Tom Hyman (5 page)

Anne shook her head. “He won’t talk about it. Mrs. Corley’s supposed to be showing me the ropes.”

“Well, all she’s doing is contriving ways to make you look stupid.”

“She’s very good at that.”

“Boy, you really are in a down mood. You need some wine, quick.” Lexy pulled a bottle from the ice chest and fished around inside the picnic basket for a corkscrew. “You can’t let a few problems in the ranks spoil your day.”

Anne took out silverware, plates, glasses, and linen napkins from the basket and arranged two place settings on the table. “It’s not just about the staff. It’s everything. I’m depressed all the time lately.

And I’m not the kind of person who gets depressed. At least I didn’t used to be.” She pulled a plate of sandwiches out of the basket, removed the transparent wrap covering them, and then slammed the basket lid closed. “I’m just not cut out for this life, Lexy.”

Alexandra popped the cork on the wine bottle with an energetic tug and filled the glasses to the brim. “Don’t be a defeatist. Once you get used to it, you’ll love it. I promise. You’ll get on top of things eventually.”

“I don’t think I can stand another week. Who lives like this anymore?

In a forty-eight-room house bulging with servants? Nobody, except heads of state—and maybe a few dotty old society matrons.”

“Dalton likes to impress people,” Lexy replied.

“You don’t think much of him, do you?”

Lexy changed the subject. She picked up a sandwich and eyed it critically. “Did you make this yourself?”

Anne looked puzzled. “Of course.”

“I could tell.” Lexy fingered the sandwich as if it were a small animal that might bite her. “The bread still has the crust on it.”

“You don’t like crust?”

“I love crust—on pizza and apple pie. You should’ve let Amelia prepare the lunch. She’s the cook. You may think that you’re being Little Miss Helpful by barging into the kitchen and making these all by yourself, but what you’re really doing is invading her territory.

Humiliating her. You’re telling her that you can do a better job than she can, even at something as dumb as making sandwiches.”

“Amelia’s a terrific cook,” Anne protested. “And she knows it.

I didn’t want her to have to fuss with our little lunch…. Now you’re making me feel really terrible.”

Lexy took a bite of the sandwich, then hoisted her glass. “Let’s get drunk.”

Anne shook her head. “I’ve got a committee meeting this afternoon.

We’re organizing a charity fund-raiser for some innercity children….”

“Fuck the fund-raiser. The committee ought to mind its own business, anyway. Enjoy life. Drink your wine.”

Anne took a sip and made a face.

“What’s the matter?”

“It tastes bitter. What is it?”

Lexy laughed. “It’s a forty-five-dollar bottle of white Bordeaux.

And it doesn’t taste bitter. It tastes dry.”

“I’ll never get beyond beer and vodka tonics.”

“At least you didn’t say wine coolers.”

“Do you really love this life, Lexy? You put it down all the time.”

Alexandra Tate hunched her shoulders and turned her palms up in a comic exaggeration of a shrug. “I don’t know anything else. I was born rich. I make fun of it just to keep some perspective. A lot of it is stupid, pretentious, hypocritical, and boring.

But I like the privileges. I’m a spoiled brat at heart.”

“Well, I wish there were more spoiled brats around like you.

You’re the only friend I have these days.”

“Oh, come on, Annie. Stop feeling so sorry for yourself.”

“Everyone treats me like a leper. Haven’t you noticed? Dalton’s family and friends included. Especially Dalton’s mother. If it was possible to be snubbed to death, I’d have been done in months ago.”

“Give it some time. And don’t take it so seriously. And Dalton’s mother is the last person in the world who should snub you.

Before she married Dalton’s father, she worked in a massage parlor.

And she didn’t give massages.”

“That’s not true.”

“Yes, it is.”

“But why does everyone hate me so? It’s incredible. Do they really think I’m so inferior in breeding and background that they can’t even tolerate my presence?”

“It doesn’t have as much to do with social class as you think.”

“What does it have to do with? I’ve tried very hard to be nice to people. I really have.” Anne’s voice broke. She felt on the verge of tears.

“Annie. Listen. To the people around here you’re an outsider.

