Mindy Gooch, who still had smudges of mascara under her eyes from the night before, tried to push her way in. “The Internet service is
out. We think the problem is coming from your apartment.”
“We don’t have Internet service, either,” Annalisa snapped.
“May we come in?” Enid asked.
“Absolutely not,” Annalisa said. “The police are on their way. No one is to touch anything.”
“The police?” Mindy shrieked.
“That’s right,” Annalisa said. “We’ve been sabotaged. Go back to your apartments to wait.” She closed the door.
Enid turned to Sam. “Sam?” she asked. Sam then looked at his mother, who put her arm around his head protectively. “Sam doesn’t know anything about this,” Mindy said firmly. “Everyone knows the Rices are paranoid.”
“What is happening in this building?” Enid asked.
Then everyone went back to their respective apartments.
Back in the living room, Annalisa folded her arms, shook her head, and continued to pace. If no one in the building had Internet service, then perhaps Paul was wrong. He’d called her at five-thirty A. M., screaming about how he’d lost an enormous amount of money and claiming that someone had found out about the China deal and deliberately sabotaged his home computers. He insisted she call the police, which she had, but they only laughed and told her to call Time Warner. After ten minutes of begging, the representative agreed to send a repairman in the afternoon. Meanwhile, Paul was insisting that no one be allowed in the apartment until the police had dusted it for fingerprints and performed other forensic duties.
Downstairs at the Gooches’, Mindy took a box of frozen waffles out of the freezer. “Sam?” she called out. “Do you want breakfast?”
Sam appeared in the doorway with his backpack. “I’m not hungry,” he said.
Mindy put a waffle in the toaster. “Well, that’s interesting,” she said.
“What?” Sam asked nervously.
“The Rices. Calling the police. Over a little interruption of Internet service.” The waffle popped out of the toaster, and she put it on a small plate, smeared it with butter, and handed it to Sam. “That’s the way it is with out-of-towners. They just don’t realize that in New York, these things happen.”
Sam nodded. His mouth was dry.
“When are you getting home from school?” Mindy asked.
“The usual time, I guess,” Sam said, looking down at the waffle.
Mindy picked up Sam’s knife and fork and cut off a piece of his waffle, put it in her mouth, and chewed. She wiped the butter off her lips with the back of her hand. “Whenever you get home, I’ll be here,” she said. “I’m going to take the day off. As the head of the board, I need to deal with this situation.”
Three blocks away, Billy Litchfield wasn’t having any trouble with his Internet service. After a sleepless night of worry, he was up, checking the art blogs, The New York Times, and every other newspaper he could think of to see if there was any mention of the Cross of Bloody Mary. There wasn’t, but Sandy Brewer was all over the financial pages with the announcement of his deal with the Chinese government to own a piece of their stock market, and already the outrage had begun. There were two editorials about the moral implications of such a deal, and how it might be a sign that high-earning individuals in the financial world could bond together to form their own kind of uber-government, with influence over the policies of other countries. It should be illegal, but at the moment, there were no laws in place to guard against such a possibility.
Sandy Brewer wasn’t the only person in the blogs. James Gooch was as well. Someone had taken a cell-phone video of James during his reading at Barnes & Noble and posted it on Snarker and YouTube. And now the hoi polloi were attacking James for his hair, his glasses, and his style of speaking. They were calling him a talking vegetable, a cucumber with specs. Poor James, Billy thought. He was so meek and mild-mannered, it was hard to understand why he could possibly be worth the negative attention. But he was successful now, and success was its own kind of crime, Billy supposed.
A few minutes later in midtown, Sandy Brewer, bloated and in a foul mood from the amount of alcohol he’d consumed the night before, strode into Brewer Securities, grabbed the soft basketball from the chair in his office, went into Paul Rice’s office, and threw the basketball at Paul’s head. Paul ducked. “What the fuck, Rice? What the fuck?” Sandy screamed. “Twenty-six million dollars?” The blood rushed to his face as he leaned across Paul’s desk. “You’d better make that money back, or you’re out of here.”
With Philip away in Los Angeles, Thayer Core was having a grand old time hanging out in Philip’s apartment, drinking his coffee and red wine and occasionally having sex with his girlfriend. Thayer was far too self-centered to be particularly good at sex, but every now and then, when she let him, he would go through the motions with Lola. She made him wear a condom and sometimes two because she didn’t trust him, which made it much less exciting but was made up for by the thrill of doing it in Philip’s bed. “You know you don’t love Philip,” Thayer would say afterward. “Of course I do,” she’d counter. “You lie,” Thayer would say. “What kind of in-love woman has sex with another man in that man’s bed?” “It’s not really sex with you and me,” Lola replied. “It’s more something to do when I’m bored.”
“Thanks a lot.”
“You don’t expect me to fall in love with you, do you?” Lola would ask, screwing up her face in distaste, as if she’d just eaten something unpleasant.
“Who’s that young man I always see coming into the apartment?” Enid asked Lola one afternoon. She’d popped in to borrow a cartridge for her printer. She was always “borrowing” Philip’s office supplies, and Lola couldn’t understand why Enid didn’t go to Staples, like everyone else. “You know, you can order supplies online,” Lola said, crossing her arms.
“I know, dear. But this is much more fun,” Enid said, pawing through Philip’s stuff. “And you didn’t answer my question. About the young man.”
“Could be anyone,” Lola said nonchalantly. “What does he look like?”
“Tall? Very attractive? Reddish-blond hair and a disdainful expression?”