The Innocents (29 page)

“This is so fucked up,” she whispered, clenching her fists. A tear slid down her cheek, and she wiped it angrily with the sleeve of her jacket. “This is so fucked up. I can’t be near you. But I don’t want to go far away either.” She stood up to leave.

He sprang up and caught her wrist, and her halfhearted struggle gave him courage. He had to make her promise; had to know that she’d see him again.

“You punish yourself with comparisons but no one has everything. Rachel’s life is hardly perfect, is it? I’m here. I’m with you.”

A strange expression came over her face; one that he didn’t recognize and couldn’t quite identify, but at his words he felt her slacken in his grip. She took a step closer to him. She had relented; he had won.

“I’m coming back next weekend. I don’t care—cancel everything. I’m coming back next Saturday and I’m staying here, with you, and we’re going to be together. Enough talking.”

He pulled her toward him until he could feel her breath, could smell perfume and smoke and the rain-wet leather of her jacket. He leaned forward and kissed her neck. And then, with all the strength he had, he turned and walked away from her, toward the platforms.

Behind him he heard her say, quietly, “Okay.”

“Adam!”

Adam jumped. He had made it onto an earlier train—in the end he’d spent less time in Paris than it had taken to get there, and all in the Gare du Nord. Still, it was worth it. He had leaned against the window as the French countryside slipped past him in a blur and for the whole journey he had played their conversation over and over in his head, and the tears that had made him ache to comfort her now seemed like a victory. Ellie had been hurting too.

He had stepped straight off the train and crossed St. Pancras, heading for the ticket office to book his seats for the following weekend. At the sound of his name he spun round, sure that his elation was written all over his face. He could feel it on his lips; it was in his stride across the station, pulsing in every cell. In front of him was Zach Sabah’s friend Ezra.

“Adam Newman.” Ezra held out a hand to shake.

“Ezra. What are you doing here?”

“I’m everywhere, dude.” Ezra slapped him amiably on the shoulder.

“I’ve been filming in Paris. Gay Paree—or at least it was for the two days I was in it. I love that city. I want to eat Paris.”

“It’s beautiful.”

“As are some of its inhabitants. I didn’t know you knew Ellie Schneider.”

“How did you know I—”

“I saw you two gossiping in the station café. I was going to come over but I was carrying all this gear”—he lifted both arms, from which hung a tripod in a case, several camera bags, and his luggage. On his back was a huge rucksack with a water bottle tucked into a mesh pouch on its side, so that he looked as if he were about to go hiking—“and I didn’t want to interrupt.” This was said without apparent subtext; still, Adam wondered how much he had seen. He tried to think back to any moments in the café that might appear suspect—only that single second when she had pulled away as he’d reached out for her.

“How do you know Ellie? Or did you just recognize her?” Adam asked.

Ezra began to lift off his various bags and pile them on the floor with relief. Adam saw that he was in for a longer conversation than he had the strength for—after having spent days irritated for not insisting that they go to Brooklyn to see Ezra’s play, he now wished that the man was anywhere but in front of him. His mind was still full of Ellie and he had not yet come up with a convincing explanation for why they had been together. And in truth, he didn’t want to. He couldn’t bear the idea of sullying their perfect morning by lying about her.

“No, I know her, I’ve known her a long time. Trust me, there was a time when everyone in New York knew Ellie. Now you can’t sneeze without tripping over a poster of her but Ellie herself is nowhere to be seen. I was the photographer’s assistant on one of her first shoots.”

“Oh, cool.”

“It all looked very serious back there in the café—are you guys close? She’s behaving herself now, isn’t she?”

“No. I mean, yes she’s behaving I think but no, not close.”

“I sure hope she is. Sweet kid. Where are you going now? Do you have time for a drink? At six thirty I’ve got to meet with an accountant about some charity stuff I’m doing, but I’m totally free till then.” As he spoke he inclined his head first one way and then the other, stretching his neck and wincing.

