The Gods of Greenwich (21 page)

“Nice hands, Jimmy Cusack.”

“Greenwich is no country for old women,” observed the midthirtyish woman with power-bleached teeth.

“Did Cy ask you to wife-sit?” asked Bianca, smart and sassy with at least one drink under her belt. She smoothed her outfit and fussed her hair into place. Then she climbed onto the bar stool next to Cusack.

“He’s joining us at seven.” The corner of Jimmy’s mouth eased up from force of habit. He never addressed the dig about “wife-sitting.”

“No need to protect Cy,” Bianca chided, not in a caustic way but canny and perhaps even coquettish. “We go too far back.”

“May I get you a drink?” asked Cusack. It seemed the ambassadorial thing to do.

She reached over, squeezed Cusack’s cheek, and said, “You have great dimples.”

“Er, thanks.”

“Tom, do me a favor,” Bianca said to the bartender. “Bring us two vodka martinis, Grey Goose, plenty of lemon twists. Shake ’em hard.”

“Coming right up, Mrs. Leeser.” Tom, twenty-something with the boyish good looks of pool bait, winked at Bianca like an old friend.

“Nothing for me,” Jimmy said.

“What makes you think I ordered one for you?” Bianca asked, cocking her right eyebrow.

“On second thought,” Cusack replied, turning on the charm and pushing aside his cabernet, “I’m glad you did.”

“Thought you’d come around.” In that moment Bianca looked radiant: the twinkle in her eyes highlighted by the crow’s-feet Cusack found so alluring; the warmth of her sun-blanched, coffee-bean coloring; and the beacon blush from whatever she had been drinking that afternoon.

At 6:35
P.M.
Cusack willed himself to relax. The evening was back on schedule. Cy would arrive in less than thirty minutes, and Jimmy would be home before 8:30. “Guaranteed.”

Between sips, Bianca told Cusack her life story and proved to be an engaging conversationalist. Native of Brazil. Retired romance novelist, who put her career on hold to support Cy and take care of her girls. She had a “love-hate thing for Dorothy Parker,” and was getting her degree at NYU. Never explained why she didn’t finish college in the first place. She was a mother who missed her daughters. The twins were spending another week at camp in Maine.

Bianca played the society game for Cy. “I’m organizing his big night at MoMA next month.”

“Emi and I will be there.”

But she hated the glitz. “Survivor Greenwich is not my thing.”

Bianca wore no jewelry. When a human ad campaign for Pilates and Tory Burch walked by, the two-and-twenty crowd ogling every loose-limbed step, Bianca announced, “I may pack on twenty-five pounds just to piss off Cy and stir things up around here.”

She proved to be an engaging, inquisitive listener. “Your fifth anniversary! Why aren’t you home with Emi?”

“It’s a long story.”

And later she asked, “Is Yaz your first?”

Cusack appreciated Bianca’s husky voice. Her sultry tones could have been tobacco cured, though she never reached for cigarettes. Her voice could have been pickled, though she purred with sultry sweetness, none of the coarse croaks that sometimes riddle the larynxes of heavy drinkers.

At 6:50
P.M.
Bianca hijacked Cusack’s martini. He preferred not to drink and drive anyway. The evening was going fine. Or so he thought. By 7:10
P.M.
Cy still had not shown. Nor had he called.

Cusack decided to leave at 7:30
P.M.
, no matter what. He changed his mind around 7:15
P.M.
when a revelation from Bianca made him forget Emi and their fifth-anniversary date.

*   *   *

“You like working at LeeWell Capital?” Bianca was slurring more than purring. “Tom, bring me another martini, easy on the vermouth.”

It’s a monkey house.

“Cy’s a great mentor,” replied Cusack, ever the ambassador.

“My husband can be a bear. Not a market bear,” Bianca clarified, referring to investors who bet on falling stocks. “The kind that’s a pain in the ass.”

“You follow the markets?” Cusack refused to take the bait and dump on Leeser. Never a winning strategy with the boss’s wife, no matter how drunk or sober.

“I read everything.”

For a moment, Bianca’s tipsiness disappeared. Her eyes were clear, her gaze bristling with conviction. The strength of her declaration, “I read everything,” made Cusack wonder why the force.

“He’s got the Midas touch,” Cusack said, falling into work mode, employing practiced lines from the office.

“That’s a joke,” Bianca scoffed. “He’s got the coyote touch.”

