The Futures(51)

I jumped when the door slammed. “Hello?” Adam called. I shoved the book back onto the shelf and hurried out to the living room, where he was shrugging off his coat. “There you are,” he said.

“How was work?”

“I’m glad it’s over.” He ran his eyes over me. “That is one hell of a dress.”

“You think so?” I glanced down, tugged at the fabric. “I was just about to take it off, actually. But if you’d prefer I keep it on…”

Afterward, in bed, he rolled over and pulled a pack of Marlboros from his nightstand drawer. He lit the cigarette, inhaled, then exhaled with a sigh. He always looked more pensive in profile.

“You smoke?”

“Sometimes.”

“I don’t think I knew that.”

He blew a smoke ring that floated briefly in the air above him. The room was almost unnaturally quiet. The constant thumps and squeaks and rattles that I’d come to expect in our walk-up apartment were absent here. Thick walls, double-glazed windows, the rugs and the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves: we were in a womb of money and culture. “There’s a lot you don’t know about me.” Then he laughed. “You want one?”

“Sure,” I said. I didn’t want it, not really, but it felt like the right thing to do.

*

In our apartment, that morning of his return, I sat on the futon while Evan paced.

Back and forth, back and forth. I’d never seen him like this.

“Evan, what is it?” I said. “Just tell me.”

He stopped abruptly. “Michael. It’s Michael. The thing has been rigged all along. And he made me deliver the papers, so the blood is on my hands, too. They trapped me. I can’t go anywhere. It’s totally fucked.”

“Slow down,” I said. “What? What are you talking about?”

“The WestCorp deal. It’s fixed.”

“What do you mean?”

He took a deep breath. He started talking about the mechanics of the deal, Spire betting that WestCorp was going to skyrocket because of their exports to China. I nodded. I knew all that. Then he explained that China had agreed to loosen the trade barriers, to drop the taxes and tariffs. Again, old news.

“Evan,” I said. “I don’t—”

He held up a hand, kept talking. He’d gotten locked out of his hotel room by his coworker. So he’d crashed on the couch in another suite. Michael and someone else from Spire came back to the room in the middle of the night.

“Did they know you were there?” I interrupted. Evan shook his head. “Why didn’t you say something? Like, hey, guys, I’m right over here?”

“I couldn’t, Jules. I just couldn’t. It was too late.” There was a sheen of sweat on his forehead. The other person in the room confronted Michael while Evan was listening. He’d spotted something in the books. Michael admitted that the deal was rigged. Michael and WestCorp had arranged for immigration papers for the Chinese officials and their families. The next day, Michael asked Evan to deliver a briefcase to a Mr. Wenjian Chan at the Venetian.

“And you did it? You agreed to deliver the briefcase?”

He nodded, looking pale and sick.

“Evan. You had just overheard all that and you went along with it?”

“What else was I going to say? He didn’t know that I’d overheard them. So I deliver the briefcase, and Chan seems happy. But before I walk out, his daughter stops me. Translating what her father’s saying. They want to keep in touch, she says. She’s applying to college in the States, and they want my help. They seem to think I have the right connections. Like, she can blackmail her way in through me.”

“Did you tell Michael this?”

“He was already gone by the time I got back. I haven’t talked to him yet. I don’t know what to do.” He stopped his pacing and sank down onto the futon next to me. He dropped his head in his hands. “Jesus. What the fuck am I supposed to do?”

I was silent. I waited for him to look up at me, but he wouldn’t. He kept his palms pressed up against his eyes, like a child willing a monster to disappear. After a minute, he said it again. “Julia. What should I do?”

He finally looked up. I flinched when he reached for my hand, when his gaze locked on mine. My heart was hammering. Evan had been ignoring me for so long. He hadn’t asked a single question in all that time. How was I? How was my day? How was I feeling? What was I thinking? And, finally, this was what he came up with. He wanted my help. I was only there to solve his problems, and then he’d go right back to ignoring me.

I was also thinking: How had he not figured this out? His pretending at innocence made me queasy. He wasn’t innocent. He’d done this, too. He let himself become blinded by it. We’re going to make billions. Spire is going to crush the rest of Wall Street. But when the truth finally became too uncomfortable, he wanted out. He wanted an escape. I was angry, but part of me felt relieved, too. Validated. I wasn’t the one who had fucked up our relationship. I’d been duped. Evan had betrayed me—had betrayed us. And whatever was happening, whatever person Evan was becoming, I wanted no part of it. This was a waste of my time. I was done.

“I don’t know, Evan.” I stood up, walked over to the kitchen. “I don’t know what you should do. You need to figure this out on your own.”