The Guest Room (8 page)

Now he met Kristin's eyes for a second as she leaned against the closet door like someone about to be shot, but then he glanced down at his shoes. It wasn't her eyes, as sad as they were, that caused him to look away. It was her face: it was so drained of color, it was as if she had the flu. It was the tears he saw running down her cheeks. It was the fact that she didn't want him to touch her. He noticed that he was still wearing his black wingtips; he couldn't recall the last time he had been wearing his wingtips on a Saturday morning. Probably never.

He had kissed the girl. Of course he had. He had kissed her a couple of times, and he suspected that if the night hadn't ended so disastrously badly, he might never have forgotten their first kiss. She had taken him to the den, away from the party because he was the best man and was going to get something special—something different from the lap dance he had received on the living room couch—and she had sat him down in the easy chair there. She had switched off the light, but the door was open and he could see the side of her face in the light from the hallway. They could still hear the music from the living room. She stepped from her thong so she was naked and climbed into his lap. He was aware—blissfully, if he was honest with himself, blissfully—of the way she was rubbing herself against him, which made the moment seem not merely consensual, but mutual; it was as if she wanted him, too. But he was focused as well on the half smile on her face when he looked up at her, and the way her lids had grown a little heavy with pleasure. Or, perhaps, with feigned pleasure. Still, it sure as hell seemed like she was in the zone with him. And then she locked those dark eyes on his and kept bringing her mouth within a millimeter of his, bobbing her lips beside his and shielding them from the whole world, it seemed, with her hair. She was brushing her cheek against him over and over, as if she were a cat marking him with the side of her face. He could feel her breath on him (peppermint), and it was warm. He never planned to kiss her. He certainly wouldn't have initiated a kiss. After all, he was married. Happily married. He had a beautiful wife. But she seemed as into it as he was when she brought her face down to him again, so wanton and desirous; he could feel her yearning, too. No stripper was this good an actress, he told himself. And so this time when she was teasing him with her half-open mouth, he arched his back and met her. Their lips touched and it was…electric. He felt her tongue against his; he felt her fingers on the sides of his face and her breasts against his collarbone.

“You're shaking,” she'd whispered into his ear a moment later.

“It's fine,” he had whispered back.

They would kiss again before going upstairs, and they would kiss again on the stairs themselves. Each kiss had left him breathless, the air abruptly gone from his lungs. Had his first kiss with Kristin been like this? Of course it had. It had. It had just been such a long time ago.

But then again, had it really been that…hot? Their first kiss had been a few yards from the corner of Fourteenth and Fifth, after he had taken her to dinner for the second time, the kiss just beyond the sight of the doorman for her building. She had not invited him upstairs, both because it was only their second date and because she was one of three young schoolteachers in a two-bedroom sublet. She shared a bedroom with one of the other women. The kiss had been clumsy and brief; neither had been sure when he bent to kiss her on the lips whether their mouths should be open or closed. In the end, the kiss had been a little of both, an awkward hybrid. He remembered walking to the subway a little afraid that she would think he was a bad kisser. They'd never talked about that kiss or laughed about it; he wished, in hindsight, that at some point they had. But then again, maybe not. A few nights later he took her to a Radiohead concert, and they had kissed there. And that kiss had been rock concert hot. They were on their feet amid the noise and the bass, and their kissing grew into the most beautiful, wrenching torment imaginable, and suddenly she was grinding against the thigh of his blue jeans and his hands were under her shirt. Even now whenever either of them pulled some Radiohead vinyl off the shelf, it was a prelude to sex—an aural aphrodisiac, the strawberries of sound.

He took a deep breath and looked up from his shoes at his wife, and he lied. “We kissed once,” he said, “sort of. Before I knew what was happening she had kissed me. I pushed her away. It felt wrong and she smelled of cigarettes. It was all too…too intimate. I was a little disgusted.”

