I stepped just inside the doorway.
“Will you order us some sandwiches from the Eye-talian place?” he asked. (He meant Mangia, the pasta and panini restaurant on West Fifty-Seventh Street.) And before I could even grab a pen and a piece of paper, the guys all started calling out their orders, most of which I already knew by heart anyway.
Mozzarella and tomato on a brioche roll for Hayes. Salami, provolone, and roasted peppers on a baguette for Cooper. Don’t forget to say “no watercress” on McCready’s smoked turkey on ciabatta. Dillinger, had he not been on television at the moment, would have wanted the herb-roasted chicken breast on Tuscan flatbread—just like Robert—except with tomatoes.
My college degree never covered this sort of material; there was no “Introduction to Remembering Breads, Toppings, and Condiments 101” at NYU, but it was cool—I could always recite a verse from Milton’s Paradise Lost to impress the Mangia delivery guy if I wanted to.
I returned to my desk to place the order, and there I found a g-chat message from Kevin: Another dinner date soon? I’ll share all my secret camera knowledge if that sweetens the pot. The message was followed by a winking smiley face that I did not like the looks of one bit.
Was I being paranoid or was Kevin trying to communicate to me—using a complicated flirtation code—that he had heard something, noticed something, or figured something out?
Just the thought was enough to make me forget if Evans wanted basil chicken salad or basil Parmesan chicken salad.
—
END OF DAY, Robert had Jason Dillinger in his office for a drink, to celebrate his successful television appearance. They were seated opposite each other on the living-room-like furniture across from Robert’s desk—Dillinger sitting up straight and rigid on the couch, and Robert lounging all the way back in his armchair, with his legs crossed. On the glass coffee table between them, there was a crystal ice bucket that I could see needed refreshing. Robert had no patience for watery ice.
So I stepped in, said, “Excuse me,” and reached for the bucket.
Robert was midsentence: “. . . and we put down new flagstone pavers and added lighting under the porch. It looks nice, real nice.” Then he paused, like he’d just noticed I’d entered the room. “You’ve never been out to the ranch, have you, Tina?”
I hugged the sloshing ice bucket close to my chest. “No, I haven’t.”
No, I hadn’t, but I’d heard all about it. Around the office, Robert’s upstate ranch was spoken of in language so ardent and enthusiastic that, taken out of context, one might think it was hell on earth: It’s fucking sick. It’s ridiculous. It’ll make you want to kill yourself. Of course, among the Titan men of the fortieth floor, this was the highest form of praise.
Unlike work parties, for which I always did the legwork, Robert’s ranch get-togethers were all his own. They were special, coveted. And I probably don’t need to tell you that Robert wasn’t an all-for-one, one-for-all type. No. He’d pick and choose who got an invite, seemingly at random—some of the guys had been invited many times over, others never once—but as with everything Robert did, everyone assumed there was a cunning methodology to it. For this reason, an invitation to the ranch became just one more carrot for everyone to compete for.
“Well, why don’t you come out this Saturday then?” Robert said. “I’m having a little barbecue. You can ride the train up with Dillinger and his wife. Do you. . .”—he stumbled on his own words for a moment—“. . . have a significant partner?”
A significant partner? The phrasing alone reminded me how little Robert actually knew about me. It was easy to forget because I knew everything—literally everything—about him, right down to his underwear size (42–44) and his favorite sock brand (VK Nagrani).
“No,” I said. “I’m alone, I mean, I—”
“You fly solo.” Robert grinned. “All right then. So you’ll ride the train with Dillinger and his wife.”
“Okay,” I said. “I’d love to. Thank you.”
So bowled over I was by this surprise, this un-fucking-believable carrot dangled in front of my face, that I forgot for a moment that I was stealing from this man.
“You ever shot a gun, Tina?” Robert asked.
“A what?”
“Do you shoot?” He must have noticed a terrified look on my face because he added, “Not at people. I mean, skeet, cans.”
“No,” I said.
“Well I’m gonna teach you then. By the time I’m done with you, you’ll be able to shoot out the eye of a needle.”
“You’ll love it,” Dillinger said, never one to like being left on the outskirts of a conversation. “Robert taught me my first time out.”
Kiss-ass.
“I can’t wait,” I said, and then just stood there awkwardly.