Tuesday Mooney Wore Black

The job at Cabot was entry level and he figured it out; he was smart and worked hard and it was pretty shocking, to Dex, that that wasn’t the case for quite a few of the people he worked with. The whole place felt like high school all over again, and he was still the odd arty kid no one knew what to do with, only this time he was getting paid, which helped for a while.

And he had Tuesday. Who was just as out of place as he was.

So when Tuesday couldn’t stand it anymore, and jumped ship for a nonprofit, Dex jumped too. To Richmont, a smaller firm, a hedge fund with more assets under management than God, more go-getters, and better alcohol at parties. Dex hated his job at Cabot, sure, hated how buttoned down and conservative it was, how it smushed him into a cube with a computer and a tape dispenser he never used, how it had absolutely nothing to do with anything that he had once imagined for his future, or valued about himself. In finance, there was no professional advantage, for instance, to being an expressive belter. There were no head-pats for one’s encyclopedic knowledge of popular song lyrics, no kudos for one’s flawless application of stage makeup.

And Richmont likely wouldn’t be that different. But he was terrified of giving up the safety of his salary, which was now, he suspected, easily more than twice Tuesday’s. Because he had known her for so long, and in such a limited capacity – they were Drinks Friends, Karaoke Friends, Trivia Friends; he had never even seen the inside of her apartment – it wasn’t weird. But it could have been. Dex didn’t forget that.

He texted, see you can’t say it

you can’t even say ‘you won’t get dumped’ bc you know I’m going to get dumped and it will just be this horrible vortex of pain

Dex calm down, Tuesday replied.

Your level of concern is insufficient, he texted.

“Hello hello hello!” And Patrick was there, swinging the strap of his satchel over his head and taking his jacket off in the same fluid movement. Patrick did everything fluidly, gracefully, as though he never had to think about where and when and how to move his body; his feet were so firmly on the floor they may as well have been glued. He’d been trained as a dancer. Now he was a manager at a Starbucks. That was how they met, at the Starbucks in the lobby of the office building Dex sometimes cut through on his walk to work.

Patrick moved to peck him on the ridge of his cheekbone. “Wait, I forget,” he said. “Can we do this here? Oh fuck it,” and kissed him, because of course he was always going to. Patrick was younger than Dex, less fearful and careful of himself in the open. Dex was only slightly older, but they had grown up in different worlds.

“Hey you,” said Dex, pulling the chair beside him out from under the bar. “Welcome. Have a seat. How was work?”

Patrick rolled his neck on his shoulders. Dex watched. He had never seen such perfectly circular neck rolls. “Fine. You know, same old same old. Ground some beans, pulled some espresso, steamed some milk, almost fired Gary.”

“No.” Dex twisted in his seat, pushed his elbow on the bar, and propped his head on his hand. “Spill.”

Patrick ordered a whiskey and tonic from the bartender. He sat and shook out his shoulders like he was trying to rid himself of something unclean. Patrick had told Dex about Gary. Gary was older, in his mid-forties. Gary had lost his job a few years ago, not long after the crash – he’d done something in finance, which made the decision to work at a financial district Starbucks particularly masochistic – and was taking classes, trying to switch careers (thank God his wife still had her job, thank God the kids were years from college). Patrick liked Gary. He showed up on time and worked steadily and well, even if he wasn’t quite as fast as the twenty-year-olds who could squat sixteen times an hour to grab a gallon of milk from the low fridge.

“He stole,” said Patrick. His drink arrived and he downed it in a single gulp. “I caught him pocketing twenty dollars from the till today. I saw him. He looked around first, to make sure no one was watching, and he just didn’t see me. He popped open the till and took out a twenty, looked around again, slipped it into the front of his apron, and closed the register. I could not believe it. You know, when you see something happening in real life that you’ve only seen in movies? You think, for one second: Where am I? Is this real? Is this my real life?”

He motioned to the bartender for another drink.

“You didn’t fire him?” asked Dex.

