Ted felt both furious and humiliated. He glared back at Jamie, hating his guts. Then he turned on his heel and tried to leave Jamie’s office with what little dignity he had left– there was nothing else he could do. He’d gone home that night and pretended to Jill that everything was fine, but he could tell she knew something was wrong. He knew they were almost ruined, and he didn’t know how much longer he could keep it from her. The effort was sucking out his soul.
The next day, Min had stormed into his office. ‘What the fuck, Ted?’ she said, confronting him, eyes ablaze. ‘What happened? You said this was a sure thing!’
He quickly closed his office door behind her. ‘That’s what I was told. I lost heavily too,’ he told her, trying to placate her. She was so angry she threatened to move her portfolio.
‘That’s your prerogative,’ Ted said. At that point, he was under such intense pressure that he didn’t really care. He’d borrowed the money for that ruinous investment from a loan shark. All he had left to get him out of this was the brownstone, and if he lost the brownstone, he was afraid he’d lose Jill. So he didn’t much care if Min took her business elsewhere. He would have been happy never to see her again. But as she turned to leave, he said– it was a reflex, regretted immediately– ‘Please don’t tell Greg about this.’ He hated how small he sounded.
She’d looked at him with contempt and left his office without answering.
Now, Ted is as good as finished. He stares at himself in the bathroom mirror before he begins to shave. He really doesn’t see a way out. He can’t borrow any more money, and he can’t pay back what he’s already borrowed without heavily mortgaging or selling the brownstone. Life as he knows it is over. He’s going to have to tell Jill.
Jill observes Ted carefully in the mirror of their en suite bathroom as he shaves before work. He’s acting as though everything is normal, but there’s a heaviness about him, a repressed tension, a darkness in his eyes that wasn’t there even a few days ago. She’s finding it harder and harder to ignore.
‘Are you okay?’
‘Yes, I’m fine.’
She regards him for a moment. Finally, she says, ‘Don’t forget we have dinner with your brother tonight at the Odeon.’
‘Right. I haven’t forgotten.’
She sees his face tighten. Ted and his older brother, Greg, are civil to one another, but there’s always an undercurrent of rivalry. She would never describe them as close. She doesn’t particularly like Greg either. But he has invited them to dinner.
Now she wonders why.
Chapter Three
TED ARRIVES ATthe iconic Tribeca restaurant first. The reservation is under his brother’s name. Greg had called Jill a week ago and invited them to dinner; Ted is not sure why. He hasn’t spoken to his brother in a few weeks. Now he’s afraid that Greg’s ex-wife has told him about her disastrous investment and how it is all Ted’s fault. He hopes that Min might be keeping it to herself to avoid Greg making her feel even worse. But mostly Ted believes that if she’d told him, Greg would have been on the phone to him by now.
Perhaps Greg wants to make an announcement of some kind. Something annoying but benign– maybe Greg has acquired another company to sell off for parts or wants to celebrate a victory of some kind and needs an appreciative audience. Maybe he has cancer. Or maybe– Ted’s heart skips– maybe he’s met someone new. He hadn’t mentioned that he would be bringing anyone.
‘How many is the reservation for?’ he inquires of the busy hostess as he’s escorted to their table.
‘For three.’
It’s astounding how relieved Ted feels. He is weary of the parade of women in his brother’s life since his divorce from Min two years ago. Ted and Jill had liked Min, but apparently she couldn’t put up with his egotistical brother any longer. Ted assumed that she no longer wanted to live in his shadow. Greg admitted that he hadn’t wanted the divorce, but there wasn’t much he could do about it. Min wanted out and she got a hell of a lot of money for it– though Ted isn’t clear exactly how much. They didn’t have any children. Min had confided to Jill one night when she’d had too much to drink that they’d been trying for a baby for years and they were giving up; that could have been another reason why she left. It gave Ted some satisfaction to think that his brother might want children and be unable to have them, that there might actually be something Greg wanted that he couldn’t have, and that he might have lost a woman he actually loved because of it. It would have been very satisfying to Ted to father a bunch of smart, good-looking, overachieving kids and rub Greg’s face in it at every opportunity, but even that prospect wasn’t enough to make him and Jill want to have children.
Ted has a habit of being just a little early for everything; his brother is usually late, and Jill is always right on time. As Ted waits alone with his thoughts, he admits to himself that his relief isn’t just from not having to get to know another superficially attractive woman who wouldn’t have much to say and wouldn’t last long, but from something else.
Ted is his older brother’s sole heir. Greg told him so after his divorce, when he’d changed his will and was still bitter abouthow much money Min had received from the divorce settlement. He was clear that she wouldn’t get another cent out of him. He said that it would all go to his little brother instead. This had less to do with affection for his little brother than with anger at his ex-wife, Ted knew. But it had pleased him nonetheless. Greg currently has no wife and no children. Their parents are dead, and there are no other siblings, so who else would Greg leave his fortune to, if something should happen to him? A small amount would go to charity, Greg had told him, but he wanted to keep the bulk of the money in the family, with the family name.
Ted has been afraid that his brother will marry again. Maybe the fertility problem was Minerva’s. And if that happened, if Greg remarried and had children, of course the fortune would all go to Greg’s own family, and Ted would get nothing. That’s the way of the world. But if Greg were to die before he remarried… and it’s at this magical moment that a plan begins to form, although Ted doesn’t immediately realize it. It’s nebulous– it begins as curiosity, as fantasy. How much is Greg really worth? What are his health prospects? Is it awful to think this way, or merely human?
Ted sits alone at the table and considers his own financial crisis. And it occurs to him that he has a window of opportunity, before Greg remarries and possibly has a family. Even if he can’t have kids, should Greg die, the wife would probably get everything.
Jill interrupts his thoughts, coming up behind him, with her familiar scent of Mon Guerlain, and bending down to kiss him on the cheek. He looks up at her as if she is a revelation and then stands up. They smile at each other. They are always smilingat each other, like people do who are in love. But now he’s also smiling because he knows what the solution to his problem might be. It’s a shocking idea; he’s shocked that he’s even thinking it. He’s thinking it as he looks at Jill, and she has no idea. What a good thing that people can’t read each other’s minds.
‘I need a drink,’ she says breezily, sitting down across from him, and he sits back down again. ‘Order me a martini, please. Have you been here long?’
He shakes his head. ‘No, I just got here.’ He suddenly wants a drink too, something to steady him. He signals for a waiter. They order drinks– a martini for her, a Negroni for him. He checks his watch. Greg is almost ten minutes late already. Arrogance, that’s what it is. Making people wait, to show that he’s more important than they are. He did that even when they were kids. It’s not that Greg’s not aware of the time; he’s aware of everything.
Jill begins to tell Ted about her day at the gallery, but then Greg arrives and the atmosphere immediately changes. Greg always seems to take up a lot of space, a lot of air. He brings a different energy to the table. His expensive aftershave overwhelms Jill’s more subtle perfume. He’s six foot three, broad-shouldered but slim and athletic. They both have the family good looks, dark hair and blue eyes, and although Ted is two inches shorter, he thinks he is slightly more handsome than Greg, whose nose is just a bit too large.
‘Hey, Ted,’ Greg says, as he pats Ted on the back and sits down across from him, beside Jill. They’ve all come from work and both men are wearing expensive suits, although Ted knows that Greg’s suit is bespoke, from Michael Andrews, and his is not.
Ted smiles at his brother, remembering what he was just thinking. ‘Good to see you.’
‘Jill. You look ravishing, as always,’ Greg says.
