The Assistants(22)

My college degree never covered this sort of material; there was no “Introduction to Remembering Breads, Toppings, and Condiments 101” at NYU, but it was cool—I could always recite a verse from Milton’s Paradise Lost to impress the Mangia delivery guy if I wanted to.

I returned to my desk to place the order, and there I found a g-chat message from Kevin: Another dinner date soon? I’ll share all my secret camera knowledge if that sweetens the pot. The message was followed by a winking smiley face that I did not like the looks of one bit.

Was I being paranoid or was Kevin trying to communicate to me—using a complicated flirtation code—that he had heard something, noticed something, or figured something out?

Just the thought was enough to make me forget if Evans wanted basil chicken salad or basil Parmesan chicken salad.

—

END OF DAY, Robert had Jason Dillinger in his office for a drink, to celebrate his successful television appearance. They were seated opposite each other on the living-room-like furniture across from Robert’s desk—Dillinger sitting up straight and rigid on the couch, and Robert lounging all the way back in his armchair, with his legs crossed. On the glass coffee table between them, there was a crystal ice bucket that I could see needed refreshing. Robert had no patience for watery ice.

So I stepped in, said, “Excuse me,” and reached for the bucket.

Robert was midsentence: “. . . and we put down new flagstone pavers and added lighting under the porch. It looks nice, real nice.” Then he paused, like he’d just noticed I’d entered the room. “You’ve never been out to the ranch, have you, Tina?”

I hugged the sloshing ice bucket close to my chest. “No, I haven’t.”

No, I hadn’t, but I’d heard all about it. Around the office, Robert’s upstate ranch was spoken of in language so ardent and enthusiastic that, taken out of context, one might think it was hell on earth: It’s f*cking sick. It’s ridiculous. It’ll make you want to kill yourself. Of course, among the Titan men of the fortieth floor, this was the highest form of praise.

Unlike work parties, for which I always did the legwork, Robert’s ranch get-togethers were all his own. They were special, coveted. And I probably don’t need to tell you that Robert wasn’t an all-for-one, one-for-all type. No. He’d pick and choose who got an invite, seemingly at random—some of the guys had been invited many times over, others never once—but as with everything Robert did, everyone assumed there was a cunning methodology to it. For this reason, an invitation to the ranch became just one more carrot for everyone to compete for.

“Well, why don’t you come out this Saturday then?” Robert said. “I’m having a little barbecue. You can ride the train up with Dillinger and his wife. Do you. . .”—he stumbled on his own words for a moment—“. . . have a significant partner?”

A significant partner? The phrasing alone reminded me how little Robert actually knew about me. It was easy to forget because I knew everything—literally everything—about him, right down to his underwear size (42–44) and his favorite sock brand (VK Nagrani).

“No,” I said. “I’m alone, I mean, I—”

“You fly solo.” Robert grinned. “All right then. So you’ll ride the train with Dillinger and his wife.”

“Okay,” I said. “I’d love to. Thank you.”

So bowled over I was by this surprise, this un-f*cking-believable carrot dangled in front of my face, that I forgot for a moment that I was stealing from this man.

“You ever shot a gun, Tina?” Robert asked.

“A what?”

“Do you shoot?” He must have noticed a terrified look on my face because he added, “Not at people. I mean, skeet, cans.”

“No,” I said.

“Well I’m gonna teach you then. By the time I’m done with you, you’ll be able to shoot out the eye of a needle.”

“You’ll love it,” Dillinger said, never one to like being left on the outskirts of a conversation. “Robert taught me my first time out.”

Kiss-ass.

“I can’t wait,” I said, and then just stood there awkwardly.

Robert’s attention diverted to his phone, and I realized the ice bucket I’d been holding too close had seeped a wet island across the front of my white button-down.

“I’ll be right back with fresh ice,” I said, and made my escape.





9




JASON DILLINGER and his wife, Kathryn, sat facing me in our cozy Metro-North four-seater, so that I was moving backward. Dillinger had brown hair, brown eyes, and the palest, most translucent skin you’ve ever seen. He was tall, with long legs (thankfully hidden beneath powder-blue summer chinos) that took up all of what little floor space there was between us. Nobody in the office worked harder or longer hours than Dillinger, hence the never-seeing-the-sun thing. He was only thirty-five, but his interoffice competition was already complaining about how he was most likely to be Robert’s successor.

“So this is your first one of these,” he said, making meaningless conversation.

I nodded. “You’ve been before?”

“Three times. But this is the first time I’m bringing Kathryn.”

Kathryn, who sat huddled against the window, was lost in her Kindle and gave no reaction to the sound of her own name. She was good-looking, I’ll give her that, like J.Crew-catalog-model good-looking. A surprising percentage of guys in the office had extremely attractive wives—wives who, as Emily would say, were not on an equal plane of hotness. It wasn’t that these Titan men were wealthy, because most of them weren’t, but working in media—news media especially—still maintained a certain cachet, in New York at least. Plus, nerdy guys were having a moment, weren’t they? It was simply the right time in history to be a pale dude who wore glasses and had a really big brain.