“How could I?” said Patrick. “He’s stealing because he needs money. I confronted him, told him I saw what he did. He got all flushed and couldn’t look me in the eye and I honestly thought he was going to throw up all over the register, me, everything. I told him if he ever stole again, I would fire him. Today, this, was a mistake.” He pulled off his glasses and rubbed his eyes with the heel of his hand. “Mistakes have consequences, but they don’t have to break us. The next time it happens, I told him, I wouldn’t consider it a mistake.”

Dex thought, I would have fired that guy on the spot.

And then, I do not deserve the love of this entirely decent, generous grown-up.

Patrick slipped his glasses back on and leaned to the side, his arm over the back of the chair.

“You would’ve fired him on the spot,” he said, and grinned.

“What can I say,” said Dex. “I’m a mercenary.”

“You’re not a mercenary. I’m too soft.” Patrick tugged his ear. “I’m a sweet fluffy bunny in a land of wolves. I need to get meaner if I want to get anywhere.”

“Don’t ever,” Dex said. “It would break my heart if you got meaner.”

“Isn’t that what growing up is? Shedding the fat and the fluff until you’re this sleek, perfect beast, entirely the you you were meant to be?” Patrick was gesturing up and down in the space between them, and Dex realized, with a little jolt, that his boyfriend meant him. Patrick thought he, Poindexter Howard – who had dreamed, once, of painting his face, wearing someone else’s clothes, and belting show tunes on Broadway but instead became something called an Investment Marketing Manager, impeccably groomed in cool Gatsby shirts and Rolexes and shiny Gucci shoes, who belted nothing but his pants – was a sleek, perfect beast, entirely the him he was meant to be. Patrick actually thought Dex was himself. He was so young and so charming and so very wrong that Dex finally realized why he’d been so nervous when he first sat down.

“Patrick,” he said, “this isn’t working.”

Tuesday flicked her fingertip up and down, up and down, over the iPad, scrolling through the guest list. Which didn’t include Dex. Richmont, his firm, had bought six tickets for their employees, but he wasn’t one of them. Her stomach rumbled again. She was starving. They were allowed to grab hors d’oeuvres and drinks after the program ended, but that wouldn’t be for hours. At least she was sitting. At least she didn’t have to staff the cocktail party upstairs, wandering among the guests, answering questions, directing them to the VIP rooms or the bathrooms. All she had to do at registration was be pleasant to white guys in suits. It was a talent she’d honed daily all the years she worked in finance.

Dex once asked if her general standoffishness, her “aversion to team sports,” as he called it, came from having grown up in Salem, stewing in the cultural detritus of mass hysteria and (literal) witch-hunting. Salem’s natural vibe was part of it. What happened with Abby Hobbes was part of it too, though Dex didn’t know Abby Hobbes existed. Technically it was possible Dex knew the name Abigail Hobbes. He would have been a teenager in western Massachusetts when the coverage of Abby’s disappearance was at its height, bleeding beyond Salem, though her story never spread as far as it might have – if they’d found her body, if the missing girl had been upgraded to a dead girl. But Dex wouldn’t have had any reason to connect Abigail Hobbes directly to Tuesday. For Dex to know, at the time of her disappearance, that Abby had been her best friend, Tuesday would have had to tell him herself.

“You don’t trust people in groups,” Dex had said to her once, while they were out at McFly’s, one of his regular haunts for karaoke. Well, Dex was there for karaoke. Tuesday was there to drink, and pointedly not to participate. “Or people, really,” he continued. “But especially in groups.”

Tuesday had never thought of it in those terms, but yes, she didn’t trust people. People, in groups, alone – people disappointed you. That was what they did. They abandoned you. They didn’t believe you. They looked through you like you were made of smoke. You had your family, your work colleagues; you needed other humans around so you didn’t go completely feral, but the only person you could trust completely with yourself was yourself. That was, like … Basic Humanity 101.

“I mean … do you?” she said. “Does anyone? I thought that was the first rule: trust no one.”

“Should you be taking life advice from a poster in the basement of the FBI? On a television show?” Dex asked.

“That poster said I want to believe.”

Dex rolled his eyes. “I trust people more than you. But only a little.”