“What do you mean?”

“Did you ever watch Roadrunner cartoons, Jimmy?”

“Of course.”

“Wile E. Coyote had better outcomes.”

“What’s that mean?” asked Cusack.

“Beep, beep,” Bianca snorted, impersonating the bird.

“Have you looked at Cy’s performance numbers?”

“Wile E. Coyote,” she tittered.

“Not funny.” Cusack felt the barometric drop of a hurricane on the horizon.

It was 7:15
P.M.

“Did Cy tell you about the time he bet against oil?” continued Bianca.

“No.”

“Lost his ass.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Did Cy tell you about
Night of the Living Dead Heads
?”

“Yeah, the movie was a windfall,” replied Cusack.

“Windfall,” she scoffed. “Those zombies bit him in the keester.”

“What are you saying?” Cusack made no effort to hide the edge to his voice. Leeser had reported the opposite, boasted how the movie’s cash flow solved LeeWell’s performance problems in 2003.

“Cy lost his ass,” Bianca said. “The crew’s still in court.”

Cusack had no idea what to think. These revelations were either the bitter meandering of a drunken spouse, or Cy had lied. One or the other. Jimmy grew angry. He grew confused. “Are you sure?”

“Twenty million down the sink,” Bianca confirmed with swizzle-stick tonsils. “My husband has one thing going for him. Luck. He’s really lucky.”

“What do you mean?”

“LeeWell Capital almost collapsed in 2002.”

“Don’t you mean 2000, the year Cy and his partner founded the business?”

“There was that, too,” Bianca slurred, not bothering to explain. “I don’t get how somebody can be so wrong, so often, and still make money. I’m not sure Cy can add.”

Cusack sickened. Bianca was losing the war to vodka and vermouth. But she just posed the smartest question he had heard in a long, long time. Leeser’s boasts now sounded hollow, one in particular:

“We don’t lose money at LeeWell Capital.”

*   *   *

It was 7:40
P.M.
No sign of Leeser. No phone call either. That was when Bianca quoted Dorothy Parker:

I like to have a martini,

Two at the very most.

After three I’m under the table,

After four I’m under my host.

“Guess what,” Bianca advised, “I’m on number four.”

Cusack’s cell phone rescued him. “Sorry, big guy,” Leeser apologized. “Tough meeting with one of our partners. Tougher than I anticipated.”

Why didn’t you include me?

“Can I help?” asked Cusack without thinking. “Maybe I should drive Bianca home.”

“How many martinis?”

“Four at L’Escale.” He whispered, “Not sure about the warm-ups.”

“Oh, shit. I’ll be there in five.” Dial tone.

Bianca knew it was Cy. And something made her crack. Maybe it was the four martinis. Or emotions finding daylight after sixteen years of marriage. Her self-restraint gave way to more information than Cusack ever expected to hear while wife-sitting.

“It’s not about me,” she started. “It’s the twins.”

“He adores them, Bianca. You should see the photo on his desk.”

“That photo is eight years old,” she argued. “He treats our twins like a to-do list.”

Cusack watched Bianca’s face cloud. Suddenly, without forethought, he felt a greater need to soothe her than to defend his boss. “You should know something.”

She tried to button her blouse without much success. “Yes?”

“There’s a meeting in Providence on August twenty-second. The week your family is on vacation. It may be the biggest opportunity we ever see as a company. And I need Cy to be there, really need him.”

Bianca picked up her martini from the bar, her eyes inviting Cusack to continue.

“He refused.” With a deft motion, smooth and deceptively quick, Cusack removed the glass from her hand and returned it to the counter. “Your twins are the reason. Nothing’s getting in the way of his father-daughter time, not even a guy with a billion in cash who can take our company to the next level.”

Bianca grabbed the martini glass back. She took a sip and replied, “I wrote ten novels, Jimmy. I know something about heroes. You think
you
came from nothing? You had a family,” she asserted. “They got behind you. Cy Leeser came from parents who beat him. From a dad who spent more time in jail than at home. From a mom who slept around to pay the rent. And now look where he is. If anyone wants to believe in Cy, it’s me.”

“I’m sorry,” was all Cusack could say.

“I envy you, Jimmy. You have a life. I remember what it was like.”

“I’m sorry,” Cusack repeated, shifting on his stool. He cursed himself for crossing the line.

