“Ever miss home, Miles?”
“Not a bit,” he said. “Why? Do you?”
“I’m not sure yet.”
“Hey, you just got here. I’ve been here, what, seven years now? It’s culture shock. You’ll get used to it.”
He took a drink of Guinness and wiped his beard with a napkin.
“How was your summer?” I asked.
“Excellent. I was a counselor at philosophy camp.”
“Philosophy camp? Is that where nerds go when they die?”
“I see you haven’t lost your mediocre sense of humor.”
“So, you had a good time?”
“Yeah. They wouldn’t let me teach Nietzsche, though. They said teaching Nietzsche to high school kids was like handing them a bottle of Jack Daniel’s and the keys to a Porsche.”
Miles was deep into his dissertation on Nietzsche, whom he liked to call “the bad boy of philosophy.” “Nietzsche probably didn’t believe half the things he wrote,” Miles once told me. “He just liked to stir the pot. Plus, he was crazy. The syphilis went to his brain. One chapter in his autobiography is called ‘Why I am so great.’”
“Miles, can I ask you a question?”
“Sure.”
“What does V and D mean?”
He rubbed a napkin across his beard and started laughing through the french fries in his mouth.
“That’s what I love about you, Jeremy. You haven’t been here a week and you’re already asking about all the interesting stuff.”
“I get the feeling it’s kind of a touchy subject.”
“Let me guess. You asked some law student about it, and they got all weird and quiet?”
“One guy. Yeah. How’d you know?”
“Oh, it’s a cliché around here. I guess he thinks he’s a contender. Doesn’t want to screw it up.”
“Okay, contender for what?”
“V and D is a club. That’s it. Some people like to call it a secret society, but it’s really just a club for rich kids. I’m not sure what the initials stand for. Some people say Victory and Destiny. Lame, right? As a former classics major, my personal favorite theory is Vitium et Decus: Latin for ‘fault and distinction,’ loosely translated; or, in modern terms, ‘vice and virtue.’ But who knows? It’s not like they advertise.”
“So it’s just a club? Why do people get so weird about it?”
“Well, according to rumor and gross speculation, each year they select a group of law students to ‘try out,’ if you will, for the club. They call it striking the club. Ultimately, they induct three students into the society. Think about that. Three and only three out of the most selective law school in the galaxy. Once you’re in, you can’t say you’re in. I guess people who want to be in assume they’re not supposed to talk about it either. And, if you really do have a shot, you don’t want to screw it up, because your life is pretty sweet if you get in.”
“Pretty sweet? How?”
Miles leaned back, savoring the suspense and taunting me. He smiled.
“Why do you care so much about this?”
I thought about what he told me, about secrecy and people screwing up their chances. But I trusted Miles.
“Can you keep a secret?”
“Clearly not.”
“I’m serious.”
“Okay. Yes, I can keep a secret.”
“I heard someone mention my name for it. A professor.”
“Mention… What professor? Who was he talking to?”
“Bernini said it. I don’t know who he was talking to. It was weird… I thought he was alone when he said it.”
“Spooky.”
“Are you making fun of me?”
“No, no,” Miles said, slapping me on the arm and laughing his booming laugh. “I hope for your sake they are thinking about you. You know what one of the rumors is?”
“What?”
“If you don’t make your first million by the time you’re thirty, they give it to you.”
I nearly choked on my drink. A million dollars by age thirty? My dad wouldn’t make a million dollars in his entire life, much less at the beginning of his career. The last few days had definitely planted dreams of power and glory in my head, but somehow I hadn’t really thought about wealth too. I’m embarrassed to admit that for a brief moment, an image popped into my mind. I saw myself holding hands with Daphne. Somehow, in this flash of a daydream, it was implied that we were very rich.
“Really?” I managed to get out, doing my best to sound nonchalant and failing miserably.
“So they say.” Miles leaned back in the booth and flipped his book closed. “But who knows? It’s all speculation.” He rubbed his wild, fuzzy beard. “Can I offer some advice?”
“Sure.”
“If you want it, forget about it. Whoever these people really are, you can’t do a damn thing about it. You don’t come to them.” He shoved another handful of french fries into his mouth and said in a muffled voice: “They come to you.”
When I got home to my room late that night, a little drunk and reeking of bar smoke, I unlocked the door and turned on the small lamp by my desk. A dim light filled the room. I was about to grab my toothbrush when I saw something on my neatly made bed. I paused, then reached behind me to make sure I’d locked the door. I had. I pulled on the knob, and the lock was indeed working. I checked my windows-each one was still locked from the inside. But someone had been in my room. I went for the object on my bed and stumbled over a wastebasket, barely catching myself on my desk so I wouldn’t do a complete face-plant. I cursed. Could you imagine the moms in Lamar whispering in the checkout line? Did you hear about Susie Davis’s son? Yeah, he was going to be president. Too bad he tripped on a trash can and died. I laughed and steadied myself. Maybe next time I’d stop at two Guinnesses.
Lying flat on the middle of my bed was an envelope, plain and white. I picked it up and examined it. Nothing on the outside. No address. No To or From or Attn. I tried to open it quickly, but my hands were shaking. Inside was a card with three lines of text:
YOUR PRESENCE IS KINDLY REQUESTED FOR COCKTAILS
ONE WEEK FROM TOMORROW NIGHT.
2312 MORLAND STREET AT SEVEN O’CLOCK.
I flipped the card over. It was blank.
I traced my fingers over the paper. It felt smooth and substantial.
Finally, I held the paper up to my lamp, and through the grain I saw the watermark, the dim glow of the letters V &D.
I should have been excited, but something bothered me as I tried to fall asleep that night. I kept replaying the conversation I’d overheard between Bernini and his unseen visitor:
“V and D, perhaps?”
“We’ll see.”
We’ll see.
Here I was, thinking Bernini was as big as you could get in this world. I thought he was the kingmaker. But now he answered to someone else? Or some group? Who on earth says “We’ll see” to Ernesto Bernini? A few hours ago, I was flying high, enjoying the fantasy of a bright and certain future. Now, it was all a question mark again. What was V &D? What hoops would they ask me to jump through? Would I make it?
We’ll see, I thought to myself, over and over, until I finally fell asleep.
4
“Get your ass over here,” said the voice on the phone.
An hour later, I was on a train to New York, watching the countryside flash by, and then I was riding an elevator to the thirty-eighth floor of a skyscraper near Central Park. I’d never seen Central Park before; when the cab dropped me off, I took fifteen minutes to wander through the woods. They were positively enchanted: the dense canopy of trees; the bridges built with mossy stones; the thin stream moving over pebbles in a riverbed. I even came face-to-face with a bronze sculpture of a wood sprite. All that was missing was the Brothers Grimm, perched high in a tree and watching me over their long noses.
I saw the woods again from above as the elevator shot up.