Tuesday hadn’t expected to stay in touch with Dex once they both quit Cabot. But Dex wouldn’t go away. He invited her to lunch. He invited her to the movies. They went to karaoke, even though Tuesday had a strict no-singing policy. They wiped the floor at pub trivia, the only two-person team that regularly took first place. She liked him; she had always appreciated his sense of humor and his intelligence. But he was needy. God, he could be outrageously needy. He texted. He chatted to her at work. In person, he required her approval of mundane choices he might have to make, her assurance that she had heard and understood him. Even the constant invitations, she suspected, had less to do with him wanting her company than not wanting to go into the world alone. Sometimes it felt like it didn’t matter who she was, so long as she was, an audience – any audience – granting him her attention.

She felt her phone buzzing in her bag, vibrating against her leg. Again. And again.

I did it, he texted.

IT’S DONE

WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME he was so nice and sweet and young and flexible

She paused, her thumb over the screen. She’d liked Patrick. But this had been coming for a while. Tuesday could tell, from stories Dex told her, from watching the two of them together, that they had fundamentally different versions of reality, and fundamentally different ideas of each other. They were both playing parts.

He was too young, she texted back.

Pls don’t remind me, Dex texted, that I’m a decaying hag

You’re not a decaying hag, she replied.

Tuesday hated texting. Hated it, for its lack of nuance and tone. She always felt she was saying the wrong thing, or saying it the wrong way. But Dex was a natural, loquacious texter, and even by his standards, he’d been texting like mad lately. It meant he was anxious. And lonely. And now that he and Patrick were no longer together …

She felt a cold little stab, the looming threat of being needed.

Hey, he texted. Has anyone from Richmont not showed

She dutifully examined the list. Three of Richmont’s six tickets hadn’t been checked in.

Anders, Grouse, and Bannerman aren’t here yet, she texted.

UGH Grouse, said Dex.

I hate that guy

Why did GROUSE get an invite

He’s never going to show

I’m taking his place

Won’t your coworkers know you’re not him? said Tuesday.

He texted back, I’ll wear a clever disguise

Then: wait my whole life is a clever disguise

A flock of new suits appeared, swerved, headed toward the table. She tossed her phone back into her bag for good.

She’d worked event registrations often enough to intuit the kind of interaction she would have with an attendee the moment she made eye contact. Most people were nice. They smiled when you smiled, offered their names when asked. They were polite and looking forward to free Chardonnay and shrimp cocktail, comfortable with the implicit agreement one makes by RSVPing to a fundraiser: that at some point during the evening, you will be asked for money, and you will say yes.

Then there were people like this one. He came alone. He waited calmly, patiently, at the end of the line forming in front of the girl next to Tuesday, adjusting the cuffs on his suit, smoothing a dark tie between two fingers. The girl next to her was a Kelly – Kelly W.; there were at least three Kellys in the office. She was shy and not, like the other Kellys, blonde; her hair was dull brown, her nose small, her eyes large. Tuesday liked her. When she spoke, it was usually to make a joke so dry it made you cough. But she looked like a mouse, and Tuesday suspected that was why this particular guest was waiting in her line.

Tuesday had spotted him as soon as he crossed the lobby, moving with the confidence of someone who owns every cell of his body, every atom of the air around it, and every right in the world to be exactly who and where he is.

He was the kind of person who expects to be recognized, and likes to make a big deal when he isn’t.

Tuesday was in the middle of checking in a gaggle of attorneys when he reached the table in front of Kelly W.

“Welcome to the auction,” she said. “May I have your name?”

He had a face made for striking on coins: hair brushed back, broad, dark-eyed, and long-nosed. It was familiar to Tuesday. Because she read society and business columns. Because she was fond of a high forehead. And because she’d researched him.

“Bruce Wayne,” he said.

Kelly W., without missing a beat, said, “Might it be under Batman?”

He laughed. It made Tuesday like him a little, which was unexpected, given everything she already knew. His name was Nathaniel Allan Arches. He was the oldest child of Edgar Arches. The Edgar Arches, who had turned a lot of old Boston money into a hell of a lot of new Boston money by founding Arches Consolidated Enterprises (yes, its acronym – and general business reputation – was ACE), one of the largest private holding companies on the East Coast, if not the world. ACE had started small, with a chain of grocery stores on the Cape, then exploded in the early eighties, thanks to smart initial investments in tech companies spearheaded by MIT graduates. The company had had a hand in every major personal electronic device developed over the past thirty years, from Palm Pilots to smartphones. ACE had moved through the tech world like an amoeba, wrapping itself around industries and companies and swallowing them whole, the man at its helm a seemingly unstoppable, unbeatable force of nature.

