With Friends Like These: A Novel (42 page)

I lingered for a minute, maybe two. “You okay up there?” I heard Peter Miller call.

“On my way down,” I shouted, though I wanted to stay rooted within the golden halo of what I was sure was an angel, not that I would mention her to Jake. I walked downstairs.

“Got a moment for a refill?” my tenant asked. “I’m hoping you might give me a chance to explain some things.”

Ah, he knew about the parties. “Only a few minutes,” I said, checking the grandfather clock. We sat again at the table.

“I want to apologize for those reams of hostile letters my wife kept sending your way,” Dr. Miller began as he refilled my mug. “I suspect you’re here partly to see if I’m as unhinged as they suggest, and I can’t say I blame you.”

“Oh, no,” I said. “Not at all.”

“You’d have every right to think my wife and I were a bit off. The truth is, she—my ex—was—is—unwell—manic-depressive—and when she’s in her frantic phase, there’s no stopping her. And, you see, she’s an attorney. Was an attorney.”

“I never took those letters seriously.” I hoped he wouldn’t notice that I squirmed.

“That’s a relief. Thank you. In any event, I’m glad you’re here, because with my change in circumstances …” Now it was he who was stumbling. “I have the opportunity to return to the canal in a month’s time, and the truth is, this house is far too big for me now that I’m alone, with my wife gone and my kids away at school. I’m lost in this much space. I know I have one more year on our lease, and I certainly will honor my obligation, but Mrs. Blue”—here he looked truly forlorn—“should you want to break the contract and seek another renter, the truth is, you could command a far higher rent. With Lake Harriet only blocks away and all the running and biking paths in the park … did you know that you can run for miles, all the way to the river?”

“Excuse me,” I said, and walked to the living room to look out front. My taxi waited. “I hate to be rude, but I really do need to go. I’m sorry for being abrupt, and I want to thank you for this chance to stop by. I’ll definitely think about what you said, Dr. Miller—or is it Professor?”

“It’s Pete.”

“Pete. I’ll talk it over with my husband, and we’ll see what we can do.” I couldn’t resist a smile, and not just because my guppy was doing another flip turn. “I promise.”

He helped me on with my coat, and we shook hands. I stepped quickly
down the walkway to the curb, hoping Sylvia Swenson hadn’t spotted me, and had the driver take me to my hotel. I’d planned to spend the late morning and early afternoon at the Walker, visiting with sculptures I thought of as old friends, but instead I collected the small bag I’d stored at the hotel and went straight to the airport.

“I got a seat on an earlier flight,” I reported to Jake before I boarded.

“Great,” he said. “Did you give that bastard what for?”

“Not exactly,” I confessed. “There was a misunderstanding.”

“That’s a relief. Hope the trip wasn’t a waste of time. Did you at least stroll down memory lane?”

Over a loudspeaker, my flight was called. I’d thought about waiting to ask until I arrived in New York, but I’d lost my impulse control, along with, suddenly, any desire to raise my child in an apartment house, where—no matter how fancy—the downstairs neighbors would complain about small feet running on a floor or little fingers pressing all twenty elevator buttons.

I felt my face break into a smile, like ice splitting on a lake. “Jake,” I blurted out, “how do you feel about moving to Minneapolis? I know just the house.”

The decision felt less like escape than a sweet return. If I didn’t need to board my plane, I even might have called my friends. Including Jules.

  
Chloe

I’ve always felt that Fifth Avenue, come late November, is one long, irresistible
bûche de Noël
. Wearing my cheeriest coat, my ritual is to start at Rockefeller Center for the lighting of the tree. I stake a claim near the ice skating rink and wait for hours, letting myself melt into the city’s most polite crowd. Once the switch is flicked, I drift north toward Central Park with the happy herd of parents and children—feeling nine years old myself—to gawk at windows bedecked for the holidays.

It’s only when I pass Trump Tower that I avert my eyes, trying to ignore the shouting monument to glitz, to overkill, to everything charmless that this city can also be. The building spoils the avenue like a belch at a baby shower. Yet this was where Xander had asked to meet. I walked into a lobby so brassy it could be a set for a movie titled
1984: The Real Story
. If I blinked, I could imagine that the women I saw weighted with shopping bags and dogs the size of Cornish hens were wearing linebackers’ shoulder pads, reeking of Opium perfume.

Twenty feet from the entrance, I stopped. I wanted the man in pinstripes to be an impostor, the living proof that the last few hours had been
imagined. But there was Xander, his arms crossed in a stance both defiant and defensive. I found it hard to focus. The features in his face slid around like pieces in one of Dash’s puzzles; his skin looked pale as a French mime’s. When he came close to kiss me hello, I withdrew.

“Where are we going?” I shouted over the din of running water. A waterfall! In this humid atrium I wondered if a cockatoo might dart out of the shadows and peck at my head or if I’d be chased by an oversexed orangutan.

“Follow me,” Xander said, leading us up an escalator and into a Starbucks. As if it were a first date, he pulled out a chair for me at the largest table, where his laptop was opened next to a pile of papers. “Excuse me for a second,” he added. “I need to thank Sophie for keeping an eye on my stuff.”

I glanced in the direction of a brunette barista who gave me a wave. I had the feeling she knew exactly who I was. In a minute Xander returned with two coffees, as if it were nothing but normal to be meeting like girlfriends. He set down the cups and spread out packets of sugar. “French roast okay with you?” he asked.

“Xander!” I snapped. “I want answers, not caffeine.”

