Constantinople
Part One
Georgina Talman led Max through the apartment. "Sarah told us very encouraging things about you," she said.
"She did?"
"She told us you nearly got your doctorate," Georgina said, moving ahead. Georgina taught macroeconomics at Columbia. Mid-forties and pretty. Max admired the way the hallway light shone against the creamy silk of her blouse. The floor beneath their feet was a scuffed wood covered in Oriental rugs arranged end to end, their edges frayed. "English, I think?" she asked.
"I got a master's," said Max.
Georgina looked at him over her shoulder. "Harvey and I can't help but look at Hugh and think" -- she mouthed the letters -- "p--h--d."
"Sarah told me he's quite a reader."
"But Wall Street's certainly where the money is."
Behind him, Max could hear the low murmur of conversation, the tinkle of ice cubes. There had been a group of guests in the living room -- no one famous, but then Max had only caught a glimpse. Men and women in suits and tight black sweaters, an antique sofa and armchairs upholstered in dark red, a piano, a chandelier throwing white light onto cocktail glasses. And Harvey, Georgina's husband, who'd raised his glass at him in half-salute.
"So, you know," Georgina giggled, a fluttering sound. She made a fist, affected an old-man voice: "Good for you."
Max stared at the long line of her neck, wanting to say something ambitious. "Equity research is..." he grasped for a word, "stimulating."
They'd reached the end of the hall. "Hugh's just finishing his homework," Georgina said, turning the knob.
Inside was a long, tan sofa, and a boy, Hugh, perched on its edge. He hunched over a workbook open on his knees, gripping a pencil. When Georgina and Max came into the room, he carefully placed the workbook beside him, stood and extended his hand.
"I'm Hugh," said the boy. His bangs edged the top of his glasses and he stuck his lower lip out to blow them up.
"I'm Max," said Max, taking his hand and stooping to meet the boy's round, cat-eye stare.
"Pleased to meet you," Hugh said. Gauzy pills of wool clung to his thick, heavy sweater. "You're Sarah's boyfriend."
Max nodded and smiled. "She's sorry she had to stay home tonight."
"Do you know anything about the Crusades?" Hugh asked.
Georgina set her hand on top of Hugh's head. "Max got a master's in English."
"Did you go to a good school?"
Max forced his smile wider. He noticed Georgina was waiting for him to answer. "Wisconsin," he said without looking at her. Then: "Only okay."
"Hugh's going through a video series on the Crusades volume by volume," said Georgina.
"I'm on five," said Hugh.
"The disc's in the machine," Georgina said, pointing at a TV and DVD in a pale wood cabinet against the wall.
"Sarah watched one through four with me," said Hugh. "Are you really her boyfriend?"
Max laughed -- a single, breathy sound, like a cough.
Georgina put a hand on Max's arm, added slight pressure, something Max swore was a squeeze. Instantly, his body lost its tension; his shoulders dropped; he listed her way. "Hugh's got a tiny crush on Sarah," she said.
Hugh threw his head back; his mouth hung open. "Mom," he said.
"Look how good looking you are," she said to her son, then whispered to Max. "Harvey and I are a little afraid of puberty."
"I'm almost eleven," said Hugh.
"Gosh," said Max.
"Can you pull a shift with Hugh?" Sarah had asked Max the night before, settling into her couch with the vodka bottle and glasses. He'd hurried to her apartment after work, eager to see her. "Georgina'll be fine with it," she said. "I'm sure she'd like a male role model for a change."
"Are you talking permanently, or, like..." Max said.
"Not permanently." Sarah had been babysitting Hugh for almost four years, since taking Georgina's course as an undergraduate at Columbia. When he turned ten, her title changed to homework coach, but the job was the same -- hang out, be a buddy, develop his social skills. She kept going because she said she liked Hugh's company, but equally because the Talmans lived on Park Avenue and "knew people."
She poured vodka over ice in two glasses, then perched the bottle precariously on a pile of magazines. Max moved it to a clear spot on the table.
