Chapter 52
Chapter
Dress hiked up and bunched in one hand, I sprint away from the casino floor, the chngh chngh chngh of someone cashing out ringing in my ears, and book it up the escalator, through the food court.
I shove past people standing in line—there’s a smattering of Hey!
and Watch it!—and speed toward the carpeted passageway that connects to the neighboring casinos.
I check over my shoulder, thinking maybe I lost him, and—shit!
—there’s Mark Winterson, coming after me at a light jog, jacket thrown over his shoulder.
So I pick up the pace, heading for the Bellagio.
Groups of tourists are clustered in the hall, some of them staring and pointing.
I realize that I’m still clutching the bouquet, and I raise it above my head.
Ahead of me, people gasp and shout, pressing closer and raising their hands to catch it, so I lob it as hard as I can toward them as I run past, and there’s some commotion as they scuffle to get it. Behind me, someone cheers.
“Ruby!” Mark Winterson calls after me. “Hey!”
I twist around to confirm that, yes, he is actually still running after me, red-faced and furious in the suit he was planning to get married in. “Come back!” he yells. “Stop! Don’t make this harder than it has to be!”
I wrench off the ring and toss it at him, and he yelps and goes scrambling after it. Maybe trying to recoup his investment will slow him down long enough for me to get away.
I rush through the winding hallways and down another escalator, weaving more deftly between groups of people than Mark Winterson on the freeway, and wrench the veil off my head and toss that too.
A burst of floral scent overtakes me as I jog past the conservatory, with its fountains and unreal displays of plants.
I nearly lose my balance on the smooth marble floor as I risk a glance behind me again—and sure enough, there, far down the hall, is Mark Winterson.
He’s slowed to a brisk power-walk—maybe because he hates making a scene—but he’s still tailing me without hurrying, which is somehow even more sinister.
I scramble up and race through the lobby, beneath the Dale Chihuly glass blooming from the ceiling, and slip into the revolving door, panic rising as they force me to slow my pace, thinking, Can this thing go any faster?
Then the summer Vegas heat envelops me like a cozy oven, and I take off running down the drive alongside the iconic fountain. There’s no way he’ll follow me outside. Too sweaty.
Across Las Vegas Boulevard, a giant poster of Martha Stewart beams at me from the fake Arc de Triomphe.
Something tells me to run toward it, and the lights are on my side—I barely catch the tail end of a Walk signal as I sprint across the twelve-lane street, sweating profusely into this (surely expensive) gown.
I don’t see Mark Winterson behind me anymore. There’s a busy street between us, but I don’t know how much time that will buy me, so I scramble inside Paris and duck behind one leg of the fake Eiffel Tower, fumbling my phone out of my purse.
And my first instinct is to call Greg.
Multiple giant television screens on the wall in front of me show the same racehorse sprinting from different angles. Relatable, I think as the phone rings and rings. Run, girl, run!
“Ruby? Are you all right?” Greg answers. “Where are you?”
“P-paris! Paris!”
“You’re not in Vegas?” He sounds as panicked as I feel. “You left the country?”
“No! No, I am! I didn’t!” I can barely breathe. “Paris in Vegas! I followed Martha Stewart here!”
“What?” Greg yells.
“Paris the hotel and casino in Las Vegas, Nevada!” I yell.
“Stay there, I’m coming!”
“No! No, Greg, I—” He sounds so ready to spring into action, it makes me tear up.
Wherever I need him, that’s where he wants to be, even if it’s a ridiculous distance away.
“I’m touched, really, I am, but I can’t wait here for, like, five hours, I—I called you because—” A strained laugh bursts out of me.
“Because I’m on the run and you’re the first person I’d call in an emergency. ”
“Ruby, I’m nearby. Stay there.”
He hangs up, and my head is spinning, a mighty What the fuck? reverberating in my head.
But then there’s Mark Winterson again, walking calmly through the front door.
I dive behind a cluster of video poker machines and scuttle sideways underneath the uncanny painted sky, inserting myself into a big Asian extended family moving together down the floor.
I hop to a group of women who seem to be here for a bachelorette party, clustered around the bride, who’s wearing a sash and, for some reason, rabbit ears and a cotton tail.
“Oh my God, I love your dress!” one of them exclaims, and I give her a strained smile as I duck behind a slot machine, low electronic rumbling sounds rattling my nerves.
I realize with a sinking feeling that I have no idea now if Mark Winterson is in front of me or behind me.
A motion in my peripheral vision startles me—but it’s just some giant craps dice, bouncing inside a plastic capsule on top of another machine.
Someone touches my shoulder, and I shriek and spring to my feet.
“Shh, shh—it’s okay, it’s okay!” There’s Greg’s astonished face, and I fling my arms around him, on the brink of a sob.
Then, across the room, I actually do see Mark Winterson—and we lock eyes for a second as Greg tugs my hand and we sprint down the fake-cobblestone street to the parking garage.
My stomach drops, seeing the line for the pay machine, but Greg powers past it.
“I already paid!” he exclaims, and my heart swells with pride.
Greg is so practical! Good in a crisis! We hop into his car, and as we peel out, I see Mark Winterson behind us in the rearview mirror, tossing his jacket to the ground.
For a while, as the aging Acura speeds down the I-15 out of Las Vegas, we can’t stop laughing. Every time we start losing steam and the car gets quiet, we look at each other and burst out laughing again.
“Can’t believe you followed me,” I say, grinning like an idiot.
