The Affinities (9 page)

Botero said, “I have no idea what you're talking about. And if you go to Giordano or anybody else with this bullshit story, you will be fucked beyond belief.”

“All you need to do is stay away from Mouse. Just forget she ever existed. Do that, and Giordano won't hear a word from me. He especially won't see a copy of that Excel spreadsheet you have on your Mac, the one with all the notations you made. Ten grand a year for, what, seven years now? Eight?”

The police car pulled abreast of the Venza. A bored-looking cop rolled down the side window. “Is there a problem here?”

Botero was still working on recovering his composure. “No,” Trevor said, “no problem.”

“You know, you can't park here—not at that angle.”

“Just getting ready to leave.” Trev headed back to his car.

“And you,” the cop said. “You're blocking a hydrant. Move along, Mr. Botero.”

Botero went wide-eyed again. “What, do I know you?”

“No, sir, not personally. Move along, please. And if you're talking to Carl Giordano, tell him hello.”

*   *   *

Tipped off by Lisa about Botero's presence, Mouse had bought herself dinner at a downtown restaurant while she waited for the all-clear.

Trev and I were in the living room when she got home. She didn't say thank you. She didn't have to. She stood on her toes and gave each of us a solemn peck on the cheek.

I met the cop again a few days later, at a multi-tranche Christmas party. His name was Dave Santos, and he belonged to a North York tranche. It was Lisa who had called him to the scene to back up Trevor. We shook hands and smiled. He didn't need my thanks, any more than I needed Mouse's. It was a Tau thing.

 

CHAPTER 5

At the end of February, not unexpectedly and after a long decline, Grammy Fisk died.

Aaron called and told me the news. (I hadn't spoken to Jenny Symanski since the week after Christmas, when I had told her as delicately as possible that I would be moving in with Amanda Mehta.) “Funeral's Wednesday,” my brother said. “If you want to come.”

“Of course I'll come. We can be there by Tuesday afternoon.”

“We?”

“Amanda and I.”

“You want to bring your girlfriend?”

“Is there a reason I shouldn't?”

He sighed. “Do what you want, Adam. You always have.”

*   *   *

So we drove to Schuyler and rented a room at the Motel 6. We could have stayed at the family house, but Mama Laura wouldn't have approved of us sharing a room, and I didn't want to expose Amanda to more of my father's attention that was strictly necessary. But there was no way to dodge the family dinner the night before the memorial ceremony.

The family was polite and Amanda was studiously gracious. “I'm so sorry for your loss” was the first thing she said when we came into the house, shedding our winter coats. Mama Laura hugged her; Aaron shook her hand; Geddy was awkward in the presence of strangers but gave her a forced smile and a “Hello, pleased to meet you” that sounded unrehearsed. My father nodded curtly from across the room, our first hint that trouble might be brewing.

We sat down to dinner. Mama Laura had baked a ham the size of a dinosaur thigh, plus peas and candied yams, food to ward off the sound of a cold wind scratching willow branches against the mullions of the dining room window. We made careful conversation. Aaron talked about the work he was doing for the county Republican Party. I talked about my job at Kohler Media, the job that had rescued me from Schuyler, though I didn't describe it that way. We all talked about the story that had dominated the news for two days: the explosions in Riyadh and Jeddah, the mine or missile that had sunk a gushing Sinopec tanker in the Straits of Hormuz. Gas prices were already spiking, and there were lines at some stations: would I be okay for the drive back? (I said I'd manage.)

My father was silent through most of this, but he had been giving Amanda a series of long, cool looks. Now he said, “The Persian Gulf, that's your neck of the woods, no?”

Amanda smiled. “No, not really.”

“No? Oh, that's right—you're Indian. Indian from India, correct?”

“I was born in Bramalea, actually.”

“What part of India's that?”

“It's a suburb of Toronto. But my grandfather was from Gujarat.”

“And what's that a suburb of?”

“It's a state, in the west of India.”

