When he finally caught his breath, he pointed to the TV and said, "Turn up the volume. What's going on? Is your dad okay? Was there an accident?" His entire body filled with panic. At first he thought something might have happened to Jeffery. Although Jeffery was talked about in the media, he wasn't one of those highprofile celebrities who were hounded by reporters and paparazzi twenty-four hours a day. When people like Jeffery, famous for making billions of dollars, made headlines, there was usually a valid reason for it.
And that reason almost always tended to be disastrous.
Kenny just slumped back on the sofa, folded his arms, and closed his eyes.
The reporter on TV started talking about Jeffery and it didn't register at first. Evan had come in during the middle of the segment and he had to piece it all together. When he finally did, he sat there gaping at the screen, with one hand pressed to his chest and the other braced against the arm of the chair. When he finally looked at Kenny again, his chest caved in and he didn't know what to say.
Evidently, Jeffery had been caught with his pants down, and in one of the most embarrassing ways possible. The owner of the high-profile social media company Jeffery had been meeting with in Silicon Valley, Darin Bloomberg, had gone to Jeffery's hotel room on Friday night. Darin Bloomberg's wife had been following her husband and Darin didn't know it. The enraged wife stormed into Jeffery's hotel room, caught Jeffery and her husband in bed together naked, and fired shots over their heads. She ran out of bullets, hotel security caught her, and the police were called. After that, the media found out about it and the incident became toppriority news. There wasn't much else going on in the world that weekend, so there was no hope of it disappearing fast. To make matters even worse, someone-probably hotel security-had taken a video of Jeffery and Darin Bloomberg in bed together and posted it on the Internet. According to the TV reporter, the video went viral within an hour and the entire world seemed to be talking about the gay billionaire Wall Street Shark in bed with the allegedly straight married tech geek from Silicon Valley.
As Evan sat there in shock, wondering what to say to Kenny about all this, the phone rang and he reached across the coffee table to pick it up. When he heard Jeffery's voice on the other end, he walked into the kitchen so Kenny wouldn't hear what he was saying.
"What the fuck were you thinking?" Evan asked, keeping his voice low. He wanted to slam the phone into the wall next to the refrigerator. "When we agreed to an open marriage you said discretion was the key word. You told me you'd never embarrass me or Kenny or do anything in public that would hurt us. And now I have to look at a viral video of you in bed with that bone-fuck ugly Darin Bloomberg on TV?" On TV they'd only showed clips of the video that had been posted on the Internet because the full video was too graphic. On TV it was basically upper body shots of both Jeffery and Darin with stunned expressions. Though Kenny had seen photos of Darin Bloomberg before, he'd never been impressed with his looks. He had a long hook nose, a weak chin, curly red hair, and a chubby body that suggested he rarely took a walk, let alone worked out at a gym. He certainly wasn't the type Evan would have thought Jeffery would have slept with. But what bothered Evan more than that was if Jeffery was attracted to someone as butt ugly as Darin Bloomberg, what did that say about Jeffery's attraction to him?
Jeffery's voice remained calm and even. "The fucking wife went berserk. You should have seen her flinging that gun around and shooting at us. I think the cunt has a firearms fetish. And she was screaming something that made no sense at all, 'What fresh hells await me now?'"
"You were boning her husband," Evan said. "Think about that for a moment." He knew Jeffery would never be the bottom with anyone. He didn't have to ask who was getting fucked in that bed. Evan also knew the wife was referring to a Dorothy Parker quote: "What fresh hell is this?" It made no sense to mention the quote to Jeffery. He'd never read a book that wasn't financially oriented from cover to cover in his life.
"It's not the end of the world," Jeffery said.
"What about your rule of never mixing business with pleasure?" Evan asked.
"Turns out Darin Bloomberg loves dick," Jeffery said. "He begged me to fuck him. What can I say? It's not like we're having an affair or anything. He wasn't planning to leave her for me. So I don't know what the fuck fresh hells the bitch is talking about. If she were smart she'd grab that gun, put on a strap-on, and fuck him herself."
"He's married," Evan said. "She thinks you broke up their home. Most people would think that way. I'm sure she didn't know she was in an open marriage, because unless an open marriage is discussed, it's called cheating." It always amazed him to think he had to explain things like this to Jeffery.
