Bad Choices

By William Hawkes

Mark West thinks his life is pretty close to perfect—until he learns that his wife Laura has been cheating on him with a co-worker. Faced with this rude awakening, Mark accepts an offer of a job transfer to Leipzig, Germany, to help start up an Eastern European branch of his company. But his escape doesn't turn out to be quite as peaceful as he expected. Mark soon finds himself entangled with Sophia, a glamorous artist with some disturbing connections, and Frau Wachter, his mysterious concierge, who turns out to be a former Stasi agent. Bad Choices tells the dramatic story of post-unification Germany through the eyes of a naïve American who has a great deal to learn about himself, women, and modern Germany.

• Language: English
• Publisher: William Hawkes
• Release date: May 29, 2015
• ISBN: 9781310464218

William Hawkes

William J. Hawkes worked in Germany for several years as a management consultant. His experience gives him particular insight into the world of international business, as well as a deeper understanding of post-unification German culture. He currently resides in Madison, Wisconsin, with his wife and two cats, and enjoys listening to harpsichord music and reading and translating German poetry.

Book preview

Bad Choices

By William Hawkes

Sale of this book without a front cover may be unauthorized. If this book is coverless, it may have been reported to the publisher as unsold or destroyed and neither the author nor the publisher may have received payment for it.

Bad Choices is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

© 2015 William Hawkes All rights reserved.

No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, scanning, or other—except for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

ISBN-13: 978-1514112908 ISBN-10: 1514112906

Printed in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
First edition

To the memories of all who made the trip more joyful for all of us.

Here, when so much else is changing,

Everything disdained or shunned

Now agrees in rearranging


All my songs of life, while, stunned

By the striking of each hour,

I recall the wondrous grace


Of my childhood’s golden bower,

Since I found this special place.

English translation by William Hawkes of a stanza of Diotima by Friedrich Holderlin (1796)

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

CHAPTER 1

Even by the most demanding of New York standards—where accomplishment is calibrated on the great trifecta of work, wealth, and wisdom—Mark and Laura West were a charmingly successful couple.

At thirty-four, Mark West was a management consultant with a Ph.D. in Econometrics from the Sloan School of Management at MIT. He worked for Hawthorne and Richmond, one of the most profitable consulting businesses in America. His wife Laura had graduated with honors from Harvard Law School and had quickly been hired by Rothenburg and Schiller, a prestigious law firm headquartered in Boston but with a large presence in Midtown Manhattan.

Both Mark and Laura were within striking distance of the seven-digit compensation packages that distinguished the realm of the truly elite. Seven digits, unimaginable outside the sphere of Greater New York, were enough to make the inconveniences of life largely go away—enough to buy Mark and Laura an eight-room apartment on 74th Street and Central Park West, a nanny, and tuition at a private school for their two daughters: Alison, age eight, and Emma, age six. Even that level of luxury required bridge loans from both sets of grandparents, but those would be repaid in the next few years once their expected promotions came through.

Mark had first met Laura at the Harvard Co-op bookstore on a Friday afternoon in the April of his second-to-last year at MIT, and Laura’s first year at Harvard Law. He had stopped in at the Harvard Bookstore in Cambridge for an hour of browsing. On his way to the Literary Criticism section, he found his path blocked by a stack of books written by George Steiner. Sitting next to the stack was a tall young woman wearing a cashmere sweater and 501 Levis. Even though she was seated, he could tell that the shrink-to-fit jeans had shrunk in all the right places.

Unconsciously, Mark cleared his throat. She looked up from taking notes on After Babel, not too busy to notice Mark picking his way across On Difficulty and Other Essays and Antigones and Martin Heidegger. She gave him a tentative smile. I didn’t mean to block your way. Sorry.

It’s all George Steiner’s fault, Mark said. If he didn’t write so much, he wouldn’t get in anyone’s way.

Do you actually read his stuff?

I think Steiner gets pilloried for his erudition—especially by Americans, who call him pretentious and superficial. Maybe he has that tendency at times, but at his best he towers over everyone else. The guy is brilliant.

Her retort was quick. But not as brilliant in our time as Edmund Wilson was in his.

That’s not quite fair. Wilson was a public intellectual; America doesn’t have public intellectuals anymore.

