Over at Union Square, James was still signing books. At eight o’clock, three hundred people were in line, eagerly clutching their copies, and as James felt obligated to speak to each and every one of them, it was likely he’d be there for at least another three hours. Mindy sent Sam back to One Fifth to do his homework.Walking down Fifth Avenue, Sam spotted Annalisa getting into the back of a green Bentley idling at the curb. Passing the car on the way into the building, Sam was strangely disappointed in her, and hurt. After helping her so often with her website, Sam had developed a little crush. He imagined Annalisa as a princess, a damsel in distress, and seeing her in the back of that fancy car with the chauffeur who was actually wearing a cap destroyed his fantasy. She wasn’t a damsel in distress at all, he thought bitterly, but just another rich lady with too many privileges, married to a rich asshole. And he went inside.
Sam opened the refrigerator. As he seemed to be all the time now, he was ravenously hungry. His parents didn’t understand how a growing boy needed to eat, and all he could find in the refrigerator were two containers of cut-up fruit, some leftover Indian food, and a quart of soy milk.
Sam drank the soy milk straight from the carton, leaving a squirt for his mother’s coffee in the morning, and decided he needed red meat. He would go to the Village restaurant on Ninth Street, sit at the bar, and eat a steak.
Stepping into the lobby, he came right up behind Paul Rice, who was heading out to the Bentley. Sam’s heart began beating rapidly, and he was reminded of his scheme. Sam hadn’t decided when he would execute his plan, but seeing Paul get into the backseat of the car, he decided he would do it tonight, while the Rices were out. Passing by the Bentley, he waved to Annalisa, who smiled at him and waved back.
“Sam Gooch is such a sweet boy,” Annalisa said to Paul.
“His mother’s a cunt,” Paul said.
“I wish you would end this war with Mindy Gooch.”
“Oh, I have,” Paul said.
“Good,” Annalisa said.
“Mindy Gooch and her stupid dog have harassed me one time too many.”
“Her dog?” Annalisa said.
“I had my lawyer send her a letter this afternoon. I want that woman, that dog, and that family out of my building.”
This was outrageous, even for Paul, and Annalisa laughed. “Your building, Paul?”
“That’s right,” he said, staring at the back of the driver’s head. “The China deal went through today. In a matter of weeks, I’ll be able to buy every apartment in One Fifth.”
Annalisa gasped. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I’m telling you now.”
“When did it happen?”
Paul looked at his watch. “About forty minutes ago.”
Annalisa sat back in the seat. “I’m astounded, Paul. But what does it mean?”
“It was my idea, but Sandy and I pulled it off together. We sold one of my algorithms to the Chinese government in exchange for a percent-age of their stock market.”
“Can you do that?”
“Of course I can do it,” Paul said. “I just did.” Without missing a beat, he addressed the driver. “Change of plans,” he said. “We’re going to the West Side heliport instead.” He turned to his wife and patted her leg. “I thought we’d go to the Lodge for dinner to celebrate. I know how much you’ve always wanted to see it.”
“Oh, Paul,” she said. The Lodge was an exclusive resort in the Adiron-dacks that was rumored to be stunningly beautiful. Annalisa had read about it years ago and mentioned to Paul that she wished they could go there on their anniversary. But at three thousand dollars a night, it had been too expensive back then for them to even consider. But Paul had remembered. She smiled and shook her head, realizing that her slight dissatisfaction with Paul in the last couple of months was something she’d made up in her mind. Paul was still Paul — wonderful in his unique and unfathomable way — and Connie Brewer was right. Annalisa did love her husband.
Paul reached into the pocket of his pants and withdrew a small black velvet box. Inside was a large yellow diamond ring surrounded by pink stones. It was beautiful and gaudy, exactly the sort of thing Connie Brewer would love. Annalisa slipped it onto her right middle finger. “Do you like it?” Paul asked. “Sandy said Connie has one just like it. I thought you might want one, too.”
“Oh, Paul.” She put her hand on the side of his head and stroked his hair. “I love it. It’s stunning.”
Back in the Gooches’ apartment, Sam rifled through his mother’s underwear drawer and, finding a pair of old leather gloves, tucked them into the waistband of his jeans. From the toolbox in the cramped coat closet, he extracted a small screwdriver, a pair of pliers, an X-Acto knife, wire clippers, and a small spool of electrical tape. He stuck these items in the back pockets of his jeans, making sure the bulges were covered by his shirt. Then he rode the elevator up to Enid and Philip’s floor and, slipping through the hallway, took the stairwell up to the first floor of the penthouse apartment.
The stairwell led to a small foyer outside a service entrance, and there, as Sam had known, was a metal plate. He put on his mother’s gloves, took out the screwdriver, and unscrewed the plate from the wall. Inside was a compartment filled with cables. Every floor had a cable box, and the cables ran from one floor to another. Most boxes contained one or two cables, but on the Rices’ floor, due to all of Paul’s equipment, there were six. Sam tugged the cables out of a hole in the back and, using the X-Acto knife, cut away the white plastic casing. Then he clipped the wires and, mixing them up, spliced the wrong wires together using the pliers. Finally, he wrapped the newly configured wires in the electrical tape. Then he pushed the cables back into the wall. He wasn’t sure what would happen, but it was guaranteed to be big.
16
Under regular circumstances, Paul Rice, the early riser, would have been the first to discover The Internet Debacle, as it would be later referred to by the residents of One Fifth. But on the following morning, James Gooch happened to be up first. Following his triumphant book reading the night before (“Four hundred twenty books sold, it’s practically a record,” Redmond had boasted), James was booked on the first flight from La Guardia to Boston at six A.M.; from Boston, he would go on to Philadelphia, Washington, St. Louis, Chicago, Cleve-land, and then Houston, Dallas, Seattle, San Francisco, and Los Angeles.
He would be away for two weeks. As a consequence, he had to get up at three A.M. to pack. James was a noisy, nervous packer, so Mindy was up as well. Mindy normally would have been testy about this disturbance to her sleep — considering sleep the most precious of all modern-day commodities — but on this day, she was forgiving. The evening before, James had made her proud. All the years of supporting him were paying off when they easily might not have, and Mindy found herself imagining enormous sums of money coming their way. If the book made a million dollars, they could send Sam to any university — Harvard, or perhaps Cambridge in England, which was even more prestigious — without feeling a pinch. Two million dollars would mean university for Sam, and maybe the luxury of owning a car and housing it in a garage and paying off their mortgage. Three million dollars would get them all that plus a tiny getaway home in Montauk or Amagansett or Litchfield County in Connecticut. Beyond this, Mindy’s imagination could go no further. She was so accustomed to living a life of relative deprivation, she couldn’t picture herself needing or wanting more.
“Do you have toothpaste?” she asked, following James into his bathroom. “Don’t forget your comb. And dental floss.”
“I’m sure they have drugstores in Boston,” James remarked.