Lauren Takes Leave (46 page)

“Something like that,” Jodi smirks. She twists the water
out of her hair and ties it into a slick, gorgeous bun. “Thanks for coming,
Lex. And for your generous message and donation last night.” Tim waves her
gratitude away, perhaps trying to make light of his embarrassment of riches.
His eyes sweep over the rest of us.

“Hi,” he says, extending his hand to a grotesque looking,
completely humiliated Leslie. “I’m Tim.”

“It was the craziest scene, Doug, and you missed it,” I
say, sliding into the passenger seat of our car. Only, when I turn to look at
Doug in the driver’s seat, he’s not there.

“Doug?” I call out, like he could be somewhere in our car
without me noticing him, or like maybe he just didn’t hear me the first time.

I get back out of the car and look down the private drive
that meanders through the cemetery grounds. There are only a few cars left from
the funeral procession and no sign of Doug standing about. During the pounding
of the rain and the chaos of the quarrel with Leslie, I sort of forgot where I
was. But in the wake of that emotional and physical storm, a placid hush has
descended on the property. I gaze across the cemetery and down the soft, green
hill dotted with tombstones, and breathe deeply, sending one final farewell—and
an apology or two—to Sonia Goldberg.

On the third ring of my cell phone call to Doug, one of
the back doors to Tim’s limousine opens, and Doug steps out. He holds his cell
phone up. “You rang?”

I click the “end call” button and walk toward him, my
stomach roiling nervously. Has Doug been sitting in the backseat of a stretch
limo with MC Lenny this whole time?

And if so, why? What in fuck’s sake have they got to talk
about besides…me?

It doesn’t help my intestines to see that he’s smirking,
like he’s got a secret. Or like he’s very pleased with himself. Or both, like
he’s got a secret that pleases him very much.

Oh no, he’s murdered Lenny.

He’s murdered Lenny in the back of Tim Cubix’s fancy ride,
and now we’ll all be going to jail together to live forever in one large pen
like at the end of
Seinfeld
.

“…and so, while I was talking to my bookkeeper on the
phone about this problem we’re having making payroll this month, I looked out
the window and saw…” Doug stops to look at me. “Lauren, are you even
listening?”

“Nah…not really,” I admit. “I’m a little freaked out right
now, creating Armageddon scenarios.”

“Lauren,” he says, extending his hands toward mine. He
clasps our hands together as we stand face-to-face, as if we are saying our
wedding vows. “I have a few things to tell you. I haven’t been…well, it’s
complicated really, but…what it comes down to is that”—and here he inhales and
exhales deeply before continuing—“I have not been completely honest with you.”

My first thought, bizarre as it seems, is one of
satisfaction, in an
I knew it
kind of way. It’s like all of my worst
fears and darkest daydreams of where Doug has been these past few months have
been confirmed. So, as much as I want to get angry at him for lying to me, my
primary emotion is actually self-congratulatory for sensing that something was
way off with us.

Then I mimic his deep inhale-exhale and ask. “Who is she?”

“My bookkeeper.”

Doug’s bookkeeper is a seventy-eight-year-old, white-haired
librarian type who wears orthopedic shoes and smells of talcum powder and clove
cigarettes. She’s like Betty White’s younger, less funny sister.

“You’re sleeping with Dorothy?”

“Sleeping with…?” Then his face explodes into laughter as
he grabs onto a mental image probably similar to the one I’ve just created. “My
God! No! Lauren, what kind of person do you think I am?”

“A gerophiliac?”

“You just made that term up.”

“Yes, I did. Right here on the spot.”

“Lauren, your imagination needs a vacation. The rest of
you does not. Now listen,” he says, placing his hands firmly on my shoulders as
if to keep me from running away again. “I’ve been having some…financial trouble
with the company, and the bank refused to give me another loan until I’d paid
back the first.”

“I thought you paid back the first one in September,” I
say.

“I tried to.” He pauses, and I watch his face as he
searches for the next words. “But it turned out that I needed the money to pay
the rent on the office space, and then payroll was due, and then quarterly
taxes were due and, still, my clients were paying me in bits and pieces, with
no one project coming in at a big enough profit margin to ever get ahead and…things
just snowballed. So, no, I haven’t been able to pay the bank back yet.”

