Chapter One
Cameron
The couple looked like they were in about their mid-fifties. Well, he looked about that old. The woman he was leading out of the building with her arm linked around his looked about half that age. I watched them. She wasn't dressed for work—not the kind that he did, in any case. She wore stilettos and a chic camel trench coat. Not the most practical work outfit, but then it probably depended on what your job was. It is none of my business, I thought, watching him lead the woman to a car. But if it wasn't, they'd be more goddamn discreet about it.
The man, I knew worked in the building. The woman? Hadn't seen her a day in my life. The two of them were familiar though. They stood on the sidewalk, kissing furiously. His name was Kirk Lourd. He drove a Mercedes, and he and his wife had three kids. She was a stay-at-home parent. They had probably sat at the same table that morning having breakfast. Hours later, and here he was, mauling a twenty-year-old right outside his place of work. He had some goddamn nerve. I didn't know whether that was a good or bad thing. Guess it depended on who you asked.
I couldn't imagine the stones on that guy. I mean, if you were going to do that shit, didn't you at least have enough shame to do it behind closed doors? Anyone could see them. What if his wife happened to come by? What then? What the hell did you even say? They finally separated, and he opened the car door for her. He patted her ass as she turned to get into it, saying something to her that I wasn't close enough to hear. What could that have been? It’s you I want to be with, I swear. I’d leave her if we didn’t have the kids. Yeah, or some other lie like that. He slammed the door shut, and the car started. Once it was gone, he turned and walked back into the building. Just like that.
You know what, Porter? She probably knows, I thought. Even better, she probably doesn't care. I shook my head and looked down at the ground. It was cold out; I could see my breath form clouds in front of my face, but the snow hadn't come yet. I was stalling. I had been outside the building almost twenty minutes. I wasn't late yet, but ten more minutes and I would be. The whole scene with Kirk and that woman…I'd probably be thinking about that all day. Or how about just forgetting it? It's none of your business anyway. Shit, he isn't your husband. If you had been inside, you wouldn't even have seen anything. Just pretend like it didn't happen.
That would have been nice. Just not giving a fuck and pretending everything was fine. What was that like? Kirk seemed to be able to pretend that his marriage and kids had never happened. It looked like that woman could pretend to be attracted to Kirk so he'd bankroll her, unless their love was real and it was just a shame that they hadn't met sooner. Yeah, too fucking bad. He had absolutely been at least thirty years old by the time her parents were welcoming her into the world. I liked to reserve my judgments because hell, I was no saint either, but goddamn. What the hell was wrong with some people?
It felt like a movie sometimes, because all the parts had already been written. A man, by birth or hard work—or a combination of the two—gets rich. He gets himself a loving partner, and they have a family together. They live in a beautiful home, raise beautiful children, and go on beach vacations in the summer and skiing holidays in the winter. You'd think that would be enough; it sounded like a pretty good way to live to me.
There were rules though, apparently. Once you hit a certain tax bracket, there was a certain car you had to drive. You had to get your suits from a certain place. You had to be unfaithful to your wife. It wasn't just the men; it was everyone. To make a play work, everyone had to play their role. That was just how the system fit together and worked—all of it. Society. Everyone got their script and acted their part. Whether it was a role you chose for yourself or one someone chose for you didn't matter. You just did it.
The whole street was on the move. Everyone had somewhere to be, somewhere to go. A role to fill. A job to do. The more I thought about it, the more I wondered how many people did what they did because they wanted to and not because they believed they had to or had been forced to believe that they had to.
Did it even make a difference? Kirk Lourd was probably lying to his wife. So what? He wasn't the first person to ever do it and wouldn't be the last either. What he ate didn’t make me shit. It wasn't any of my business in any case...until I had a wife and a couple kids and it was my turn to help keep the wheels spinning.
I went inside. My father was probably already here. Morning meetings were the usual. At the end of the day, I had a job to do. How about you concentrate on that, I thought, getting into the elevator that would take me up twenty-six floors. I had a role to play too. I was my father's son, and he had been his. For decades, that had meant only one thing. This: Porter Holdings—my father's legacy and my future.
A lot of people liked to think that they made their own choices, that they owned their own lives, but how many of us could really say that that was true? Our building was one of the tallest in the Salt Lake skyline. My office was on the top floor. I had worked at the firm since graduating, six or seven years ago, and I could look forward to another twenty-five or thirty where those had come from. My dad had worked here all his life, taking over after my grandfather had established the company. I was next. Just like that, that was how the wheel kept turning.
If you thought about it too much, it started to feel a little crooked. Unfair maybe, like it didn't make sense, but if you shut up and fell in line, then everything worked out. Actors received awards for portraying roles in movies, and we did, too, for the roles we played in our real lives. If you waited long enough. It wasn’t gold statuettes, but what were those good for anyway?
I knocked at the door of my father's office, saying good morning to his secretary, Hope. I remembered her from a time when she didn't have the grey hair at her temples and light lines around her eyes, even when she wasn't smiling. She had worked at the company for god knew how long. When I had been a teenager, spending time at my dad's office instead of getting into trouble like a normal kid over school breaks, she had covered for me the couple times that I had snuck out when I hadn't been supposed to and gotten back to the office late. Earlier than that, I remembered sitting at her desk, doing my homework the days I'd come to the office after school instead of going straight home. It was never too early, according to Grayson Porter, to start working towards your future.
"Morning, Hope," I said. "Old man already at it?"
"As usual," she said, smiling kindly at me. "Mr. Hamm's with him too. They're expecting you."
Brett? Made sense. He had been working at the company for almost as long as Hope had. Only difference was he'd show up at the house sometimes. He and my dad were friends and working together so long, and somehow, they hadn't managed to screw that up. I heard my dad on the other side of the door and walked in. After my childhood bedroom at my parents’ house and school, my dad's office was probably the place that I had spent the most time as a kid. It was a big, airy space, with wood floors and luxurious leather furniture. My dad and Brett Hamm were sitting on the couches across
from a mahogany coffee table, talking. They stopped when I walked in.
"Took your time today, son," my dad said. I shrugged and walked over to them.
"What'd I miss?" I asked, sitting on the last couch, a leather loveseat that faced my dad's large, antique style desk. The blend of modern and antique elements was something that I had only started appreciating as an adult, even though I had spent hours in his office since childhood. At my parents’ house, my mom had taken care of the interior decorating. My dad's office was the only place that really reflected who he was. A balanced blend of traditional and modern—same as the values he held and what he had tried to teach me my whole life.
"Not much; you're lucky this morning," Brett said in a mock-warning tone. I wasn't late; my father just set his clocks early. We launched into easy conversation about nothing in particular, catching up after the weekend that had passed. Brett brought up a project that the company had been working on: a housing development in Draper. I had grown up hearing about developments, acquisitions and investments so much, I wasn't sure I found it interesting myself or just did by force. I respected what he did. He had grown the family business exponentially in the years that he had been at the helm. He was good at what he did and had earned his position. I just didn't know why I had to want the same thing.