"It'll make a ring," Sarah said, handing Max his glass.
Max slid a Vogue under the bottle and watched Sarah take a mouthful. Would drink turn her gloomy? Since she'd been fired from Angstrom-Hollier, the mood swings had been severe: teary and depressed, then grimly determined to restart her career at another firm, then celebratory, toasting the prospect of a new future. On Tuesday and Wednesday, he'd found her in tears; last night, they'd had sex ten minutes after he'd gotten home.
"When were you supposed to go over?"
"Saturday night. They're having one of their dinner parties. Maybe you'll meet someone famous."
"Tomorrow night?"
"I can't go myself," said Sarah. "I wish I could. I wish I had the guts to tell Georgina what happened -- but I don't. Not yet, anyway."
Max pulled Sarah's legs into his lap.
"Careful," she said, lifting her glass so it wouldn't spill. She rotated into the couch's end, slumped down, sent him a low-lid gaze.
"You look great," he said. "Your hair, the highlights." It actually looked weird, streaked with this unnatural, tennis ball yellow. She'd had it done that morning.
She kept her eyes on him. "Will you do it?"
Why couldn't they spend Saturday night together? "I thought you loved hanging out with Hugh," he said.
Sarah took a deep breath. "I do. And I think Georgina would want to help me, give me a referral, whatever. But they're having this party, and I'm worried I might burst into tears -- which would be embarrassing for everyone."
"I'm sure she'd understand."
"You're sure." Sarah flashed him an impatient look. "You've never met her."
Max ran his hand up Sarah's leg, inside her jeans along a stubbly length of skin and watched her take another mouthful of vodka. Last Friday, Bruce Huber, Angstrom-Hollier's marquee analyst, had let her go for a report she'd written on a telecom company. That afternoon she'd passed Max's cubicle on her way out of the office, whispered the news: "Huber fired me. Call you later." Max had nearly choked on his pen top.
Max still didn't understand. Huber was imperious; he'd apparently fired analysts before -- but Sarah knew research. That's why she'd been put with Huber in the first place. She'd been training for Wall Street since she was a little girl. And yet she'd put the wrong numbers on the wrong reports, made sloppy mistakes he hadn't believed she was capable of until she showed him the numbers. Max leaned into her now, kissing the well of her neck. He ran his hands up her ribcage. All week at the office, the sight of her empty cubicle had sent blood rushing to his face.
"Besides," she said, gently pushing him away, "I kind of want to see what Hugh thinks of you."
"What he thinks of me?"
"Kid's smart as hell. I trust his judgment."
"On what exactly?"
She set her glass down, nearly empty, beside the bottle and leaned forward, drawing her legs around and under her. Her vodka breath hit Max's face. She twisted her mouth, chewing the corner of her bottom lip -- a sign, he'd learned, that she was thinking something over.
"What?"
"Nothing."
"Tell me."
She shook her head. "Will you do it? Can I call Georgina and tell her I'm not feeling well? Tell her you can go instead?"
"Sure. But you were going to say something else," Max said.
"No I wasn't."
Max placed his own glass on the table and hooked his fingers in the waist of Sarah's jeans. He kept waiting for an explanation: I messed up on purpose, I was sick of Huber's demands, the cubicle walls were closing in. But none of that would make sense. She liked her life at A-H. She wouldn't have packed it in the way he had at his degree at Wisconsin. And he was the one who had suddenly become sick of the generalized anxiety at the office, the cubicle walls, his twelve-hour computer-LED days. Losing her at the office had made him realize how much hated these things. He'd been looking forward to Saturday night; there'd be no reason to wake up early. He made his voice more insistent: "Tell me."
Part Two
Max and Hugh sat in front of the blank TV. Georgina had left them to rejoin her guests. Max could hear their faint voices filter down the hall.
"Is Sarah really sick?" said Hugh.
"Why do you ask?" said Max.
"Because she didn't sound very sick on the phone."
"How'd she sound?" Max asked.
"Fine."
"She's sick," said Max.
"Promise?" said Hugh.
