My memory wasn’t all that good, but I could still remember a few of the women I had seen him with. My mother used to drive me past his office at lunchtime, and she would check to see who he was going to lunch with. Most of the time, it was a young blonde or brunette from the office. Sometimes, he would meet the women at a local restaurant, and other times, they left work with him.
I still remembered how he’d grab onto them and kiss them with so much passion that my mother would burst into tears. As a young boy, I vowed never to do such a thing to a woman as long as I lived. That was why one-night stands worked better for me.
The few times I had been in relationships, fidelity was something I could always assure my girlfriend of. I absolutely refused to ever cheat on a girl. Although, if they chose to cheat on their men, that didn’t seem to bother me as much. One-night stands were the best solution I could come up with. I met them, enjoyed them, and moved on. There wasn’t any of that emotional stuff to bog down my life with.
Women often didn’t even bother to hide the fact that they had a boyfriend or husband from me. They seemed justified in their betrayal and often told me of all the affairs their man had already had, and that they were in search of getting even with him.
I suspected that the baseball player’s wife I had traveled with probably made sure the paparazzi knew where we were. She was angry with her husband and desperate to get back at him, after he had an affair with a famous actress.
It seemed a sad existence to stay in a relationship where both people just wanted to have affairs and hurt the other person. That certainly wasn’t something I ever wanted to deal with. If I ever did find a woman to settle down with, I figured I would know she was the right one because I wouldn’t want to let her go after just one night.
“Here are your eggs,” I said as I joined my father at my kitchen table.
“Chase, I know it seems like I'm hard on you, but you have to get your life together. Meet a nice girl or something. Find a hobby other than sex and alcohol. You need to start finding your way in life.”
“I know, Dad,” I said.
The truth was I had thought about living a calmer lifestyle, but I just hadn’t been motivated enough. Spending my nights at clubs and parties was an easy way to keep busy all the time. I didn’t have to worry about the silence of being home alone or the loneliness of not having people in my life who cared about me.
Gambling had also recently become a fun hobby of mine. I enjoyed dabbling in some underground poker tournaments and betting on sports games. It was a surprising advantage when you knew the quarterback of a team was going through personal problems with his wife. Or when the head pitcher had just cheated, and his wife kept him up all night yelling at him.
I did have my family and my two best friends, Mathew and Carlos. But everyone else had their own lives and didn’t have time for me very much. My brothers were all busy. They just had too much going on for me to bother them. My best friend Carlos got married – it was a sad day when he got married to Maria. He had been my last hold out on the party scene, and when he settled down, I had to start going out alone. Mathew had a steady girlfriend and never spent much time away from her at all.
“Here’s the deal, Chase. You still have your job. Start showing up, and you’ll get a paycheck. It’s plenty enough for you to live on, if you stop buying rounds of drinks at clubs and throwing your money around like you have a money tree.”
“How can I show you I’m responsible enough to take over?”
“I don’t know. You’ll just need to start making some major changes, and we can talk about it. Certainly not seeing your face on the front of any newspapers for a while would help your case.”
“Dad, I’m going to make you proud.”
“I hope you will.”
We hugged it out, and my father finally left. I was left standing in my million-dollar house, hoping I would be able to figure out some way to get my bills paid. The good news was that if I showed up to work and waited for my paycheck, I took home over $20,000 a month. The bad news was that wasn’t enough money.
I had been borrowing money from Jose Escabar lately, and I didn’t really want to get behind on those payments. He was tougher than any bank would ever be. I had heard horror stories about what he does to people when they don’t pay him back on time. And I definitely didn’t want to be one of those people.
My gut told me I should have told my father about my hard money loans with Escabar, but I decided he certainly wouldn’t think I was being responsible if he knew about them. Unfortunately, I needed to get the money together quickly to make a payment to Escabar.
I clicked through my bank accounts on my phone and quickly realized I needed to get dressed and show up for work. Escabar expected a $10,000 payment by the end of the month, and that only covered a portion of what I owed him.
Panic started to set in at the thought of not being about to pay him back. I needed to figure out a new plan to get him his money.
It wasn’t an option. Paying Escabar back had to be my top priority. Nothing else mattered as much as getting him his money. I had to get my shit together. I had to figure out a way to make my father trust me and quickly, before I ended up having my legs broken.
I walked into my closet and pulled out one of my custom suits. If I had to head into work, I was going to be dressed for the part. Work wasn’t that hard for me. The problem was more in dealing with my expectations. I always wanted everyone to be happy that I was there. It was such a letdown to see people look at me as if I shouldn’t be in the office. I understood what my father was saying, though, and I would
have to show up to work more often if I wanted the people in the company to believe in my ideas.
If my father wanted to see that I could lead the company, then that was exactly what he would see. I put my tailored suit on, with my Hermes shoes, and called our car service to come take me to work.
“Mr. Foster, I’m sorry, but you are no longer an authorized user of this account,” the operator at Select Cars said.
“What? How am I supposed to get to work?”
“I’m sorry, sir. Your father removed you from the account.”
“Fuck!”