What about Noam Chomsky? she asked. I think he would qualify by anyone’s definition, even yours.

But he was a linguist first. Stop talking so much. If you want to ask her out, ask her out.

France has plenty of public intellectuals, she said. They even show up on television. Lyotard, Boudrillard, the whole lot of them became celebrities by virtue of what they think, not the other way around. Germany has them, too; so do Italy, and Spain and England.

She stood up, arms laden with Steiner’s works, all of which she put back on the shelf— except for After Babel. I need to study law all weekend, not Lit Crit, she said, but I’ll bring one of these home for entertainment. I’m Laura, by the way.

Nice to meet you, Laura, I’m Mark. Here, have my card. It has my cell phone and e-mail on it. Maybe we could continue our discussion sometime?

I’d like that, she said, handing him her card in return. Why don’t we meet for some dinner on Sunday after I’ve finished studying?

Just then, Laura glanced down at the card Mark had handed her: Mark West, Econometrician-in-training. Forecasts available at a discount. Backcasts, too.

Laura looked at him with suspicion. Are you a student? You’re not married, are you? She made a face. Sorry to be so forward, but the last guy to ask me out was, and I just don’t have time for that.

Don’t worry about it, Mark said. No, I’m not married or seeing anyone. But then, I’m not looking to get married either—at least not yet. Still, I’d be interested in getting some food Sunday evening. Then we can continue our discussion as you suggested. I know a good Italian restaurant in the neighborhood. Do we have a deal?

Why do I feel as if you just trapped me in a chess game with mate in two moves? Laura asked.

Mark laughed. Is that a yes?

Sure, I’ll accept your offer, but I’m not sure I trust you yet.

That’s probably just evidence of low self-esteem. Have you talked to your therapist about these feelings?

Now she was the one to laugh.

By semester’s end they had seen each other several times, but had not yet become lovers. When Laura returned from a trip to Europe that summer, they talked at length about where their friendship might take them. They both admitted how much they had missed each other, but by the time the conversation reached that point the issue was nearly moot as Mark unhooked Laura’s bra at the same moment that Laura was unbuttoning his blue jeans, then pulled down his shorts with the same deft motion.

Let’s go into the bedroom, she said. There’s more room to play in bed.

Later that night they decided to spend an experimental weekend together in the fall. By this time Mark was thoroughly bewitched with Laura and with the condition of being in love.

His parents gave their raised-eyebrow permission for Mark and Laura to use the island summer home in Penobscot Bay for the trip, where they would spend their first full weekend together since meeting at the Cambridge bookstore several months earlier.

They fell completely in love that weekend under the full moon blazing above its own reflection on the water, making love by candlelight the first night on the creaky bed in Mark’s old bedroom. Mark was laying on his back when Laura came into the bedroom wearing only the briefest of panties (scanty panties, she called them,) and a transparent bra that revealed the

complex curvature of the structures underneath. When Mark put his hands on them he nearly came with excitement and she laughed at how his erection stood stiff as he eased his boxers down over it. They made love again the next afternoon in the back seat of the old family Packard, parked on a bluff above the breaking rhythm of the surf, once again after dinner listening to Pink Floyd on the living room stereo, and a final time, almost as a grace note, on awakening in the guest bedroom Monday morning, careful to use the sheets that Laura had brought along, just in case. They were very happy that weekend.

They pronounced the experiment a success. Then, looking even further into the future, they made a tentative plan to consider getting married after graduation—if the job market was still favorable and if they still felt the same way about each other.

Mark met Bob Hawthorne and Hal Richmond, who were teaching a weekend seminar at MIT, while he was finishing his course work there. Bob was chairman and CEO, while Hal was president of the management consulting company Hawthorne and Richmond, which they had founded while they were completing their dissertations.

After graduation, Mark was considering following through with Hawthorne and Richmond on their earlier conversations about coming to work with them—and everyone was expecting him to do as much. Instead, no sooner was the ink dry on his doctorate diploma then he surprised them all by turning down that and several other private sector opportunities in favor of a two-year research fellowship at the Federal Reserve Board, realizing that it would allow him to burnish his resume by gaining government contacts that would stand him in good stead throughout his career. This was all done with the understanding that he would look with favor on Bob Hawthorne’s offer when his contract with the Fed was up. It required a delicate pirouette, but it worked.

