“Why not just write a check?”
“Trick I learned from my dad. These receptions make great press, and it’s always easier to explain a donation to the IRS when you can point to an exact time and date. I just let the museum keep the prize to reauction. Spin classes and baseball tickets? No thanks.” He made a sour face. “Wanna play?”
Ruben turned in surprise. “Me?” Was he serious?
“Why not? It’s all charity. Many hands make light work. Plus we can escape faster.” Andy winked. “You take that wall and I’ll take this. Try to blow twenty-five grand, and I’ll do the same.” Without waiting for an answer, he waved at a painfully skinny brunette wearing some kind of shredded dinner napkin and hared off.
And so Ruben spent the next half hour buying twenty-five thousand dollars of crap no one needed: a football signed by the Giants, a spa weekend in Kentucky, a snowboard airbrushed in colors so ugly that no one would stand next to it. A few people made eye contact and so he smiled back, but he kept quiet.
The disguise Andy had given him sat a little too comfortably on his shoulders. He ignored the champagne circling on trays.
Instead, he took a break to grab another club soda and scanned the sea of white faces, looking for Andy. A couple Asians scattered in, but these folks were adamantly young, Anglo upper crusties. Without question, he was the darkest person in the room, even counting cater-waiters. Didn’t look any different to Ruben. Bunch of middle-aged people standing around a museum talking. The men looked bored, the women looked anxious. The only person having any kind of good time was an old guy with a horseshoe of silver hair who kept stopping in the knots of guests to chatter excitedly and point at the air.
Finally he spotted Andy laughing with a polished group about twenty yards away. Their eyes met for a split second and held till Ruben looked away from Andy’s satisfied grin. Man knew how to work a room.
He’s your boss, not your friend. He’s the principal.
Later, shrill shouting made him turn. A whip-thin socialite in vintage Balenciaga flailed and wailed at Andy, purple faced. A short, chubby man tugged one of her elbows forcibly, but she wouldn’t budge.
The hell?
Andy seemed amused.
Frowning, Ruben started to walk toward the fracas. He couldn’t make sense of her ranting. Thick veins were standing out in the angry woman’s throat.
A mistress? A rival? A lawyer?
He began pushing through people faster, until Andy caught his eye.
Headshake at Ruben: stay put. Whatever was happening he didn’t want his bodyguard in the middle of it. He wanted Ruben undercover.
Ruben froze, watching the Balenciaga hysterics with the boozy crowd. Protective rage rose in him, but he needed to stay put.
Suddenly she swung her hand and slashed Andy with champagne across his face and chest. People yelped and jumped back. More shrillness from her. Splintered crash of the flute breaking, but between the bodies Ruben couldn’t see where and he wasn’t supposed to move closer.
Stupid.
Andy grinned big and made a show of scraping the wet off his goofy face. He shook his hands, scattering drops. Big joke. The room laughing with him.
She clawed at her own throat, grabbed the neckline of her dress and ripped it, exposing one high breast. Her chubby date tried to cover it. Scandalized gasps. The crowd edged away and gabbled excitedly.
The hell?
Over the fascinated partygoers and echoing space, Ruben couldn’t really hear her. Two words only crossed the room and only because she kept shrieking them: “Trust” and “Apex.” The whites of her eyes blazed. Again he looked to Andy, but all he got was a headshake that held him in place across the room.
Security guards joined the socialite tug of war now and herded the angry couple out the side door. The Balenciaga woman cursed Andy over her shoulder all the way out, not bothering to cooperate or cover herself.
What did I just see?
He couldn’t ask.
Instead of joining his slicko boss, Ruben stood to one side, watching the meandering guests with the dead-eyed concentration of a snake. He put crazy bids on a few more crappy prizes that guests had wisely avoided. He kinda loved the idea of getting Andy stuck with that fuck-ugly snowboard or a romantic safari to a miniature emu ranch.
Ha-ha, twenty five grand.
Eventually Andy spotted him and drifted over, joining him under a sign for the “African Mammals Room.” Some kind of temporary disco throbbed inside.
Ruben peered through the arch and started to investigate, but stopped when he saw Andy’s grimace.
“White prep schoolers dancing. Abort, abort.” He shook his head and took Ruben’s bicep. His warm breath smelled like whiskey. His fingers didn’t let go of Ruben’s arm.
“Yes, sir.” Ruben chuckled. “You done all your hustling?”
And who in hell was that dame?
