So, yeah. I’m doing better than yesterday. And let’s not forget that I also nailed a new job during that phone call to Jamie. I don’t know whether keep Parker Barnes from stealing the show and turning it to shit pays better than the marketing and copywriting work I was doing for the foundation before, but I do know that it only came up when I insisted that Jamie slot me into a place where I could actually further Anthony’s mission and make a difference.
And I really do want to do good in the world, like Anthony . I really do want to make a difference.
So it’s all great. It’s a good thing.
“Well, now,” says a deep voice. “Fancy meeting you here.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CAITLIN
AT FIRST I DON’T KNOW where the voice is coming from. It’s clearly Anthony’s, but because I’m alone, my head initially insists that someone is playing that voice from the loudspeakers. We’re here for an Anthony Ross event, why not play his programs over the PA?
But then I see him emerge from the shadows, almost as if he’s been out on a late-night walk. My eyes have yet to adjust from the bright lobby, so I can’t really see past the apron. Was he just standing there? What’s he been doing in the half-hour since we parted?
“Hey,” I say, surprised.
“Are you going out?” He looks me over, taking in my little black dress, heels, hair and makeup.
It’s probably just my imagination, but I swear he looks for longer than necessary. I can feel the cool air under my knee-length hem. The top feels a little too clingy, and I sort of wish I wore a bra because my nipples are back. I’m afraid to look down.
“No,” I say. “Not going anywhere.”
“You’re sure?”
How could I not be sure? He’s smiling at me — grinning as if I’ve said something hilarious.
“Yeah, I’m sure.”
His stare lingers, makes me uncomfortable. Never mind what I intended when I left my room. I was flush with orgasms then.
It’s one thing to dream and giggle, but another thing to get caught in my own silly fantasies.
“Why?” I ask, when he doesn’t stop staring.
“You just seem all dressed up.”
I look down. “Oh. Yeah. I’m just going up to my room.”
“So you’ve already gone out.”
“No.”
“In the half-hour since I last saw you.”
“No, I didn’t go out.”
“So this was a wardrobe change. Like a pop star at a concert. You swapped duds to come down to the bar for a drink.”
“A drink?”
“Isn’t that what you call that strange object in your hand?”
Oh, right. Dressed up for no reason and drinking alone. My self-esteem is getting beat to shit. “I just needed a drink. I mean wanted. I wanted a drink.”
“Makes sense.” He leans back against the same planter I’ve been leaning against throughout this ridiculous encounter. His hip is only a few inches from mine.
“Well, what about you?” I ask. “Just creeping around in the dark?”
“I was making a phone call.”
“In the dark?”
“It was a boring call. Normally I do it under a spotlight and throw confetti.”
I don’t know if this is a joke.
He puts his hands in his pockets as if he’s got nothing better in to do, and a moment later he comes out with a small green leaf in his hand. “Speaking of confetti,” he says, holding up the leaf.
“That’s a leaf,” I point out.
“I saw it over by the reflecting pool.” He gestures, and now I can see where he must have been for his call: a circular body of water surrounded by smooth stone benches. “It was just laying with a bunch of other leaves along the footpath. Just four or five others, lined up like soldiers. Like someone had arranged them that way. I know nobody did, though; it was just one of those coincidences. But I looked down at it after my call, as I was walking back here. I didn’t wonder why those few leaves had fallen off the tree, totally green. I didn’t ask what circumstance led to those leaves falling at my feet all in order, as if to point me over here toward where you were standing. I didn’t see coincidence.”
“What did you see, then?”
“Confetti.” There’s a beat of quiet, then he meets my eyes and says, “Caitlin, I’d like to ask you a question.”
I wonder if it’s about confetti. I don’t know where this is going. “Okay.”
“If you felt you could really make a change in the world — I mean really, honestly, for-real, no-bullshit make a change … would you do it?”
“What kind of change?”