Amanda's grandfather had immigrated in the 1960s and married a Canadian woman. Amanda's father had raised her in a secular household, though the family still celebrated some Hindu festivals—I had helped them light candles for diwali. My own father was putting on his redneck act, probably hoping to draw Amanda into an argument that would make her appear shrill or condescending. His racism was selective: he did business with Indian wholesalers, and a sales rep named Banerjee had been a dinner guest on occasion. “Dad's been to India,” I said. “That trade show, what was it, 2009?”

“Twenty-ten,” my father said levelly, his eyes still on Amanda.

“Mumbai, right?”

“As I recall.”

Amanda's smile looked more genuine that it could possibly have been. “And how did you find Mumbai, Mr. Fisk?”

“It was outside the airport.” He unclenched a little and added, “Hot. Crowded. Real bad traffic.”

“I've never been,” Amanda said. “I'd like to visit someday.”

Mama Laura asked about Amanda's family, and Amanda gave her the short version: her father was an architect, close to retirement but still doing design and consultation for a Toronto firm. Her mother was an engineer for a forestry company. Her older brother was a physician, currently living in Vancouver. I had been invited often to her family's house in Bramalea, and I had been received with a graciousness that made my father's attitude all the more infuriating.

“And you?” Mama Laura said. “Adam tells us you work at a restaurant of some kind?”

“A vegetarian caf
é
,” Amanda said, at which Aaron smiled and my father repressed a derisive snort.

Amanda had taken the job when she dropped out of the University of Toronto. She'd been taking pre-law courses at the urging of her family, excelled at research but hated the career prospects. She liked to say she was being educated by Tau: she had learned more from a couple of tranche meetings than she had in six months at school. Tau would find a place for her, she liked to say. And maybe that was true. One of our tranchemates, Damian Levay, was trying to set up an all-Tau investment fund, and Amanda was keen to work with him. I imagined she wouldn't be serving kale and spirulina much longer.

“And you met Adam through that, uh, interest group?”

“Affinity group,” Amanda said. “Yes.”

“People say it's, you know—”

“I'm not insulted by what people say.”

“A
cult,
” Mama Laura finished in an apologetic whisper.

“It's not a cult. There's no doctrine, no creed, no leader. Nothing we have to believe in or swear allegiance to.”

“It costs money, though, doesn't it?” my father asked.

“For evaluation, plus an annual membership fee.”

“Like a cult because it breaks up families, too.”

“I don't believe that's the case, Mr. Fisk.”

Amanda put a hand on my knee to let me know she wasn't rattled.

“Well,” he said, “all I know is, I hear things. People develop a loyalty to these Affinity groups.”

“They do,” Amanda said. “But not for any sinister reason. The whole point is that it's a group of people you can trust, who trust you.”

“That's all?”

“Think about it this way. Everything human beings do—everything worthwhile—depends on cooperation. We cooperate better than any other species. But cooperation can get derailed pretty easily. People lie, people cheat, people misunderstand each other. So we learn to be wary and mistrustful. Once burned, twice shy, no?”

“Happens in business often enough.”

“Sure. It happens to everyone, and it slows you down, it costs you time and money, it leaves you cynical.”

“That's just human nature, Miss Mehta.”

“But an Affinity group is a place where that logic doesn't apply. It's a place where you don't have to watch your back. Where people like you, for sensible reasons. A place where—”

“Where everybody knows your name?” Geddy asked. Followed by his own goofy rendition of the old
Cheers
theme song.

Amanda returned his grin. “Yeah, like that,” she said, laughing. “But in real life.”

“Can't replace family,” my father said, looking pointedly in my direction.

“Some of the people in our tranche come from pretty unpleasant families, Mr. Fisk. Some of them
need
a replacement.”

“Do we seem that bad to you?”

“I don't mean
this
family. Is that a blueberry pie, Mrs. Fisk?”

“Boysenberry,” Mama Laura said, beaming.

“It looks great.”

“Bless you for saying so. I think we're about ready for dessert and coffee, now that you mention it.”

“Dessert,” Geddy agreed, nodding.

*   *   *

After the meal we adjourned to the living room. And the conversation turned to the subject of Grammy Fisk. We told our favorite stories and shared the poignant business of missing her. Amanda had nothing to contribute, but she listened attentively and put an arm around Mama Laura when she started to cry.