Ruben was dying for some kind of explanation, but obviously they were going to ignore the Balenciaga chick and her champagne freak-out.
“Mostly. I pledged a sum of money to them, but Stanley insists that donors come to these receptions. Publicity and all. Those balls aren’t gonna lick themselves.”
Ruben nodded. “Most these people look like they’d pay money to not come.”
“Yes and no.” Andy stepped closer to whisper, his chest brushing Ruben’s shoulder blade through the jackets. “Donors show up looking for other things: favors, husbands, dodgy attorneys. All the crap that requires face-to-face.”
“People.” Ruben smiled. Somehow he’d expected the upper crusties to live on a rarefied plane. Noble and strong. Cheaper clothes and sketchier locale and this could have been a tailgate party. “Everything’s the same all over. Everybody wants shit that isn’t theirs.”
Andy grunted and didn’t move back. His torso felt warm against Ruben’s back. “Monkeys with manners.”
“Bauer—” Ruben opened his mouth to say,
You took the words—
and stopped himself. The tickle of air at his ear made the hairs on his neck stand on end. Without thinking he asked his real question. “—you ever had a job-job? Like, working for someone else who’s not related.”
Andy looked startled and pleased. “My stepfather made me get a summer job after sophomore year in college. To keep me away from the house.” He peered up at his own eyebrows. “Mmmm. I worked in a bank for two months. Ugh.”
“Poor kid.”
“Yeah I know. But hey, I escaped the stepfucker. Short days and all the free pens I wanted.”
Ruben laughed, although it didn’t seem really funny. He knew Andy was joking for his benefit.
“Having serious money made everything tricky. You can’t talk to people. Everyone wants stuff.” Andy leaned even closer, his mouth an inch or two from Ruben’s ear. “Wealthy people think of themselves as a different species, though a lot have forgotten they do it.”
Ruben tried not to feel insulted. “And poor people are chimps.”
Andy frowned. “Other way round.”
“Howzat?”
“The rich are the damn monkeys. Only, we burned the jungle down, so we live in a glass box so
homo sapiens
can watch us dying out. We’re so slow and inbred, we’re practically extinct.” Andy scratched his scalp hard, setting his cowlick free.
Ruben refused to smooth it. He thrust his hands in his pockets. “You’re a nut.”
“Helped me survive fourteen years of prep school. And Columbia.” He didn’t sound happy about it.
“Everyone’s got their own shit sandwich to eat.” Ruben’s schooling had been public and sloppy. He’d scraped by with a C average, coasting on athletic ability and the piss-poor Florida standards. When he was growing up, the superintendents got indicted and replaced almost annually due to corruption. Education was something they’d survived.
“That’s the key thing.” Andy swung his arm toward the main doors and the street beyond. “The sweaty masses are way more clever and evolved. Opposable thumbs and hyoid bones. They adapt. They aren’t as inbred and stubborn. Like
Clan of the Cave Bear
. The Neanderthals all know they’re on the verge of extinction. So they set up these little enclaves and lure Daryl Hannah inside to nanny the brats and fix the air conditioning.”
“Bauer, just for the record: you’re one of them.” The shrieking champagne woman flashed before his eyes, bare breast and Balenciaga.
Andy blinked his big felt eyes. “You only assume that ’cause of my camouflage.”
“Okay. Yeah.” Ruben’s brow felt stern but he nodded. “A tribe. I get it.”
“That’s dying out. With all these rules. A hundred bucks says the lunatics harassing and attacking me were classmates, because they know the system from the inside. There’s nothing random here. They could be in this room.”
That seemed like a leap, but Ruben could see the logic. He eyed a pair of blonde debutantes drifting by with several thousand dollars’ worth of hand-tailored silk draped over bony magazine bodies.
“Which is why I wanted you here. Well, partly.” Andy shook his head firmly. “All I’m saying is, the Upper East Died thinks of the rest of the world as outsiders and tradition is everything. S’why they form clubs and committees and co-op boards. S’why they marry each other and buy the government. They huddle together and communicate in grunts and clicks while the Ice Age settles in around them and Daryl Hannah dates John-John then puts on her eyepatch to go
Kill Bill
.”
Ruben chuckled. “You’re such a fucking hypocrite.”
“Why? I didn’t say that I’m one of them; you did.” Andy’s blush caused two high, hard points of pink on his cheeks, like rouge spots on a marionette. “My father is sterile.”