Max shrugged. He didn't want to lie.
"You don't have to tell me," said Hugh, staring at a spot just past Max's head.
"It's a little complicated," said Max. "Work can be stressful."
"When my Dad is grumpy, it's usually because of work," Hugh said.
Max nodded. "Sarah works hard."
Hugh ran his tongue along his upper lip, thinking. "Do you work hard?" he asked.
"Sure."
"As hard as Sarah?"
"Not as hard as Sarah."
That was true. They'd been hired roughly the same time a year ago, but Sarah covered telecom while Max researched steel. The valuation data she put together helped Huber make his stock calls on CNBC every week. Steel ratings nestled into the back pages of Angstrom-Hollier's research monthlies. Max compiled industry information, satisfied the executive analyst he worked for, but only barely, spending long minutes of his day staring into the tight weave of the office carpet beneath his feet, watching the fibers go blurry and indistinct, become worms or waves or mountain tops.
It was a fluke he was there at all. One day the previous February, he left the University of Wisconsin library and the crosswind coming off the lake nearly knocked him down. He thought of his studio apartment, the warped floorboards, the black grime accumulating on his window from the construction going on across the street. He had a presentation in Critical Theory due on Thursday; it was Tuesday and already 4 p.m. He should turn around and go back inside.
Instead he wandered to a nearby coffee shop. Sitting at an empty table, a cardboard cup warming his palm, he opened a university paper, flipped through the news. An Angstrom-Hollier recruitment ad filled the back page. There was an information session at 5 p.m. at the Union, across the street.
He went on an impulse, joined about fifty others in folding chairs, listening to Sherri from Angstrom's research division. "The company needs intuitive thinkers," she said. "Men and women outside the Econ track, non bean-counters, real researchers."
That's me, he thought. Why on earth had he come to graduate school? Next to him an undergraduate in a Big Ten sweatshirt whispered to his friend: "Take the signing bonus, add the year-end, plus base salary gives 80k, at least. And that's the first year."
Max's cover letter got him a one-on-one interview with Sherri. He emphasized his information-retrieval skills, the one statistics and one higher calculus course he'd taken as an undergraduate at Michigan. He kept his hands still and folded in his lap. When he opened his offer letter in April, he nearly sank to his knees.
So he moved to New York that summer and went through training and after a little while the computer models and valuation formulas came easily to him. He liked being told exactly what he had to do; he didn't mind the long hours; he loved the little windfall direct deposited into his account every two weeks. So what if he wasn't exactly clicking with anyone he worked with? So what if among the young assistant analysts, he felt like the only non-Ivy League educated, non-Upper East Side-living Midwesterner? This was a real career, and he was happy.
As the fall progressed and the days got shorter, Max watched the sunlight weaken through the office windows, then disappear behind the apartment buildings across the Hudson. Guys near his cubicle compared Hamptons connections and mimed golf swings in the hall. Loneliness, he thought, might become a problem.
In October, he passed Sarah's cubicle on the way to the men's room. He noticed her Milton Academy mug jammed with identical Pilot V-Ball extra fines. He noticed the gentle curve of her bare calves tucked beneath her office chair, her light brown hair hanging above her shoulders, her knee-length wool skirt. Then this: her battered leather office bag, the Penguin anthology of 20th Century American Poets visible inside.
Okay, thought Max, standing at the urinal. He loved some of Bishop's stuff, and that Lowell poem about the mental hospital with the big naked guy soaking in the bathtub.
Later in the day, he managed to join her over the coffee maker. "Hi," he said. "I'm Max." He hooked his thumb over his shoulder towards his desk. "New analyst."
She glanced at him and emptied a sugar packet into a Styrofoam cup. "Hi," she said. "Sarah."
He stuck his hands in the pockets of his suit pants. "Do you want to get a drink after work?"
She blinked and shook her head a little as if trying to clear it.
"It's frowned upon," she finally said.
"What is?"
"Drinks after work."
"Really?" Max said.
She sipped her coffee. "Not just casual drinks. Date drinks. It's like an office policy."
