It’s a courier in a black uniform who makes me state and sign my name for his records before handing me a box that turns out to have the purse Prin loaned me inside.
I pull out my phone and find a few messages from my mother, along with one clearly marked HOLT CALSON even though I never put his number in my phone: ur welcome. i expect 2 c u after work on Monday.
I push “Reply” below the message and ask without any humor whatsoever, “Are you still on drugs?”
The answer appears on the small screen of my flip phone immediately. “Not the same ones as Friday,” he answers.
I want to tell him not to text me anymore. It is an extra charge I will have to explain to Mommy and she is having a hard-enough time keeping both our lines on as it is. Besides, I am not the kind of wild girl who can or will give him what he wants. But the fact is he’s kept a promise I did not ask him to make. So, I tell him the truth as best I can. “I am not an ungrateful girl but I cannot do the things you want with a boy I barely know. This is not who I am. Also, I cannot have this conversation much longer because we do not have text included in our service plan.”
His answer is a long time coming and I can just imagine him in that overwide bed of his, staring in confusion at his phone. Wondering at my audacity. But then he finally responds, strong, and clear: “Then you’ll come to my place every day after work until you get to know me.”
Chapter Four
HOLT
Three weeks later…
“Holt, Holt…wake up! It’s time for a squirrel hunt!”
My eyes open with the expectation of finding my mother, standing over me, her hair in two long braids, her eyes bright with adventure.
But only slices of moonlight and the shadows of overlarge furniture occupy the dark beyond my bed. My mother is not here, and even if she was, we’re not at our country house which is the only place we’re allowed to hunt squirrels. We learned our lesson about the squirrel hunts in New Haven the first time we tried it. We got picked up by the local police less than an hour after leaving our apartment building. That was the first time Dad posted an additional nighttime guard at the lobby elevator.
But not the last.
I hadn’t been downstairs since mom returned from her latest “rest,” but I was willing to bet my favorite lacrosse stick that another guard was now posted down there, making sure the new drug cocktail she’s on doesn’t give her any other “spontaneous ideas.”
I get up and out of my bed anyway. I have to pee, but I don’t head for the one in my suite, because the one across the hall is actually a shorter walk in the dark.
However, I find the hallway outside my room even more menacingly dark than my moonlit bedroom, which means Mom still is not entirely healed up. When she feels okay, Mom leaves the hallway light on for me. When she doesn’t, the light switches remain in the off position, the blackout curtains are drawn, and our place stays as dark as her mood. I don’t really need the light, but I switch it on anyway. It’s a habit I got into the first time Dad made her go on a vacation without me—one of the many ways I’d learned to pretend my mother was still there, even when she wasn’t.
But after I flip the lights on, I don’t continue to the bathroom. In fact, I freeze because of what I can now see taped on Mom’s door: a note with my name written across the top in capital letters. It looks innocent enough, but something about it feels radioactive to me.
Still, I go to it. Because my name is on it. And I have to get closer to read the rest of what she’s written in her generously looped Spencerian cursive: Holt, please don’t come in. Get a guard and tell him to come in. Then go back to your room.
I stare at the note. Rereading it three times but still not comprehending it. And then somewhere in the background, the Beastie Boys start shouting about how I have to fight for my right to party.
I wake again. This time with a start because I’m no longer a little boy and, unlike ten years ago, I now have a slick rectangular device that screams music at me instead of ringing like the cells my guards used to carry.
I don’t open my eyes. Just fumble around until I find the sleek phone that was hand delivered to my apartment a few days ago around the same time middle-class nerds started camping out to get the new iPhone.
“Hello?” I mumble after depressing the touchscreen button.
“Why the hell haven’t you turned in your paperwork to HR?” My dad’s aggressive Arkansas accent bellows across several state lines.
Ah, fuck. They talk about women being micromanagers, but I can tell you right now that’s a load of sexist bullshit. Because there isn’t a woman alive who has anything on my dad, who’s obviously been abusing his position in order to talk to HR about me.
“Uh…” I answer. It’s too early in the morning, afternoon—whatever fucking time it is—to be coherent.
Not surprisingly, Dad doesn’t like my answer. “Filling out the gotdamn paperwork is the one gotdamn thing you had to do to get this job!”
“I know,” I answer, wondering, not for the first time, if my father—or Big Jack as he makes everyone call him at the office—purposefully held on to his accent after four years at Yale and three at Wharton as a means of intimidation.
“Are you even awake?” he asks.
“Am now,” I answer, still too fogged up by whatever I smoked and drank last night to come up with a less snotty response.
Right on cue, Big Jack asks, “You backtalking me, son?”
“No, I’m not,” I answer, my voice flat as I scrabble around my nightstand to find my small mirror. On it is a half-smoked joint and a couple lines of what might be coke or some smashed up pills. I opt for the joint and tell my dad, “I’ll get the paperwork in.”
“It was due yesterday,” he reminds me, even though—c’mon—he and I both know deadlines don’t apply to people with as much money and power as we have.
“Give me ‘til the end of the week, then.” I say.
“Get it in tomorrow. If you overnight it, it’ll be here by Friday.”
