“Cheetah Global is voting soon. I’d like to get you in front of them. Any chance we can visit them together?” I ask.
Who would I put my boss out in front of before payday but my best client? I envision the client singing my praises to Simon just as he inks my bonus check. I doubled the commissions Cheetah paid to Feagin this year. I shake Greene’s damp hand and head toward King McPherson, head trader and member of the compensation committee.
King is an excellent second choice to rub shoulders with early in the evening. A striking six-foot-four former Duke basketball player, he quickly becomes the center of any party once a woman’s inhibitions are numbed. In other words, if I don’t talk to him early, I’m not going anywhere near him later.
“Isabelle!” he yells as I make my way over. He is leaning against the bar with Ballsbridge.
“Happy holidays, sweetie,” King says while planting a kiss that includes a small lick on my cheek. I choose not to notice the lick. King is the kind of guy I dated before I took up the cause of the underemployed. He’s dashing and funny with an intimate manner that sucks people in. It didn’t take long to see a shiftiness I couldn’t trust. To compare? When my husband, Bruce, says he didn’t come home because an engine fell out of an airplane while he was flying home from a conference in St. Martin, and that he emergency-landed in St. Barths where the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition was being shot, and that he didn’t call because he was sharing a room with [insert supermodel’s name], whom he was just friends with, and that he didn’t want to wake her, it is actually true. With a guy like King, it’s just not true. I knew I could handle being the breadwinner, but I couldn’t handle being the lied-to wife. I used to be the lied-to girlfriend and that life wasn’t for me.
King shifts his hand to the lower-back part of my skirt and presses into the small of my back while turning me around to face the bar. Marcus reaches over and pulls the hand off me, like some self-appointed big brother. This should make me feel cared for, but I hate it. I know how to take care of myself.
“Check out what Ballsy bought for his kids!” he says, now hanging his thumb on the back of my skirt. It’s distracting and infuriating at the same time but I just go with it and am glad that Marcus lets it go too. While I love his support, it sometimes feels patronizing, like he won’t let me fight my own fights.
I turn obligingly to face a coveted, hard-to-find, four-part Greybeards Castle. I know because my seven-year-old wanted one and I told him Santa doesn’t do $289 toys. I may be wealthy but I’m not spoiling my kids like that. But Ballsbridge does. The men giggle as they insert the batteries and put the giant plastic keys in the fortress doors (oh please, house keys for a castle?) and hear the castle screech, “Intruder! Intruder!” Bells and sirens roar and King’s hand heads farther south toward my ass, actually inside my skirt’s waistband. Each time the sirens go off he laughs and with each laugh he fans his hand to brush my ass.
I have two thoughts: I’m disgusted at myself for not walking away, for putting up with this stuff just to talk business, and second, I think of me dumping my toys to hide my other life while Marcus wants to show them off. He’s boasting that he went toy shopping, while King says, “That Ballsy, such a good family guy.”
“Hey, golden girl.” I’m pulled away from King, causing his hand to be caught on my skirt for a moment, by one of the guys on my Avoid list. This is the stuff I’ve rehearsed for.
He’s Salvatore Brody, whom everyone calls Sally, co-head of the over-the-counter desk, and right now he’s dancing like an Irish/Italian—a man bred from two cultures known for step-dancing and red wine, and from where I stand, he seems to be indulging in both. I try and follow his moronic motions, smiling all the while as I cross, hop, and 1, 2, 3, 4 while keeping my arms firmly at my side.