Robert’s three o’clock appointment was US Representative Mike Nesbitt, one of Robert’s best friends from college. They went to the Cotton Bowl together every January and celebrated opening day of deer-hunting season every November. They even had matching Audemars Piguets. But Nesbitt had dropped the ball on an important favor Robert wanted. Some regulation that Robert needed relaxed (his word). He basically wanted Nesbitt to send the regulation out for a massage, or a colonic. Anyway, news had broken yesterday—a lurid photo of Nesbitt at the W Hotel with a prostitute—so here he was now. The assumption being, of course, that Robert was responsible for the breaking news.
Robert’s office door was closed, so I couldn’t hear Rep. Nesbitt through the glass, but I could see him yanking on his neatly cut, pomaded brown hair and on the crisp red knot of his necktie. He leaned forward in his chair, pointed his finger into Robert’s face, and yelled something along the lines of, You mother#%!@ing c@#%$ucker! That was my cue.
As I’d been trained to do any time it appeared like Robert was having difficulty with someone, or they might try to murder him, I picked up my phone and buzzed his line pretending he had an important call. It always amazed me how talented Robert was at this act—he never gave us away by glancing knowingly at me or by not appearing surprised enough. He could have given any Method actor a run for his money the way he refused to break character, except maybe Daniel Day-Lewis, because that guy took pretending to a whole new level of insanity.
At the sound of my first buzz, Robert huffed and held up his hand, cutting Nesbitt off midsentence. He grabbed his phone’s receiver like it was the biggest imposition of all time. “This better be important.”
“Do you need an out?” I whispered conspiratorially. This was the extent to which Robert’s viciousness had, up to this point in my life, been a blood sport I could watch and support and enable from the safety of my cubicle.
“Tell him I’ll just have to call him back,” Robert barked—which meant he was all good with his fight, that he was winning and maybe even enjoying himself.
He slammed the receiver back down onto its base, like always, except this time he must have knocked some buttons because his phone hadn’t hung up properly. Somehow he’d put himself on speakerphone.
“Now, where were we?” I heard him say through my phone’s receiver, with crystal clarity. All I had to do was hang up my phone and it would disconnect us—but then I heard Nesbitt’s reply: “We were just discussing what a lowlife rat bastard you are.”
Whoa. Not hanging up. This scene had the dramatic potential of a Dynasty catfight, circa 1985—my latest Netflix nostalgia binge.
Robert chuckled just like a billionaire on pre-present-day-golden-age television would. Though I’m pretty sure back then the billionaires were only millionaires, since a million dollars was still a lot of money.
“This was too malicious, even for you, Bob,” Nesbitt said. (Bob?!) “To turn on me this way, after all we’ve been through together.”
“Who turned on whom?” Robert was cool as a cucumber pickle from Momofuku.
“There was nothing I could do. My hands were tied, you know that.”
“Bullshit,” Robert said.
I could hear that Nesbitt was about to cry, which would have both disgusted and exhilarated Robert. “You’ve destroyed my career, Bob, my entire family, for what? Because you’re pissed off about not getting an FCC waiver? Are you fucking serious?”
“You betrayed me,” Robert said, and the acid from my stomach began boiling up my throat. This was how nasty it got when someone crossed Robert.
“You betrayed me,” I heard Robert say yet again, just before I hung up the phone.
I’d heard enough.
Nesbitt betrayed Robert, so Robert ruined him. Simple as that. This was the Robert the public read about in malicious headlines (in the more liberal papers) and cruel blog posts, the one they referred to (like Margie Fischer did) as a bully and a propagandist. A monster. This was the version of Robert that had never applied to me before, that I’d never had to fear—but did now.
—
THAT NIGHT, we met at Bar Nine. Emily, Ginger, Wendi, Lily, and me. Bar Nine was the only place within walking distance of the Titan building that didn’t feel like a Midtown bar. It was a wash of red light and flickering candles, oversize velvet couches and—fortunately for us—a private back room.
The five of us eyed one another from around a too-low wooden table. We’d all come straight from the same place of work, but who could tell? Between Emily’s diamonds and Ginger’s fuck-me pumps, Wendi’s bondage pants, and Lily’s cardigan with giraffes on it, we looked like the snapshot of a new Tumblr meme. We may as well have had a neon sign over our heads blinking, We’re a ragtag group up to something no good! Though a sentence that long would have required a lot of neon, so fluorescents were another option.
Wendi had her laptop out on the table and she was showing us what her computer program could do, which sounded a lot to me like computerstuff computerstuff functionality bitmap vector browser analytics computerstuff computerstuff.