fucking ass!’ she said. She opened the office door wide – ‘That goes for all of you!’ – then slammed the door shut behind her.
‘Come out and say hi to Jeff,’ she ordered. ‘Be polite and act like a normal guy.’
I followed her outside. Sam was already sitting in the child seat in the back of the car. She waved at me. I waved back.
‘Hey, big guy,’ said Jeff. He smiled whitely.
Big guy. What an asshole.
‘Hey . . . Jeff,’ I said.
We shook hands. He did that thing he always did where he held on to my right hand for too long with his right hand while gripping my upper arm with his left hand, and examined my face the way a surgeon will check out a patient who is seriously ill and doesn’t appear to be getting any better, and is thus an affront to his caregiver.
‘How you doing, fella?’ he asked.
Fella: it just got better and better. Rachel grinned maliciously. It was revenge for earlier.
‘I’m good, Jeff. And you?’
‘Fantastic,’ he replied. ‘Just fine.’
‘Speech went well last night?’
‘It went down a storm. There were people asking me to run for office.’
‘Wow. Somewhere in Africa would be good. I hear Sudan needs ironing out, or maybe Somalia.’
He looked puzzled, and the smile faltered for a moment, then recovered.
‘No, here,’ he said.
‘Right. Of course.’
‘There was a reporter who came along from the Maine Sunday Telegram. They’re going to report the details of my speech on the weekend.’
‘That’s great,’ I said. If they did, the Telegram wouldn’t be getting my dollar seventy-five that Sunday. ‘Any other reporters there?’
‘Some guy from the Phoenix, but he was just hanging around to cause trouble.’
‘Asking awkward questions? Not accepting the party line?’
‘Ordinary people just don’t understand deregulation,’ said Jeff. ‘They think it involves a state of lawlessness, but it simply means allowing market forces to determine outcomes. Once government begins to interfere, those outcomes start to become unpredictable, and that’s when the trouble starts. Even light-touch regulation interferes with the natural running of the system. We just want to make sure that it runs right so everyone can benefit.’
‘So you’re the good guys?’
‘We’re the wealth generators.’
‘You’re certainly generating something, Jeff.’
Rachel intervened. ‘It’s time to go, Jeff. I think you’ve been baited long enough.’ She hugged me and kissed my cheek. ‘You’ll come see Sam in a week or two?’
‘Yes. Thanks for letting her spend the night. I appreciate it.’
‘I didn’t mean that part about you getting shot,’ she said.
‘I know.’
‘The other two maybe, but not you.’
She looked to the office window. Angel and Louis were dimly visible through the blinds. Angel raised an arm, as if thinking about waving, then thought better of it.
‘Jerks,’ Rachel said again, as she got into the car, but she was smiling as she said it. Jeff wasn’t joining her, though, not yet. Instead he was looking to the road, where a black Cadillac CTS coupe was slowing down before turning into my drive.
‘Hey, just in time,’ he said.
‘In time for what?’ I asked. Clearly, someone wasn’t being hit too hard by the recession, but it was nobody I knew.
‘There’s a man I’d like you to meet,’ said Jeff. ‘He drove up to hear my speech, and he said he might take a look at some new development up on Prouts Neck while he was in town. I told him I’d keep him company, and he should look out for my car.’
The Cadillac pulled to a gentle halt behind Jeff’s car. The man who climbed out looked a couple of years younger than Jeff and glowed with good health, and he couldn’t have smelled more of money if he was printing off bills in the back of his car. He had opted for a smart casual wardrobe: tan pants, a black roll-neck sweater, and a black mohair jacket. He was balding, but he hid it well by keeping his hair short, and he wasn’t carrying more than a couple of pounds of excess baggage around the waist. He also had the decency to apologize for driving up to my home uninvited, pointing out that the road took a sharp bend and he was concerned about causing an obstruction by leaving his car there. I told him that it was okay, even if I didn’t think it was. This guy made my skin prickle.
‘I hope I’m not intruding,’ he said. He waved at Rachel, and she waved back, but she was careful not to look at me.