The Faculty Club Part 2

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 Ernes...o...b..rnini? 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 a.s.s 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 skysc.r.a.per 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.

My brother was standing by the window in his lavish office, in an immaculate silk suit with initialed cuff links.

"Look at you," he said. He grinned. He held out his hand, and when I shook it he grabbed me and gave me a hug. "Look at you," he said again. "All grown up. Fancy school, big shot lawyer-to-be."

"Look at you," I said. I glanced around the room. It was a true corner office--two of the walls were floor-to-ceiling windows. "This is amazing, Mike. I had no idea."

"You haven't seen the half of it," he said. "Later, I'll take you to a bar where I've seen Bono, Al Pacino, Warren Buffett. Everyone."

"You saw Bono?"

"Saw him? I talked to him. I went right up to him and said, 'Are you Bono?' And he said, 'Yeah. Who are you?' And I said, 'I'm Mike.'"

"And?"

"And what? That's it. Nice guy, though."

He dropped himself into a cushy leather chair and put his feet up on the desk. It was strange, hearing him talk. He still had a little of his Texas accent, but he'd also picked up a Brooklyn cadence.

"Settled in yet? Like it up there?" he asked me.

"Yeah. The town's great. I'm in the dorms."

"They have dorms in law school?"

I nodded. "They're really nice dorms. More like a fancy boardinghouse. Stickley furniture. Oak cabinet, oak desk. View of the campus. It's all kind of embarra.s.sing, actually."

"Not bad," he said.

I didn't think I was still angry at Mike, but something about seeing him in his fancy office made it bubble up out of nowhere.

"You should've come home when Dad had his heart attack."

"What?"

"You heard me."

My dad's breakdown had climaxed, a few years after it started, with a ma.s.sive heart attack. All that worry had worn him down; it turned out there were even smaller guys than he imagined himself to be, chewing away at the cords and strings that supplied his heart.

"Jer, that was four years ago."

He waved my comment away and gave a big laugh. But I wasn't ready to let it go.

"Dad needed you."

He sighed and shook his head.

"Jeremy, I get here at five a.m. every day. No fancy degree for me, like you're gonna have. No one handed me anything. I'm competing against the smartest people in the world, every single day. I have to stay ahead of the market. I could be up sixty million one day, and poof, I'm down a hundred mil. That doesn't wait. Not for me, not for Dad, not for anybody."

He was staring out the window as he spoke, and this gave me a chance to really look him over. My brother had always been handsome. He used to have a lean, hungry look, but now his face was rounder and his cheeks were rosier. His hair was slick with gel and combed in a precise part. A full-length wool coat hung from the back of his office door.

"Jeremy, I love Dad. Dad knows that. You and I made different choices, but that's all it is. Choices. I'm still your brother. Remember when you broke your leg?"

"Yeah."

"Who carried you all the way to the house? Ten blocks of heavy lifting?"

"You did. You're also the one who told me to jump."

I had to stop myself from laughing--I was doing a bad job of staying angry. I was four when I broke my leg, he was ten. We were playing Justice League. Mike suggested that if I was a halfway decent Superman, jumping from the bridge over the creek shouldn't pose a serious problem. My scowl broke a little, and the tension was gone. He breathed a sigh of relief and his smile lit back up.

"Come on," he said. "Let's get a drink."

We went to his Bono bar. There was a doorman and a velvet rope, and sure enough we pa.s.sed right by the long line. He whispered to the doorman, who clapped him on the shoulder and laughed. My brother could always make people laugh. His smile was contagious. The place was sw.a.n.ky, but at the moment the most famous person in the room was Steve the bartender. We settled into a booth. Mike ordered us both boilermakers.

"Whatever happened to that girl you used to date?" Mike asked me.

"What girl?"

"Amy something."

"Well, we never really dated. She was a little out of my league."

"Mom said you guys dated."

"Mom's an optimist. We hung out a lot. It was one of those: you're cute, funny, smart, and awesome, so let's just be friends."

"Ouch."

"That was back in high school anyway."

"Dating anybody now?"

"I just got here! There is one girl, though. Daphne. She's pretty amazing."