You grew up somewhere else—you went to different schools and different parties. You had different friends. These people all grew up together. They’ve all had the same experiences. They share the same values. Pretty boring, but that’s the way it is. It’s tribal.

Selfprotective. You’d get the same treatment if you moved into Little Italy, or a Jewish neighborhood in the Bronx, or a dinky little hamlet in New England. Close-knit people are intolerant and suspicious of outsiders.”

“It can’t be that simple.”

“You’re right. The Stewarts are still considered parvenus by the Old Guard, for one thing. And of course all the women are terrified of you.”

Anne gaped at her friend in genuine astonishment. “Terrified of me?”

“Sure. You’re too good-looking. They’re jealous. And they think you’re after their husbands.”

“That’s completely ridiculous!”

“I know, I know, but don’t play dumb. You’re a threat, whether you intend to be or not. Look at you—twenty-six years old, long strawberry-blond hair, peaches-and-cream complexion, soft sexy voice, big blue bedroom eyes, a gorgeous face with a cute dimpled chin, a smile that could melt the Antarctic ice pack, and a body that should be legally classified as a lethal weapon.”

Anne laughed.” ‘Bedroom eyes’?”

“You have star quality—that indefinable, mysterious whateverthe-hell-it-is that makes you irresistible to any man with even trace amounts of testosterone in his blood. Even Giorgio, my gay decorator friend, told me he’s in love with you. You’re a knockout.”

“Stop it, you’re embarrassing me. And you’re more interesting and sexier than I am, anyway.”

Lexy shook her head firmly. “No. I have fat ankles and no boobs. And I sweat easily. I have to be sexy and interesting as all hell just to stay in the chase. You’re in a different class altogether.

I’m jealous of you myself.”

“But the bottom line is I’ll never be accepted here.”

Lexy waved the idea away with a lazy flick of her wrist. “Don’t even think about it. Because you don’t need to be ‘accepted.” It doesn’t mean anything.”

“Dalton thinks it does.”

Lexy refilled their glasses. “Well, if it all gets too unbearable, you can always walk away from it.”

“How can I? Dalton expects me to live up to the role.”

“Do you love him?”

Anne thought about it for a moment, then sighed. “God, I don’t know anymore.”

“Well, Dalton just threw you into all this without any warning or any help. It’s going to take time. If you really don’t want to put in the time, you should just take your piece of the Stewart pie right now and split.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Divorce. And your share of the estate.”

“I signed a prenuptial agreement.”

“Yeah? What’s in it?”

Anne hesitated; she wasn’t sure it was a good idea to share the details, even with Lexy. “Basically it’s a million dollars . . . if there are no children….”

Lexy banged her wineglass down all over the glass surface. It hit with a sharp crack, spilling liquid all over the glass surface.

“A million dollars? That’s what you get? Are you joking?”

Anne felt a surge of guilt. “You think it’s too much?”

Lexy rolled her eyes, stuck out her tongue, and clutched her stomach.

She scraped her chair back across the terrace and pushed herself to her feet. She staggered around the terrace in an operatic exaggeration of someone taken violently ill, flinging her arms out and lurching drunkenly from side to side.

Anne laughed out loud. Lexy finished her performance by leaning over the edge of the terrace and pretending to throw up in the bushes. She returned to the table, wiped her mouth with her napkin and gulped down half a glass of wine. “Did you ask me if I thought it was too much?”

she said. “Is that what you asked me?”

“That’s what I asked you.”

“Well, Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, Anne—Dalton’s worth over a billion.

He’s one of the richest men in the country—in the world!

A million dollars is an absolute criminal outrage. It’s nothing for Dalton Stewart. Why did you ever agree to it?”

Anne flushed. “A million dollars is a fortune to me. And what right would I have to take Dalton’s wealth? It’s his. He earned it.

I didn’t.”

“He didn’t earn it, Pollyanna. Nobody ever earns a billion dollars.

That’s not humanly possible. He stole it. It’s called high finance.

Or investment banking. Or venture capitalism. But it’s actually more like grand theft. Normally it wouldn’t be legal, but at Dalton’s level normal doesn’t apply.”

“That’s very cynical.”

