size, why had he not consulted her? She put her hands on her hips and tapped her foot. But this was a pro-forma show of indignation, easily eclipsed by his heroic-scale gesture. This strange, foreign house, commissioned by some fanciful Victorian industrialist—he had bought and redone it on a whim. How she hates it. It squats smugly before her, nestled on meaty buttresses. I will be here, it whispers, long after you have gone.
| * |
Unthinkingly, Noah rams the valve with the heel of his hand. Ouch! The valve seems to have given, but the hissing has intensified. And now the unwelcome fountain moistens his face. He realizes he has lost the coin toss, and inadvertently tightened the valve. A sheepish tug in the other direction yields nothing. He strokes his beard. A lifetime’s work offers no help. This beaming brass fixture: he can compare its value to that of other goods, hypothecate the manpower required to construct it, show its utility to the household economy or its contribution to the balance of payments. But he cannot turn it.
He sees that he should approach it from the other side, and that this will force him to lie on his back and slither under the basin, as if repairing a car. A hammer would help, but there is the matter of going downstairs to the entryway closet, where he last stashed the toolbox. To raise himself now, step out to confront Sacha in her righteous, arms-folded glory, seems akin to an expedition to Kilimanjaro.
| * |
The nape of her neck is still moist, but her yoga high has long passed. She discards her bag and heads for the kitchen. The inevitable scribbled note is taped to the fridge, amid a forest of missives from Noah’s media acolytes. Her slight shoulders stiffen and she gulps a breath, acknowledging, too young, the wifely burden of ground given up:
“A: Had to go to Sacha’s. Plumbing crisis! Back before twelve. Best, N”
She blames hunger for the empty feeling in her gut and resolves to assemble a salad. With grim satisfaction, she organizes two fat red tomatoes, a leaf of fresh lettuce, and a doorstop of stilton on the chopping board. She unsheathes a large, serrated knife from the double-decker maple rack. In her head, Noah’s glibly initialized names, A and N, perform a bizarre Sesame Street jig. Grown men in felt costumes and red tights dance around each other, bumping and falling down. The tomatoes yield to the knife, bloody red juice staining the board. Endearing at first, his note-scrawling ways now vex her. He reduces her to marginalia. How many seconds does he save, one letter instead of six? She tears the lettuce. Pompous prick. And what to say of the flat, loveless “Best?" Best what? Wishes? Regards? Best of luck? The stilton is dry and crumbles as she slices it. She will not skimp with the dressing. What does that fat Slavic bitch get? Better than “Best”, it would seem. She's hardly fooled by the exclamation point, with its “what can you do?” chumminess. No initials for Sacha, after all.
Reckless with the knife, she slices a layer of skin from her forefinger. She watches blankly as blood pools like an inkblot on her trembling fingertip. She crumples the note and reaches for a bottle of wine.
| * |
He lies on his back and thinks of England. Of English women. Not the functional peasants of his adolescence, with their childrearing busts, voices eternally raised, arms flailing. English girls. Plaintive and coded. A head turned sideways to exhale cigarette smoke, a gin and tonic lustily drained. A half-wink at the call of last orders. The publicist, makeup like an underscore, whose hand lingered on his knee. Befreckled breasts revealed as she leaned forward. They dropped hints, these girls, that he was happy to pick up—the married man still desired. He feels the tumescence press into his leg, and thinks of his wife. He sees her as he has so often of late: naked, spread-eagled on her stomach, sheets strewn, bloodless back rising and sinking to the unfathomable rhythms of her sleep.
Angela is an unbalanced checkbook, a lengthening list of intermittently remembered to do’s. Last week, glancing up amid the yeasty throes of intercourse, he was startled to see, on their nightstand, a dog-eared copy of “What to Expect While You’re Expecting.” It lay atop a copy of his book. As far as he knew they were not expecting. They were not even expecting to be expecting! He reminds himself to ask about this.
| * |
Quite drunk, she roams the empty, sterile house, tracing her bandaged finger over Queen Anne chairs and cherry bookcases. To know the price of everything and the value of nothing. Her own possessions filled two duffel bags that Noah heaved, puffing theatrically, into an idling taxi at Euston Station. Now they lie marooned in a bedroom closet. She might have packed her youth too, wedged among love letters and cheap plastic picture frames.
Climbing the stairs, she yanks off her damp clothes and reels into the cavernous marble bathroom. The wine bottle swings from her hand like a child’s favorite toy. Pour another glass—it makes no difference now. Not after her afternoon chat with Dr. Carmichael, confirming what she'd known when she saw the crimson-tinged flushing water. He told her that this was bad luck, nothing to do with her. But it seemed to have everything to do with her. She turns the taps and watches the water spin down the plughole, and registers the full measure of her loss.
| * |
Noah has surrendered to physics and armed himself with the hammer. Clank! He skirted wordlessly past Sacha, showing his reddened palm in silent explanation. Clank! How he despised her. His anger rises with his heartbeat, itself quickened by the bound back up the stairs. Clank! He indulges himself in a Hitchcockian fantasy: the hammer buried in the back of her fleshy head, snow white curtains splattered red. Clank! He'll never be back by twelve, as he promised Angela in his note. Clank! What on earth is he doing here? There are plumbers for this! Clank! He could be cradling Angela at this very moment! Clank! The valve loosens and he feels invigorated, and sure that one more meaty—
The pipe snaps free of its rusty hinges and crashes down on him in a torrent of hot water. His legs jerk like a hangman’s trophy as he struggles to get clear. Thump! Rising, he smashes his temple on underside of the washbasin. His neck whiplashes with a sickening crack.
Sacha opens the bathroom door and sees his sopping gray hair flap wildly across his seared red face. His forehead bears an accusatory welt. She retreats and he lurches toward her, quivering hand brandishing the hammer. It thrills him to see her jaw slacken as she backpedals down the hallway to her bedroom. Her outstretched hand nervously traces the balcony to her rear. He wants to follow her, finish the job, but instead he screams, “Get a fucking plumber!” and veers down the stairs. He grabs coat and keys and spills out into the clarifying night air, epithets reverberating in his wake.
Rage has cleared his mind and lifted the dull weight of obligation from his shoulders. He will not come here again, no sir! He heads back north, to his wife and home.
| * |
Fantasies seize her mind. Noah and Sacha copulate clumsily in the hallway of a flat she's often imagined, but never visited. She sees them in cartoon poses—yellow teeth thick as piano keys, fat red mashing tongues, great white expanses of blubbery skin, chafing and heaving. The picture makes her giggle, and her shoulders send ripples through the bath water. Thoughts comes fast and free, and she lets them drift over her as the wine, warmth, and crushed Xanax go to work. She slips down and the water consoles her face, washing away her dried tears. She comes back up and wonders who would notice if she were to be drained away, like so much dirty bathwater. No one, she thinks, as she slips under again.
© 2005 Keith Lord