"Well, what's the problem? There's no more 'out of my league' bulls.h.i.+t. You're Mr. Ivy League now."

"I live in the Ivy League, Mike. Every guy in town is Mr. Ivy League!"

"Still, you want something, you have to grab it. That's what I did. I didn't have a fancy diploma. No one handed me anything."

"So you've said. A couple times now."

"You know how I got where I am?" I did, but that never stopped Mike from telling the story, so I let it go. "I didn't go to Wharton. I didn't have an MBA. I walked right up to my first boss and said, 'I'll work harder than anyone you've got, and I'll do it for free.' I got a second job through a temp agency. Data entry bulls.h.i.+t. It paid twelve bucks an hour. I could do it in my sleep. Actually, I did do it in my sleep. Worked until ten at night, then got home and did data entry till two in the morning. G.o.d only knows how many people got the wrong pants size because of me. I lived like a b.u.m. I ate ramen noodles every night--twenty-five cents a pack--until my palms started itching from vitamin deficiency."

"That's messed up."

"You're d.a.m.n right it's messed up!" he said, laughing and slapping his hands on the table. "And look at me now!"

"That's great, Mike."

"How much debt are you gonna have, after law school?"

I swallowed hard. It was a subject I preferred to handle through total denial.

"A hundred and fifty thousand dollars."

"I could pay that off for you like that." He snapped his fingers. "But I won't. It wouldn't help you a bit."

"I don't want your money, Mike. But you can pay for the drinks."

He laughed and ordered us another round. A little later, Sean Penn and a woman walked into the bar.

"That's Sean Penn," Mike whispered to me.

"I know."

"But it's Sean Penn."

"I heard you. It's Sean Penn, not Jesus Christ."

"Should we meet him?"

"What would I say--'Do you like movies?'"

Mike grinned at me.

"Well?"

"No, I don't want to meet him."

He shrugged. "I would've done it. I would've walked right up to him."

I watched my brother. He kept looking around the room, from table to table. I leaned in.

"Hey, Mike."

"Yeah?"

"You've done great for yourself. I'm really proud of you."

For a second, he seemed really surprised. Then the c.o.c.ky expression came back.

"Thanks," he said finally, after a moment had pa.s.sed. He looked me over, then turned his gaze back to the crowd. "Ten blocks," he said to himself, proudly.

5.

Back on campus the next day, I decided to take Nigel up on his dinner invitation. Unlike most students, who lived in the dorms, Nigel had an off-campus apartment in the posh section of town. I knocked on his door and wondered who else was invited.

The door swung open and Nigel appeared, looking like he'd just stepped off the cover of GQ. He wore a tan s.h.i.+rt that appeared bronze against his brown skin; on me, the s.h.i.+rt would have looked like mustard on an undercooked hot dog. It hung perfectly on his thin frame, as if he were an alien that could grow a second skin specifically for dinner parties. His slacks were crisp and casual, with brown shoes and a matching belt. But more than anything he just seemed comfortable, totally at ease. I glanced behind him at the other guests, and I thought of the old line: this was the role he was born to play.

He gave me that million-dollar smile and ushered me in.

There were four people in the living room, sitting on the plush couches and chairs. I recognized John Anderson, the Rhodes scholar and Harvard debate champion, immediately. Until now, I had only seen him from across the lecture hall of Bernini's Justice cla.s.s. Up close, he looked like a high school football star, with broad shoulders and aw-shucks good looks. But high school football stars were supposed to become fat, bald shoe salesmen, while us nerds grew up and became fabulously wealthy. Jocks certainly weren't supposed to stay fit and intimidating and go on to elite law schools. John must have been six foot six, and his hands, resting casually on his legs, were ma.s.sive. Even sitting, he somehow felt taller than me. I suddenly had the very uncomfortable sensation of being a freshman in high school all over again.

Next to him, holding a gla.s.s of wine, was a stern-looking man who fixed me immediately with saggy vulture eyes. As if reading my mind, Nigel whispered, "Dennis Vo. He never sleeps. He's working on some book and he won't tell anyone what it's about." Nigel grinned.

"Do you think it's any good?" I whispered, smiling for the first time that evening.