“Buon compleanno!”
She took a big swallow, hoping the wine would calm her further. “Grazie. Il dolce far niente,” she said.
He took a tiny sip. “So you speak Italian besides Scotch.”
“A wee bit,” she said, intentionally upping her brogue. “At one time I hoped to be able to speak it with my mother. I’m told she lives on Ischia. Maybe you’ve heard of her. The painter, Giulietta Borelli?”
“I leave the artsy-fartsy stuff to Marlena,” he said. “Funny, I always thought you were pure Scot, and that the legendary Sir Harald had been a widower for years.”
“She left when I was two.”
“So your hot-blooded mama was incompatible with one of the dourest men alive?”
“You’d have to ask her,” she said. “How do you know Father?”
“By reputation.” He plunked into the creamy leather swivel chair at the head of the table and gestured for her to sit at his right. He levered a Diet Coke tab, stuck a straw into the hole, and sipped, his gaze fixed on that same spot on her chest. “Maybe you were especially terrible at two? I’d believe it, given the temper you conceal under all that curvy cashmere.”
She’d never confess, especially to the likes of Salustrio, that she’d always felt to blame for her mother’s departure. Pulling the lapels of her robe closer, she gazed through the porthole at Nevis Peak and imagined the volcano’s dormancy abruptly broken, its molten core blurping up and searing a path through the rain forest until it slid, hissing, into a boiling sea.
“Maybe I got that temper from her,” she said.
Salustrio refilled her glass while he bragged of all the Caribbean islands he’d visited on Iguana, having chartered her every year since her restoration.
“Do you ever think of owning something here?” she said.
He tore off a piece of bread and tossed the rest into the basket. “You’re too smart to get bitten by that ridiculous bug,” he said. “Scratch the surface anywhere in the Caribbean, and all you find is poverty, corruption, incompetence. Governments a joke, economies unstable.”
“You like it well enough to spend a bundle chartering this boat.”
“The yacht’s the thing,” he said. “The setting just makes it go down easier with Marlena and the girls.” He speared and waved a piece of lobster. “Living here would never match your fantasy. Stuck in the expat community of misfits and exiles. Impossible to become friends with the natives. Just because they smile at you, don’t get to thinking they like you.”
“I’m used to people not liking me.” She finished her second glass of champagne and shook her head when he offered a refill.
He poured one anyway, then laced his fingers behind his head, leaned back, and thrust his splayed thighs forward in the chair. “You should have made managing director by now.”
“I’ve been up two years in a row.”
“They’re keeping you slaving away on a promise while they promote guys like Singh and Carmody. Now that your father’s retired from the board, you can probably kiss any hope of MD goodbye.” He looked at her over the rim of his soda can. “If Coxe doesn’t shitcan you altogether.”
While she washed down a bite of lobster, she imagined the backbiting at work spreading throughout the City and Wall Street grapevines, the whispers reaching Salustrio and beyond. The champagne was turning her stomach acid and her head fuzzy. She pushed the glass aside.
“Why do you work so hard when everyone knows you don’t need the money?” he said.
“That money is Father’s.”
“Hoping to prove you’re more than just a sacred cow, then?” he said. “Maybe you should try working someplace besides your family’s bank—a place that doesn’t owe Sir Harald anything.”
A gust of wind rocked the boat. The view captured in the porthole panned up Nevis Peak and back down.
“Like Goldman?”
“If you’re hungry enough,” he said. She caught a flash of glee in his eyes. Surely he knew Goldman was one of the few shops that could lure her from Standard Heb. He stood up, hiked his bathing trunks, and shouted, “Cap, time to head back.”
“I need the loo,” she said.
Steadying herself against the passageway paneling, she went astern, where she took refuge in the head. She sat for a while, listening to footsteps on the deck above, a chain rattling, and the engine purring. In the mirror—skin splotched from sun and wine, hair a wind-tossed copper mane—she looked bleary, vulnerable. She tightened the belt on her robe.
When she rolled open the door, Salustrio was on the other side, his hands on his hips