I don’t answer. Just wait for the penny to drop.
Which is stupid, because it never does. He says, “I mean it, Holt. Get it in TOMORROW!” his voice is so belligerent, I can tell he’s been hitting the bottle, too.
Like father, like son. The thought makes my stomach twist. Almost as bad as the thought of leaving this building and showing up in New York on September 3, ready to become the person he groomed me to be from birth.
“Look, son, if you were down here I could have my girl take care of it. But you were the one who decided to stay back east. That means I can’t hold your hand or stand over you. The days of us getting handed shit on a silver platter are over now that we’ve got this board, so either you step up or the next president of Cal-Mart might not be a Calson.”
“I’ll get it in,” I say again, more to get him off the phone than to reassure him. I know he’s disappointed in me. Far as I know, he’s been disappointed in me since my birth shut down any chance he had of having another child with the society wife he’d moved heaven and earth to bag—only to find out she was defective. Not only could she not reliably throw a masters of the universe-level dinner party, he had to pay a pretty penny to keep her manic episodes out of the paper. And that was before my arrival took out her uterus.
My birth pretty much put the nail in the coffin of their marriage. Growing up, it was my mother and me along with the occasional nanny who was more of a guard than anything else. My father was just that guy who dropped by once a month and then, after two hours of barking commands at everyone including my mother, left me with a list of things to work on between then and his next visit.
For most of my life, I worked on that list. Even harder after my mom’s death, in order to prove I wasn’t like her, and that I was a son worthy of the Calson name.
But all that stopped the day of my graduation when he came up to me and said, “You gotta keep your mouth closed when you know there’s a camera on you, son. Or turn your hea
d so they can’t see you talking. That’s PR 101. You better work on that before you start in New York.”
You better work on that. That was all I received from him after busting my ass for five years to get a combined BS/MBA so I could start living his dream that much sooner. And that’s when I got it. Really got it. He’d never forgive Mom for being crazy, and he’d never forgive me for having a crazy mom. I could fulfill every wish on his “work on this” list, and he’d still come up with shit for me to do to prove myself to him.
As if on cue, Dad huffs into my memory of the last day I spent comfortably outdoors with, “I’ve fired assholes within the first month for not getting the reports to me on time. Believe me, if the New York office tells me you ain’t pulling your part of the ox up there, I’ll ship you down here to Arkansas faster than you can say your own last name. We clear on that, son?”
“Yes,” I answer, too brain scrambled to argue with him. The phone beeps and I pull it away from my ear to look at the display. It’s Javon.
“Dad, someone’s on the other line. I need to go. I’ll get the paperwork in, for sure.”
“You better—” he starts to say but I switch to the other line before he can get out another threat.
“What’s up, Von?”
“You told me yesterday to start calling a half hour before your dinner company arrives.”
My dinner company… “Fuck, is it 4:30 already?”
“Yeah, it is,” Javon answers.
I hang up the phone and jump into the shower, just managing to pull on a pair of sweatpants and a Henley before the Beastie Boys start up again. “She’s here already?” I ask when I answer the phone.
“Yeah, looks like her bus was ahead of schedule,” Von answers.
“And she’s still saying no to the car? Did you ask—?”
“Every day just like you said, but she ain’t budging.”
Okay, shit…so I don’t have time to get in even half a joint. I scan the room for options and settle on the mirror with the lines, hoping like hell it’s oxy and not coke. She’s already cagey around me. The last thing I need is her running away because I’m talking too fast and too much. I grab a cut piece of straw off the mirror and dip my head, deciding I don’t want to give her the excuse she needs to call my bluff and never come back—
“Fuck!” I yell, head kicking back when the line I just snorted burns into my nasal cavity. Not oxy…must be the leftover Ibiza MCAT Luca brought a few weeks ago.
But the burning sensation soon gives way to a kind of distant euphoria that I still vaguely remember from the party. Fuck cloud. And with only those two words as warning, a carnal image hits me square in the brain. Her riding my dick…my hands guiding her thick hips as I watch her breasts bounce.
And now I have two problems because I immediately become hard as steel inside my sweatpants at the thought of finally getting what I want from her.
Calsons get what they ask for. Whatever they ask for. Whether it be favors from politicians, appearances from worldwide superstars at our investor meetings, or sex from the most mesmerizing woman we’ve ever met on a balcony.
But she said no. And she’s been coming here daily after work, but even when she’s laughing at something I said or talking excitedly about her day at the childcare center, her eyes stay wary. I shake my head at the tent in my pants because there’s no doubt about it: this hard on will definitely chase her away.
Feeling like I’m the one who just graduated from high school, not her, I strip off my sweatpants and change into the tight swim trunks I used to wear while vacationing in Europe. Those, and a pair of jeans hide the erection.
But it feels like she can still tell something’s off with me when I open the door.
“Are you alright, my friend?” she asks, lifting an eyebrow at me.
Fuck cloud. Fuck cloud. “I’m fine,” I answer.
“You are smiling,” she points out like she’s just diagnosed a medical condition. “You have a big, big smile on your face. Why?”
“Dunno, happy to see you, I guess,” I answer, standing back and waving her into the apartment.