"It's not the first time I've slept with a married man. It's just the first time I got caught sleeping with one. I can't believe that crazy fucking bitch shot at us. I could be dead now. I don't know what the fuck her problem is."
Evan hadn't overlooked this. He was relieved Jeffery hadn't been shot. But he was too mad to comfort him. "Her problem is that you fucked her husband and that her husband is a lying goddamn cheater. What part of that don't you get, Jeffery?" He knew he shouldn't have asked that question. He knew Jeffery would never understand what he'd done wrong. For Jeffery, sex had nothing to do with emotion. It was a physical need to be satisfied. Plain and simple.
"I can't talk long," Jeffery said in a dismissive tone. He'd mastered the art of changing the subject years ago. "I'm waiting for a call from my attorney."
"What am I supposed to tell Kenny?" Evan asked. He glanced into the living room and saw that his son was sitting on the sofa with a pillow over his face now.
"Tell him I'll talk to him when I get home," Jeffery said. "For now, tell him the truth and don't lie about anything. You know me better than anyone in the universe, and we both agreed a long time ago never to lie to him."
"But he's still hoping we might get back together," Evan said.
"Well, we are going to get back together again as soon as you come to your senses. I don't see how this silly little thing changes anything."
Though most husbands would have hung up and phoned their attorneys, Evan knew deep down that wasn't how it would work with him. It would have been a completely different matter if Jeffery had been lying to him. But Jeffery had always told him the truth, which made it virtually impossible to hate him. So Evan ignored the remark about them getting back together and asked, "When are you coming home? I don't want to deal with this alone."
"I'm leaving as soon as I can," Jeffery said. "Darin's not going to press charges against his wife, but I'm not sure how that works. I'm not either. We want this thing to die fast. That's why I'm waiting to talk to my attorney."
"I guess the deal you've been working on with Darin is finished now," Evan said. He felt a slight sense of comfort in this. Jeffery had worked hard, but a lot of his success had been acquired through what Evan considered dumb luck-being in the right place at the right time. He'd always believed that if his husband had known how to deal with a little failure it would have made him a better person. Evan had been around long enough to learn one thing: money didn't buy happiness.
"The hell it is," Jeffery said. "This doesn't change anything. I didn't fuck his fat for nothing. We're still going public next week, I'm still investing millions of dollars in his company, and this is only going to give us the best free publicity we've ever had. Oh, there's nothing like a good old-fashioned sex scandal to get attention."
"You almost got killed while you were fucking a married man, and now your dick is all over the Internet. How is that good publicity?"
Jeffery laughed. He didn't seem concerned. "Any free publicity is good publicity as long as they spell my name right. And you know I have nothing to worry about with my dick. If anything, when they get a look at me naked, the stock is going to soar."
"Don't be so smug," Evan said. "Not now."
"It's true. I'm not being smug. I know how people think and I never sugarcoat it."
Evan hadn't looked at it that way, but that was because he'd never been good with anything that involved business or marketing. He needed advice from his literary agent about everything that involved the business end of publishing. He probably could have sold more books if he'd spent more time marketing and promoting himself like other authors he knew, but he was satisfied with his small readership and as long as his books sold a decent number of copies, that was all he cared about. Like most career writers, he only wanted to write. He didn't want to give speeches or lectures, or spend most of his time at book signing events. Conferences made him cringe.
So Evan sighed and said, "You'd better promise me one thing. When you get home you talk to Kenny first. Nothing else happens before you do that."
"Of course I will," Jeffery said. "You know the only two important things to me in life are you and Kenny."
This sounded good whenever Jeffery said it. But Evan always had trouble believing it. He also wondered if all this had been an accident, or if Jeffery had somehow planned to get caught in bed with Darin Bloomberg on purpose to get the free publicity. It seemed awfully strange that something like this would happen only days before Darin's company went public. And from what Evan had read, this social media company was popular but based on nothing concrete. "I have to go into the living room and talk to him now. Call me before you leave California." His voice had softened by then. He knew getting mad at Jeffery wouldn't help the situation. It would be the same as getting mad at a dog for licking his own balls.