“One you felt would improve things for everyone.”
“Sure. Why wouldn’t I make a change that I thought would make things better?” Isn’t that what I just asked Jamie to help me do?
“Don’t answer so quickly. Everyone draws that same conclusion and reasons it in exactly that way: If it’s good, then of course I’d do it. But if you stop being academic and pretend that you truly have that power, does the feeling change?”
It shouldn’t, but as I put my mind behind Anthony’s question, I notice that the feeling shifts. I’m not sure why, but I hesitate.
Anthony answers my unasked question. “I think it’s the sense of responsibility that makes the difference. Whether you do good or bad, power comes with responsibility. If you change things, everyone going forward will always look back to you as the person who caused it. And that opens up all sort of other questions, doesn’t it? Like: Is anything ever one hundred percent good? What if your great change improves things for 99 percent of people, but one percent just hates it? What then? Because you’re on the hook for that one percent’s complaints. What they hate — even if it’s a side-effect of your good works that caused it — it’s because of you.”
I find myself thinking back to my conversation with Jamie. This discussion feels heavy, like that one. “Why are you asking me about this?”
Anthony shrugs, then answers as if I hadn’t asked my question. “And if you think this issue is complicated now, try adding questions to it.”
“Like?”
“What if someone found the fountain of youth? What if instead of making your big change and living out a normal life, what if they could keep on living to see how your single act changed things over a hundred years — or two hundred? Hell, five hundred years. A thousand.”
I’m lost. He’s speaking like a philosopher, and philosophy was never my strong suit. “What’s this about, Anthony?”
He still doesn’t really answer. He’s barely talking to me; it’s more like he’s talking to nobody, and I just happen to be here to hear it. “I was walking past those leaves,” he says, again pointing toward the reflecting pool, “and I noticed how pretty they were, the way they’d fallen for no reason and then lined up as if they’d done it just for me. I got to wondering why it had happened, and what string of circumstances led to those leaves falling, when they were clearly too green to fall on their own. Maybe some kid threw a Frisbee and knocked them down. If he did, what led the kid to be here? Was he on a family trip? Maybe the family was all here because they were visiting family and the timing was right. But what caused that family’s availability? And what caused that? Cause and effect is a chain. It goes backward into infinity. It’s the whole butterfly effect. Maybe if a dinosaur had stepped six inches to the left a hundred million years ago, everything would be different today.”
Anthony holds up the leaf. It’s bright green and waxy, about the size of a half-dollar. The kind of leaf that falls off a bush, not a tree.
“All those thoughts occurred to me,” he says, speaking more to the leaf than me, “but I didn’t really focus on any of them. Instead I saw the leaf and I didn’t think cause and effect or kid with Frisbee or even leaf. I thought: confetti. Because no matter what big decisions might be in the air, it all comes back to my most immediate purpose — to what I can affect here and now, n
ot in a thousand years. And right now, my mind said, ‘Instead of dropping scraps of colored paper from the rafters at the end of each day of Fate In Your Palm, what if I dropped leaves instead? It might be pretty. It might convey a sense of rebirth better than paper scraps, for all the people below who’ve just had their own rebirths.”
He hands me the leaf. I don’t know what to do with it.
“All this from a few leaves you saw on the ground?”
“You got me thinking today,” Anthony says.
“Me?”
“Yes. Because I’ve known you for a long time, and I don’t normally work so closely, emotionally speaking, with people I know in my personal life. I’ve always had my lines that I try not to cross. This is one of them. I wanted to help you; of course I did. But I wasn’t really ready for it. I didn’t know you’d be so affected. I didn’t know my work would align so closely with what you had going on. And so I’ve had to try and process … not just what you felt today when you had your realization and called your dad, but what I felt observing it. Causing it.”
“Do you … what, do you somehow feel bad for pushing me to do that? Because if you do—”
“It’s not that,” Anthony says.