By the time Mark reached the end of his fellowship, Hal Richmond had semi-retired, but Bob Hawthorne remained chairman and CEO, working even harder than ever. Mark was offered a position as Senior Econometrician at the firm, at what seemed to him an obscenely high salary. He eagerly accepted the offer.

The highly respectable job was a good indicator of his progress—good enough to test the anchors of his judgment against the floodwaters of his self-confidence. Having studied at Carnegie-Mellon University as an undergraduate, including a semester at Freiburg University in Germany his junior year, and at MIT for graduate study, as well as working side-by-side with several top-ranked economists at the Federal Reserve, Mark now felt ready for any kind of quantitative challenge. During his tenure at Hawthorne and Richmond, he learned to temper his impatience, drive, and energy into cooperative efforts for projects with fellow staff members.

Laura’s career at Rothenburg and Schiller had a correspondingly rapid trajectory. Her clients almost doubled their contribution to the firm’s revenue and she was up for partner in record time. She seemed to be balancing career and family effortlessly.

While Laura was cautious and solidified her client base by paying attention to details, Mark eagerly took risks early in his career, his tenacity and adaptability rewarded with a string of successes. His progress at Hawthorne and Richmond was aided by his enthusiasm and a willingness to understand the clients’ needs, and after only a few years, Mark had become one of the firm’s most valued consultants. Soon he was not only managing clients all over the U.S., but also being granted accounts in Europe. The chance to travel to Germany and other European countries on short-term assignments thrilled Mark, allowing him the chance to strike out on his own and conquer new worlds, metaphorical though the conquests may be. But his European work had negative consequences as well.

Often in the course of the idyllic first few years of their marriage, Mark and Laura had asked themselves whether the whole trajectory had in some unexpected way become preordained, like a ritual dance whose patterned steps had lost their sense of order but were enacted anyhow for reasons of pageantry. That carried its own justification, along with the beat of the music.

More recently, however, Mark’s frequent absences from New York had been putting an extraordinary burden on Laura to be both parents much of the time. The burden gradually became insupportable, and without warning the marriage was under severe stress. There was blame on both sides, but the details of how it happened played over and over again in Mark’s mind, generating great recursive loops of memory around the still point of each sleepless night. However successful their life seemed to others, it had become impossible for Mark and Laura to deny that they were increasingly feeling the stress of maintaining two high-intensity careers and a happy home life as well.

CHAPTER 2

One day, Laura was late coming home from her law office. She’d left a message with Mark’s executive assistant that she would be working on the Everts case until eight or nine o’clock and would share a pizza with Miriam and Susan, who were helping her meet a deadline imposed by a move-up in the trial date. Mark walked home through Central Park on that early spring evening; the sky above the city painted with a half- plum, half-tangerine sunset that dusted the Plaza Hotel and the other buildings along the southern border of the park in chalk pastels. The view alone made the pleasures of living in midtown Manhattan seem worth the inconveniences, especially since he and Laura had finally become financially comfortable thanks to their combined incomes.

When Mark arrived at home he called a cab for the children’s nanny, started dinner for his daughters Alison and Emma, and took them up to the roof garden to see the lights of the city under the darkening sunset. After dinner he put them to bed, read them a story, and waited for Laura to call again.

At 9:00 the phone rang. It wasn’t Laura. Hi, Mark. It’s Miriam. Is Laura near the phone?

I thought she was working late with you tonight.

No, she left the office at six—maybe six-thirty.

That’s strange. There was a message when I got home that you guys were all working overtime on the Everts case. Have you seen Susan?

She left early, too. Maybe you should try calling her. Do you have her number?

I have it right here. Thanks, Miriam.

He called Susan. She’d left the office at six and hadn’t seen Laura, either. He called Laura’s office. No answer there, or on her cell phone.

He hung up the phone, frustrated and concerned. She’d never been this late without letting him know where she was. Central Park West and 74th Street was a reasonably safe neighborhood but he still worried. He called her cell phone again, this time leaving a message. He tried to keep his voice light-hearted.

