“Want a drink?”
“Coke would be great.”
“That’s right, Scout doesn’t drink. Commendable. Of course, I have to warn you, in this business, you’ll run into clients who won’t trust you if you don’t imbibe . . . in moderation of course.”
“In that case, I’ll have what you’re having.”
“That’s the spirit. While I make us a daiquiri, look around.”
Scout was drawn to a painting that was six feet tall and depicted a pair of raw and fleshy not-quite-human forms engaged in an intimacy that looked painful. Scout had never seen a Francis Bacon before. He was still trying to figure out who was being fucked by whom when Moran reappeared with the daiquiris. Scout hadn’t had a real drink since the incident. Alcohol hadn’t played a part in what happened, he just knew that people would be more inclined to believe his side of the story if they thought he was a teetotaler. Moran watched Scout’s eyes try to disentangle the snarl of body parts in the painting.
“You remind me of me.”
Scout saw no similarity between himself and the bloated rainmaker, nor did he want to, but said, “I’m flattered.”
“I bought this house when I was twenty-seven years old.” Porter sipped thoughtfully, giving Scout time to absorb the magnitude of that accomplishment.
“That’s impressive.” Scout said what he thought Porter wanted to hear.
“Want to know the secret of how I pulled it off?”
“Got to admit, I’m curious.”
“I married a very rich girl.” It wasn’t what Scout expected him to say. Porter gestured to a silver-framed photograph on the mantel of an attractive woman with a widow’s peak who looked to be around twenty-five. Next to it were photographs of a pair of teenagers who had the same hairline. Their children, no doubt.
“Your wife’s beautiful. You’re a lucky man.”
Moran nodded in agreement. “Of course, being married to a rich woman isn’t as easy as people like to think. It’s hard work . . . a job in and of itself. Truth is, not every man is suited to the challenge of marrying up. Requires special talents to make it work for you. To see, as they say, the big picture.” Moran drained his glass. “Though there is one thing that makes tying the knot to money easier than your average ball-and-chain marriage . . . no one ever feels sorry for a rich girl, especially if she’s pretty.”
Moran gave the photograph of his wife a sympathetic smile. “It’s not fair or right, just the way it is. Trust me, it’s the only prejudice nobody will ever fault you for.” Moran was telling him something, but he wasn’t sure what.
“Is your wife here in town?” He couldn’t think of anything else to say.
“Sadly she passed away a few years ago. Cirrhosis of the liver. Drink got to her. She tried to fight it but . . . sad, in the beginning she was a fun drunk.” For several minutes, the only sound in the room was Moran thoughtfully crunching ice cubes. Then the big man opened a humidor and lit a cigar. “So, Scout. You want to come on board?”
Porter handed him two contracts. The first was White Stone’s standard employment agreement. The second was a twenty-four-page contract on Porter Moran’s personal letterhead that featured a draconian confidentiality clause. “When you graduate next June, you’ll come to White Stone as a junior associate directly under my supervision. To give the illusion that you are more solvent than I know you to be, I’ll arrange a $250K loan, interest-free, payable in twenty-five years or on demand.”
“A loan from White Stone Trust?”
“It’ll come from a foreign bank. This is a separate arrangement, just between you and me. White Stone’s not involved nor privy to our agreement.”
Scout’s eyes darted across the pages of the second contract. The wording was unusual, the services required vague. “What do I have to do?”
“For the moment, nothing. In a year or two we’ll talk about it. Live up to your potential and we’ll pick up the tab for an MBA or law school. I suggest both.”
“Why?”
“To make you more useful to me and the men who will become your friends.”
Scout started to sign the contracts, then paused.
“Under one condition.”
Porter looked at him like something dirty stuck to the bottom of his shoe. “This isn’t negotiable.”
Scout smiled. “Everything’s negotiable, but I don’t think you’ll have a problem with this . . . I don’t want to be called Scout anymore.”
“Fair enough.”
After Scout signed the contract, they talked about fly-fishing. It had been done this way for a long time, and there were reasons.
CHAPTER 4
I got out of the hospital thirty-six hours after Scout brought me the flowers. Before giving the final okay for me to fly to America, my oncologist insisted that we spend the next five days at our apartment in Paris to make sure my body could handle the new meds I was on. Chemo had made me so radioactive, the head nurse told me not to share a toilet with anyone who might be pregnant and alerted us to the possibility that when I passed through the airport security scanner I might be mistaken for a dirty bomb.
After thirteen days in the oncology ward, I had hoped coming home would make me feel more normal. But like I said, I was radioactive and knew it.
Though I had spent my entire life in the cozy attic apartment above my mother’s studio, when I came back from the hospital, home felt like a haunted house and I was the ghost.
The familiar spooked me. Sitting on the swing my mother had hung from the rafters in our living room when I was little; gazing up through the skylight she had cut into the roof above my bed so I could fall asleep looking at the stars: all that had made my life special suddenly reminded me of how much I would be leaving behind, how much I wished I had been more appreciative of it all when I was well.
Trying not to surrender to morbid thoughts, I searched Netflix in the hope of finding a feel-good movie my mother and I could watch under the covers of her bed. It’s harder than you think to find a movie where the girl isn’t murdered or tortured or dies young.
It was broad daylight, but I could feel nightmare sweat coming out of me. Desperate to distract myself from thinking about the future, I pulled my mother into my bad dream by asking about the darkness in her life.
“What was the name of the man you shot?”
My mother nervously began to water dead houseplants. “His name wouldn’t mean anything to you. It’s not important.”
“What if we run into him when we go to Rangeley?”
“He doesn’t live in Rangeley. You don’t have to worry about him.”
“I’m not worried. Just curious.”
“Can we talk about something else, Chloé?”
“What did it feel like?”
“What did what feel like?”
“Shooting a person? I mean, did you freak out when you saw the blood?” Like I said, I wasn’t feeling normal.
I thought my mother was trying to change the subject of the conversation to a pleasanter topic when she asked me, “Did the man who brought you those flowers say anything about me?”