The Guest Room(70)

Maybe…nothing.

He recalled how he had tossed and turned on the futon last night and wished he had bought that hunting rifle. Or at least started the process. It would do him no good with Spencer—you couldn’t just lean back in a bar and reveal it like your hidden carry—but it might have given him some peace of mind when he thought of the Russians. He knew intellectually there was no reason to be scared for his family. They wanted the girls, not him. At least that’s what he was reminding himself now, in the clear light of day. It was in the small hours of the morning when all horrors seemed plausible. Even likely. Hadn’t his brother told him that Spencer was terrified?

Well, maybe Spencer should be terrified. There was a guy at Franklin McCoy from Texas who once said about a bastard CEO whose company they were trying to sell, “Some people just need killin’.” He said it with a twang that only appeared when he wanted to make a point. Well, in the Russians’ eyes, Spencer probably just needed killin’—and to them it wasn’t a joke.

Of course, Kristin would have been absolutely furious if he had brought home a rifle. She would have been convinced that he had, once and for all, lost his mind. And, perhaps, he had. Last night, he had stared up at the ceiling, awash in the superstitious fear that by failing to buy a weapon, he was inviting disaster: his family would be killed while a rifle lay dormant in its box in a gun store in Yonkers. If only…

If only…

Well, f*ck the if onlys.

Fuck this goddamn painting.

Fuck Spencer Doherty.

Fuck the news vans and the Russians and the bastards he thought were his friends at Franklin McCoy.

He held the painting by two opposite sides of the frame as if it were a serving platter and marched to the bottom of his driveway. He stood before the antique wrought-iron post with his mailbox, raised the painting over his head, and then smashed it as hard as he could against the black metal finial, impaling it. Skewering it. The tip pierced the canvas, and the mailbox widened the gash. Then, the painting dangling on the post, he grabbed loose strips of it with his hands and shredded them, pulling them apart as if he were ripping the tenderloin from chicken breasts. He cursed it. He swore under his breath. And when he lifted the painting back off the post, the slivers dangled like entrails. For a moment he held it in his hands, unsure why he wasn’t wholly satisfied. But then he got it. Then he understood. He slammed the frame down onto the asphalt, splintering the wood on two sides and unhinging the corners.

Fuck you, he hissed at it. Fuck you. Now he was satisfied. He had to admit when he was throwing away the frame and the canvas, he really did feel a little better. No. He felt a lot better. He almost wished there had been a vulture present to capture his madness on video for the world.

He glanced at his watch and thought about what he would be doing if he were not killing time on this appalling leave of absence by destroying a painting. He counted back the hours to the bachelor party, numbering the intervals of twenty-four in his mind. How many hours ago had the guests started to arrive? How many hours ago had the two Russians been killed? He thought once again of that poor girl on the bed with her feet not touching the floor. She was still on the run somewhere. At least that’s what the newspapers said. She was either on the run or she was dead. No, not dead, he thought. Please, not dead. Her death, he feared, might really push him over the edge. Would make his little catharsis with the painting just now seem like a round of golf.

He realized that he had to get out of the house. He saw that the car trunk was still open and slammed it shut. He combed his hair in the driveway, and climbed into the Audi. Then he drove down the hill to the school. There he waited in the parking lot, soaking up the cool autumn air and the bright midday sun, waiting for those two consecutive periods when he knew that Kristin was on break. The hours when she usually did errands or grabbed a bite to eat. He thought he would surprise her and take her to lunch.

…

Philip Chapman stood beside Spencer Doherty with his back against one of the black marble obelisks behind which statuesque young women—dressed always in black sheath dresses, spike heels, and a shade of lipstick so red the company christened it Provocateur—would check guests in and out of the Cravat, and lost what it was that his friend was telling him. He had been surveying a part of his little empire, but now he was watching a young woman in a white skirt and matching blazer nuzzle a man a generation older as they crossed the lobby and disappeared inside an elevator. The guy was handsome, and the suit was a perfectly tailored charcoal gray pinstripe from Brooks Brothers. It was so clear that the pair was about to have a lunch-hour quickie in their hotel room. He imagined they worked together at some investment bank like his brother’s, but one based in Chicago or L.A., and they were in town for a series of meetings with clients. He fantasized about the woman’s lingerie beneath that skirt and blazer. He told himself that it was okay to think like this, now that Nicole had dumped him. Broken off the engagement. But he also suspected that he would have been envisioning the woman’s panties and bra—a demi thing, he decided—even if he was still getting married a week from Saturday.

“Anyway,” Spencer was saying, “that’s what my lawyer thinks will be the deal.”

“Sounds okay to me,” he murmured, as the elevator doors soundlessly slid shut. “And you feel good about that?”

“You didn’t hear a single word I said, did you?”