I look over. He’s so quiet. Nobody ever really sees him this way, I guess.
“But it’s something,” I say.
There’s a beat of silence, then: “You know I believe in honesty. Even when it’s uncomfortable.”
“Sure.”
“You got me questioning things today. I saw this leaf, and instead of thinking about its natural beauty, I put it in my pocket because it gave me an idea about my work. I immediately looked past what most people would see and instead saw a way to improve Fate In Your Palm. That’s what I do: I find ways to make things better. A lot of people wouldn’t understand that, but it’s a choice. It’s what I need to do in order to accomplish what must be done. I can’t work with less than total effort. If I’m going to play this game, it needs to be full-out, with every ounce of my body and soul. Second-guessing myself will slow everything down. It’ll ruin what needs doing before it can be done.” He nods at his leaf. “It’s one thing when I second-guess a chance to change the form of my confetti.”
Anthony reaches for my hand. His hand is huge, and when he puts his palm under mine to fold my hand around the leaf, it dwarfs mine.
“But when I second-guess bigger changes that will affect things for centuries or millennia,” he says, “that’s a bigger problem.”
“Anthony …”
“I think I know why you really came down here,” he says, quietly — the opposite of his enormous stage voice. “And I think it’s not really much of an accident that we ran into each other. Am I right?”
I shake my head. I suddenly feel naked, and this time it’s not good. I thought the bartender knew what I was doing? It’s nothing compared to what Anthony seems to know, looking at me in my little black dress with my makeup refreshed, down-to-fuck with no strings attached if anyone ever was.
“You matter a lot to me,” Anthony says. “You’re Jamie’s friend, and Jamie is my world. Her friends are my friends. If there’s a problem here, it’s that I know you too well. And maybe I know myself a little too well, too.”
Is he really saying what I think he’s saying? I’ve barely opened my mouth, and yet he’s talking to me as if I walked up to him stark naked, ringing a dinner bell. I don’t know whether to be embarrassed, angry, sad, rejected — or something else entirely.
It’s not fair that he’s so able to read me, like he has a key to my mind. It’s an unfair advantage. I didn’t offer myself to him, so why do I have to suffer rejection? I was mature enough to abort this before it happened. I came to my senses. I rose above my emotions and my hormones and got my head on straight. It’s flat-out bullshit that I have to sit here and listen to Anthony deny me after I made the right choice. He can’t just presume I was going to proposition him. I wasn’t — not after I thought about it a little.
“You’ve got me all wrong,” I say, trying to smile.
He smiles a little wider and shakes his head. It’s a sad, almost pitying expression. It’s the way he looks at his audience members when they raise their issues, when they cry so his wisdom can save them.
Fuck. That.
I’m not one of his disciples.
I don’t want Anthony’s compassion right now. I don’t want or need his pity.
“I think the problem is that, because I broke one of my rules and pushed too far with someone I know and love already as a friend,” he says, “I’ve gotten myself all wrong.”
“I didn’t ask for your help.”
“I wanted to give it. But here? Now?” He looks as at me, and I swear his whole body finishes the thought: I can’t pity-fuck you, Caitlin. I want you as much as your sorry ass wants me, but my cock has to be saved for bigger and better things.
“I just came down here to get a drink,” I say. “That’s all.”
“I know.”
“I’m serious.”
“I know you are.”
Goddamn his knowing. Goddamn his sympathy and his understanding. I barely understand why I’m getting so pissed, seeing as it’s entirely possible I’m reading things into this that aren’t actually there. It’s so possible, in fact, that I’m beginning to feel that it’s outright likely. Because what has Anthony actually said to me? We’ve made no mention of sex, no mention of desire, no mention of anyone’s inappropriate longings — mine or his. So doesn’t it seem likely that I’m the crazy one?
Still, I can’t shake a very real, very intense, very raw feeling of rejection. It’s a bones-deep thing. It feels like he’s walked past me and rejected me wholesale, in advance. And the self-pitying way he’s doing it, as if he’s a martyr for passing me by?