“Oh, Doug.” I mentally begin adding up the money I spent
frivolously in the past few days and estimating it at about $5,000. My stomach
drops into my bowels.

“Since Dorothy is in charge of the company’s books, she
saw where things were headed, which was basically into bankruptcy, and she came
to me one night after work with a proposition.” He pauses and raises an eyebrow
at me mockingly. “
Not
of the sexual nature.”

“Ha,” I say, meaning,
get on with your story and let’s
not pause for comic relief.

“So, long story short, Dorothy has been a private investor
for me since September, loaning me a good deal of her own inheritance and
retirement money to help me get out from under, thus avoiding having creditors
come after us and take away our house as collateral for unpaid bills.”

Our house?

“Can you really be that bad at business?” I ask, rather
unkindly. “And that careless? To put our home at risk?”

Doug looks contrite, but speaks defensively. “That’s what
you have to do when you start your own business, Lauren! Put up something of
value as collateral.”

“Don’t snap at me!” I snap at Doug. I take a moment to compose
myself, then continue at a lower volume. “You never even discussed that part
with me. I had no idea.”

“I know, I know.” He scratches his head with his right
hand. “I had it in my head that I wasn’t lying to you if you hadn’t asked me
about something directly. I thought it was okay to gloss over the everyday
accounting problems because…well, I guess I thought I could handle it myself,
and that it would straighten itself out, and that I didn’t want you to worry.
As you well know, there’s a fine line between withholding information and
lying.”

“Don’t twist this around and make it about me!” I say.
“That’s not a fair comparison.”

He raises his eyebrows at me questioningly.

“Okay, fine. It’s a perfect comparison,” I say. I look up
the hill to where Kat, Jodi and Leslie are still talking with Tim.

That particular group assembled on the hill is like a
study in the art of withholding information. Tim pulled a disappearing act from
the set of
Croc of Lies
and didn’t tell Ruby where he was. Jodi
consistently skims off the fat of Lee’s profitable business and uses it as her
own “salary,” and Leslie does everything within her power to make sure that her
husband never discovers that she has more facial hair than he does. And Kat?
She lied to herself, which is maybe the worst of all, by pretending that
teaching kindergarten and being married to Peter would lead her to the life she
thought she wanted.

Every one of us has found ways to skew the truth to fit
our purposes. It’s not always the moral choice, or the most mature, but
perhaps, in the moment of decision-making, it seems completely necessary.

I look at Doug and try to see this mess from his point of
view. “I think you didn’t want me to know the truth and to judge you. You
didn’t want me to be mad at you.”

Doug shakes his head in disagreement. “It’s not anger I
worried about…more like…I didn’t want you to be
disappointed
in me. And
I couldn’t admit that I was failing. That my company was failing. That
I
am a failure.”

“Oh, Doug,” I say again, this time with compassion. “Your
company might fail, but that does not mean that you are a failure.” I put my
head against his chest and hear the thrump-thrump of his heart.

“What’s that you just said, Worthing? Repeat after me:
nobody’s a failure,” MC Lenny says, emerging from the stretch limo and
stretching. “Certainly not a client of mine like your husband here.”

“A what?” I ask, looking from Doug to Lenny and back
again.

“He’s right. A client,” Doug reiterates. “I saw Lenny get
out of the limo with Tim Cubix, and, once my initial shock at that passed, and
once my initial interest in busting Lenny’s ball sack passed, too, I
remembered: rapping aside, Lenny is a pretty well-known accountant in the
city.”

“CPA by day, RAP by night, though not for much longer, I
hope,” Lenny says.

“Just long enough to get me out of this jam,” Doug adds.

“And…did I mention
how
I’m going to do that?” A sly
smile creases the corners of Lenny’s mouth.

“With some…magical accounting skills, I’m guessing?” I
say.

“Including some creative restructuring of my company and
another loan from a different bank?” Doug adds.

“Nah, guys. Think out of the box. Think…Hollywood,” Lenny
says cryptically.

And just like that, almost as if on cue from an unseen
director, Tim walks over and joins us.

