Blessed Are the Cheesemakers Read online

  He was sure he saw his face grow pale in the mirror and, unless his imagination was playing tricks on him, each breath was more shallow and coming quicker than the last. Panicked, he gripped the hall table, his knuckles white with the effort. Then he saw it. Sitting in the silver tray with his keys and his wallet was a little plastic bag containing a dusting of white powder. So that’s what the girl had been talking about. The blow. But why hadn’t she taken it? Kit thought to himself as he stood, trembling, in his hallway. It wasn’t his. He didn’t do drugs. He never had and he never would. Especially not now, after . . .

  A vague dreamlike image of money changing hands in a busy bar started to cloud his thoughts like an incoming storm, and panic grabbed again at his stomach. He tried to get his breathing under control but still it raced away from him, dread lurching from his heart to his guts and back again. If he was going to be able to cope with the next few moments, let alone the rest of the day, he needed to ease whatever was gnawing away at him.

  Grabbing the little plastic bag from the hall table, he stumbled into the kitchen and emptied what little remained of its contents into the sink and washed it down the drain. He rinsed out the bag and threw it in the trash.

  His stomach was still revolting. He needed to calm down. He needed peace and tranquility. Kit looked at the refrigerator for less than a heartbeat before opening the door. The smell hit him like a tsunami but, blind to the Princess and her fury, he had eyes only for the Grey Goose in the freezer.

  He poured the contents of the bottle down his throat, his chaotic innards falling into line as they were massaged by the smooth satiny vodka. Relieved and much calmer, he easily took a deep, long breath and headed for the door, looking again in the mirror as he walked by with a confident smile. Now he could face the day.

  Outside his apartment, the Peterson girls were giggling in the hallway, waiting for the elevator. Or him. Giggling and the Peterson girls went hand in hand where Kit was concerned, although he had not noticed this until Jacey pointed it out and started a relentless campaign of teasing him about it. Since then, he’d tried as hard as he could to avoid them, avoid the whole family, in fact. It had been their mother, Sasha, who had found Jacey and—Kit pulled nervously at his tie. He closed his eyes and tried not to think about it again. About her.

  Inside the elevator, the two girls continued to whisper and giggle, getting louder and louder until finally the elder one, Charlotte, pushed the younger one, Jessica, so that she fell into him. She jumped away and stood up straight, blushing and glaring at her sister.

  “Ask him,” dared Charlotte. “Go on. Ask him.”

  Kit turned to look at Jessica, as though he had only just noticed her.

  “Ask me what?” he said as coolly as he could without being unfriendly.

  Jessica shook her head and hugged her schoolbag close to her chest.

  “Ask him,” insisted Charlotte, eyeballing her sister ferociously.

  “Ask me what?” said Kit, now directing his question at Charlotte.

  “Ask you what Coco Lloyd was doing coming out of your apartment at 7:30 this morning,” said Charlotte boldly.

  Kit’s confidence in his ability to handle the day vanished. He felt sick, but tried not to look it. So he’d been right. She was a model. Trust one of those Prada-conscious Peterson girls to be lurking around at just the wrong time. (He hadn’t done anything wrong but that didn’t mean he didn’t feel like he had done something wrong. He considered offering up a prayer that the girls wouldn’t tell their mother but doubted he’d get a lot of sympathy.) It was less than three months since he’d lost Jacey, and he didn’t want Sasha Peterson to think he was that sort of guy because he wasn’t.

  “I’m doing some work on her stock portfolio and she was dropping off some papers, if you must know,” he said, acting far more nonchalant than he felt. Picking up strange women in bars was really not his thing, even if it had happened a couple of times lately. Not to mention that it was too soon. He thought so and everybody else would too. “She’s one beautiful woman, though, I’ll give you that,” he added.

  Charlotte and Jess exploded with laughter.

  “‘She’s one beautiful woman,’” Charlotte mimicked, amid snorts and guffaws.

  “What’s wrong with that? What’s funny about that? She is a beautiful woman,” Kit said, vaguely annoyed, as the elevator arrived at the ground floor and the door opened.