He hadn't known. "How about a non-date drink?"
"I don't think so."
"Okay," said Max.
They stared at each other for a few seconds.
"I hear my cubicle calling," she said, cupping her ear, backing away.
Max passed the afternoon with a pile of U.S. Steel earnings statements, his face burning, mentally mapping new routes to the men's room. Then, around seven Sarah stopped at his desk on her way out. She tipped her head to the side. He blinked, then lifted a finger, powered down his computer and jammed a couple of reports into his bag.
They took a cab to a tiny brick-walled West Village bar. Inside, over martinis, he told her about seeing the anthology in her bag. She took it out; "It's from this poetry course I took in college. My lit requirement -- not sure I paid much attention. I thought it would wind me down on the train home."
He told her about his abandoned Ph.D. "The one year master's option was made for guys like me."
"What do you mean guys like you?"
"Like to read and write, not thrilled about all the theory, not thrilled about grad student life."
"What's that like?"
"Lonely. Like you're not a real person."
She sipped her drink. "What's a real person?"
"I'm not sure," he admitted, laughing. "But I do feel like I'm actually doing something now. Boring as hell, but at least the work's predictable."
After a moment she said, "When I was a little girl, my dad and I used to take drives around the neighborhood, and he'd talk about stocks, accounting, interest rates, hedge funds. He was really excited about my career from age, like, eight. Made me read Benjamin Graham in sixth grade."
"Wow."
"I wanted to be Olivia Newton John. Seriously. I made my little brother act out 'Grease' with me."
He thought of the end of that movie -- Sandy's curly blond hair, tight pants, pursed lips.
Sarah took another sip of her drink. "But Dad's been pretty insistent all the way through. He got me a Journal subscription my freshman year at Columbia. Wanted me to major in econ, sign up for the investment club."
"And you did?"
"Well, yeah. All of it." She waved her hand. "He had a little crisis when I didn't get an offer from Goldman, Morgan or Merrill."
Max raised his eyebrows.
"So, you know, I try not to think of it as 'boring and predictable.'"
"Oh. I didn't--"
"I take it seriously."
"I think that's great," he said. "Really."
Silence. She took a deep breath, settled into the booth. "Of course, my dad retired from Salomon Brothers at fifty. Why? Ulcers."
He felt the pressure of her searching look.
"Who's Benjamin Graham?" he asked.
She laughed and her leg nudged his under the table.
Part Three
Sarah's laugh -- bright, startled -- Max heard it again the Sunday afternoon in November when she finally saw his studio apartment in Carroll Gardens. They'd been spending weekend nights together at her one-bedroom in Gramercy. She had new furniture, framed posters on the walls. He had a bed piled with dry-cleaning, a cheap floor lamp, two unopened cardboard boxes of books on the floor.
"It could be nice," she said, finding a corner of bed to sit on, looking around. "Nicer than mine."
"C'mon," he said.
"Your ceilings are higher."
"You have three whole rooms."
"Still, check out your molding." She pointed up.
There it was -- a formal, ruffled band running around the ceiling.
"I hadn't noticed," he said, looking. Some nights he was so tired, he didn't even turn on the light when he came home, just undressed, laid down, closed his eyes. "My place in Madison was about this size," he said.
She leaned back on her hands, burying them beneath the plastic sheaths of dry cleaning. "Do you miss it?"
"No," he said. He crossed the empty room to the window. He didn't. Why even bring the place up? Through it, across the airshaft, was a blank brick wall. "I guess I wanted to start with something small," he said. "Just in case."
"What?"
"I don't know. In case things didn't work out."
"But things are working out," Sarah said. Such a simple sentence, so reassuring; it turned Max around.
Max and Hugh watched the DVD, a PBS-produced documentary on the Crusades. This episode described the period at the beginning of the third century when the Pope asked the French to make another attempt, a fourth, to recover Jerusalem from the Muslims and Turks. The visuals were mainly of medieval tapestries, illuminated manuscripts and stained glass. A bearded narrator, a historian from Harvard, walked streets in Venice and Istanbul.
