Absentmindedly he fingered the Band-Aid on his neck; for the first time in years, he had cut himself shaving, and it was a doozy. Thank God you couldn’t kill yourself with a Gillette Fusion razor.
He scrolled through the contacts on his iPhone. He wasn’t sure what he expected to find, but he was hoping there was a name there he could talk to. Just call and say hello. He had noticed that none of his golf buddies had phoned him since that one call on Saturday afternoon, and that was well before the scope of the violence and bacchanal were clear. Of course, those guys might be more accurately described as golf acquaintances: a group of men, all five to ten years older than he was, whom he saw on occasional Saturdays. They talked about work and they talked about their families, but he was pretty sure he had never spent any time with any of them away from the country club. Away from the golf course. Their wives recognized each other when their paths crossed at supermarkets and restaurants, but Kristin had never taught any of their children.
He was also acutely aware that none of the people he thought were his friends at Franklin McCoy had checked in. He guessed he was glad the women he worked with hadn’t called. He was embarrassed, and he wasn’t sure what he would have said—what someday soon he would have to say—to Anna Gleason. Or to Sue Miles. Would they be sickened or merely surprised? He couldn’t decide. And the men? He had almost invited two of his male work pals to the party, so he would have some friends of his own there: David Pace and Will Dundon. He always enjoyed having lunch with one or both of them, and they were clearly a pair who wouldn’t have minded a stripper and a little harmless drinking. But in the end, he hadn’t. And he hadn’t, he knew, for the same reason he hadn’t invited the men with whom he played golf or the fellow he went to college with who lived in Scarsdale or the male halves of any of the couples with whom he and Kristin socialized. (Lord, the male halves of those couples didn’t dare call him: they were all friends through their wives.) He hadn’t invited any of his friends because he had understood on some core level that this whole bachelor party thing was kind of juvenile. Kind of disturbing. Kind of gross. He hadn’t even told anyone ahead of time that he was hosting it.
He guessed that was why his friends hadn’t called him first. But Dundon and Pace from Franklin McCoy? He feared there was another reason, one that transcended awkwardness: self-preservation. At the moment, he was in exile. He was a pariah at the bank, and he was going to be given a very wide berth.
He wondered what would happen if he called his idiot younger brother and told him what Spencer was doing. So, Philip, your good friend Spencer is trying to blackmail me. His brother might be able to shame Spencer into letting go or at least stopping at thirty. But probably not. Spencer was a loose cannon. For all Richard knew, Spencer might go ballistic if the Chapman brothers ganged up against him: he might launch the video. He might become the wolf in a trap that chews off its own leg: upload the video and watch it go viral faster than the flu. He might be throwing away its blackmail potential, but he’d be ruining a certain Franklin McCoy managing director.
Besides, Richard knew he wasn’t emotionally prepared to tell Philip that the video existed. He was ashamed. He was Philip’s older brother, and older brothers never went to their younger brothers for help—at least not in the Chapman family. He held himself to a higher standard than Philip, and the video compromised that moral authority. He understood on some level that eventually he might have to tell his younger sibling. But he wasn’t there yet.
Now he tossed his iPhone onto one of the leather couch cushions beside him and watched it slide over the stains where strangers had been fucking last week. The bottom line? All of those names in his iPhone were worthless. He had absolutely no one on his side but Dina Renzi, and she was only there because he was paying her.
…