That stopped Ruben cold.
“Radiation in college for testicular cancer. I found out by accident. I didn’t look anything like him anyways, so it wasn’t a complete shocker. He’s French and German, pretty dark.” He looked at Ruben’s skin, hair, eyes, but didn’t elaborate.
Noted.
“Then who was your real dad?”
“One of his partners? Chauffeur? Bodyguard? Who knows? Turns out Mom was a bit of a swinger back in the day. Coulda been the plumber. Or her plastic surgeon.”
“She told you this?”
“Not like… no. One of her nasty ‘friends’ said something to me in high school because I was dating her daughter at Exeter. Turned out everyone in Scarsdale knew I was the cuckoo’s egg. Worse, my stepfucker sold insurance. Kids acted like I was a convict.”
Ruben frowned. “Sucks.”
“Hardly! I’m grateful. All those inbred dickheads. I have a real chin, thick dick, and both my nuts still. I’m way smarter than Dad is. Besides, his name was on the certificate and all the checks, so… I got all kinds of shortcuts.”
“Lucky you.”
“I watched these inbred idiots my whole life. The guys squat in dark rooms looking for a tribe who speaks the same language. The wives barter for status, venture out to hunt, and gather shiny shit. But when they get robbed or conned, it’s terrifying to them because the earth isn’t flat and the sun doesn’t live in a cave.” Andy snorted. “Hell, that’s how Bernie Madoff happened.”
“Well, some of them think you’re one of them.”
“A few. I learned how to blend in. My parents taught me. Dorky cuckoo grows up to be an apex predator.”
Hence the company name.
Ruben nodded. “Did you ever ask your mom?”
“Cilla?” Andy gave him a funny look and then busted out laughing. “Oh man. Oh Rube.” He snickered loudly. “You’re awesome. I love that.”
Other partygoers turned to look at them with gormless expressions. Ruben smiled uncomfortably, waiting for Andy to straighten up and pipe down.
Andy calmed down mostly, though a few stifled snorts slipped out. “My mother doesn’t like to refer to my birth in any way if she can help it. Cilla’s never put her hands in cold water. She hired caterers for dinner parties so the cook could go home.”
Ruben left for another soda water and pointedly did not refill Andy’s glass.
Gradually Andy grew more incautious. The drunker he got, the warmer and more expansive he became: loosening his tie, laughing too loud, and greeting the other party guests with a hug instead of shaking hands. He kept an arm draped over Ruben’s shoulder like they were brothers.
Ruben couldn’t tell what Andy was thinking, but caught himself staring at the handsome face as if it was a code that could be cracked.
“We should make an appearance at dinner.” Then Andy caught sight of a pretty, animated redhead wearing a dress with so many patterns she seemed to be drifting toward them. “Other way.”
Maybe another champagne assassin. “Ex-girlfriend?”
Andy grimaced. “Eesh. No. Her husband is on the board of Princeton. They want me to endow a chair.”
Ruben shrugged.
“Math Department, except Princeton and Columbia are rivals so fuck ’em.” Andy made his embarrassed face. “Colleges, not countries.”
Ruben said, “Yeah. Thanks.” Andy didn’t know he was being condescending, so taking offense seemed pointless.
The dinner was a sit-down snore under a life-size blue whale suspended from the ceiling.
Taxidermy?
No one looked up at the gigantic model but him.
Each table had place cards, but Ruben ignored that and took the seat against the wall. Dinner looked to be some type of creamy chicken with about three green beans angled across it. It looked fancy. It tasted like socks.
“I shoulda warned you. The food is usually Natural History too.” Andy considered his own plate of artful glop skeptically. “We’ll eat properly once we leave. Sushi. Steak. Tapas. Whatever you want.”
The other diners ate like it was delicious, chatting and clinking in the echoing hall. In a nearby wing, nineties dance music pumped dully.
Ruben caught a couple young bucks eying Andy like poison, but maybe that was payback for the shrieking champagne woman or even snobbery about his parentage. Everyone knew everyone in this room.
A murmur in his ear and the scent of fresh bread. “You spend your twenty-five?” Andy smelled better than the food.
He stiffened. “You mean your twenty-five. Yeah. I think so. Near enough.”
“Good man.” Andy patted his back then rubbed it in slow circles through the jacket.
Petting me again.
To make space, Ruben stood and dropped his napkin, scanning the crowd. “I think maybe we ought to make an exit.”