  “She’s a beautiful girl, jerk-off,” said Charlotte as she pushed past him. “She’s in Jessie’s grade at school.”

  Kit felt the familiar frenzy clawing at his innards again. Barely able to move, he watched Charlotte and Jessica wave at the doorman before disappearing into the street in their school uniforms. In Jessie’s grade at school? But Jess was only in eleventh grade. How old did that make her? Sixteen? Fifteen?

  “Oh, Jesus,” groaned Kit.

  “All right there, Mr. Stephens?” Benny the doorman called, stepping out from behind his desk with a worried look on his face as he came to Kit’s aid. “You’d better sit down. You look all done in.”

  He guided the shaking Kit over to the leather sofa in the reception area and eased him down onto it. “Can I get you anything? A glass of water?”

  Kit nodded his head and Benny disappeared into his office just as Kit’s cell phone started to ring. The feeling of dread doubled, then tripled, then multiplied itself by a thousand.

  “Kit Stephens,” he said, without much enthusiasm, into the phone.

  “Where the hell are you, Christopher?” George’s voice boomed out of the earpiece. “We’ve got the Chemocorp deal going through this morning, the AsiaBank report—as if I need to remind you—out at eleven and your assistant is starting to put your calls through to me because some of your clients are ringing back for the third time today. Did I mention we missed you at the meeting this morning? Christ, that’s the second time this week, Kit.”

  There was silence.

  “Kit, are you there?”

  “Yes, George, I’m on my way. Something came up and I—”

  “Spare me the details. Just get here.” George hung up in his ear.

  “Sounds like what you might call a shit of a morning, huh, Mr. Stephens?” Benny said cheerfully, appearing at his side with a glass of water, which Kit glugged down greedily before getting to his feet and checking to see if his legs were working properly.

  “You could say that, Benny. God, what’s the matter with me?” He felt his pockets just to reassure himself he was still inside his suit, then exhaled sharply and collected his wits. “Hey, thanks for the water, pal,” he said. “I was just, uh, surprised by something the Peterson girls sprung on me, that’s all.”

  He offered the doorman a weak smile and patted him on the shoulder in a friendly show of appreciation.

  “They’ll have a few more surprises in store for the likes of us, them two, huh?” said Benny as he watched Kit’s back retreat through the doors and out into the street in search of a cab.

  For once, Kit didn’t stop to take in the breathtaking view from the twenty-seventh floor of the glass and stainless building they called the Toast Rack when he arrived at work.

  His assistant, Niamh, stood up from behind her desk when she saw him and intercepted him at the door to his office. “George wants to see you,” she said, looking at him closely. “And I don’t think he wants to swap recipes.”

  Kit closed his eyes and tried to straighten his head. Niamh strode back to her desk and opened her top drawer, returning with some breath-freshening mints.

  “Don’t blow it now, Kit,” she said, staring at him with her earnest eyes. “You’ve come too far.”

  For a moment Kit thought about asking her to hold him and let him cry for a while on her shoulder. But even through the jelly in his head he realized now was probably not the time. Now was the time to get yelled at by George, his friend and boss, a guy famous for having very little patience and a lot of sarcasm. He turned and walked past the rows of trading desk
s where eighty of his colleagues were shouting into headsets and bashing at their telephones and keyboards. Nobody was looking at him but he couldn’t remember if that was normal or not. He passed Eddie’s office but the door was shut. Maybe Ed hadn’t made it into work this morning either. God, thought Kit, it would be great to not be the only one in the shit.

  George’s assistant, Pearl, a gorgeous Asian woman with legs that raised the temperature of water coolers the whole floor over, indicated that he should go straight in.

  George was behind his desk, on the phone. “I’ll call you right back,” he said into the receiver and placed it carefully in its cradle.

  “Kit,” he said, motioning for him to sit down. “So nice of you to join us.”

  George’s eyes were as cold as Christmas yet his lips were smiling and the sunlight glinting off his shiny bald head cast a certain jauntiness on the scenario. Kit suddenly wondered if he was dreaming and started to smile as well. Maybe the not-really-happening-to-him feeling that had been plaguing him these past few weeks was justified. Maybe it wasn’t really happening to him.