His voice was a whisper, higher than usual. “People are staring. Can you calm down, please?”

I looked around. Faces at other tables blurred as if they’d been painted by Matisse, a Matisse who liked mink, the occasional shearling, and overpriced denim. I searched for self-control and compassion, but could get reception on neither channel. I felt duped, humiliated, scared. It was a killer combo, and I fought every instinct to cry, trying to act as Jules would, perhaps not the Jules of today, but the real Jules.

“Xander,” I said, as evenly as I could, “please explain why you’re no longer at Denton. I showed up there and felt like a horse’s ass.” He winced. “The receptionist hadn’t even heard of you!” He looked in my direction, mute. “Did you suddenly get tired of hedge funds?” The pressure had to be daunting, though I always suspected that without it, my Master of the Universe wouldn’t have a pulse.

“I loved my work,” he said. “You know that.”

“Do you have something else lined up?” I took out the sheet of watermarked paper I’d found in the printer hours ago, when life as I knew it hadn’t yet imploded, and shoved the résumé in his face. “Why didn’t you discuss this?”

“Strictly speaking, I didn’t really do anything wrong.”

“
Wrong?
What are you talking about?” I felt a rising level of dread that was making me shiver as it turned my skin clammy. “I need answers!” My voice was raspy. “I deserve to know.”

“Can we take a walk?”

“Stop stalling! Tell me now. Here. Do you have any idea of how pissed I am?”
Pissed off enough to use that word
. “How worried? How mortified I felt at Denton?”

Xander loosened his tie, one I’d chosen for a Father’s Day gift. The pattern of tiny black triangles hopped in front of my eyes like fleas, and the tie had a spot, which in itself was disturbing. The Xander I thought I knew was meticulous.

“I was always one of the fund’s top five earners,” he began after a noisy sigh. “About four years ago a guy I trusted, a money manager type, offered to compensate me every time I’d steer customers his way.”

I noticed that the tail on Xander’s fine Egyptian cotton shirt had bunched at the waist.

“It was a slam dunk for my clients. His company was one of the first to go green—they made solar panels and that kind of stuff, for Christ’s sake. It was easy to get people to invest, made them feel like do-gooders while they racked up obscene profits.”

As I started to catch the general drift, I felt my stomach cramp.

“Believe me, no one complained when they saw their statements. My customers thought I was God.”

God was sweating and cracking his knuckles. Near his nose, he had a pimple.

“This went on without a hitch for a few years, with everyone all back-slappin’ happy, until an exposé appeared in the
Journal
. Internal problems
at this company, rumors of the CEO resigning, then a market correction. Not a major dip, but noticeable. Around this time, it got back to me that the … person … I’d been dealing with had started shooting off his mouth on the golf course, saying he had me on his payroll. That’s when Edgar heard.”

Xander rubbed his wrist. He wasn’t wearing a watch. Had the Patek Philippe, with its eighteen-karat white-gold case—which the average person, like me, might take for stainless steel—landed in a pawn shop?

“Actually, it was Charlene who heard.” He called Cha-Cha Denton a name I thought only other people’s husbands used. “Edgar took me to his club. He was smiling over our martinis—you know that pit bull look he gets?”

I was glad I didn’t.

“I was such a fool that day. I thought I was going to get promoted, at least see a bump in my bonus. I made a boatload of money for the firm,” he continued, as if he were talking only to himself. “My numbers were double digits. But Edgar knew the history of every client I’d talked into the deal, had each one detailed in a dossier with the letterhead of the law firm he keeps on retainer.”

As the magnitude of Xander’s wrongdoing unfolded, I wondered if he felt the way I did, wanting to be anywhere but here.

“I didn’t lie or deny.” His eyes darted around the room, never connecting with mine. “For Christ’s sake, I wasn’t the first or the only guy to do this! It’s an open secret that Edgar was a pretty smooth operator himself—that’s how he was able to start Denton. I was just the moron who got caught.”

Xander made a sound like a bitter gurgle. This alerted the rubber-neckers at the next table, who’d been drinking in our whole conversation along with their Tazo tea.

“Edgar pontificated about how he was disappointed, that I’d been like his son, the son who’d let the old man down. How I’d tarnish the firm if word got out, and he wasn’t going to let that happen.” My husband ridiculously gesticulated with air quotes and looked straight at me, talking
faster now. “I thought it was a warning, until he said I should let him know the day I’d be leaving. Offered me a settlement, all spelled out. Thought he was being generous. He gave me forty-eight hours to sign.” He mentioned the name of a Dartmouth friend, a criminal lawyer. “Sam said I didn’t really have a choice. I left Denton the next day.”

“When was this?” I croaked.

“Two months ago.”

“You never said a thing!” The buzz around us deadened. Though a good wife might have laid her hand on the arm of her unhinged husband, I realized my only consolation, small as it might be, was that I was enjoying Xander’s discomfort. “The thing I don’t understand is,
why
?” I said, quietly and with immense control. “Why did you do something you knew was unethical? Corrupt. Taking kickbacks?” I choked on the word.

“Gratuities. It’s common industry practice.”

“Common was the last thing I thought you were. You broke the law. How could you have been so stupid? You’ll probably wind up in jail. Did you go to Harvard Business School to make license plates?”

“Chloe, you’re getting hysterical. That’s not going to happen.”

“Maybe not. But at the very least I can’t imagine you’ll ever get another decent job again, at least not in finance. And you’ve done something horrible—to Dash, to me. You’ve ruined your own name.” I didn’t care that my voice was shriller with each accusation.