One Fifth Avenue - Candace Bushnell [162]
The recent events in One Fifth had made Paul Rice more paranoid and secretive than normal, and he was continually losing his temper over things he might once have ignored. He screamed at Maria for folding his jeans the wrong way, and then one of his precious fish died and he accused Annalisa of killing it on purpose. Fed up, Annalisa went to a spa in Massachusetts with Connie Brewer for six days, and Paul was left facing a lonely weekend. He spent most weekends pursuing his own interests anyway, but he liked the comfort of having Annalisa around, and the fact that she’d left him, even temporarily, made him fear she might someday leave him permanently.
Apparently, Sandy Brewer didn’t have the same concerns about his own wife. “Dude,” he said, going into Paul’s office, “the girls are away this weekend. Thought you might want to come to my house for dinner. There’s someone I want you to meet.”
“Who?” Paul asked. Ever since Sandy had flipped out about the two-minute delay in launching the algorithm, Paul had been watching Sandy closely, looking for evidence that Sandy was trying to replace him. Instead, Paul had found payments to an escort company that revealed Sandy had been paying prostitutes to service him during business trips. With Annalisa away, Paul wondered if Sandy would try to introduce him to a hooker.
“You’ll see,” Sandy said mysteriously. Paul agreed to go, thinking if Sandy had invited one of his prostitutes, Paul could leverage the information to his advantage.
Sandy loved to show off what his success and hard work had brought him, arranging for a formal dinner for three in his wood-paneled dining room, where two enormous David Salle paintings hung. The third dinner companion wasn’t a prostitute after all, but a man named Craig Akio. Paul shook Craig’s hand, noting only that Craig was younger than he and possessed sharp black eyes. They sat down to a glass of a rare white wine and a bowl of seafood bisque. “I’m a big admirer of your work, Paul,” Craig Akio said from across the polished mahogany table. “Your work on the Samsun scale was genius.”
“Thanks,” Paul said curtly. He was used to being called a genius and took the compliment as a matter of course.
“I’m looking forward to working with you.”
Paul paused with his spoon halfway to his mouth. This was unexpected. “Are you moving to New York?” he asked.
“I’ve already found an apartment. In the new Gwathmey building. A masterpiece of modern architecture.”
“On the West Side Highway,” Sandy joked.
“I’m used to cars,” Craig said. “I grew up in L.A.”
“Where’d you go to school?” Paul asked evenly. But he felt uneasy. It struck him that perhaps it would have been normal behavior for Sandy to have told him about this new associate before hiring him.
“MIT,” Craig said. “You?”
“Georgetown,” Paul replied. He looked past Craig’s head to the David Salle paintings on the wall. Normally, he didn’t notice such things, but the paintings were of two jesters with terrifying expressions—both jovial and cruel. Paul took a gulp of his wine, feeling inexplicably like the jesters were real and mocking him.
For the rest of the dinner, the talk was of the upcoming political election and its impact on business; then they moved into Sandy’s study for cognac and cigars. Passing out cigars, Sandy began talking about art, boasting about his dinner with a man named David Porshie. “Billy Litchfield, he’s a good friend of my wife’s—when you get married, he’ll be a good friend of your wife’s as well,” he explained to Craig Akio. “He set us up with the head of the Metropolitan Museum. Decent fellow. Knows everything about art, but I suppose that’s not surprising. He got me thinking about improving my own collection. Going for the old masters