The Guest Room(53)

He was also acutely aware that none of the people he thought were his friends at Franklin McCoy had checked in. He guessed he was glad the women he worked with hadn’t called. He was embarrassed, and he wasn’t sure what he would have said—what someday soon he would have to say—to Anna Gleason. Or to Sue Miles. Would they be sickened or merely surprised? He couldn’t decide. And the men? He had almost invited two of his male work pals to the party, so he would have some friends of his own there: David Pace and Will Dundon. He always enjoyed having lunch with one or both of them, and they were clearly a pair who wouldn’t have minded a stripper and a little harmless drinking. But in the end, he hadn’t. And he hadn’t, he knew, for the same reason he hadn’t invited the men with whom he played golf or the fellow he went to college with who lived in Scarsdale or the male halves of any of the couples with whom he and Kristin socialized. (Lord, the male halves of those couples didn’t dare call him: they were all friends through their wives.) He hadn’t invited any of his friends because he had understood on some core level that this whole bachelor party thing was kind of juvenile. Kind of disturbing. Kind of gross. He hadn’t even told anyone ahead of time that he was hosting it.

He guessed that was why his friends hadn’t called him first. But Dundon and Pace from Franklin McCoy? He feared there was another reason, one that transcended awkwardness: self-preservation. At the moment, he was in exile. He was a pariah at the bank, and he was going to be given a very wide berth.

He wondered what would happen if he called his idiot younger brother and told him what Spencer was doing. So, Philip, your good friend Spencer is trying to blackmail me. His brother might be able to shame Spencer into letting go or at least stopping at thirty. But probably not. Spencer was a loose cannon. For all Richard knew, Spencer might go ballistic if the Chapman brothers ganged up against him: he might launch the video. He might become the wolf in a trap that chews off its own leg: upload the video and watch it go viral faster than the flu. He might be throwing away its blackmail potential, but he’d be ruining a certain Franklin McCoy managing director.

Besides, Richard knew he wasn’t emotionally prepared to tell Philip that the video existed. He was ashamed. He was Philip’s older brother, and older brothers never went to their younger brothers for help—at least not in the Chapman family. He held himself to a higher standard than Philip, and the video compromised that moral authority. He understood on some level that eventually he might have to tell his younger sibling. But he wasn’t there yet.

Now he tossed his iPhone onto one of the leather couch cushions beside him and watched it slide over the stains where strangers had been f*cking last week. The bottom line? All of those names in his iPhone were worthless. He had absolutely no one on his side but Dina Renzi, and she was only there because he was paying her.

…

It was Claudia’s family’s turn that Wednesday to drive the three girls to dance—Melissa and Claudia and Emiko—and because dance didn’t begin until four-thirty, there was always time for ice-cream between school and studio. The ice-cream parlor was around the corner from the dance studio in Scarsdale. The three girls had ballet for an hour and then jazz for an hour. It was, Melissa had heard Claudia’s mom observe any number of times, a pretty serious workout, even for kids who were nine. But Melissa looked forward to it immensely: she and Emiko (and even Claudia, once in a while) practiced daily what they learned each Wednesday afternoon. This deep into the autumn, it would be dark when the girls emerged from the studio.

Today Claudia’s mother, Jesse, was driving, but equally often it was Claudia’s dad. The two of them both worked from home a lot. Her dad was a computer engineer and her mom was a copywriter. Now the three girls were sitting in a booth and eating different variations on the ice-cream sundae, while Jesse sipped her coffee, read news stories and texts off her smartphone, and occasionally chimed in on the girls’ conversation. Claudia was sitting beside her mother on one side of the booth, while Melissa and Emiko sat across from them on the other.

Abruptly Jesse put her phone down on the thick wooden tabletop and leaned across the table toward Melissa. Melissa thought that Jesse was—very much like her own mom—very pretty. But unlike her mom, Jesse dressed more like a teenager. Or at least, Melissa guessed, like a much younger woman. Her mom said it was because while Jesse worked at home most days, when she had meetings she had to look more stylish and hip than a schoolteacher. Melissa could tell that she must have come straight to the school from a meeting to pick up the girls, because she was decked out in black and gray animal print leggings and a black jacket that looked sort of like a man’s, except it was cut like an hourglass. Her leather boots had stitching the same color gray as her leggings.

“So, Melissa,” she asked, “how are you?” She had emphasized the verb to stress that she genuinely wanted to know—that she was sincerely interested. Melissa understood that this was no mere social formality, where she was only supposed to nod and say fine. She paused the spoon with her chocolate ice cream in midair and thought for a moment. Claudia and Emiko were watching her. Jesse was watching her. She knew that everyone was talking about her father behind her back, but only Claudia—who, Melissa’s mom said, was one of those brilliant math kids who were born without filters—had wanted to talk to her face-to-face about the dead men and the prostitutes in her house. Claudia had wanted to know if she was afraid of the dead men’s ghosts (Melissa had not been afraid until Claudia had suggested that the spirits might have chosen to remain in the house), and whether her parents were going to get a divorce because of the prostitutes (she was indeed stressing about that, and the fears only became more pronounced when her mom had told her dad that he had to sleep downstairs in the living room—not even upstairs in the guest room).