As the disc began, Max watched Hugh wedge himself in the cushions on the couch. At his age, Max wouldn't have lasted ten minutes with this thing, would have been flipping the channel to MTV, or raiding the freezer for Bagel Bites. But as the episode progressed, Hugh looked more and more engrossed, his eyes big, round, black.
"Don't you ever get to watch, like, movies?" whispered Max.
"Mom says if I learn about history, I'll get into a good school," he said without looking away from the screen.
"She's probably right," said Max.
The story went that the Crusaders gathered in Venice to sail to Jerusalem, but the manipulative Venetian Doge ("An executive of the merchants and wealthy class," said the narrator. "A kind of third century CEO") convinced them to conquer Constantinople, capital of the once-powerful Byzantine Empire, instead.
The narrator related the siege of Constantinople, how the Venetian fleet with the Crusaders aboard breached the harbor by capturing the towers at the harbor's mouth. How they extended ramps from the decks of ships to the top of the city walls and poured in. He described the massacre and rape of thousands of citizens, the fires set to buildings, the looting of gold and jewels. "It was the most ironic of the Crusades," huffed the narrator, climbing a grassy bank to the reddish stone of Istanbul's city wall. "Sent to liberate Jerusalem from the infidels, the holy army instead pillaged the richest Christian city in the world and divided its spoils."
"Hey," said Hugh, turning to face Max. "What would you rather be, rich or famous?"
"Can I be both?" asked Max.
"No." Hugh hit pause on the remote. The picture froze on a gold-encrusted Byzantine crucifix.
"Rich, I guess."
"That's what Sarah said when I asked her," said Hugh. "She said she didn't care about being famous."
"But maybe it'd be nice to do something important."
Hugh just looked at him.
Important: Not a bad word to serve over the net, but try playing out the point. Do what? Feed the hungry? End global warming? He went to a cubicle every day so that he could advise investors whether to buy steel. Sarah said the work developed decision-making skills, your ability to evaluate a set of options, make tough judgments. Good life training. But Max knew that for him Wall Street was just a whiplash detour, an antidote to sitting in a library and reading books. Wall Street meant getting rich. Getting rich felt like the opposite of doing something important.
Hugh was still waiting for him to say something. "What about you?" Max asked.
"Famous," Hugh said easily and shrugged. "Do you think you're going to marry Sarah?"
"Why? Do you want to?"
"Maybe if I was older."
Max laughed. "I wonder if Sarah would want to marry me."
He'd meant it as a sort of joke, but Hugh seemed to really consider the question, chewing on the corner of his thumb, scrutinizing Max. He blew his bangs out of his face again, shrugged again. He moved his gaze back to the TV.
Max's smile faded. He thought of the office: the background hum of computers and printers and fax machines, the soft, percussive steps of analysts and executives and administrative assistants, the low, blunt syllables of his boss's voice, the twist of too much coffee in his stomach. He tried to imagine the days and weeks and months ahead of him, but they slipped out of his head. His heart began to race.
Finally Hugh hit play on the remote. The gold crucifix became a gold crown became a jeweled sword -- images from museum display boxes. "Few examples of Constantinople's enormous wealth survive today..." explained the narrator.
Part Four
The night before, after Max had pulled Sarah's shirt over her head, after she had pushed his pants down to his ankles with her foot, after they'd had sex right there on her couch for the second night in a row, Max said it again: "Tell me what you were going to say."
Sarah propped herself up on one elbow and met his gaze. She chewed on her lip again, took a deep breath. Finally she said: "Okay. What if I were pregnant?"
Max went completely still. "Are you?"
She shrugged. "I'm a little late. Not much. It's just got me wondering."
"How late?"
"Not very," she said.
Max stared at her.
She kissed him, her face big and blurry. "Four days," she said. "Nothing."
"Really?"
"I'm sure it's everything that's been going on."
"You've been taking your pills?"
She pulled back. "No, not for weeks. Think that's why?"
