I push. I don’t get pushed. I could have knocked the guy out with a single, clean, sharp left-hook to the jaw. He’d be eating pavement and dozing hard.
But then I stopped. I found my hands sliding into my pocket, feeling the cool, sharp metal of my condo keys, pressing the metal into my flesh.
No, it wasn’t worth it. I had everything else. I had money. I could go to a hotel. I would figure it out.
And so, instead of confronting Liana, I had turned around and walked right back to the elevator. I took the elevator down to the lobby in silence, ignored the quiet gazes of the other residents, other bankers and lawyers and doctors who usually ignored me, usually didn’t have much to say to me nor I them. But now, the only human interaction they would offer me was a quiet look of pity.
I didn’t want their pity. I didn’t fucking care.
I stormed out of the building, gave the moving company my phone number, told them to call me when they had picked everything up and take it to a storage warehouse in New Jersey. Then, I checked myself into the Hilton and called my lawyer.
The divorce was easy. Liana agreed to everything, and we had signed a pre-nup beforehand, so the proceedings went smoothly. It was what happened afterwards that made my life a living hell.
Liana calling me constantly, showing up at my office, interrupting dinners, stalking me around town… The particular instance immortalized on the cover of this tabloid showed a moment last weekend when she had tracked me down to a Midtown restaurant where I was holding a dinner for my new management team, congratulating everyone on a good first quarter. It was a welcome distraction from the madness of dealing with my ex-wife.
And then, into our private dining room, Liana stormed, her thin, pale face running with mascara, her lipstick slathered on awkwardly, a glass of white wine in her hand.
“Blaine,” she screamed. “I can’t find the fucking remote!”
I remember simply putting my head down on the dinner table, face-down, as the staff escorted her out. My people know about my wife; they know the trouble we’ve been going through. None of them were surprised. I couldn’t think of a better crowd to have that happen in front of.
But then, she had hidden out outside the restaurant, in a line of clubgoers waiting to get into the night spot next to the restaurant. She flung herself at me, screaming as I hailed a cab that was meant for me, but which I ended up depositing her in, handing the cabbie a hundred-dollar bill, and telling him to take her back to the condo.
I guess there had been some paparazzi in the area. You can never escape. There’s something that money can’t buy me, I suppose. Damn it all to hell.
“Nick, just make her go away…” I sighed. “Make it all go away.”
“Like I said, Blaine. Not that easy,” my friend and PR man said with another long-suffering sigh. “You know that Jenkins Consulting is starting to say they don’t want to work with us?”
My eyes widened and I sat up in my chair. Jenkins was a consulting outfit we had been looking at acquiring for the last six months. The deal was almost done with.
“What? Why is this the first time I’m hearing about it?” I demanded, reaching for my phone.
Nicholas smiled cautiously, smiling the smile of a man who’s not happy about anything.
“They—“ this meant the other senior company officers. “—wanted me to tell you. So you wouldn’t be mad.”
“Damn right I’m mad!” I yelled. “Just over this stupid thing? And I’m hearing this from my public relations man—not from my chief financial officer, not from my chief operating officer, not from any of my vice presidents whose whole fucking job it is to make this deal happen…”
“Image. Reputation. It’s everything, Blaine. Your divorce has been in the tabloids for weeks, months even. It’s one thing after another. These aren’t glamorous celebrities you’re working with—they don’t want to work with Chris Brown. They want someone who doesn’t get written up in the rags for slapping his ex-wife.”
“I didn’t slap her! I put her in a taxi home!” I protested, growling like a cornered beast. But like a cornered beast, I was ready to fight.
“I know that. And she knows that. And hell, the tabloids probably know that. But does the rest of the world know that? Do they care?”
I sat back in my chair and once again, turned around, taking in my skyline, the skyline and panorama of the city I planned on someday owning. It had darkened over the course of my conversation with Nicholas. Now, storm clouds were moving in from off Long Island Sound. Big, bloody, angry ones, with deep rumbling emanating from their guts that spoke of an oncoming tempest.