And then Edgar Arches, the force of nature himself, went missing.

Five or six years ago, now. Tuesday had still been at Cabot when it happened. He disappeared over Labor Day weekend under odd and tragic circumstances. After a scene of public drunkenness during a charity wine tasting in Nantucket Harbor, Edgar Arches and his son retreated to the family yacht, Constancy. Nathaniel brought the yacht back the next morning – alone. His father and the yacht’s dinghy had vanished in the night. The dinghy eventually washed up on Madaket Beach, but there was no evidence of foul play – no blood, no fingerprints. There was no hint of corporate malfeasance or a scandal that would suggest a possible suicide. The family’s public statement was crafted for maximum plausible deniability: Nathaniel, the dutiful son, left his father safely sleeping it off on one of the yacht’s banquettes, and went to bed in his own stateroom. When he woke up the next morning, father and dinghy were simply AWOL. Nathaniel was questioned by the police, but not, as far as Tuesday knew, ever considered a suspect, because there wasn’t an obvious crime. There was no body, so there’d been no murder; Edgar Arches was a missing person. The news took that paucity of information and whipped it into a froth of supposition and gossip. What had happened on that boat, that night? What had happened to the richest of rich men, Edgar Arches – the man who had it all?

But what had he really had?

He’d had a wife, Constance, who’d assumed control of ACE in his absence, and presumably still ran it. He’d had a daughter, Emerson, made internet famous by a meme of her clotheslining Paris Hilton at a Halloween party (Paris was a devil; Emerson was a unicorn). Before his disappearance, Edgar Arches was a staple on the Forbes list of billionaires. Constance, as the surviving scion, currently held that honor, though there were rumors – even at the time of the disappearance – that Nathaniel was champing at the bit to manage the family fortune.

Most people with that kind of life did not have a sense of humor, and if they did, it was not about themselves.

“Look under Man,” Nathaniel Arches said. His voice was slow and deep. “Man comma Bat.”

“Look under Arches,” Tuesday said to Kelly W., soft enough not to embarrass her, loud enough for him to hear. “First name – there. Nathaniel.”

He smiled like a flashbulb.

“Would you like to make a nametag?” Kelly W. handed him a permanent marker and a HELLO MY NAME IS sticker.

“Sure,” he said, uncapping the marker and inhaling. “I do love a fresh Sharpie.”

Tuesday’s mental file on Arches, Nathaniel fluttered in this breeze of personality. Nathaniel, since his father’s disappearance and his mother’s takeover of ACE, had funneled his share of the family fortune into N. A. Arches, a venture capital firm that invested in biotech, the next generation of MIT-spawned companies ACE was built on. There were rumors he had dated Gisele before Tom Brady. There were rumors he had dated Tom Brady before Gisele. In every interview Tuesday had read about him, he’d sounded like an out-of-the-box corporate venture dude, a walking jargon machine. He talked about synergy, about leveraging his assets. He made not one joke, possessed not a hint of wit or irony or self-consciousness of any kind.

He’d come to her attention last month, when one of the fundraisers she worked with – Watley, who raised money for primary care – asked for research. Nathaniel had no apparent connection to the hospital; he’d given no money, expressed no interest. He was just a name Watley discovered, probably after Googling “rich people in Boston.” She tried to tell Watley that good fundraising required a slightly more strategic approach, that it wasn’t worth her time to research and write up a full profile on a prospect with no Boston General connections and no history of, well, anything other than being a wealthy douche.

But Watley was new to the office and eager, Nathaniel Arches was rich as hell and his family was bonkers, and it was the dull deep end of August when everyone was down the Cape, so Tuesday dove into the cool information-soaked sea of the internet. His Facebook account was locked down, but he tweeted pictures of sunsets, the beers he was drinking, and the kind of vague motivational quotes that were usually accompanied by photographs of soaring eagles and windsurfers (REACH! IT’S CLOSER THAN YOU THINK). He did have a record in the patient database, but he had seen specialists (plastic surgeons, years ago), and technically that wasn’t public information; it was a violation of the hospital’s privacy policies to use that information to initiate contact.