“Interesting threesome,” Tim whispers to me, sending
chills down my spine. I laugh and try to make light of his comment, because the
last thing I need Doug to know is that Tim knows that I kissed Lenny in Miami.
That’s like TMI times a million, when a megastar’s got inside info on where
your wife’s tongue has been before you do. Instead, I make introductions. Tim
to Doug, Doug to Tim.

“Hey,” Doug coughs out, extending his hand for a manly
shake.

“Hey, dude. It’s great to finally put the face to the
name,” Tim says warmly. “Your wife is a great person.”

“Yup,” Doug says. “Although I prefer when she doesn’t flat
out lie to me and then bolt, abandoning me and my kids and risking her
livelihood in the process.”

“True, that,” Tim says. “Ruby’s always on the run. Namibia
one day, Cannes the next. It’s
annoying
.” He shrugs. “You know, women.”

That shuts Doug up pretty quick.

“Hey, Tim,” Lenny says, “did I mention that Doug here is a
talented graphic designer with his own boutique shop in the city?”

“Really?” Tim says, studying Doug.

Doug merely nods. I want to kick him into high gear, bring
out the salesman smooth talker that Doug can be when he gets excited about his
work. Instead, his cheeks are flushed and he’s scratching his neck nervously.

Okay, maybe that’s just how I was when I first met Tim,
too.

“Totally cutting-edge facility,” Lenny adds, seeing that
Doug might not jump in here. “He used to work with some guys out in LA at
Imaginary Forces. Doug’s shop can handle lots of specialized motion graphics
for movie titles and trailers, plus amazing collateral materials in print, like
posters and bus-wrap signage.”

Lenny knows all this stuff because I complained to him for
hours on end via Facebook about Doug’s new solo venture and his subsequent
workaholic schedule.

Now, that’s irony put to good use right there.

“You serious?” Tim says, addressing Doug as if he’s the
one speaking the lines.

“Uh-huh,” Doug says. He clears his throat, which is a good
sign that he might actually speak intelligible words next. I breathe a sigh of
relief as he does. “We just got Nickelodeon as a client. We hope they’ll let us
do all the work for the Kid’s Choice Awards, but we’re still up against some
other agencies for that particular gig.”

“I’m thinking he’s the right guy for postproduction on the
Haiti stuff, since I’ll be doing it all in New York,” Lenny says.

“What are you doing right now?” Tim asks Doug.

I’m thinking that Doug’s possible answers to that question
include, but are certainly not limited to:
Melting down, Freaking out, Putting
my cozy Tudor on the market
, and/or
Trying to unravel a tangle of lies
and get my wife to forgive me just as I have forgiven her
.

“Not much,” Doug says, which is also a legitimate
response. “Mourning maybe? Sitting some shivah?”

“Did somebody say shivah?” Jodi says, walking down the
hill with Kat and Leslie in tow, the two of them holding the train of Jodi’s
dress out behind them like bridesmaids coming down the aisle. “’Cause it’s at
my house and I think I’m running a little late. Plus, I’m freezing! Thanks,
ladies,” she says, as Leslie and Kat drop Jodi’s tail. “Glad we could work that
out. Everyone in love again?” she jokes, scanning our faces for signs of
unrest.

“Yes,” Doug says, speaking for the group. “I believe we
are.”

“Oh, Tim, would you mind if Leslie had a small photo-op
with you, after she cleans herself up a bit at my house?” Jodi asks. Tim raises
an eyebrow, but nods gamely. “Wonderful,” Jodi continues. “In exchange for the
experience, Leslie wishes to drop any and all charges against Lauren for the
‘incident’ on Wednesday night.”

“Really?” I say. “You…don’t mind, Tim?” He shakes his
head, and I turn to Leslie. “And…this is all good with you? No hard feelings?”

“I won’t sue you, Lauren. But I probably won’t ever be
your friend again, either. No more of my parties for you.”

I pretend to find this news disheartening, and shake my
head forlornly. Inside, I’m thinking,
Now, that’s what I’d call a win-win!

“So, who’s up for enjoying white fish and herring with
Rabbi Cantor?”

“Bring it on,” Lenny says. He motions for Doug to join him
and Tim in the limo. Doug tosses me the keys to our car and flashes me a huge,
childlike grin.

“I know all about it, Doug,” I say, heading back to our
Acura. “Stick with me, my friend. It turns out, life is fun!”