I glanced down to the street, seeing the people, like little ants down there, rushing about, trying to take cover and hail cabs as the rain began to fall. Within moments, moments of silence between myself and Nicholas, bullet-sized drops of rain began to pour out of the sky, peppering the ground like shotgun pellets.
I might have been a cornered beast ready to fight, but that didn’t matter one damned bit if I were shot down before I could do anything.
“Is there anything I can do to improve my reputation, then?” I asked, turning back once more to my friend. Nicholas stood, taking his glass with him as he walked over to one of my bookshelves. I used to keep books on management and finance in my office, but found that I never looked at them and, besides, who really cares about reading books like that? So, instead, I switched them all out for the classics—Faulkner, Hemingway, Melville, Shakespeare. Nicholas set down his scotch and plucked The Great Gatsby out of the shelf.
“Gatsby dies in the end, Nick,” I grumbled. “Your choice of reading material is not making me feel anymore confident.”
“You could always start a charity or a foundation,” Nicholas suggested finally, setting down the book. “Something that’ll get people distracted, that’ll make them think of you as a philanthropist, rather than a wife-beating billionaire.”
“I’m not…”
“Damn it, Blaine!” Nicholas roared, turning on me. “I know you’re a fine, decent man but that’s not what you pay me for. I’m telling you what this says you are! That’s what you pay me for!”
He strode up to my desk, pointing at the tabloid.
“And this says you’re a rich playboy who slaps around his ex-wife, a girl barely out of college! It doesn’t say anything about her using drugs or cheating on you or kicking you out of your house! All it says is that you were seen with your hands on her outside of a nightclub!”
Nicholas was one of the only people I’d let talk to me that way, and even then, it was hard not to leap over my desk and throw my patented left-hook into his jaw.
Hell, if I did that, he wouldn’t even hold it against me. And not just because he’d be too busy holding a package of frozen carrots against his cracked jaw.
But that would’ve been a waste of time.
And besides, he was right. Right about every damned thing.
“Fine. Fine,” I growled. “I’ll look for… Something. Some way to give back.”
“Think of it as a long term plan. Look at Bill Gates—billionaire to philanthropist. Don’t see it as a chore. See it as an opportunity.”
All right. I would try to see it as an opportunity.
At least this seemed like something I could, literally, throw money at. My favorite way to pass the time.
3
Morgan
All faculty meetings operate in one of two moods: boring as hell, or depressing as hell. Or, you know… Both.
Based on the way it started, it seemed like it would be a combination.
I could feel my eyes start to glaze over as one of the other professors began talking about her truly interminable research into the citational systems of 14th century Scottish monastery manuscripts. She was going to conference to present next week, so it was well within her right, I suppose, to monopolize our time with her medieval trivia.
But that didn’t stop my eyes from wandering out to the green, the jewel in t
he century of campus. Fresh-faced, grinning and giggling students lounged all over, the picture of languid, easy-going collegiate life. Some studied on blankets, while others flung Frisbees between them, laughing and squealing.
I saw groups of sorority girls picnicking, shooting eyes as the fraternity boys who were in the process of grilling and playing football, acting like complete cavemen: look, fire! Look, acts of strength and big, big muscles!
Oh, I knew what those girls were going through. I had been there before.
It’s easy to fall in love with a quick, carefree smile and a set of cut abs. I knew that all too well. In fact, Tyrone seemed to know it because I had an email from him, as I discovered when I clicked into my inbox in desperation, trying to stave off complete death from boredom.
I deleted it immediately. It felt good.
I should be paying attention, I decided. This was my career. It was my career that was important, not Tyrone. Not the boys and girls outside, and their primitive mating rituals. The work I was doing in here was the reason I WAS here. Even if it was boring.