Displays of emotion made Geddy uneasy, and he excused himself early and went up to his room. A little while later a sound echoed down the stairs, a brassy hoot that made me think of geese heading south in autumn. “Oh, Lord, Geddy's saxophone,” Mama Laura said. “It's way too late for him to be practicing.”

“Geddy took up an instrument?”

“For band, at school. Yes. And not just the instrument! He brought Grammy Fisk's old record player down out of the attic and set it up in his room. Plus maybe a hundred or so of her dusty old records.”

It was getting on time to leave, so I headed up to Geddy's room to say good night and investigate his newfound interest. Geddy's enthusiasms tended to monopolize his conversation and most of his waking thoughts, and when he opened his door I saw this was no exception. Grammy Fisk's fifty-year-old turntable and receiver covered most of the free space on his desk. The cloth-grille speakers were set up at the foot of his bed, and Grammy Fisk's record collection (mostly old jazz, folk, rock) snaked along the floorboards under the window.

Geddy put down his sax and waved me in. He told me about the instrument—a Yamaha alto sax, secondhand from Schuyler's only pawn shop—and about the music he'd been listening to. Forget My Chemical Romance, he was all about horns and reeds now. His favorite saxophone player was Paul Desmond. (“Because of his tone. He plays a real pure note. Only a little vibrato. He doesn't fancy up the sound. I want to learn to play a pure note like that.”) Geddy was daunted by the difficulty of the instrument, but he honked out a scale for me, and I thought I could hear what he was aiming at. Years later I would admire his skill, but what I heard that night was more ambition than talent.

He grimaced when a high C went sour. “I'm just learning.”

“Yeah, but I can tell you're getting better at it.”

He gave me a tight smile that was both a thank-you for the compliment and an acknowledgment that I couldn't possibly know what I was talking about.

“I guess it's a way of remembering Grammy Fisk, too—all this,” I said.

He thought about it. “Maybe.”

“There might be some crying at the memorial service tomorrow. Are you okay with that?”

He shrugged.

“I'll be there if you need me.”

“Amanda is nice,” Geddy said.

“Thanks.”

“Is it true, what she said about the Affinity groups?”

“Yeah, I think so.”

“Maybe I'll join one. When I'm older.”

I didn't know whether there was an Affinity he would qualify for, but I hoped so.

*   *   *

In the morning Aaron drove me to a family meeting prior to the memorial service. I was a pallbearer, and a deacon at the Methodist church explained what was expected of us: how to support the weight of the coffin, where the hearse would be waiting. After the briefing Aaron drove me back to the motel so I could take Amanda to the service. And while we were alone in the car he raised the subject of Jenny Symanski: ten earnest minutes of how-could-you-do-this and she-deserves-better.

“I mean,” Aaron said, “what's she supposed to do now? Pretty girl like that, smart but no college, parents both drinking, the family business drying up in this shitty economy, and no marriage prospects because for most of her adult life she's been waiting for you to grow a pair and ask her. What the fuck is she supposed to do?”

I didn't have an answer.

*   *   *

Jenny was at the funeral, of course.

I was up front with the immediate family, in a church crowded with my father's business associates and his buddies from the local Republican committee. Snow melted snow from shoes and boots puddled on the oaken floorboards and made the air humid. Psalm 23, a hymn, the eulogy, a benediction, and I couldn't help wondering what Grammy Fisk would have made of all this. (“I don't know where you go when you die,” she had once confided in me. “I don't think you go anywhere at all except the grave.”) After the memorial service we got in our cars and trailed the hearse to Schuyler's big nondenominational cemetery, where a machine had gouged a perfectly rectangular hole into the frozen earth. It was a gray end-of-winter day, a few flakes of snow riding on a wet wind. We stood in silence as the coffin was lowered.
Blessed are the dead. They will rest from their labors.
Mama Laura leaned into my father's shoulder, weeping quietly. My father stood immobile, his features locked into a sculpture expressing, somehow, both anger and loss. Geddy stood with his head down, probably pretending he was somewhere else.