The Corrections

The young estate planner was short and had a pretty face and hennaed hair. She smiled up at Gary as if inviting him to speak. She looked midwestern and happy to be standing next to him.

Gary fixed his gaze on nothing and attempted not to breathe. He was chronically bothered by the T erupting in the middle of the word CenTrust. He wanted to push the T down hard, like a nipple, but when he pushed it down he got no satisfaction. He got cent-rust: a corroded penny.

“Girl, this ain’t replacement faith. This supplemental. Isaiah mention that lion, too. Call it the lion of Judah.”

“A pro-am thing in Malaysia with an early leader in the clubhouse, but that could change between 2:11 and 3:11. Can’t miss that.”

“My faith don’t need no replacing.”

“Sheri, girl, you got a wax deposit in your ear? Listen what I saying. This. Ain’t. No. Replacement. Faith. This supplemental.”

“It guarantees silky vibrant skin plus an eighteen percent reduction in panic attacks!”

“Like I’m wondering how Samantha feels about the alarm clock going off next to her pillow eight times a night every night.”

“All I saying is now’s the time to shop is all I saying.”

It occurred to Gary, as the young estate planner leaned into him to let a raft of sweltering humanity leave the elevator, as she pressed her hennaed head against his ribs more intimately than seemed strictly necessary, that another reason he’d remained faithful to Caroline through twenty years of marriage was his steadily growing aversion to physical contact with other human beings. Certainly he was in love with fidelity; certainly he got an erotic kick out of adhering to principle; but somewhere between his brain and his balls a wire was also perhaps coming loose, because when he mentally undressed and violated this little red-haired girl his main thought was how stuffy and undisinfected he would find the site of his infidelity—a coliform-bacterial supply closet, a Courtyard by Marriott with dried semen on the walls and bedspreads, the cat-scratch-feverish back seat of whatever adorable VW or Plymouth she no doubt drove, the spore-laden wall-to-wall of her boxlike starter apartment in Montgomeryville or Conshohocken, each site overwarm and underventilated and suggestive of genital warts and chlamydia in its own unpleasant way—and what a struggle it would be to breathe, how smothering her flesh, how squalid and foredoomed his efforts not to condescend …

He bounded out of the elevator on sixteen, taking big cool lungfuls of centrally processed air.

“Your wife’s been calling,” said his secretary, Maggie. “She wants you to call her right away.”

Gary retrieved a stack of messages from his box on Maggie’s desk. “Did she say what it is?”

“No, but she sounds upset. Even when I told her you weren’t here, she kept calling.”

Gary shut himself inside his office and flipped through the messages. Caroline had called at 1:35, 1:40, 1:50, 1:55, and 2:10; it was now 2:25. He pumped his fist in triumph. Finally, finally, some evidence of desperation.

He dialed home and said, “What’s up?”

Caroline’s voice was shaking. “Gary, something’s wrong with your cell phone. I’ve been trying your cell phone and it doesn’t answer. What’s wrong with it?”

“I turned it off.”

“How long has it been off? I’ve been trying you for an hour, and now I’ve got to go get the boys but I don’t want to leave the house! I don’t know what to do!”

“Caro. Tell me what’s wrong.”

“There’s somebody across the street.”

“Who is it?”

“I don’t know. Somebody in a car, I don’t know. They’ve been sitting there for an hour.”

The tip of Gary’s dick was melting like the flame end of a candle. “Well,” he said, “did you go see who it is?”

“I’m afraid to,” Caroline said. “And the cops say it’s a city street.”

“They’re right. It is a city street.”

“Gary, somebody stole the Neverest sign again!” She was practically sobbing. “I came home at noon and it was gone. And then I looked out and this car was there, and there’s somebody in the front seat right now.”

“What kind of car?”

“Big station wagon. It’s old. I’ve never seen it before.”

“Was it there when you came home?”

“I don’t know! But now I’ve got to go get Jonah and I don’t want to leave the house, with the sign missing and the car out there—”

“The alarm system is working, though, right?”

“But if I come home and they’re still in the house and I surprise them—”

“Caroline, honey, calm down. You’d hear the alarm—”

“Broken glass, an alarm going off, somebody cornered, these people have guns—”

“Look, look, look. Caroline? Here’s what you do. Caroline?” The fear in her voice and the need the fear suggested were making him so hot that he had to give himself a squeeze through the fabric of his pants, a pinch of reality. “Call me back on your cell phone,” he said. “Keep me on the line, go out and get in the Stomper, and drive down the driveway. You can talk to whoever through the window. I’ll be there with you the whole time. All right?”

“OK. OK. I’m calling you right back.”