“Next order of business,” Anthony Kennedy, the chair of the department, and my mentor began, his voice beset by obvious sleepiness and fatigue as the Scottish woman from the 14th century sat down. His handsome, lean older face had developed a conspicuous set of particularly deep and noticeable wrinkles in the last few months, coinciding with his appointment as Department Chair and the lawsuit against Gary Towson—the ancient troublemaker who started this mess.
Of course, no one could prove that he had groped a female undergraduate back in 1995, but she was finally suing and the senior faculty almost universally had his back, had voted to divert department funds to fight the suit. He was, after all, one of the most illustrious professors we had, and (almost) universally loved by all his students.
And so, the department was in serious financial straits. It was this that Anthony found himself dealing with, facing down the row of stern pale, grizzled faces that demanded success from him, demanded a solution to the problem they had created.
“We’re hoping that we can reach out to private sources for additional funds to make it through the rest of the year,” he said carefully. Judging from the sweat on his brow, he was nervous. I had never known him to be nervous and the fact that he was—that scared me.
“So, what? We’re supposed to be fundraising now?” someone said. This set off a chorus of grumbles and murmurs from around the room. I watched helplessly as Anthony sighed and called for calm.
“Don’t think of it as fundraising. Think of it as alumni engagement. Think of it as… As lobbying. I don’t know. Think of it as whatever you want, but it’s what we have to do if we want to continue to exist as an independent department within this university.”
“Maybe we don’t?” someone else said. “I hear the Modern Languages department gets free Italian catered every Friday!”
“That might be true,” Anthony said seriously, glaring down his interlocutor. “But they also have room for only ten professors.”
The math was easy to do. We had twenty-one professors. Eleven would have to go, at least.
I was doomed to be among that eleven. I just knew it. Even if that meant the university broke its contract with me, it was cheaper to buy their way out of their obligations than to keep me on faculty. And then I’d be back on the merciless, unforgiving job
The meeting moved on, going through discussions of course syllabi, scheduling dissertation defenses, and taking suggestions for where to hold the faculty Christmas party—as if we didn’t have more important things to spend money on. Professor Towson smugly suggested the most expensive restaurant in town, a Michelin-starred establishment that could, over the course of a single meal, easily bankrupt the department.
But what did he care? His job was destined to be safe, and the lawsuit was destined to die away in court, at the cost of my job. He had legions of devoted alumni, former students of his, who would rally to his defense in seconds: generations of lawyers and bankers who had taken his classes, whom he had mentored, put in touch with other wealthy, high-placed alumni. They’d cut their donations to the university in a second if anything happened to him.
As the meeting finished up, Anthony waved to me.
“Morgan? Could we chat?”
I felt a deep bite of anxiety in my chest. Normally, when Anthony wanted to chat, it was to ask about my book deal, or articles I was writing, or the classes I was teaching.
Now, I felt positive that he would be telling me to start looking for a new job.
The thought of not teaching, of leaving that classroom with my students completely enraptured by what I was saying—it tore me to pieces. I saw their faces, each one: smug, ruddy lacrosse players and sorority girls with fake tans, and smart girls from the ‘hood on scholarships, and nerdy computer science boys just trying to fulfill a last requirement before graduating—where else but a university, this university, would they all be brought together to discuss and learn about the power of books, the power of reading?
And now it was going to be taken away from me. I felt selfish. It was really the students who would suffer, the students whose tuition dollars were ultimately being used to defend a pervert in court. But there was nothing I could do to stop from feeling like everything I had worked for, everything I had always wanted—it was all about to be torn away from me.
“How’s class?” Anthony asked as the last of the other faculty dissipated from the meeting and we sat back down, this time next to one-another. His face had softened as he shed his armor. No longer did he look so stern and stony—now, he just looked tired.
“It’s good. I’ve got the kids reading Harriet Jacobs for Monday.”
“That’s good. Powerful stuff.”
“Some of the best.”
“You’re right.”
A moment of silence passed.
“Morgan, I hate to ask you about this, but do you know someone named Blaine Stone?” Anthony finally said, not meeting my eyes.
I opened and closed my mouth a few times before answering.