“Realistic. Money—if you have enough of it—turns the normal workings of society on its head. People get bought, seduced, intimidated, and crushed. And laws get ignored. Or they get rewritten.”

“You make business sound like organized crime.”

“Right. The only difference is the businessmen use lawyers and paper instead of hit men and bullets. Most of them, anyway.”

“That still doesn’t make it okay for me to take it from him.”

“Why not? Dalton Stewart took it from someone.”

Anne Stewart crossed her arms. “Let’s change the subject.”

“Listen to me,” Lexy continued. “If word ever gets out that Dalton got you to agree to a prenuptial with a pathetic milliondollar payoff, you’ll be able to hear people laughing as far away as New Zealand. You were suckered. If I were you, I’d get a lawyer to take a look at that agreement right now, and see if he can’t break it.”

“No, damn it. I stand by what I said. I don’t care where it came from, I don’t want to take Dalton’s money. I’d have a hard time accepting the million.”

“At least show the agreement to a good divorce attorney. I know just the guy. I dated him a few times—” “I’m not planning a divorce.”

“Okay, okay. I was just—” “Just shut up and pour me some more of that terrible-tasting wine I’m supposed to think is so great.”

Lexy topped off Anne’s glass.

“Why is everything always about money?”

“Nobody can think of anythir g more interesting.”

“I can.”

“What?”

Anne looked into her wineglass. “Kids. A happy family.”

“Kids? Is that what you want?”

“Don’t look so surprised. That’s why I got married.”

Lexy shrugged. “So have some. I think you’ve got space in the house for a nursery.”

“Don’t you want to have children someday?”

“No. I’m too selfish and spoiled. I like the fucking part okay, but it’s all downhill after that. Nine months of fatness, morning sickness, maternity clothes, and labor pains, and then you segue right into spitting up, messy diapers, food on the floor, and temper tantrums. It’s not an attractive scenario. I’m just not the mother type, I’m afraid. I’ve never met a three-year-old I genuinely liked….”

Anne wasn’t listening. She felt a sudden flood of anger. “I gave up a careen-or at least the promise of a careen-to marry Dalton and have children. But he lied to me. We can’t have any.”

“You never told me that.”

Anne sank back against the chair. The wine had loosened her inhibitions, and she had to share her misery with somebody. “And he won’t let me go back to work. He wants me to spend the rest of my life playing the piano and smiling and making small talk with his friends and business associates. I think he sees me as a business asset. Just another of his acquisitions. He needed something young and female and cute to run his household, carve out a prominent niche for him in society, and make his male friends jealous of him. Someone who’d stay home and not interfere too much in his life. That was supposed to be me. We really have nothing in common. Our lives barely even overlap anymore. He’s away six months of the year. And when he’s around, he pursues his own interests. He doesn’t like anything I like—music or science. Or literature or the theater or the opera. He claimed he did, but he doesn’t. He likes business. He sees it as a kind of modern version of the hunt. A blood sport. It occupies all his time.

It’s what gets him excited. The smell of money. He can never have enough. He lusts after it. You ought to hear him go on about it sometime. It’s quite amazing.”

Anne picked up the wineglass and stared into it. “He also likes other women. I’ve learned to ignore it. If I bring it up, he just denies it and says I’m too jealous and possessive. The affairs never seem to amount to much. It’s just constant screwing around. Picking up women in London or Paris or Rome or Berlin or Philadelphia or wherever his business takes him. Having a good time here, there, and everywhere—rewarding himself for all his hard work.”

“Christ, you never told me any of this.”

“It’s been building up.”

“You think he still loves you? At all?”

“I don’t know. He used to say he did. He doesn’t anymore.

And I don’t ask him. So I don’t really know what he feels anymore.

All I know is that we’ve become a big disappointment to each other.”

A prolonged silence greeted Goth’s announcement.

The doctor stuck out his chin defiantly. “You’re skeptical, of course,” he muttered. He folded his arms across his bony chest and leaned against the cluttered bookcase behind his desk. “You five, of all people, with your experience in the marketing of applied genetic engineering, shouldn’t be so incredulous. You all know that altering human genes has become a routine procedure, carried out every day in hospitals and clinics all over the world.