Page 82 of Boardroom Ties
Behind us, the staff are unloading shotgun cases out of the back of an old-school Land Rover and lining them up on a folding table draped in green felt. The two dozen or so partners are clustered nearby, cheeks already ruddy from the cold and a pre-dawn nip of something brown out of someone’s flask.
Bill Oglethorpe is at the center of the throng of men, alongside Raymond, who keeps clapping Bill on the back over and over again while they guffaw about something I cannot and do not want to hear. They’ve always gotten along well, as far as I know—after all, their names are the two on the doors of the firm—so it’s strange that there’s an almost-menacing kind of energy radiating from Raymond.
It’s like the claps on Bill’s back are designed to hurt the old man, not to chuckle along with him.
I shudder and look away. I’m probably reading too much into things. Too much tweed and pipe smoke does that to a girl’s brain.
Not to mention the whole, y’know,murder plot that is actively unfolding today.
In a larger ring around the main partners stand the juniors and associates, all the lower rungs of the ladder, ranged outward in order of importance. Matvei is close to the center. I see his black crop of hair towering above the others. He glances at me once, letting his blue-eyed gaze travel over me from boots to bobble hat with absolutely no expression whatsoever, then looks away.
Which is, of course, what we agreed to.
Which is also, of course, a little hurtful.
Snap out of it, dummy,I remind myself.There are more important things than your silly crush.
Even lower on the totem pole than the associates are the wives. They form a circle of their own a polite few paces away. It’s a flock of long camel coats and dainty gloves, of curled blond hair and glittering diamond necklaces.
I’m technically a member of this ring, but I’m not participating in the least. I don’t care to exchange notes on whichever ski trip they took last and whichever ski trip they’re planning next.
My attention is mostly on one member of the women’s cluster: Susan Oglethorpe.
She’s standing at the far edge across from me, slightly apart, in a fur-trimmed parka, sipping from a thermos. She hasn’t looked at me, but neither does it seem like she’s actively ignoring me. She’s justthere, in my peripheral vision, a steady, cool, and unbelievably terrifying presence.
I run through every horrifying possibility on a loop, like a roulette wheel that only lands on red when all my money is stacked up on black.
If Susan tells Bill, there’s no telling how much longer I have left to live. It’s so easy to picture Bill swirling the Glenlivet around his glass during the post-hunting lunch and muttering to Raymond,Say, old chap, you might want to keep your wife on a shorter leash.
If that happens, I am dead by nightfall.
She might not tell Bill, though. Which could be worse. If she whispers to the wrong person in New York high society, then it will ripple out through all the usual channels until it forms a noose around my neck. That’s easy to imagine, too. Susan at a charity gala, leaning in to a gossipy friend to say,You’ll never believe what I saw at The Crispin, but you cannot tell a soul.
And then that friend tells one more friend, and so on, and so on, until the rumor circles the Upper East Side like a vulture and lands, fat and bloodthirsty, on Raymond’s desk, for him to deal with as he pleases.
Her not tellinganyonemight, in some ways, be the worst outcome of all. Because it means I’ll spend the rest of my life—or at least, the rest ofRaymond’slife—waiting for the other shoe to drop. An anvil above my head like Acme Co.’s finest, and I’m poor Wile E. Coyote about to get smushed flat.
I don’t know what Susan wants. That’s the problem.
With Raymond, at least, I always know what he wants.
With Susan, the menu is unwritten.
A throat clears and everyone turns to look. Standing in front of the tables is a staff member in a flat tweed cap, who announces that the guns will be distributed shortly, and could we please form an orderly line?
The clutch of partners around Bill peels off toward the folding table, jostling and laughing like schoolboys, which is what grown men become when they’re about to be handed something with a trigger.
Raymond falls into the queue near the front, of course. God forbid he wait behind another man for anything.
I shove my mittened hands deeper into my pockets and take my place at the back of the queue.
Up ahead, I watch Raymond accept his shotgun from the staff member, break it open, peer down the barrel with the air of a man who knows what he’s doing—which he most definitely does not; I’ve seen him try to assemble an Ikea nightstand, and that led to almost as much bloodshed as today’s hunt will—and then snap it shut with a satisfyingclack.
“That’ll do the trick, eh?” he booms to the crowd. All his sycophants laugh on cue, just like they’re paid to do.
More of us shuffle through. Down the line, Matvei is handed his. He takes it as if the gun was made for his hand and his hand alone. No fuss. No flourish. No drama whatsoever. He breaks it, checks it, closes it, and rests it in the crook of his arm. It’s a stark, night-and-day difference from Raymond’s gaudy display. Efficiency, stripped of all the spare parts.
Eventually, everyone is in possession of a firearm. This is, as some people might call it, when the fun is meant to begin. I’m not one of those people, but then again, it’s not like anyone gives a crap about my opinion.