“Look what happened to us. My only job now is to protect the twins from drowning in our sewer.” Bianca’s eyes dampened but she did not cry.

*   *   *

Leeser arrived at 8:05
P.M.
He wore faded black jeans and a sweaty NYU sweatshirt, with the sleeves cut off above the elbows. Pre-shower, not post. His hair was wet and slicked back, the style more boiler room than hedge fund magnate. He carried a navy blue polo shirt in his right hand and navigated the patio bar with purpose.

“Sorry, Jimmy,” he apologized.

“You’ve been through the wringer,” Cusack said.

So has your wife.

“You have no idea.” Leeser motioned the bartender to close out the bill. “This fucking partner insists on a three-mile run every time we meet.”

“Have I met him?” Jimmy asked.

“No. And tonight it was six miles, not three,” Leeser said, “of riding my ass.”

“Look at you,” Bianca snapped. “We can’t eat dinner with you looking like that.”

Leeser inspected his jersey with an expression that said, “Oh, right.” With that, Cy shocked everybody in the bar: Bianca, Cusack, Tom the bartender, and the crowd that had changed several times over since six
P.M.
He ripped off his sweatshirt, not in the tearing sense but really fast, and began pulling on the polo shirt.

Around the bar’s pentagon elbows, the power-bleached woman eyed Leeser’s flat stomach and started to clap. He kept things tight. A few of the gods laughed and clapped, too. The one with bulging, thyroid eyes hollered, “Hey, Leeser. It’s too late for the swimsuit edition.”

Not everyone in the bar found the quick change funny. Bianca growled, “What’s wrong with you, Cy?”

“I need to fly.” Cusack shook Cy’s hand and cheek-kissed Bianca goodbye.

It was 8:20 when Cusack jiggled the ignition of his car, always an “adventure in precision physics.” Once, twice, it took three times before Cusack found the right angle. The old clunker fired. Or rather it deigned to fire. The car performed like a teenager doing him a favor.

*   *   *

Cusack arrived home at 10:45
P.M.
The condo was dark. The lights in the kitchen were off. The house smelled flower fresh, a welcome respite. For the last two or so hours he had been listening to the blues. That was the good part.

He had also been sucking on exhaust fumes. That was the bad part. Ordinarily, the drive home took forty-five minutes. Cusack hit a major snarl, however, on the West Side Highway. It backed traffic all the way up the Henry Hudson.

When he called from the car, Emi said, “Just get home.”

He was finally standing in the dining room, surrounded by shadows and guilt from missing his date. He flipped on the light to find a plate waiting on the dining-room table. There were mashed potatoes, pounded veal and mushrooms, and almond green beans all covered in plastic wrap. Easy enough to nuke in the microwave. There was a glass of red wine, uncovered, breathing long and hard with enough kick to take out some nerves. And there was an envelope marked
James
across the front.

Cusack was not sure what to expect. Emi had listened to his breathless excuses earlier, the booze, the boss, the Beemer in traffic. He ripped open the envelope, a mix of curiosity and apprehension pasted across his face.

The note said,
James, I can’t wait up any longer. Xoxo, Emi.

The tone was flat. Cusack never understood the whole “xoxo” thing from women. And right now those mystifying
x
’s and
o
’s were the only hope he had not checked into Emi’s doghouse.

Cusack slumped down on a leather chair in front of the television. Alone. He drank the wine and ate his dinner. Alone. He never even bothered to microwave the plate, a lousy end to a lousy day where the Sturm und Drang of late-night news resembled an uptick.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

FRIDAY
,
AUGUST
22
BENTWING AT
$53.05

By late August, Victor’s financial strategy showed the promise of a poolside tray holding a pitcher of margaritas, a bottle of sun cream, and an empty bikini. As LeeWell bought more Bentwing, slathered it on, the portfolio recouped fifty million of its losses. Employees turned optimistic; everyone except for Cusack, who watched as promises drained his bank account.

Two days ago he had written an $8,990 check to cover tuition for Jude’s two kids. He paid another $12,330 for Jack’s three. As enlisted men, they could never afford private education for their kids. And Cusack’s mom would raise hell over public schools. She had always insisted on a Catholic education for her grandkids.

Though he stockpiled cash every paycheck, without a bonus Cusack could never make the $148,542 interest payment in February—ten months at 5.75 percent. It was like waiting for a guy wearing a black hood and holding a rope to hear the word “Pull.”