My Other Life (65 page)

In my speculative frame of mind the only way I could determine the caliber of the bullet I had dodged was to see the man it had hit.

The secretary of a lawyer friend of mine once told me, "I can find anyone," and it seemed to me an absurd boast. That was naive of me. One of the greatest skills a person can have in the commercial world, and not only the commercial, is the ability to locate the whereabouts of a particular person—a debtor, a patron, a client, a customer, a felon, a friend. Your whole working life depends on such people. Only writers, dealing in the realm of the imagination, are content to find people in their heads. That is the writer's boast. We invent them. Everyone else goes looking.

But in the active search for my other life I was operating in the world of reality. I needed to find this man in order to finish my story. I realized that the ability to find someone—to locate a stranger lost in the darkness—approaches an art, since its nearest analogue is in the writer's searching his imagination for a character.

I strongly suspected that the man I had spoken to when I was trying to find out Wanda's address was her ex-husband. But I needed to be sure. So I called my friend's secretary and reminded her of what she had told me.

"I think I can find the guy," she said. "Tell me everything you know."

"Just his last name and his telephone number."

"Area code?"

"Nine one four."

"Does he work in New York City?"

"Why do you ask?"

"Because that's White Plains," she said. "What else do you know?"

"He might be in computers." Wanda undoubtedly was. And these computer nerds—"tech weenie" was her expression—tended to gravitate to each other.

"That helps. There are directories."

"And I think he used to live in Danbury." Surely if she got his life, she got the house.

"Tell me where he used to be, and I'll tell you where he went."

I liked that, because that had its literary parallels, too.

His name was Todd Falkenberg. He worked for Global Teletronics, in the sales and marketing division. The company was one of the leaders in telecommunications and had developed a range of portable satellite telephones. The Global brochure depicted these phones as being convenient as luggage—one was a suitcase, another a briefcase, the last the size of a laptop computer.

I decided to ask Mr. Falkenberg for a demonstration. I called him, but—worried that Wanda might have told him about me—said that my name was Edward Medford and that I was coming to New York.

He said, "I'm in the city Tuesdays and Thursdays. How about next week? I can do Tuesday afternoon. Let me make a suggestion."

That voice was almost certainly the one that had given me the Danbury number.

He was accommodating, he was manipulative, he was a salesman, and when I met him I was pleased to see that not only was he talkative, he was also informative and observant—brand-name conscious in the way that competitive people are; not necessarily accurate, but I could do the subtraction. He was smiling at my briefcase.

"That an Orvis bag? I buy their stuff all the time. Our newest model satellite phone will fit inside that puppy."

"Is it on the market?"

"I'll lay it all out for you."

Salesmen never gave a straight answer, and the words "yes" and "no" were not in their vocabulary.

We were in his office on Lexington Avenue in the Seventies, a busy neighborhood because of the large hospital nearby, and in spite of the hospital, very noisy. The office he said was temporary—he was in the process of moving. True, there were cartons stacked at the side of the room, but I had the feeling he was not going anywhere.

In contrast with the provisional look of the office, he was careful about his appearance, very tidy. Everything about him was studied—the shoes, the belt, the tie, the suit. He knew how to make an impression, though it was lost on me. I saw only a man who wanted to be regarded for the way he was dressed; this was not something I valued at all. He was a bit older than me, but he was in much better shape. That did impress me. I wanted to know more about that.

I was on the verge of asking this when I was distracted by the framed photographs of the little girl on his desk. Three photographs—in a pink blanket an even pinker infant; on all fours, like a wind-up toy; a portrait of a woman as a little girl. She had Wanda's looks—the pale eyes, the willful mouth, and there was something of the diet-prone Wanda in the little girl's chubby cheeks.

"Hey, welcome to Global," he said, full of salesman's poise, and he shook my hand and showed me a chair, all the while apologizing for the state of the office.