  “I’m glad to see you have retained your sense of humor, Christopher,” George said, the smile slipping off his face like mud in a landslide. “That the seriousness of the situation is not dampening your spirits in any way.”

  Kit cleared his throat. The chances of it all being a dream, he supposed, were really quite slim but that was okay. He wasn’t naturally a dreamer, he had his feet on the ground, everyone said so.

  “God, George,” he said. “I’m real sorry about this morning. It’s just that, ah, I got held up back at the apartment with the neighbors. One of their girls had taken the dog for a walk and lost it in the park and Sasha Peterson—remember her? I think you met her last Thanksgiving. Anyway, she came and asked if I could—”

  George, unable to listen to another syllable of Kit’s labored excuse, suddenly thumped his fist on his desk with a rage of which Kit had heard but never dreamed he would bear the brunt.

  “Don’t. Fuck. With. Me. Kit,” he said in a voice so cold and hard Kit couldn’t believe he wasn’t shouting. “I’ve had enough. I’ve heard enough. You are messing up big time, buddy, and you are not going to do it on my shift any longer.”

  “Your shift?” Kit laughed, albeit nervously. “Come on, George, what is this, Hill Street Blues?”

  George took a deep breath. “Kit, you don’t seem to understand. You seem to have forgotten that there are kids out there on that trading desk who would do your job for free, just to prove that they can. There are kids out on the streets who would do the jobs of the kids on the trading desk, just to prove that they can. The places left empty on the streets? They would be filled like that”—he snapped his fingers—“with other kids also willing to do anything, anything, for nothing, no money, nothing, just to prove that they can. Are you with me?”

  Kit was bewildered.

  “What I am saying, Christopher, is that you are no longer an indispensable part of the broking team here at Fitch, Wright and Ray. As of 8:30 this morning your clients were transferred to Ed Lipman, and your office is to be occupied by Tom Foster from the desk. We will pay you a month’s notice and your stock options can be cashed in with no penalty for choosing not to remain employed here for the required ten years, although you will have to wait until the ten years is up. I believe that will be, luckily for you, in just a couple of weeks’ time. In the meantime, good-bye.”

  The sun still glinted off of George’s bald pate as Kit sat stunned in his seat.

  “Jesus, George,” he said, trying to laugh and failing miserably. “You’re firing me?”

  “No, Kit, you are resigning.”

  George paused, then looked at his friend and shook his head, thawing slightly now that the worst part was over. “Jesus, man, look at yourself,” he said more softly. “You’ve been a mess since Jacey—”

  “This is not about Jacey,” Kit broke in, his voice shaky but determined nonetheless. “Do not talk about Jacey.”

  “Kit, you’ve got to accept the facts,” said George, exasperated. “Without her, you have been a disaster area. Jesus, and I thought with her you were a disaster area. You can’t do a decent day’s work anymore, Kit. You don’t sleep. You can’t concentrate. Your drinking is way out of control. I can’t trust you anymore. Your clients can’t trust you anymore. You’re a mess, my friend. You are an embarrassment.”

  “But, George,” Kit said, feeling the words starting in his throat strong and sure before stumbling over his tongue, tripping on his lips to end up weak and pathetic and whining, “we’re buddies. I’m your daughter’s godfather, for chrissakes. I made a speech at your wedding. Jesus, we go back. Way back. I’m your top guy. We built this firm up together, you and Eddie and me, from almost nothing. The money I’ve made you, made us. God, doesn’t that count for something?”

  George looked at him sadly. “Kit, the day you met Jacey Grey was the day you stopped being my top guy. It was bad enough when she was here but since she’s been gone you have turned into someone I don’t even know anymore. Look at you! I can smell the booze from here, Kit. When did you have your last drink? Did you even get any sleep last night? Can you even remember where you were, what you did?”

  Smell the booze? What was he talking about? Kit started to feel the panic rising in his stomach again.

  “Remember what I did? Sure,” he said, uncertainly. “Had a few drinks with the guys at the Grill and then, uh, hung out a bit, I guess. What does it matter?”