She doesn’t answer, just regards me warily as she comes through the door with a brown bag of Chinese food Javon ordered.
While she’s setting it out, I focus hard on finding a screw top bottle of wine in the cabinets full of liquor.
“No beer tonight?” she asks when I come back to the table with an open bottle in my fist.
“Nah,” I answer. And saying that one word—only that one word—takes all I’ve got, because MCAT is a tongue loosener of the worst kind. I want to tell her every truth I’ve been holding back from her these past weeks. That there’s no reason for her to be so self-conscious, because she’s beautiful to me and sexy as fuck. That I think both our worlds would change forever if she would just let me in.
I also want to remind her that I am a Calson and Calsons get whatever and whoever the fuck they want. Resistance is futile—I want to tell her that. I want to tell her that. I want… I want… I want…
But I don’t. Instead, I grind my teeth hard, leaning into the MCAT’s side effects so my tongue will stay caged. Don’t talk. Stay quiet. Don’t scare her.
“I listened to all the music on the mixtape square and I liked it very much. Thank you.”
Shuffle, I think at her as I watch her set the small electric blue device down on the table between us. I’d actually made a new playlist with White Stripes, TV on the Radio, LCD Soundsystem, and Gorillaz on it last night. But today I don’t chance try to handle a laptop in this state. Or talk. I don’t even open my mouth, even though I want to know which songs she liked. Ever since our first dinner when I discovered she didn’t know much about any kind of music beyond gospel, I’ve been educating her with playlists I spent hours curating before uploading them to an iPod Shuffle that we pass back and forth.
But today, the Shuffle sits on the table between us like a cockroach I’m unwilling to touch.
After a few beats of uncomfortable silence, she says, “I particularly liked the band who sang about the crystal ship and the riders on the storm and breaking on through to the other side.” Sylvie smiles and touches her hand to her nose to give a little laugh before confessing, “Their song about people being strange is the right one to be listening to on the bus, you know?”
I want to laugh, I do. But I grind my teeth instead because I know my laughter will come off sounding more maniacal than appreciative.
Which makes her drop her fork and demand, “Holt, please, what is wrong? Why are you not talking?”
I’m freaking her out. I know I’m freaking her out. “Sorry,” I mumble.
“Don’t say sorry. Just tell me why you are suddenly taking that sex cloud drug again.”
I blink, wondering if I just hallucinated her question. “How do you know what I took?”
“Because of the way you are staring at me. Like I’m all you can focus on. You think I would forget so quickly how you were that night?” She looks at me, stricken. “Why did you take it? Why would you think tonight I would…?”
“It was a mistake,” I answer before she can finish the question. “I’m not trying to force you do anything with me, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
I pick up my glass and take another swig of wine. It must be helping because the usual depression is starting to cut into the manufactured euphoria. “Finish your food.”
It’s a command, but even though her eyes drop to her plate, she doesn’t pick up her fork.
“I do not understand you,” she says quietly. “I do not understand why you keep making me come here.”
Making me come here. The words slice through me, coloring the sex cloud euphoria red with a new rage. “You know what, Sylvie? I’m sorry I’ve been putting you through the hardship of having dinner with me.”
“No, that’s not what I mean!” she says, her eyes meeting mine. “I’m only saying I am not like you. I do not drink. I do not do drugs. And I’m not sup
posed to have sex before marriage. So, I feel I must be very boring to you and though I enjoy our dinners—usually—I cannot understand how you can possibly feel the same.”
I blink and ask, “Are you fucking insane?”
I’ve been trying not to swear in front of her, I really have. I know she doesn’t like it but I can’t help it this time because, “You’re smart. You’re interesting. You actually know something about shit and have opinions about what’s happening in the world. Plus, you like The Doors. You’re the least boring person I’ve ever met, even if you won’t let me kiss you.”
Sylvie inhales hard through her nose, apparently shocked as shit that I actually like her. But then she shakes her head and says, “You don’t really want to kiss me. It’s just the drugs…”
“When are you going to stop blaming drugs every time I try to get close?” I ask her between clenched teeth.
“I cannot answer this question,” she shoots back. “Because in the three weeks I have been coming here, I have never seen you as you really are.”
A bitter laugh tumbles out of my mouth because she can’t even begin to imagine what a mess I’d be without the drugs. Especially right now.
Speaking of which…
“You know what,” I say, standing up. “Take the rest of the week off. Go home after work tomorrow and Friday.”
I watch her closely, my hard-on thrumming behind the zipper of my jeans. I want her more than I’ve ever wanted any girl ever. But these fucking dinners make me feel like I’m banging my head against a wall.
“Okay. If you would like me not to come tomorrow or the next day, I won’t,” she says carefully. Face clamped down and serious like she’s afraid I’ll hear how loud she’s cheering on the inside if she doesn’t keep her expression locked in place.
“Okay,” I answer, stomping over to the front door, and putting my hand on it’s stupid-ass middle of the door doorknob as I add, “In fact, you don’t have to come back here at all. Take the job. Be free. I don’t give a fuck anymore.”
Holt, Her Ruthless Billionaire Page 4