“Couldn’t let you be stranded with that guy,” Greg says as his car strains uphill through brown hills dotted with Joshua trees and cacti. “Don’t think I slept the whole time you were at that wedding.”
Another mock business card flashes in my mind:
Greg De Leon
Childhood Crush and Hot Accountant
Doesn’t Dream of Labor but Organized a Union
Actually the Most Reliable Man I Have Ever Known
For a while, we sit in silence—both shell-shocked, maybe, giddy from tearing out of a hilarious location, basking in the glow of speeding off into the desert as fast as this twenty-year-old car will take us.
But slowly it feels like the warmth drains out of this small bubble we’re in together (even though I’m sweating, and the AC is weak).
Greg’s eyes dart between my outfit and the road. “You’re dressed up?” he says finally.
My hands twist in my lap. How am I going to explain any of this? “He asked me to marry him.”
“Oh,” Greg says, looking at me sideways again. “So did you…do that?”
“No!” I shout, too loud, all my nervous energy spilling out. “Because I don’t love him! And he’s kind of terrible! By all the metrics that matter, and some of the ones that don’t too!”
Greg laughs at my outburst. “Okay?”
Some tears of frustration spring to my eyes, and I wipe them away while the words tumble out.
“He just sprang it on me! And I thought, what if this is the thing that gets Mom out of Slack, finally? What if it is, and I never tried it? So I…I said yes, and…I got dressed up, but…I couldn’t go through with it. ”
For an agonizing moment, the only sounds are the wind whistling outside the car and the rumbling of the engine. Greg sighs, wrestling with his own thoughts. Up ahead, the mountains look like streaks of muddy watercolor on the horizon, shades of brown fading to deep purple, the color of a bruise.
Greg checks his mirrors, like he’s trying to see if a black Mercedes might be following us. And when he’s satisfied with the empty highway behind us, he pulls over at a rest stop—a diner and a gas station, surrounded by desert scrub—and parks in front of the pump.
He kills the engine and turns to me. “You’ve had quite a day, huh?”
That makes me burst out laughing, but it quickly turns into sobbing. I almost wish I still had that veil to hide me.
Greg takes my face gently in his hands, wiping at my tears with his thumbs. “Shh, shh. I’ve got you. You’re okay.”
Everything around us goes into soft focus. I’m sticky and sore and so thoroughly exhausted, but I’m so filled with affection for him and the absurd way he just came through for me.
I lean closer to kiss him, but Greg gently presses me back, hands on my shoulders.
“Ruby, hey,” he says, voice low, eyes roaming around my face.
“I think maybe, by now, you know how long I’ve wanted this, but…
you’re all dressed up to marry someone else.
Can’t help feeling like a rebound?” A bitter little chuckle shakes his chest, and he glances away, out the window.
“Maybe let’s cool off for a minute. See how you feel after sleeping on it.
” He runs a hand over his face and sighs again.
“Not wanting him…doesn’t mean you actually want me. ”
I let myself fall back against the passenger seat, arms crossed. “Do you even realize how long I’ve wanted you? It’s humiliating! It’s completely ridiculous.”
Greg scoffs, but still doesn’t look back my way. “Maybe you should tell me.”
“For ten years, basically.” I glare at him. “Do you know how exhausting it is to be in love with someone for a fucking decade?”
He lets out a short breath, like he’s trying not to laugh. “Okay, well, if that’s true…then what’s another day or two?”
Oh shit. Another day or two.
Monday! The layoffs!
I grab Greg’s arm, gripping it for dear life. “I have his password!” I exclaim. “Did you bring your laptop?”
We move into the diner next to the gas station, using Greg’s phone as a Wi-Fi hotspot.
I sign in to my Slack account, download the spreadsheet Mom found, enter the password, and—oh my God, everything is here, all laid out.
Every clandestine payment made from TKCORP to one of the GERBO LLCs to Mark Winterson and then on to what seems to be Erickson’s offshore bank account, in an amount just shy of $10,000.
There are routing numbers in the spreadsheet, too, apparently for Mark Winterson’s own reference.
He was even using one tab as a to-do list.
WIND DOWN SPECIAL PURPOSE ENTITIES
ENSURE SOX COMPLIANCE
PREPARE FOR IPO
So Erickson has been stealing from TKCORP—ever since he started, probably. And now that they want to take the company public, he brought in Mark Winterson to cover it up before they have to make more disclosures about the company’s finances.
Greg peers over my shoulder from behind and whistles.
“Um, yeah, I think we have enough to make a stink,” he says in a low voice. “Do you…know anyone in the media?”
I remember Anna from the reunion, telling me about her struggles in journalism. Maybe now she won’t have to sell her eggs.
I write everything up in an email, attach all the evidence, and send it.
And then I text her: Hey Anna! I know it’s the weekend, but I’ve got a huge scoop for you. Call me!
After I finish talking to Anna, we get back on the road, sandy earth and big sky stretching out around us while we sit in exhausted silence. An email notification pops onto my screen—a message from DocuSign. Update to: Relationship Contract. And in a text block in the body, it says:
Contract terminated in person (fleeing). Clauses one, four, and five still binding, as per agreement. —MW
I can’t help it—I start laughing, desperately, unstoppably, gasping for air, clutching my sides.
“What’s funny?” Greg asks.
“I’m such an idiot.”
My adrenaline peaked long ago, and now I’m crashing, my aching, hungover limbs so heavy, thoughts slowing and growing thick. My eyelids close and I drift off to sleep.