She seemed to think about this, and slowly her body hunched over, her arms now wrapped around her chest—not in defiance, but as if she were ensconced in a straitjacket. She was still crying.

“That's the truth?” she asked.

“That's the truth. Absolutely.”

She wiped her eyes, and he went to her. He tried again to wrap an arm around her shoulders, and this time she let him. Her body relaxed into his. He noted that she was wearing some pretty sultry pantyhose, and his mind reeled at the idea that he could even think about having sex with her right now.

At precisely eight-thirty that morning, Richard called a lawyer from his mother-in-law's guest bedroom. He was beyond tired, but his hangover was responding to the Advil and the gallons of water he had been drinking; he no longer worried that the excruciating spikes of pain behind his eyes were going to cause him to wilt like a flower in a fast-motion film—to just collapse against a door or a wall with his head in his hands. He rang the fellow who had drawn up Kristin's and his wills and set up their trust, relieved that he had the attorney's home number on his cell phone and that the guy actually picked up. He was pretty sure that Bill O'Connell knew next to nothing about criminal law and probably wouldn't end up representing him—if, please, no, he actually needed representation—but he had to begin somewhere. He was glad now that the attorney was male. The last thing he wanted to do was explain to a woman what happened last night. And, as he expected, Bill told Richard that he wasn't his man. But the firm did have a couple of people who could help him, one who was indeed female, and one who was male. Immediately Richard asked for the home phone of the attorney who was male, but Bill surprised him.

“I think you should call Dina. Sam is very, very good, but Dina is a lot smarter than me—and probably, based on what went on in your home last night, a lot smarter than you. She has to be the smartest person I know. And if you ever do need her as a face—in depositions or in court—it would be great to have a woman.”

“I'd really prefer a man, Bill.”

“Get over it. Sam is terrific—he really is. But in this case, you'll be a lot better off with Dina.”

He swallowed hard. He thought of his wife and his daughter. He had to be smart about this. He took down Dina's number.

“One more thing,” Bill said.

“Sure.”

“Don't talk to reporters. If you get a call and don't recognize or can't see the number, don't pick up.”

“Reporters,” he murmured, repeating the single word to himself. He recalled what the detective had said in his living room. “Fuck.”

“Yup. Be smart about that, too. Don't say anything. Eventually they will find you. It's their job. When you don't take their calls, they might come to your house. They might come to the building where you work. So postpone the inevitable. By the time they corner you, you can just send them to Dina.”

He thought again of Kristin and Melissa, this time imagining what they were going to read about him: his looming public mortification. He wanted to crawl into the bed on which he was sitting and pull the covers over his head. He really did need to sleep. Almost desperately. But he couldn't close his eyes. Not yet, anyway. As soon as he said good-bye to Bill, he called Dina. He must have sounded so pitiable, so pathetically in need, that she agreed to meet him in ninety minutes in her office in midtown. He would have used that time to nap, but he had to shower and shave; he needed to wash last night from his body.

In his mother-in-law's elevator, he realized that he was murmuring to himself. He shook his head and told himself he was doing this only because he was overwrought and he was alone. He was in no danger of becoming a street mumbler.

But he did recall how strangely sensitive he became on airplanes, especially when he was traveling alone on business. Movies seemed sadder, novels more poignant. He recalled watching a comedy—a wistful little bauble about a pair of aging lovers—he had seen a few months earlier with Kristin, and this time having to dab discreetly at the edge of his eyes. Another time, about fifteen minutes after takeoff, he had pulled a werewolf novel from his bag and started to read. When the werewolf was killed, he had put the book down and found himself…unmoored. Wow, he remembered thinking, you're losing it over a fictional dead werewolf? Seriously? He considered whether he was emotionally stunted.

But maybe it was merely his lack of control on an airplane—every passenger's lack of control on an airplane. A subconscious fear of flying. The reality that flights are often about beginnings and endings.

Then again, perhaps it was just the loneliness—the being alone.

