Chapter 4 Platitudes #2
But it did cross my mind that Smith had other benefits as well, including the reality that it would be more difficult for Theo to see me or me to see him.
There was no train service between Northampton, Massachusetts, and Manhattan, the way there was between New York and New Haven.
He’d have to drive to New England, or I’d have to take a Peter Pan bus to New York.
And the realization that Nick Foster had seen us together at a hotel had me feeling the need for separation.
It wasn’t just that I wanted to protect him, though I did; I was also frustrated that I craved a boyfriend to comfort me in the wake of Kenny Foster’s death, and the closest thing I had to one had to keep his distance.
Sure, he had called me the night of the accident, two rings at nine p.m., after which he had hung up.
Our signal. But by the time I called him back, ringing his office the next day and lying to his secretary that I was Lindsay Horan, a fake secretary for a fake researcher at Braniff Airways, he was in meetings.
He was a management consultant at RCG, the (then) prestigious Rexton Consulting Group, a cadre of former senior executives from Fortune 100 behemoths who would parachute into a company, solve a problem, and then exit stage left.
Their jokes, which he shared with me as if I were a peer, included these:
What’s the definition of a business consultant? A man who knows sixty sexual positions and no women.
What’s the definition of a business consultant? A man who’ll borrow your watch to tell you what time it is, and then charge you twenty grand.
What are the two things you need to get to become a business consultant? Fired and business cards.
(Note how, back then, a business consultant was invariably a man.)
I was feeling the need to escape everyone in Tallmadge, of course, not merely Theo.
The day after Kenny’s funeral (yes, I was there), I went to visit my brother, Spencer, in D.C.
, sleeping on the couch in the studio apartment my parents were renting for him because his internship was unpaid.
My first full day there, a Wednesday, Spencer took me to the zoo.
It was one of those humid summer afternoons in the capital that give credence to the myth that the city was built on a swamp.
It wasn’t. But it was built where it is because of the presence of navigable waterways.
Still, my shirt was sticking to me, and Spencer’s was epoxied to him.
“I love to look at the lions,” he said as we stood and watched two of them dozing on rocks the size of pickup trucks, “but, man, are they bored. Superpredators, built to stalk, and here they just sit in the sun and sleep.”
“I think that’s what they do in the wild,” I told him. “Not an expert on big cats, but I’m pretty sure it’s the lioness that hunts.”
“Really?”
“Well, mostly. I mean, males will kill whatever threatens the pride. But the lioness is faster and fiercer.”
“Sounds like you are an expert.”
“Not really. I just know a little about predators.” He had a bag of popcorn, and I reached in for a handful.
“Mom and Dad are freaking out about your proclamation that you’re not going to go to college in a few weeks,” he said, staring at the animals, separated from us by both a moat and a fence. “You will go, right?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Nah, you’ll change your mind. I know you.”
“I won’t. I just can’t.”
“Well, I still believe you will. The only reason I have any doubt at all is the fact you’re here with me right now, instead of playing golf.”
“The whole idea of golf makes me sick.”
He shrugged. “If you fell off a horse, you’d get back on.”
(Ride me, girl, ride me, said Theo once, when he was bucking beneath me in bed.)
“How come you stopped playing?” I asked Spencer.
“I went to college.”
“People play golf at college.”
“Not really. Who has time to spend four hours on the course—unless they’re on the team?” He started walking around the lions’ enclosure, and I followed. “I’ll take it up again when I’m done at Princeton. Golf matters in the business world. Look at even the mediocrities at our club.”
“Mediocrities at golf or business?”
“Hah! I meant business. But you thought golf.”
“I played with the president of Lambert Foods two weeks ago. He’s pretty damn successful,” I said, unsure why I was feeling defensive about the place.
I had never viewed it as a great course or its members as the sorts of robber barons who made lesser men quake—or retained the services of men like Theo Catton.
“You beat him?”
“I did.”
“There you go, you’re a teenage girl and—”
I punched him in the arm to shut him up, a good-natured but nonetheless solid smack.
He grunted, but there was laughter in it.
“I can see you, maybe, postponing Yale a year. Maybe. That’s Mom and Dad’s hope, if you really don’t go in a couple of weeks.
But you’ll be playing golf again before the fairways are covered in leaves. ”
“No, I won’t. I can’t get the image of Kenny toppling over after I hit him out of my head.”
“You didn’t hit him. A golf ball did.”
“Still…”
“Dad says his family might sue the club. Or the company that made the net. Or both.”
“I have no idea. But I saw his mom and dad the Saturday after I killed him, and I saw them again at the funeral. Mr. Foster seems to have his shit together, but Mrs. Foster sure doesn’t.”
“And you don’t either. At least not yet. And that kinda makes sense.”
“Would you?”
“God, no. You’d probably be a sociopath if you did.
But it’s like, I don’t know, you were driving the car and ran over a sleepwalker in the middle of the night who walked right smack into the middle of the road.
Or someone walked right in front of you at a shooting range and you shot him by accident.
Neither would be your fault. It would be theirs. ”
“This wasn’t Kenny’s fault!”
“Okay, I shouldn’t have put it that way. But it’s not like you made a mistake. I think the detectives spooked you, and—”
“The detectives didn’t spook me.”
“Has Dad gotten you a lawyer?”
“Yes, if we need one. A guy named Mr. Barker. We spoke on the phone. He’s one of the reasons I’m here. He wanted me to come to his office on Park Avenue yesterday. Just to chat, he said. Just in case. I came here instead.”
He tossed some popcorn onto the ground for the pigeons. “You took the train to see me instead of meeting your lawyer in person? Not sure that was the best choice, Mira,” he murmured.
“Maybe not. But he said on the phone that he can’t see how or why I could ever be held legally responsible and I have nothing to worry about.”
“There you go.”
“But the fact is, I killed Kenny Foster and nothing is ever going to change that,” I reminded him. “Nothing. Kenny’s gone, and I’m still here. Mostly.”
“Mostly?”
I sighed. “Yeah. Mostly,” I reiterated, and as vague as that was, I made sure my tone was as absolute as it was final.