Union Atlantic Page 0,92

cry, Nate kept his eyes open, staring straight at him. Doug reached his hand down to cover the eyes, but with surprising force Nate peeled the hand back and kept looking. It was unbearable. He jabbed harder, pushing air from Nate's lungs, forcing him to gasp for breath. And still he wouldn't look away. A surge of nausea rose up through Doug's body as he hovered over him, threatening to drain all his energy, making him wish for a moment that those eyes were the barrels of guns that would finish him here and now. But time kept on and he was sweating and Nate came on his chest and stomach and Doug emptied himself into him and pulled out. And then Nate, spread-eagled on the bed, arms out to the sides, looked once again as he had before, like a lamed foal awaiting its owner's merciful bullet.

Doug wiped himself off and pulled his trousers up, watching Nate rise from the bed and disappear into the bathroom. The ringing of the shower water blended with the ringing of his phone, which he ignored.

Nate was quiet when he returned, dressing with his back to Doug, who flipped on the TV in search of news.

A few minutes later, from over his shoulder, Doug heard him say, "I got you something."

"What do you mean?"

"A present."

"What for?"

"I don't know. I felt like it." Coming around to Doug's side, he handed him a small wrapped box. Doug removed the gold ribbon and tore away the paper. Inside the case was a pair of black-and-silver cuff links.

"You've got all those cuff shirts. But you always wear the same links."

Doug closed the case and put it aside.

"This game," he said, "it's over."

"It's not a game to me."

"You don't know what you're talking about. You're a kid. You think that what you feel matters."

"It does."

"I'm doing you a favor. You can't see it now, but I am. You want to be defenseless all your life? You want to be the chump? You like sleeping with guys - fine. But take your heart off your fucking sleeve."

Standing up, Doug grabbed his jacket and briefcase from the couch and walked out of the room, slamming the door behind him.

At the entrance to the ballroom, a security guard asked him for ID.

"You're not press, right? There's no press allowed."

Teams of lawyers were arrayed around an enormous oblong table, their seconds seated behind them like congressional aides. The young associates whispered in their bosses' ears, as a guy in suspenders at the head of the table read aloud from a paragraph of the contract projected on a screen behind him.

Save for occasional naps on their hotel beds, the lawyers had been in this room for three days straight, fighting over the details of the acquisition, down to the last indemnification.

At a desk in the far corner of the room, Holland's secretary, Martha, was typing furiously on her laptop.

"Where's Jeffrey?" he asked her.

"Doug," she said, seemingly alarmed by his appearance. She pointed to her right. "It's the second door down. Good luck."

Another security guard, this one a man Doug recognized from the office, opened the door for him and he entered the windowless antechamber. The two men from the lobby, still wearing their blue windbreakers, sat on folding metal chairs. They stood as he entered; he heard the door close behind him.

"Douglas Fanning?" the older of the two asked, as his partner removed a pair of handcuffs from his belt.

"Yeah," Doug said. "That's me."

Chapter 17

Across from Henry, Holland rested his elbows on the table and leaned forward, interlacing his meaty fingers, the extra flesh of his neck pinched by his shirt collar.

"First guy I ever worked for," he said, "could rattle off every loan on his book, quote you the rate, and tell you who was past due, all without so much as glancing at a balance sheet. Sean Hickey. Manager for Hartford Savings. He told me to forget whatever they'd taught me and learn to read a man's face. That was the training. To sit beside him in meetings with the local entrepreneurs and give him my thumbs-up or thumbs-down. I picked the ones with the flash - the talkers. He rejected every one of them. You're thinking short, he'd say. You want steady. All that seems like a hundred years ago. It's a trader's game now, a pure trader's game."

The Bierstadt canvas hanging on the wall behind Union Atlantic's chairman and CEO depicted an untouched Yosemite in early fall or