“I… Sure, I do. He’s my step-brother. Well, he was my step-brother. Our parents got married when we were in high school and divorced a few years later. He was away at boarding school and college most of that time, so I didn’t see him except on holidays…” I replied finally. Blaine Stone was a name I hadn’t heard for a long time.
“He’s done quite well for himself, hasn’t he?” Anthony suggested, his voice breaking a bit. I saw immediately what he wanted.
“I… I don’t know if I could ask him to donate. We were just never all that close. Honestly, he was a total asshole back them—he’d pull my hair, make fun of me, everything—incredibly immature.”
“I understand, I understand…” Anthony said and sighed. “I didn’t want to ask because I suspected as much but it’s just…”
“…he’s a billionaire,” I replied. Anthony nodded gravely.
“A lot of it he inherited. From his dad.”
“Your stepfather.”
“Ex-stepfather,” I corrected him quickly. “Our parents divorced. It was a second marriage for both of them. Neither ever got to the ‘third time’s the charm moment,’ though.”
“Oh?”
“Blaine’s father, Dominic Stone… I know he killed himself a few years ago…”
Anthony’s eyes widened.
“Morgan, I’m so sorry… I had no idea…”
I shrugged.
“I mean, he was never really a father to me, so it just leaves me cold… My mother was upset, as you might imagine, but she didn’t even go to the funeral. There was already too much bad blood there.”
“So, you absolutely wouldn’t feel comfortable contacting Blaine?” Anthony said, finally. I shook my head.
“I just can’t… I don’t think there’s anything left for me to draw on there. Does that make sense?”
Anthony nodded and smiled, a bitter look in his eye.
“I
really should be asking the other faculty to get their rich former students to donate… But you know how they are. Can’t be bothered. The ones with tenure don’t give a damned. Living in 14th-century Scottish monasteries in their minds.”
I smiled sadly, laying my hand on his. His strong, weathered hand: Anthony had grown up on a farm in North Dakota, working the land until he won a scholarship to Dartmouth. He never really fit in on the east coast—he seemed like he would be far more comfortable on a little plot of land back west. And that’s certainly the sense you’d get from his book on Willa Cather.
But he had always done his best for me, for his students and mentees. He went to bat for us in a way that most scholars, obsessed with their own research, protective of their own reputations, rarely did. He strove to make sure we would get the jobs we wanted, the jobs we deserved. He had a quiet, powerful dignity about him, but a sadness in his eyes—when you looked at them, it was almost as if you could hear the cold, bitter North Dakota wind washing over the plains, blowing away any trace of our vain human endeavors.
The wind, it occuredd to me, wielded the same power as a university budget committee: the power to undo what you had worked for. What is it they say about the best laid plans of mice and men?
“Something will turn up. The university will bail us out. Something will come through.” I didn’t believe what I was saying, but I knew I had to say something. Anything. I knew I had a part to play in this little drama, even if it was all just a fiction and it was my job, in the end, that was on the line.
“I’m… I’m sure you’re right,” Anthony said, rising to leave. “I’ll see you after Thanksgiving, then. Take care of yourself.”
I watched him walk out of the spacious meeting room, down the richly decorated and sculpted halls of our building. For a place so old and wealthy, the University truly outdid themselves in piling on the ivy, piling on the markers of old world extravagance and privilege.
And poor Anthony Kennedy, my mentor, fit so poorly in the middle of it, in the middle of the richly carved oak paneling on the walls and the coats of arms of the wealthy families who had once donated to the university and to the department specifically. His simple, plains farmer walk, and the stiff, but dignified way he held himself. He walked slowly, at about half the speed a man his age would normally go, and he was no young man, not anymore. He limped too, the result of an old war wound acquired in Saigon, back in 1968 during the Tet Offensive. That was after Dartmouth, but before he began his doctoral degree. He never talked about his time in the war and I didn’t blame him, but I couldn’t help but wonder about it.
At His Mercy: A Dark Billionaire Romance Page 2