"Sarah."
"Don't be dumb."
"I'm just asking."
"If I was pregnant..."
"Jesus, Sarah."
"You asked."
Max steadied himself.
She placed a cool hand on the back of his neck. "What would you do?" she asked.
He looked past her head. There were scoring marks on the wood floor where they'd pushed the couch around.
"I would leave it up to you," he said. "I don't want a baby."
A moment passed.
"Are you pregnant?"
"I'm sure I'm not."
"Do you feel pregnant?"
"I don't know what pregnant feels like."
Max closed his eyes. He pressed his teeth against his lower lip. He felt Sarah's hip jabbing him in the stomach, her toenails on his shin.
"Let me ask you something," he said.
"Okay."
"What if I were to quit my job at Angstrom?"
"Why?"
"I liked the work when you were down the hall. I could convince myself that Wall Street was always somewhere I wanted to be, but now that you're gone, I realize the only thing I really like is the money."
Sarah lifted herself off him and reached for the bottle of vodka. He stared at her back, at the smooth pale skin, at her spine -- a ladder of bumps.
"You're not fired. You quit," she said. "In this scenario."
"Quit," he said.
"Honestly," she said, turning with her glass. He stored away the image, the one he was taking in now -- Sarah naked, half-twisted, a drink in her hand, her streaky hair eclipsing half her face -- for the long hours at the office. "I'd support you. Do what you want."
"That's nice," he said.
"And I'd end it," she said, replacing the glass on the table and lying back down on top of him.
"What?"
"The pregnancy," she said. "You know. If."
Part Five
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Max sat on the end of Hugh's bed. The firm mattress reminded him of Sarah's. She would be lying on her couch right now, TV on or a magazine open, a headband holding her hair up out of her face, waiting for him to come over. What was he going to do? He'd get his Angstrom bonus in December -- a big check that would cover his rent for months to come. The only thing I really like is the money. At least he'd had the nerve to say it out loud.
There were no pictures on Hugh's walls. No trophies or ribbons or junk anywhere. Just a bookshelf full of books and a yellow block of National Geographics, a dresser, a bed, and a white desk with a dictionary and a laptop on its surface. Through Hugh's window, Max could see the light-spangled apartment buildings on the far side of Park Avenue.
Hugh came in from the bathroom, his teeth brushed. He'd changed out of his sweater and pants, and he folded them carefully in his closet. An orange Princeton long-sleeve t-shirt swallowed him like a dress.
"Sarah tells me a story to get me to sleep," he said climbing into bed.
"What about?"
Hugh rolled his head side to side on his pillow, a pillow printed with Latin phrases: Carpe Diem, Pax Vobiscum, E Pluribus Unim. "They're usually about Annie. She's the CEO of this huge company and lives in a mansion."
"Oh really?" said Max. "Does Annie have a boyfriend?"
"Husband. Sam. He's the vice president of her company. And they have a son named George."
"How old is George?"
"He's ten."
"No kidding."
"The company produces these really cool cell phones that have TVs in them."
"And they all live on Fifth Avenue?"
"A huge place with ten bedrooms."
Max thought for a moment. "Okay," he said. "I can probably work with that."
Hugh rolled onto his side, folding an arm under his head. He squinted under the glare of the bedside lamp, reached out and switched it off.
The room was lit only by the glow rising up off the street, twenty stories down.The digital clock on Hugh's dresser read 9:16.
"So Annie has made tons of money," said Max, trying to put a story together in his head.
"Tons," said Hugh.
"Through her successful TV-cell phone telecommunications company."
"Uh-huh."
"And, um, she keeps this money -- piles and piles of hundred dollar bills -- locked in a giant safe in her basement." Not bad, thought Max.
"Okay," said Hugh looking dubiously at him.
"It's a state of the art safe. Reinforced steel, code pads, wired with alarms."
"Why doesn't she put it in a bank?"
Good point, thought Max. "Because she doesn't trust banks."
Hugh nodded.
"So it's a winter evening and Annie has asked Sam and George to haul all of her money out of the basement."