FUCK.
HIM.
I wrench myself away, then plant a palm flat against his broad chest. The small green leaf — and all the bullshit baggage it never asked for — sticks to his shirt for a moment before falling to his feet.
“Keep your fucking confetti. It’s not my goddamn fault you can’t see it for what it is. It’s not my fault if you think you need to reevaluate time and space just because I’m standing here minding my own business.”
I keep my voice even, and I resist an irrational urge to throw the remainder of my white Russian in Anthony’s face. I’m at least half sure that I’m imagining all the insults I’m feeling, and as much as three-quarters sure that I’m overreacting to the nothing that’s happened.
But still the feeling remains, unshakable.
I don’t know what’s wrong with me, that he can say no damning words and leave me feeling like less than shit — I only know that I feel it, that I wish I could throw this drink, and that I want to be alone right now more than anything in the world.
“Caitlin—” he says.
But I’ve already turned around. I’m already stalking away.
Wisely, he doesn’t follow.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
ANTHONY
OKAY, SO LAST NIGHT WAS probably a mistake.
After Caitlin left, I finished my should’ve-been-having-sex block without any sex. That was a foregone conclusion after I inadvertently blew Erica off, but then the proverbial other door definitely opened. Turning away from that newly opened door was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.
After I didn’t have sex with Caitlin, I went back to my room and had sex with myself. For some reason that didn’t solve the problem so I did it again. I’m an energetic guy, but at age 43 even I can’t stay horny after blowing two loads. Supposedly, the mind can’t tell the difference between what’s real and what’s vividly imagined — and if that’s true I definitely bent Caitlin over all sorts of couches last night, and really should be past my inappropriate affliction.
But instead of feeling relaxed going into my midnight chiropractic session, I felt tense — worse rather than better. Instead of feeling like I’d gotten some taboo
jollies at the expense of my daughter’s friend and rinsed her from my system, the inverse was true.
Instead of freeing myself from thoughts about Caitlin, I’ve wrapped her around my cortex so tightly that now I can’t pry her away.
The chiro hurt more than usual. The massage keyed me up instead of relaxing me. My masseur is a 250-pound linebacker of a guy, but for some reason his hands still got me thinking about how I won’t let myself touch Caitlin.
And, of course, it doesn’t help that she clearly knew my thoughts despite my best efforts to turn her down without embarrassment.
By bedtime, I felt more guilty than anything else, but contacting Caitlin to apologize or talk it out would only make things worse. I wasn’t trying to reject her, but I managed it anyway. And to make things worse, I didn’t cut her off cleanly.
Maybe I should have had sex with her. What would have been the harm? Caitlin wouldn’t have left pissed. We’d both be satisfied.
Maybe I’d be able to shake her out of my head, because the tension would have fled.
Instead, I’ve screwed everything up.
I try to give myself a break, knowing I need it. I overbooked myself yesterday like I always do, and today is no different. Now, thanks to a mostly sleepless night, I’m beat with no rest in sight.
I try to tell myself I had no options. Despite the fantasy of just heeding our urges — Caitlin’s long-denied, mine brand new — giving in would have made things worse. Caitlin probably would’ve left my room embarrassed, feeling like she betrayed Jamie. I’d have felt similar shame regarding Jamie, and would have known I breached my moral code in maybe three different ways.
And of course, there’d be the second-guessing.
Yes, I saw those leaves lined up when I walked back toward the hotel, yes I thought of work instead of wondering at the serendipity, and yes I second-guessed my knee-jerk response thanks to my earlier talk with Caitlin. Her father always put work first, just like I do. His circumstances are very different from mine, of course — he has a family and I don’t, he needs love and I have enough — but still it was Caitlin who made those doubts appear in my head.
The Guru (Trillionaire Boys' Club Book 6) Page 8