Adam mumbled an apology and left Ezra collecting all his bags again. He had hours before he was expected at home and he wanted to think his way back to where he’d been, in his head, before Ezra had called to him. He bought a ticket for the following weekend and then, instead of descending into the tube station, he left St. Pancras, turned up his collar against the rain that had started and began to walk home. It was only when he reached Camden Town that he remembered he had forgotten to bring back the macarons for Rachel.

24

Ziva’s birthday was a major event in the Gilbert calendar and Adam had always been moved by the enjoyment that it gave her. Ziva—ferociously rational and contemptuous of most other frivolities—glowed with pleasure at the sight of her own candlelit cake. This year she was turning ninety and despite many offers from Lawrence and Jaffa, was throwing her own party at home. No one else, she believed, would do it just so. Jaffa had worried about several aspects of this plan—about the elderly guests traveling so far when most of them lived in Golders Green; about her mother’s terrible cooking and also about the alternative, that in all probability Ziva would commission the local takeaway to cater the party and that her ninetieth year would be honored with lukewarm curries in polystyrene. In the end, compromises were reached. Jaffa was granted permission to cook; Lawrence arranged for each of the younger guests to chauffeur the less mobile ones. Rachel ordered a new book of pastry recipes and had been fussing in the kitchen for days. Ellie had not been able to get out of a shoot for Balmain and so was still in Paris but had sent a towering, violet-iced cake from Ladurée, covered in scallops of cream and pearly sugared almonds and placed at the center of the dining table where Ziva would glance at it, intermittently, with pride.

The older contingent were the fellow members of the Jewish Care Holocaust survivors’ group. At their lunches they did not talk about their experiences, Ziva told her family; often nothing was said at all. They spoke of politics, of literature, of their grandchildren. But to be there together was restful, in a place where volunteers ensured there would always be bread on the table. There was balm in their silences together, just as their listening offered balm to those among them who did decide to talk. Others thought they could imagine, but no one else could know. And here they all were—Ziva’s daily lunch companions, men and women shrinking with age but strengthened with pride at their own continued existence. To celebrate ninety when they’d faced death at nineteen, it was not nothing. They ate and they joked and they argued. And always in English, even among friends who shared a mother tongue.

With unspoken consensus, everyone had converged on an Austrian theme to their catering. Lawrence had collected three old ladies from an assisted living center in Hendon, one of whom had thrust into his hands, without explanation or ceremony, two heavy oblongs of silver foil. These warm, sagging parcels turned out to be wide coils of apple strudel, rich with nutmeg and moist raisins. Michelle had bought Linzer tortes from Carmelli’s, filled with plum butter and sour cherries. From the new book, Rachel had made Sacher torte with bitter black chocolate and homemade apricot jam; another of the formidable Austrian ladies from the Jewish Care group had brought a box of rum-soaked petits fours iced in strawberry pink fondant and painted with arabesques of dark chocolate, Viennese delicacies that were apparently called
punschkrapfen
. Lawrence and Adam had both suppressed a smile at this name; Ziva had tutted and called them infantile and though the word
punschkrapfen
had been only mildly amusing, her chastisement ensured that when they next caught one another’s eye they both emitted infantile, strangulated giggles. Ziva, entirely aware of the effect this would have, said again, “Really, I do not see what is so amusing about
punschkrapfen
,” and left Adam and Lawrence collapsing with laughter in the kitchen.

Later, when Lawrence’s BlackBerry began to trill on the sideboard Adam, who was closest to it, peered at the number.

“It’s the switchboard.” He handed it to Lawrence who was among a group listening to a very tiny old man tell a story, confused and hilarious, about buying a beagle in Frankfurt in 1929.

Lawrence took it, mouthing “sorry, sorry” at Jaffa and heading for the hall. Michelle looked disapproving. It was a work call—of course he should take it, she thought, without the need for an apology. Michelle had turned back to hear the beagle punch line when Lawrence’s voice was suddenly audible in the hallway.

“Shit.”

