He goes outside to the loading area and takes a few deep breaths.
Anyway, this probably isn’t a situation Mike would be all that well equipped to deal with-disaffected staff member getting confrontational, using abusive language. He might be trained for it, in theory, but given his age it’s unlikely he’s had any direct or relevant experience. With jobs so hard to come by these days, people tend to be more careful in their behavior.
Frank stares out over the vast, largely empty parking lot to the rear of the mall.
So… what was he thinking? What was on his mind?
With jobs so hard to come by and all.
He doesn’t know. Could this be a turning point, though? A tipping point?
Maybe.
But to what?
In the absence of a cigarette to smoke, or a soda to drink, he takes out his cell phone and scrolls down through his list of contacts.
He stops at Lizzie’s number.
He didn’t want to call her yesterday, because that would have been too soon after their conversation of the night before. No doubt today is still too soon.
But he’s worried about her.
He makes the call. No answer.
Leave a message.
He doesn’t.
What would it be? I’m worried about you? I love you? It makes my heart ache just to say your name?
With his stomach jumping, he puts his phone away, turns around and goes back inside.
On his way up in the elevator, Craig Howley straightens his tie. He’d have liked a little time to freshen up before coming here, but it was a busy day. Hectic actually. The worst part was the two hours he spent on a conference call with three executives from a struggling Asian hotel chain, Best Pacific-a company whose senior and subordinated debt Oberon recently acquired, an act that then necessitated Oberon’s shedding the chain’s pension fund along with seventeen hundred of its employees.
Tough, yes, certainly, but what planet were these people living on? Barking at him over the phone wasn’t going to change the basic facts of the situation.
Vaughan’s absence didn’t help much either, it has to be said.
The elevator door slides open.
At which point Howley remembers just where he is, and what he’s in for here. The foyer to James Vaughan’s Park Avenue apartment is a palace of onyx and alabaster, a trompe l’oeil cathedral. Howley has lived on Park himself-though a good bit farther up, and it was at least fifteen years ago, different job, different marriage, different life. He currently lives in a handsome townhouse on Sixty-eighth, but this place is simply of a different order.
“Meredith!”
And there she is-sculpted purple sheath dress, crimson lips, coruscating eyes, raven black hair. Gatekeeper, keeper of the flame. Howley more or less hates this woman, but he has to admit that he has a weird, tingly kind of crush on her at the same time. He couldn’t imagine having sex with her, wouldn’t want to in a million years, nor could he imagine even having a meaningful conversation with her, but there’s something there, something that renders-not her, actually, but him incomprehensible.
“Craig, how are you?”
And the pussycat voice. Over the phone, it’s like a joke. In person, it’s more like an intimidating sex toy, black, solid, shiny.
Unknowable, but in your face.
A lot of people, Howley included, have expended a good deal of time and energy speculating about the nature of Vaughan’s relationship with this woman. Of course, the knowledge that five fairly formidable wives preceded her only complicates matters. Howley himself knew Ruth, who stretched back into the early nineties, and who at the time seemed like a perfect lady, smart as a whip and rake thin-a victim of cancer, sadly, but also, in many people’s eyes, the calculating bitch who took over from Megan, his eighties wife. To those in the know, however, Vaughan’s real wife-the way people have a real president, the one they grew up with, and that in a strange way defines them (LBJ in Howley’s case)-was Kitty. She stretched from the early eighties right back to the mid-fifties. She was the sweetheart, the mother of his children, the woman behind the man. The first two wives, the early ones, Howley knows nothing of. He assumes they were probably a bit like this one, sexy, distracting, ill-advised.
“I’m good,” he says, mwah-mwahing her. “Kept on my toes, you know, with the boss out sick and all.”
“The boss,” she says, mock dismissively, and leads him along the main hallway. To Howley’s surprise, they head for the kitchen. He’s been to the apartment many times before and is usually led into the library or straight into the dining room. This is his first visit to the kitchen, which is huge, brightly lit, and fitted out with cabinets and surfaces of brushed steel, black chrome, and polished marble.
Vaughan is seated on a high stool at a long counter. He looks small and frail. There’s a bowl of something in front of him. He glances up.
“Craig.”
Howley approaches and nods at the bowl, which contains some kind of soup or chowder. “Getting a head start there, Jimmy, are you?”
Vaughan shrugs. He’s wearing a bathrobe and hasn’t shaved. Howley has never seen him like this before, never seen him out of a suit before.
“Yeah,” he says. “What are you gonna do? Sue me? Mrs. R there will fix you something if you’re hungry.”
Howley looks at him. If he’s hungry? Of course he’s fucking hungry. He’s been working all day and was expecting dinner. He glances to his left. Mrs. Richardson, Vaughan’s longtime cook, is busy over at the sink scrubbing something, a baking tray or a pot. Howley looks back, hesitates, and then says, “You know what, I’m good, thanks. I’ll eat later.”
“Suit yourself.” Vaughan indicates a stool on the other side of the counter. “But sit with me, will you?”
Howley pulls out the nearest stool and sits down. A little farther along the counter, an open copy of the New York Post is lying next to a can of Dr. Thurston’s Diet Cherry Cola. Meredith slides onto the stool in front of the paper, hunches forward, and starts reading.
“So, Jimmy, how are you feeling?”
Vaughan makes a face. “Lousy. I’ve got ten different things wrong with me.” He takes a slurp from the bowl, then looks up at Howley. “Believe me, you don’t want to know.”
And he’s right. Howley doesn’t.
But at the same time it’d be useful to know what they’re dealing with here. Vaughan looks pretty awful, it has to be said-pathetic, really… stooped, unshaven, pale, dribbling chowder. It’s hard to imagine a route back from this, and to something like a vigorous investment committee meeting or a tricky client lunch at the Four Seasons. It’s shocking how rapid the deterioration has been. The old man seemed fine on Friday.
“Are we going to be seeing you back at the office anytime soon?”
The moment Howley says this, he regrets it.
“Jesus, Craig.”
Because it’s not as if Vaughan has been out sick for weeks. He’s missed a single day. It just felt like a very long day.
“No, I meant…”
“Ha,” Vaughan says, his spoon suspended over the bowl, “either you can’t handle the pressure or you’re itching to rearrange the furniture in my office. Which is it?”
Howley tenses. He isn’t comfortable having a conversation like this in the kitchen, with Meredith there, and the cook listening in. “Jimmy-”
“Just tell me, should I be worried?”
“Look, I, er-”