My life went soft at the edges. The same feeling permeated the hours at work, the hours at home: emptiness, futility, like a bucket with a hole in the bottom. The SEC investigation had been my last vestige of purpose. For a few weeks I continued to arrive early, stay late, and keep my closet door propped open so that anyone walking past might imagine me hard at work. Then I left a little earlier. Arrived a little later. Started shutting my door at lunch so I could watch the postgame highlights with the sound on. January became February, then February became March. Eventually I gave in to it. I punched in and out. I ate dinner; I drank. I’d go entire weekends without speaking, so that my voice felt scratchy and strange when I greeted the security guards on Monday mornings. I arrived hungover and shut my door for long stretches to take naps on the coarse industrial carpet, letting time pass like high clouds drifting through the upper atmosphere.
I realized at a certain point that I’d been celibate for nearly three months. It was the longest by far I’d gone without having sex. In high school, it was only ever a few weeks at a time, and in college, too, and after that came Julia. It was like a portal to an earlier time. The texture of this frustration was identical to what I’d felt as a virginal teenager. It was almost as if, by going so long without sex, I had become my younger self again. I felt confused and melancholy in a way I hadn’t in a decade. I could have gone out to a bar and ended the celibate streak with a one-night stand easily enough. But in a way, I liked being alone with my former self. I indulged it. I liked recalling how it felt when adulthood was still a distant mystery. When the concrete details—an apartment in Manhattan, a high-paying job—would have been sufficient by themselves. I hadn’t realized, back then, how messy it actually was. I wanted to go back and hide inside that ignorance.
I kept waiting for the SEC to come knocking, to ask the question I’d never answered. What did you mean, you didn’t keep it a secret? I had blurted it out without thinking, and they treated it like a throwaway. A pathetic, confused, nonsense lie. But it was the truth; I hadn’t kept it a secret. I was the whole reason the SEC was there, shining a bright light on the dirty deal. No one ever asked about the leak. Maybe they always assumed it was me, the young analyst gone nervous and blabby, or maybe they just didn’t care. It was a paltry defense in any case. I had told somebody, but not the right somebody.
One day in March I lay down for a nap after lunch, intending to sleep off another hangover. When I woke up, it was late—past 8:00 p.m. I’d slept for almost five hours. On my way to the elevator, I passed the other analysts, gathered near Roger’s desk.
“Steve’s riding you that hard?” one of them was saying to him.
“Go without me,” Roger said. “I’ve got at least six hours left here.”
Roger’s face was puffy and pale, exhaustion and caffeine lending a nervous twitch to his features. But when he noticed me approach, he grinned like his old self. “Look,” he said. “Peck can take my place. Make him pick up the tab. He’s rich.”
Everyone had heard about the $20,000. They knew I had to turn it over, but it was fodder nonetheless. Roger laughed. “Still can’t take a joke, huh, Peck?”
“You can come along if you want,” one of the other analysts mumbled, a residual politeness kicking in. The group walked slow, including but not quite acknowledging my presence. No one knew what to say to me. I glanced back over my shoulder at Roger. He was staring so closely at his screen that it looked like he was going to tip over. Just as I must have looked, so many nights during the previous year. It was like coming across a photograph of myself that I didn’t remember being taken.
When had I become so invisible? I thought as the elevator descended and the analysts traded stories I knew nothing about. When had I become an afterthought? Other people made mistakes and were forgiven. I didn’t know how much longer I could endure this. I knew it was fucked up, but I missed Michael. Or maybe it was more that I missed the way Michael made me feel. Like I was part of something bigger.
The neon sign for McGuigan’s glowed ahead of us in the darkness. It was the same as always—the stale beer smell, the jukebox, the crack of cue against billiard ball, the rattle of ice. But before I could follow my coworkers to the usual booth in the back, my eye caught another familiar sight.
“Evan?” she said. Her eyes wide, uncertain. Almost regretting it.
Then she smiled.
I nursed my Guinness. It wasn’t until late, long after my coworkers had gone, leaving bills stuck to the damp table, that Maria came and sat next to me.
“Do you want another?” she asked, pointing at my empty glass.
“I’m okay.” For the first time in a while, I didn’t feel like getting drunk.
“Sorry. I meant to come over earlier. It was a crazy night. How are things?”
“Good, I guess.”
Good? I missed the way things had been between us in the fall, but I didn’t know how to go back to that. I doubted it was possible.
“I have to say something,” Maria said at last. “I should have said this a long time ago. I’m sorry things got kind of weird when I started dating Wyeth. That was bitchy, bringing him in like that. I should have told you.”
“Oh,” I said. “That. That’s fine. You didn’t owe me an explanation.”