  “It matters to me,” said George, once again cold and unfriendly. “It particularly matters to me that you downed half a dozen tequila shots in some swanky bankers’ joint then shouted for Cristal for your companions before snorting a line of coke on the bar in front of two of our biggest clients. You then tried to pay the bill with your company credit card, which, by the way, is maxed out. It’s not the nineties anymore, Kit. Nobody wants to see money being spent like that. It’s disgusting.”

  Kit was speechless. George had his facts wrong. What the hell was he going on about? Snorting coke in a bar? Someone had been but it wasn’t him. The panicky feeling had reached the insides of his face by now. A drink would be great, he thought. He realized he was sweating.

  “You’re not the smart, great-looking guy from Burlington, Vermont, who’ll do anything to prove himself to the world anymore, Kit,” continued George, his anger building again. “You’re just another Wall Street burnout with a drinking problem and I don’t want to know you anymore. I don’t know you anymore. Now, get out.”

  George dismissed Kit by picking up his phone and punching in a number. “I said, get out,” he repeated as he waited for his call to go through. “Straighten out. Clean up your act, Kit. Maybe you can start again someplace else.”

  By the time Kit had stood up and made it to the door, George was already explaining to Neil Ryan, formerly one of Kit’s A-list clients, that Ed would be taking him to lunch next week to discuss future initiatives. Standing outside George’s office, Kit looked around the trading floor. Not one single dealer could meet his eye. The noise in the room seemed wrong. Too quiet. Or too loud. He wasn’t sure, couldn’t remember. They all knew, Kit suddenly thought, feeling the sweat running down his spine under his shirt. They all knew.

  Attempting to pull himself together, he walked down the hall to Eddie’s office and opened the door without knocking. Eddie was sitting on the edge of his desk laughing, his back to the view. Tom Foster was sitting opposite him.

  “Kit, hello,” Eddie said, standing up as the smile dropped from his face. “Tom, would you excuse us for a moment? Thank you.”

  Tom snuck a look at Kit before snatching a bunch of files off Ed’s desk and leaving the room.

  “Did you know about this?” Kit demanded, trying to sound angry but only half getting there. “Did you know George was going to fire me?”

  Eddie slunk around behind his desk and sat down. For the first time ever, Kit noticed how smarmy he looke
d. That slicked-back blond hair, those glasses. The lips already too moist that he kept licking. Was this really his best friend? The firm’s other hotshot managing director? He and Eddie had been George’s natural choices as right-hand men and had helped him build the firm up to the level and significant status it enjoyed in the banking industry today. They had worked and played together side by side for years now, yet suddenly he felt as if he’d never really looked at Eddie before.

  “Listen, Kit,” his friend said soothingly, picking his words carefully, “this has been coming for a while, you must know that. Christ, you can’t even make it to lunch without a drink these days; you’re not paying your way, your clients are nervous. What did you think would happen?”

  Kit slumped into the chair left warm by Foster’s butt. The butt that was replacing his.

  “God, doesn’t a guy get a second chance around here?” he tried to joke. “Couldn’t you have said something to me? Warned me?”

  Eddie looked pained. “Kit, you have had all the second chances and warnings you were ever going to get. Jesus, it’s not as though we didn’t try to help you. There was the weekend up at Mary’s family place when we tried to sober you up for two days. There was the counseling George organized. We had an intervention at your apartment, for chrissakes. What else could we have done?”

  Kit was stunned. Not for the first time he felt as though he had slipped into the shoes of some nightmare-ish stranger. Counseling? Sobering up? Intervention? Was it possible they were talking about him?

  “Christ, Ed. You talk as though I have some sort of terrible problem. I mean, it’s not like I go out drinking on my own. You’re usually there, for one. I mean, you were there last night. You’re always there.”

  “The difference is, Kit, that I stop and I go home. And I get up and come to work in the morning.” Eddie paused and looked him in the eye. “Tell me, Kit, what time did I go home last night?”

  Kit stared at him. Had Eddie been at the restaurant? The secret Korean bar? Jesus, was George’s story about the coke true? Had Eddie seen that? And why hadn’t he stopped it? He cleared his throat. “You came to the Tibetan place,” he said, without great certainty. “And then Mary called and you left.”