His family exchanged worried glances. Lawrence did not believe in profanities. Adam had last heard him swear when Arsenal lost to Barcelona in Paris in the final of the 2006 Champions League. Adam and Lawrence had gone over with Rodney Wilson; Barcelona had scored twice in the last fourteen minutes. Then, Lawrence had said “bollocks.” It was possible he’d even said it twice. Now Jaffa half rose to go to him but Ziva checked her with a glance.

“Leave him to talk, Jaffale.”

Lawrence returned to the dining room looking pale.

“Nothing to worry about,” he said before Jaffa could ask him. “But one of our clients has had … a bit of a situation. Adam, I’m sorry but I’m going to have to ask you to come back to the office with me.”

Adam had been on his feet as soon as his father-in-law returned, scanning his face for clues. Lawrence bent over his wife and kissed the top of her head. “Nothing to worry about,” he said again, “but I think it’s going to be a late one. I’ll call later if I can with an update but don’t forget to set the alarm when you go to bed. Happy birthday Ziva, so sorry to run.”

Kisses were exchanged; Rachel and Jaffa in almost perfect synchrony tipped some desserts into plastic bags (Rachel the brownies, Jaffa the meringues) and pressed them fervently on the men. Adam demurred, with no idea of the emergency he was about to attend to; Lawrence accepted them in order to speed up their departure. Once in the car he threw them on the backseat and said to Adam, “I don’t actually believe what’s happened. Shit. I can’t actually believe it.” Lawrence swearing again was more unsettling than almost any other development.

“What happened?” Adam’s first thought had been of Ellie; his panic had been steadily rising.

“Ethan Goodman.”

Adam breathed freely again until Lawrence said, “He’s lost everything, Adam. Everything. Not just his own investments—everything.”

“God. What do you mean? How?”

“I just—I don’t know anything. But it’s all gone. His fund’s collapsed, or it was with an Austrian bank that’s collapsed—I don’t know. Tony was saying something about the forint, but we’d never have done anything as risky as investing in Hungary so I don’t understand how it’s happened. Ethan doesn’t take risks. My staff. The pensions! This has to be a mistake.”

Adam was unable to keep the horror from his face and then felt immediate regret that his first reaction had not been more supportive, or at least more calming.

“It has to be a mistake,” he echoed. “Substantial losses maybe, but he can’t have lost everything. Tony’s panicking.”

But if it wasn’t a mistake it was horrendous. His father-in-law would be ruined. The money they held for clients would be safe, but GGP’s debts would be crippling. Fatal. They would have to sell the company for pennies.

Ethan had taken on the GGP Pension Fund as a favor when Lawrence had been looking for safe, reliable fund managers. Adam remembered the conversation—it had been more than five years ago and all three of the GGP founding partners had been elated by the move. Surely it wasn’t possible for a pension fund to just disappear? An inventory of GGP employees began to form in Adam’s mind: those with families, those who’d recently bought houses, were pregnant or were approaching retirement. He began to imagine them in a line, men and women in single file stretching away into the distance. The futures of each one and all their dependents had been entrusted to Ethan Goodman. Along with his own fund, Ethan had managed the GGP Pensions and the savings of one or two private individuals—not people with a lot of money, but those whom Ethan had gone out of his way to help. And what help it turned out to be! Adam was fairly certain that Ari Rosenbaum’s father had given his money to Goodman and—

“Poor, poor Ziva,” Lawrence said, just as Adam’s realization dawned. She would lose everything.

Not since his first year at Linklaters had Adam worked through two consecutive nights at the office. They were seeking to obtain a freezing injunction against the Goodman Funds and he was almost cross-eyed with exhaustion, fueled only by caffeine, adrenaline, a fierce urge to protect Lawrence, who was looking a decade older with each day that passed, and an even fiercer urge to punch Ethan Goodman and keep punching him until he was on the floor and screaming for mercy. Then, he imagined, he might move on to kicking him in the face. That his train for Paris had departed that morning without him on it was a frustration that he did not yet have the emotional resources to address.