There was a great deal in his handshake. It was of course a deliberate grip, a bit overprecise. But his fingerpads were hard, the heel of his hand was hard. He did not have to squeeze hard for me to know that he had a powerful grip. I guessed that he probably rowed or biked. Realizing that he had a sport, at his age, and probably a sport he excelled at, made me judge him differently, as much more complex than the salesman stereotype I had first seen.

His face was blotchy and sunburned. He was not sleek in the vain way of someone who worked out, but rather, seriously healthy in the manner of a solitary athlete—his muscles knotted and bunched, his neck thick, his knuckles skinned. You noticed his strength because it made his clothes fit awkwardly. He had sturdy shoulders, and patches on the balding top of his head were tanned and peeling, as were the backs of his hands.

He conveyed the restless impression of an athlete confined indoors, for he had a slight clumsiness, checking himself as he moved in the small space of his office. In this setting his good health was incongruous. He was a big man, and when he squatted to show me the smallest model of the satellite phone, he hitched up his trousers; a guess told me he might be a cyclist. Two solid blocks of muscles were his calves, and the rest was whipcord.

"You ride a bike?"

"How'd you know?"

I was sorry for being so impulsive in my curiosity. But cycling was a generally solitary business. It had little to do with teams and companionship. It was another and almost unknowable life, a kind of monasticism—that was what made me see him differently. I was more respectful, but also warier.

"Just guessed."

"You know bikes?"

"I have a Merlin."

He smiled. "You know bikes." He looked aside and said, "I had a Kestrel until a little over a year ago. Carbon fiber. It had a few dings but it was incredibly light. A beautiful machine. I had to sell it."

I filled in the rest. It was a $3,000 bike. He needed the money because of the divorce.

"Now I'm just riding an old Fuji I had in the garage."

"You cycle in Manhattan?"

"I cycle to work from Westchester. I've got an apartment there."

"I can't imagine many people do that."

That pleased him. He told me how long it took, the route; how he changed his clothes and got a shower in this office. And with all this talk about cycling I liked him a bit better and he saw me as something other than a customer.

"I drove in today, because I've got an errand to run in Connecticut."

Where Wanda lived. He was probably going to make a visit, his once-a-week chance to see his little girl. I was thinking of this, seeing him with the child, when his voice broke the spell.

"Where's this going?"

"Excuse me?"

"You want to talk bikes or you want to talk satellite phones?"

He said it pleasantly in the bantering manner of a friend, and as he spoke I saw another picture of his little girl: another shrine, Wanda's face distorted and miniaturized. It made me more curious about him.

To satisfy and detain him, I talked phones. "It's a niche market," he was saying. I found it hard to listen, because I was distracted by his athlete's health and focus. He was two men, the sportsman and the salesman, and they were so different he appeared divided and somewhat clumsy.

"We're a small company, we started in semiconductors"—Wanda's field, as it happened—"but we began to concentrate on telecommunications. We sold the semiconductor division and—hey, can I give you an analogy? The big companies are like elephants. Ever see an elephant's foot? Big round thing, but if you imagine it in a room it doesn't get into the corners. That's where we are, in the corners, where the elephant's feet of your IBMs and your Toshibas and your Motorolas can't go."

I complimented him on his elephant-foot illustration and said, "I'd like to know more about the satellite phone."

"I can give you the specs. I'll find a spec sheet."

"I just wanted to see how the phone works."

"Right. Why should you be interested in tolerances? Here, let's get someone on the phone."

"Shall we call your wife?"

"Ex-wife. No thanks."

He was hurt. He remembered.

"I'll try the head office. It's on Long Island."

We tried three times, and failed.

"It's not locking on to the satellite. I keyed in the right coordinates." He frowned at the window. "The hospital might be in the way."

"That must be very frustrating," I said.

But he smiled. "No problem. I've been in anger management."

I was so fascinated by this expression "anger management." I was unaware of his repositioning the phone on the windowsill. He had aimed its lid, which contained the antenna, past the upper corner of the hospital. He handed the receiver to me. I heard it ring and then, "Good afternoon, Global."