Outside his mother-in-law's building he stood for a moment on the curb. This, he decided, was being alone. It dwarfed the loneliness that could besiege a person at thirty-five thousand feet. He was as alone as he'd ever been in his life.

He shook his head. He gathered himself. He hailed a cab.

Even though it was a Saturday morning and he was interrupting her weekend, Richard was surprised to see that Dina Renzi was wearing blue jeans, a flannel shirt, and pink and black Keds. But her raincoat was Burberry and her attaché was a Bottega—he knew the weave from the women who carried them in his office—with buttery soft cinnamon-colored leather. He guessed that she was his age, her hair a yellow reminiscent of straw. It was a darker blond than that of the girl who had danced at the party, fucked his younger brother, and then epoxied herself to the back of one of the men who had brought her, stabbing him over and over with a kitchen knife. This morning the lawyer had pulled her hair back into a ponytail; he imagined it snaking its way through the half-moon hole in the back of a ball cap when she wasn't at work, just the way Kristin did with her hair whenever they took in a game at Yankee Stadium. It was a fashion statement that Richard found wholesome and sexy at once. She had two rings on the ring finger of her left hand, both with serious rocks in them.

The firm rented the western half of the nineteenth floor of a building on Park, six blocks north of Grand Central. There were a few younger lawyers working in the office that Saturday, too, also in jeans; two were in one of the firm's conference rooms, the magnificent ash table awash in documents and legal pads, and a third was in his windowless, but still nicely appointed, office.

For what Richard guessed was the fourth time in the last ten hours, he told someone what had occurred. Each time he did, he found himself adding some details while omitting others. He would remember a different moment, a different sensation, a different facial expression. With this lawyer, he kept seeing the faces of the two dead men. He recalled the pudgy hands of the thug—and now they were thugs in his mind, not bodyguards or handlers or managers—who had been shot in the front hall. He thought of the thick gold chain around the neck of the one who had bled out on his living room floor, and how it had sunk partway into the crimson runnel carved into his throat. He was reminded of how he and the other men had cowered during the violence. Not a one had tried to save the poor bastard.

When he had finished, he asked her the question that had been gnawing at him all morning long: “Do you think I am in actual legal trouble?”

“No. At least not criminally. And I really don't see any civil exposure. You're positive there are no videos, correct? No photos?”

“Well, pretty positive. All of the guys were told to keep their phones in their pants.”

“Pity they didn't keep everything there. What is your wife thinking?”

“She is thinking I am despicable. As, I guess, I am.”

“Is she going to leave you?”

“No. I don't believe she will.”

“Your marriage will be okay?”

“Yes. I love her. She knows I love her. I believe our marriage will be fine.”

“How do you think Franklin McCoy is going to respond? My impression is that you guys are not exactly the wolves of Wall Street.”

“We are pretty conservative. And a lot of our clients are as conservative as we are. I'm a managing director. I work in mergers and acquisitions.”

“So, what will your bosses think?”

“Of me? Of the party?”

“Either. I was thinking of the party and of the publicity that's coming. The deaths of two people in your living room and your front hall; the Dionysian tone of the whole affair.”

“Obviously, they won't be happy.”

“I assume your clients won't be either.”

“No.”

“But no one's going to fire you?”

“I don't think so.” He thought of the company's CFO. He thought of his direct boss, a guy a few years his senior named Peter Fitzgerald. Peter was the head of mergers and acquisitions, a job Richard knew that he was in line for someday. The fellow was a great-grandson of one of the firm's two co-founders, Alistair Franklin. He was the sort of boyish, ageless preppie who, despite being somewhere in his mid-forties, looked like a groomsman at a Brick Church wedding—and the most priggish one at that. He was, it seemed to Richard, tragically humorless—and likely to be the firm's CFO eventually. Richard believed that he and Fitzgerald had an amicable relationship, though not an especially close one. They were, alas, never going to be friends.

“Well,” Dina said, “that's another issue you should be aware of: being fired.”