So she focused on everything else. Nathaniel had been profiled on Boston.com and the Improper Bostonian. He barely opened his eyes in photographs. He was listed as a director of a private family foundation that gave, relative to its potential, offensively nominal donations to every nonprofit organization in Boston – the equivalent of giving a kid a nickel and telling her not to spend it all in one place. He owned no property under his own name, though he lived in the family’s luxury condo at the top of the Mandarin Hotel – when he wasn’t at the family compound on Nantucket – and he’d shown up on five separate lists of Boston’s sexiest: Sexiest Thirtysomethings, Sexiest Residents of the Back Bay, Sexiest Scenesters, Sexiest New Capitalists (he was number one with a bullet), and just plain Sexiest.

Tuesday had compiled all the hard and soft data she could find on Nathaniel Arches, and found his self-satisfied, megamonied, essentially ungenerous, ladykiller affect the exact opposite of sexy.

In person, though, was a totally different story.

This was why she volunteered for events.

He peeled the paper from the back of his nametag and slapped it gently on his chest. “How’s that?” he asked. “Is it on straight?”

Under HELLO MY NAME IS, he’d written ARCHIE.

“One edge is a little – higher—” Kelly W. pointed.

Tuesday stood and leaned over the registration table. “I can fix it,” she said.

Archie leaned toward her without hesitation. They were close to the same height, and he turned his head slightly to the side. “I’ve always wondered if two heads colliding really make that coconut sound,” he said, “but I don’t need to find out tonight.”

Tuesday gave him a long smile. “The night is young,” she said, and slowly pulled his nametag from his suit. Holding the sticky corners level, she repositioned it, pressed, smoothed it flat with her fingertips.

He stepped back and held out his hand.

“Archie.”

“Tuesday.” She squeezed his hand.

He gave a little finger-gun wave and glided away.

Tuesday plunked back in her chair.

“Holy crap,” said Kelly W. “What just happened?”

“Research,” said Tuesday. “In the field.”

At the Four Seasons Hotel, in a ballroom full of smiling men in suits, Dex Howard waited to be hit on.

That was it, right there: that was why he’d decided to come. As pathetic as it might be, he wanted a pity pickup. A distraction from having broken up with Patrick, even though everyone – seriously, everyone, including his own subconscious – had seen it coming. They had chemistry, they had fun, but they didn’t have much else. Patrick was a wet-behind-the-ears erstwhile ballet dancer turned barista. Dex was a Vice President. Richmont, which had no more than fifty employees, had fifteen Vice Presidents. All employees who had, at other firms, started as Coordinators, transformed into Analysts, then Senior Analysts, and then, having no further room in the chrysalis, burst into fully mature Vice Presidents. He was a Vice President who Managed Marketing, whatever the hell that meant, and his hairline was receding at the same rate as his childhood dreams.

He hated to think it – it was mean, it was shallow – but Dex was pretty sure Patrick had seen him as a meal ticket, a sugar daddy, a sponsor. Dex bought dinner. Dex bought tickets. Dex bought gifts. Patrick gave: support, compliments, sex. (Not for money, Dex told himself; not like that.) He liked buying things for Patrick, and Patrick liked receiving them. That Patrick liked his money didn’t mean he didn’t also like Dex as a person. Dex took a slug of open-bar whiskey – God, he hated this thing that his brain did, the way it looked at a man who professed to want him and asked, But why? Then answered, without waiting for a response, Because I can buy you things.

At least in a crowd of senior vice presidents and higher, Dex’s ability to buy things was relative, and puny. Though it wasn’t all that different from the crowd in The Bank. It had a higher tax bracket, was older and less visibly douchey, but there was still that slightly desperate undertow of desire threading through like a hot wire. Desire to make some sort of impression, to outperform, to draw attention, or at least to numb yourself to the day you’d just had with free booze – not to mention the next day, and the next.