“Trust me,” I said, “if ever the day comes that I ‘get you,’ that day will also be synonymous with my death.”
“Come here,” he said.
I faced him at his desk.
“Come around here,” he ordered.
He was logged on to an online banking session. It was a wire transfer. A million dollars made out to me. My heart began to race in anticipation. He slowly hovered the mouse over the send button and pressed. The click resounded through my head. It was different this time. Too reminiscent of the clicks that earned me the pictures. This transfer didn’t quite feel the same as all the others though, and my stomach dropped.
“You’re too afraid to accept it,” my father began, leaning back in his chair, “but I’m gonna say it anyway. That transfer. That, among the many others, is you ‘getting me’”
I backed away slowly. “No, it’s not.”
“Yes, it is,” he answered with the same serpent’s smile, elbows on the chair’s rests, hands steepled in front of him.
“I’m nothing like you,” I told him. Who are you trying to convince? “Nothing,” I repeated.
“Son,” he said, leaning forward, “you are me.”
I turned and bolted down the hall, away from his cackling laugh, away from his accusations, desperate to leave my own suspicions behind. I ran up the stairs, shedding pieces of my suit as I went, determined to shower, resolute in washing away what I’d just done, who I really was, but I was certain there was nothing that could cleanse me, to launder my poisoned blood. This was who I was. Hopeless personified.
I vomited twice, showered and brushed my teeth, but it did nothing to appease my unsettled stomach. I threw on a pair of Adidas pants and laid on my stomach in bed, curling my blanket over my head after turning on my stereo. I’d left one of The Cure’s albums in there.
Knock. Knock.
“Come in,” my voice cracked. I cleared my throat. “Come in,” I said with purchase.
My door opened and I lifted my head to see Bridge. “How was your date?” she asked, hopping on the bed and laying next to me. I shifted onto my back, the blanket falling between us, and tucked my hands behind my head.
“It was okay,” I lied.
“An untruth,” she said, throwing her hands behind her head as well. “But I’ll let it go for now.”
“You’re doing that a lot lately,” I teased. “How are you feeling?”
“It passed,” she said, getting quiet.
We shared a moment of silence.
Finally, I studied her, my brows creased. “You okay?”
“Yeah, fine,” she hedged, hopping up. “Hey, want to get dinner Friday? Just you and me?”
“Sure. Mom doesn’t have dinner plans for us?” My mom usually had every minute of our days planned when I came home.
“Nah, she and dad are going to his office Christmas party.”
“Okay. How’s school?”
She rolled her eyes at me. “You’re only four years older. You act like my freakin’ father or something.”
Someone has to. “All right, simmer down now. Simmer down.”
She rolled her eyes again but smiled. “Want to watch It’s a Wonderful Life?”
Hell to the no. “Absolutely not.”
“A Christmas Carol?”
It’s like she has a window into my conscience. “No, let’s try something funny.”
“Elf,” she recommended.
“Elf it is.”
That night I opened my laptop and set it on the bed beside me. I toggled between wanting to log on to my Swiss account and wanting to throw the whole damn machine across the room. I settled on logging on. I couldn’t help myself.
Seven million two hundred ninety-three thousand eight hundred fifty-nine dollars and seventeen cents.
A burn of satisfaction radiated across my chest and I couldn’t help the smirk that appeared after, but that burn turned into a different kind of heat, an uncomfortable heat in my stomach when I thought of the imaginary image I had of Peter Knight’s wife.
I imagined Peter’s face when she opened the envelope of pictures. I imagined how he would fluster and struggle to explain images he had no recollection of. I imagined her slapping the innocent man, imagined her packing up a bag and the kids and leaving him.
I slammed my computer shut and ran to the bathroom, vomiting once more. But it did no good. I still felt like the piece of shit I was, and there was nothing I could do about it. My only choice now was to sit there and pray that he would choose the merger route, to save his family.
My only consolation was that he seemed like the kind of man who would pick his family over his career.