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.