"Why?"
"So she can count it. See--" said Max, his mind racing ahead. The story was coming to him more easily than he'd expected. "Annie's got plans. She wants to expand the business, to acquire a couple of competitors in the TV-cell phone market, to open another office abroad, diversify into digital cable and satellite. And she wants to have another baby." Max paused. "She's already pregnant," he said.
No reaction from Hugh.
"A baby on top of everything else means she's got to make sure she's got plenty saved up. So, George and Sam haul armfuls of cash into the living room and push it into this giant pile." Max lifted his arms to show how big the pile was. Hugh looked unimpressed. "George and Sam figure all that money will put Annie into a great mood, rev her up for another killer week at the office. But that night, for some reason, Annie seems antsy."
"Antsy?"
"Unhappy. Sam's watching his wife make these careful figures on the yellow pad. It's an enormous pile, but Sam sees the frown on Annie's face as she counts and he thinks about the baby and how she won't have enough."
Down the hall, through Hugh's closed door, Max heard a burst of laughter.
"Meanwhile--" Max said, the next part was instinctive, knee-jerk. "There are thieves in the park just across the street."
Hugh nodded: good.
"George spots them through the window. He calls his dad over. George and Sam both peer deep into the woods and see hundreds of them gathering to rush the house."
Max paused. In his head he could see the thieves huddled in the dark. He opened his mouth and the sentences spilled out: "Sam looks over his shoulder. Annie's got the money in neat little piles. Her pad is covered in numbers. She's going to be at it for hours."
"Are they going to get robbed?" asked Hugh.
Max bit the inside of his cheek, trying to slow down and think. "If the thieves attacked the house," he said, "swooped in and hauled off all the money, Sam and George and Annie wouldn't have anything left. Annie would have to reconsider her plans. They'd have to start over as a family, from scratch."
Hugh propped himself up in bed on his elbows. "What about the baby?" he asked.
"She wouldn't have it."
Hugh tucked his chin in. Max wondered if a ten-year-old knew what that meant.
"Would they be okay?" asked Hugh.
"They'd probably be better."
"But couldn't the thieves kill them?"
Max lifted his gaze to the windows on the far side of the darkened bedroom. Low clouds, flooded with city light, pressed down on the roofs of buildings. Hugh had a point. What about those thieves? They were nasty folks, prone to rape, murder. The story was going to get ugly; maybe he should start over. It's a winter evening and Annie and Sam and George are having pizza and ice cream. The money disappears some other way. A freak fire in the basement vault. An accident -- nobody's to blame. They're happy, oblivious.
Hugh waved a hand in Max's face. "Hello?"
No. He'd put the thieves in the Park -- he could still see them massing there in his head. Who'd believe a freak fire anyway? This story had its own momentum; Hugh would want to know whether the family was going to survive. He was sitting upright, his thin arms folded across his chest, waiting. Max took a breath to speak, and a warm space opened in his chest. For a moment he tried to imagine that this was his apartment, those guests in the living room were his friends, and Hugh was his son. That he had this much to protect and defend.
"The thieves begin to move," Max said. "Sam and George can see them coming through the trees. They both shout warnings at Annie and throw the curtains closed. Annie starts to gather up the money, but there's no time. They can already hear them on the street. George hits the lights. Sam runs to the door, turns the bolt, and braces his back against it. Sam feels them battering the door. He hears the thieves on the outside of the house. They shout warnings -- 'Surrender!' 'It's not worth it!' 'Save yourself while you can!'"
Max threw these at Hugh gruffly, trying to sound threatening. Hugh let out his first yawn of the night, sinking down into his pillow, his eyelids closing in a slow blink.
"Upstairs, a window breaks," Max said, hurrying along. He knew the ending now and just had to tell it. There would be a struggle, but the family wouldn't survive. Max could see it all: the hand-to-hand fighting, the doomed heroics, the blood. "Sam hears footsteps through the ceiling," he said. "Noise on the stairway. He knows they're inside."