It was better, smaller, more efficient than I could possibly have imagined. The fact that I had no use for it, that I had come here only to see the man Wanda had married and divorced, did not keep me from admiring the product he was trying to sell me.

"Help me with this," he said. "You want one of these phones for what reason? Remote places? Construction site? Secure line? You know, a cellular phone works in so many places."

"I'm planning to do a lot of foreign travel. I think 'remote places' is probably the best description."

"I'm not asking you what you do," he said, and it seemed slightly arch. "Only where you do it."

"New Guinea is one of my destinations."

"There's some microwave technology out there because of the mining, but you're right, this phone would be very useful."

"What do these things cost?"

"I can get you a price on it."

That was salesman-speak for a lot of money.

"I'll need to know that, because"—and here I was freewheeling—"I'm relocating to Manhattan and I've got to factor in that expense. I know these phones cost quite a bit."

He did not hear me say that. He said, "You looking for office space?"

"I'm looking for everything, but office space is my priority."

He became even more alert—friendlier, more companionable.

"I might be able to help. You got some time?"

"I don't want to monopolize your day. You said you had an errand to run."

"If you want to go for a ride, I could show you some locations. It'll only take an hour. How many square feet are you looking for?"

That seemed an accurate question, though I had no idea of the answer.

In desperation, I made conjuring gestures with my hands and said, "About this size."

"This is just under five hundred. Let me show you two places."

I was glad for a chance to spend a little more time with him, even though it was under false pretenses. But it was no greater a charade than my proposing to buy one of his $20,000 phones. His car, which we retrieved from an underground parking garage on Seventy-seventh Street, was an old Volvo station wagon, with a bike rack mounted on the rear. Stacked on the back seat were Global brochures showing the various satellite phones.

"I'd rather be on a bike," he said when we were in the crush of Lexington Avenue traffic.

"I don't think I could handle this," I said.

"After my marriage broke up I was not about to compromise my immune system with casual dating," he said. "The biking was a necessity. And I worked more—for the money, and for the distraction."

Crossing over to Third Avenue, we became caught in the middle of a block behind a delivery van. Falkenberg shook his head, he smiled sourly; and I remembered what he had said about having been in anger management.

"That's how I came to be moonlighting in real estate," he said. "Funny, I didn't start out in sales."

On the dashboard of his car was another shrine to his daughter; a snapshot in a magnetized plastic frame, and a ribbon tied in a bow to it—probably a hair ribbon, definitely a relic. I thought how estrangement from your children can turn that desperate love into a religious frenzy.

"Cute kid," I said.

"Yeah," he said hoarsely. He was too moved to say more.

When I saw that he was trying to hide his pain—that he felt pain, that he had been hurt and undermined by it—I saw myself in him. He was like a weak and susceptible part of myself, someone I pitied and partly loathed.

The compassion I felt was useful, because his sadness, his depression perhaps, made him reactive and strange. Heading for a parking lot, he saw a car pulling away from a meter and he shouted so loudly in a mirthless parody of glee that he startled me.

Walking from there to the first office he wanted to show me, he pointed to a tree inside an ironwork fence in front of a brownstone and said, "I used to have one of those trees. It's a Japanese maple. I had a fence like that, too. They look nice but they're hell to fix. Sometimes the cold gets to them and they crack."

It was a bonus to have him outside his office, in the world. By way of being competitive and impressive he volunteered a lot of information. The tree was not in White Plains—that was just a temporary situation. No, he had planted the tree himself at his house in Danbury, where he had raised a family. He had two older children, a boy and a girl. They were out of college—they were in jobs now, in their late twenties.

He even spoke of Wanda, though obliquely.

"I said to them, 'You're glad I'm here?'" —he was referring to one of his employers, I had missed the prologue—"'Thank my ex-wife for that,' I says. I could have put in for early retirement. Now I'll probably be doing another fifteen years."