This is Mark calling, Laura. You must have gone out for dinner with your Boston colleagues. I made veggie lasagna for the kids. They said to wake them up when you got home. Call me when you’re ready to leave. Love from all three of us.

Another hour went by slowly. Alison and Emma were wakeful, too. He went into their bedroom, told them their mother was still working but would say goodnight to them when she arrived.

Daddy?

What is it, Emma?

"Do you remember the big campfires we had last summer at Grandmother’s house on Isle au Haut?

Of course I remember. And we’ll be going back there to visit them later this year.

Isle au Haut is my favorite place in the whole world. I remember all the campfire songs that Mother taught us. She has such a pretty voice.

Yes, she does, Alison. And so do you.

Wake us up when she gets home. Goodnight, Daddy.

At 11:00 he heard the key in the lock. Laura’s face seemed a little flushed as she tossed her coat onto a chair. Are the kids asleep? she asked.

I told them you’d look in on them when you got home. Did you guys finish your project?

Just about. Miriam may still be working. She had a few things to wrap up.

The sudden recognition that she was lying hit him with the force of a sledgehammer.

I see. Why don’t you say goodnight to the kids? I’ll get you a glass of wine.

It took her fifteen minutes to tell the children a bedtime story and quiet them down for the night. She looked uneasy when she came into the living room, studying their carefully chosen chairs as if she’d never seen them before.

Miriam stayed and worked with you the whole time? he asked her.

She sipped her wine. Right. She hardly stopped working long enough to eat a slice of pizza. Did we get any mail?

Screw the mail.

What did you say? Laura’s face was suddenly pale.

I said, ‘Screw the mail.’ Where were you tonight?

I told you, I was working late. She didn’t look at him. Her eyes kept shifting away from his.

You already used that excuse. Want to try a different one?

Mark, what’s wrong? Is this some kind of game we’re playing?

I’ll tell you what’s wrong, Mark said. Miriam called at nine o’clock. She hadn’t seen you since six. I tried Susan and got the same answer. I called your office and your cell. Now do you want to tell me where you were?

She hesitated. I’m sorry. I just wanted an evening for myself, so I went to a poetry reading at the Y.

Who was reading?

Another hesitation, eyes searching the ceiling. W.S. Merwin.

Just visiting from Hawaii, right? He picked up the New Yorker and turned to the events listings. I don’t see any listing for him at the Y tonight.

I think he was a last-minute replacement.

Mark took a deep breath. He tried to keep his voice steady.

Tell you what. I’m going to call the Y tomorrow and find out who read there tonight. If it was Merwin, fine. If it wasn’t, you might want think about telling me the truth.

I’m not going to tell you. You have no right to talk to me this way.

How do you expect me to talk to you when I find out you’ve been lying to me about where you were?

I’m not sure you have any right to be angry at all, considering what you’ve done. She was looking at him defiantly now.

Mark ignored the pointed remark, choosing not to get into yet another fight about the night he had spent sleeping—just sleeping— in the same hotel room as an attractive woman he had attended a conference with last year. Instead, he said, I’m not threatening anybody. I just want to know where you were and with whom, his voice sharper than intended.

Shh, not so loud. You’ll wake the kids. Will you stop shouting at me if I tell you?

Yes, of course I’ll stop. I’m just a simple guy, looking for some simple answers. And I’m sure that everything you did was innocent.

She swallowed the rest of her wine, then held out her glass. More, please.

He refilled her glass. Go easy, he said. Just tell me his name.

Fine, Mark. If you really must know, his name is Dennis Healy.

Is he your lover?

She hesitated again. He’s a colleague, and a friend. He’s co-counsel on the Everts case and came down from Boston to work with us today. We worked together all day, and kept working at dinner.

I didn’t ask about friendship or co-counsel status. I asked whether he was your lover.

Laura poured another half glass of wine for herself. Mark, this has been a long day. Do we really have to do this tonight? You said no more questions if I told you his name.

We’ve already broached the subject; we might as well get it all out in the open!

Please keep your voice down. I don’t want the girls to hear your accusations. Suppose I told you he was my lover, once upon a time—would that satisfy your curiosity?

Was he tonight?

I’m going to be sick. She ran to the bathroom, locking the door behind her. He heard her crying and throwing up. After a while the throwing up stopped, but the crying didn’t.