Porter shook himself and flushed. “Boys will be boys . . . no harm, no foul.” More unexpected, as they washed their hands at adjoining sinks, Porter inquired gruffly, “You have a dinner jacket?”
“Yes.” He didn’t, of course.
“It’s my niece’s birthday tomorrow. There’s a party for her at the Carlyle. It starts at seven p.m. See you there.”
“Thank you . . . sounds great!”
As he headed toward the door, Porter added, “One more thing. Don’t mention this to any of the others. You’re the only one I invited.”
“I understand.”
“You don’t, but that’s okay for now.”
Having rented a tuxedo, Scout paused to admire his reflection in store windows as he walked up Madison Avenue; he liked what he saw. He stepped into the Carlyle at 7:15 p.m. expecting to be shown to a table for ten or twelve at the restaurant. Instead, he was directed upstairs to a gilded ballroom, where a hundred and fifty people had gathered. Two-thirds of the mob were in their twenties; the rest were their parents’ and grandparents’ age. And although he didn’t know a soul, he knew they all had one thing in common.
When Scout finally caught a glimpse of Moran across the room, he was hobnobbing with a group that included names he recognized from the headlines of that morning’s Wall Street Journal. When their eyes met, though, he had no acknowledgment from Porter other than a glance that said Not now. Scout retreated to the bar. He was wondering why Porter had invited him when the big man stepped over to him. “I didn’t bring you here to drink.”
“It’s Coca-Cola.”
“You see that girl over there?” Porter nodded to a blond woman in her early twenties sitting on a banquet with two girlfriends, laughing and smoking cigarettes. “Her father’s the third-richest man in Palm Beach.”
“Lucky her. Are you going to introduce me?”
“We’re in the business of making believers of people who don’t know shit about us.”
“So you want me to go over and talk to her?”
“No, I want you to go over and make her think you’re a scholar and a gentleman. Show me I’m right about you.” The last part was what his hockey coach had said before the start of his first varsity game. Scout focused on the goal.
Moving close enough to the girls to eavesdrop but not to appear to be lurking, he overheard just enough to ascertain that they had been roommates at Brown, spent the previous weekend at Maidstone, and that after the party they were going to Area. He didn’t know Maidstone was a private golf and tennis club on the beach in East Hampton or that Area at that moment was the hippest nightclub on the planet, but he did pick up that one was named Priscilla and the one he’d been told to impress had played the part of Miranda in a summer Shakespeare workshop in the Berkshires.
“Can I possibly bum a cigarette from one of you ladies?” He didn’t smoke, but they didn’t know that. It was as good an excuse as any to push his butterscotch hair out of his eyes, lean in, and give the bashful grin that made women feel special and safe.
He took a Marlboro, accepted a light, and was about to turn away when he exclaimed with truthless enthusiasm, “You know, I think we’ve met . . . you went to Brown, right? You’re Priscilla.” Everyone likes to be remembered.
Scout was swimming in known waters now. He asked them questions about themselves, but more importantly he listened to their answers as if he had been waiting his whole life to hear what they thought. Because Scout had gone to the right schools, looked smart in a tuxedo, and most of all because somebody had invited him to the party, the three young women on the banquet assumed he was a nice guy.
In less than a minute he had them talking about college as if they were old friends. When Scout got around to introducing himself, he gave them the name he was burdened with at baptism and didn’t mention hockey just in case one of them had heard a rumor about the hockey player named Scout and the girl who had woken up shaved.
When they started talking about hotels in Europe Scout had never heard of, much less stayed in, he volunteered a self-deprecating story about waking up in the middle of the night at a hotel in Venice. Curtains drawn, total darkness, and suffering from jet lag, he opened the door to what he thought was the bathroom, only to have it close behind him, and discover he was locked out in the hall naked. Worse, he had to wrap a doormat around himself to go down to the lobby for a spare key and, being less than fluent in Italian, asked for a spare sock. He had heard the story from a fraternity brother.
It had the desired effect. He was sitting on the banquette with them now, leaning ever so gently into the daughter of the third-richest man in Palm Beach.
Moran watched and liked what he saw. Most men Scout’s age would have been distracted by the physical proximity of so much femininity, but Moran perceived that Scout’s only interest was to please him. The girl had her arm around Scout’s shoulder now. She was flirting; Scout simply demonstrating his ability to turn himself on like a heat lamp.
Moran moved closer. A passing waiter dropped a tray of champagne glasses. Moran didn’t get it when Scout stage-whispered in an English accent, “Be not afeard, the isle is full of noises—”
“That’s Caliban! I just played Miranda at summer stock.”
One of the others asked, “So you’re an actor?”
Scout smiled shyly. “Sort of . . . I’m a summer analyst at White Stone Trust.”
The daughter of the third-richest man in Palm Beach put her tanned arms around his neck, pulled him close, and said, “You’re a funny guy.” The kiss she planted on his cheek left a lipstick mark. As Scout proudly wiped it away with his handkerchief, he was disappointed to see Porter Moran had stopped watching.
It wasn’t until the end of the evening when they brought out the birthday cake that he found out that the pretty girl he was ordered to charm was Porter’s niece and that her father was already a client. Scout wasn’t sure what to think. It was a test, but of what?
There were other invitations after that, always offered at the last minute and never discussed or acknowledged at the office. A charity benefit for a museum where the price of a table was a six-figure donation; a golf scramble at a club that had thirty-six holes; a member-guest tennis tournament played on grass. Usually there were other people his age in attendance, but not always. Business was never discussed and Porter rarely bothered to introduce him. Scout was left to fend for himself. Porter watched.
Moran waited until the last week of August to invite Scout to stop by his home after work and talk about his “future.” It was an insufferably hot and humid evening. The city smelled like a clogged drain but the light was golden. At least that’s how it seemed to Scout.
He got off the subway at 72nd and Lex and walked up and over to a thirty-foot-wide Beaux Arts mansion, slightly grander than the consulate across the street. When he saw a single buzzer at the door, he realized that Moran occupied the whole house. When the bell rang, dogs barked. A pair of German short-haired pointers sniffed Scout’s crotch as Moran shook his hand.
Down a hallway checkerboarded in black and white marble, Moran led him into a living room featuring walnut paneling that had once graced the walls of a seventeenth-century château. When Scout looked up he saw uncircumcised putti and naked nymphs carved into the cornices. Porter plopped into a gilt armchair; Scout sat on the couch and waited for the rainmaker to speak.