The Teaser

by Michael Dalton

  The Teaser

  Copyright 2000, 2014 by Michael Dalton. All rights reserved.

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.

  This is a work of fiction. References to real people, establishments, organizations, or locations are intended only to provide a sense of authenticity, and are used fictitiously. Any similarity to persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Cover design by Coverama.

  Follow Michael at michaeldaltonbooks.com and on Twitter at @MikeDaltonBooks.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  About the Author

  Other Books by Michael Dalton

  I.

  The invitation, when it came, was something of a shock.

  To be fair, I hadn’t seen her or talked to her in almost a year, not since graduating from law school, so no doubt plenty of things had happened to her since then. But the incongruity of it all rang through my head as if I were standing within the Yale carillon at noon.

  Kate? Getting married? I would sooner believe she had been abducted by aliens.

  The invitation was engraved, printed on heavy cotton-rag paper and hidden within multiple envelopes, with bits of tissue paper throughout. Mr. and Mrs. William G. Armitage request the honor of your presence, etc., etc. The name below Kate’s was unfamiliar: Preston Mayhew MacDonnell MacAllister IV. No one I knew from Adam.

  I could picture him, though. The name just reeked of WASP-y privilege and money, the milieu I had stood on the fringes of all during college, as if it were the dance pit at a strip bar: Look But Don’t Touch. Boys who had made their money the old-fashioned way, by inheriting it.

  My family did have money, but it was new. My grandfather had been born in a wooden shack in the coalfields of West Virginia, climbing his way out all the way to Yale Law School and beyond while their grandfathers were presiding over the wreckage of the Depression from their mansions in Newport. And they let me know it in a thousand little ways.

  Kate had come from their world, but she had never seemed to be a part of it. Until now. I wondered what had finally turned her around.

  The invitation sat on my desk at home for a couple of days while I pondered this development. Kate and I had been close friends at one time. I liked to think we still were, but the fact remained that we hadn’t spoken in about nine or ten months. The why of it was something I didn’t like to think about much, and didn’t need to, since I could explain it away by blaming the seventy-hour work weeks I had to log as a first year associate at a giant Manhattan law firm. Most of the time it felt like the truth.

  My curiosity finally got the better of me after three days—she had not, I knew full well, sent me the invitation simply because she found my name in her address book. I looked up her parent’s number and called her. The phone rang twice before an unfamiliar female voice answered.

  “Armitage residence, may I help you?”

  “Uh, hi. My name is Tom Dempsey. I’m trying to reach Katherine Armitage.”

  “Just a moment, please.”

  The maid set down the phone, and about a minute later, Kate’s voice came shrieking over the line.

  “Tom?”

  “Hey, stranger.”

  “My God, how are you?”

  “Still a little in shock. I just got the invitation.”

  She laughed.

  “I know, can you believe it?”

  “No.”

  She laughed again.

  “God! I wasn’t that bad!”

  “I’m kidding. A little. Congratulations.”

  “Thanks. I’m so sorry I haven’t called you about it. I meant to and meant to, I’ve just been so incredibly busy planning this thing.”

  “I understand. It’s okay. How did it happen? Who is he?”

  “A friend of the family. You know how those things go. I don’t think you ever would have met him. He was a year ahead of us at Yale.”

  “I don’t think I did. The name doesn’t ring any bells.”

  “Well, I hardly knew him myself then. My uncle introduced us our junior year, but we didn’t start dating until about a year ago.”

  “What’s he do?”

  She laughed.

  “Preston? Nothing. He moves his money around online when he wants to feel useful. He worked for Merrill Lynch as an analyst after graduating, but he quit after about a year. He doesn’t really have a job anymore. Not that he needs to work.”

  “Trust fund baby?”

  “Right.”

  I ignored the growing twinge in my stomach, shoving it back into the past where it belonged.

  “Look,” she went on, “you’re still in New York, right?”

  “Right. Midtown. I’m still with Wilson & Taft.”

  “Well, do you think you could burn a sick day and come up to Newport? I’d love to have lunch and catch up with you before I get too caught up in the wedding.”

  “Sure. When?”

  “Wednesday? Say at noon? Do you remember that fish place near the Block Island Ferry?”

  “Anderson’s?”

  “Yeah. Meet me there at noon?”

  “No problem. I’ll see you then.”

  II.

  I first met Kate during our freshman year at Yale.

  Though I had grown up in midtown Manhattan, not far off the Park, I was not the typical New York City private school-educated teenager. Unlike many of my friends, who were drinking at 12 and having sex at 14, I was a quiet and reserved kid. Much of that mien I inherited from my father, and from my grandfather, who had been elevated to the federal bench by President Bush while I was in junior high. As a survival mechanism early in his career, he had kept his undistinguished background close to his vest, trying to absorb the affectations and mannerisms of his colleagues, some of whom had ancestors who had practiced law with Thomas Jefferson. My father grew up in this environment, and, knowing nothing else, had assumed that presenting a distinguished and conservative front to the world was paramount if one wished to succeed. By the time I hit puberty, my father was a partner at a large city law firm, my grandfather was a federal judge, and my one greatest fear was not living up to their expectations for me. So the last thing I was going to do was engage in any adolescent rebellion, no matter what my friends might be up to.

  I arrived at Yale a shy, uptight, anal-retentive virgin. When I left, I was none of these things. Kate fixed the first three directly, and had a hand in fixing the fourth.

  That first fall, I pledged SAE for little more reason than my father and grandfather were both members themselves. In October of my freshman year, the house had an exchange with Tri-Delt. For much of that night, I wandered aimlessly around the party, a bit drunk, checking out the girls but too shy to approach any of them.

  I was standing by myself, minding my own business, when someone crashed into me from behind. I lost my balance and fell to the floor, spilling beer all over myself, hearing a shriek of feminine laughter at the same time.

  I looked up to see a brown-haired girl standing over me, giggling in tipsy embarrassment. Two other girls behind her were laughing just as hard at what she had done.

  “Oh, my God. I’m so sorry. Are you okay?”

  “Yeah.”

  I stood up, wiping at the
beer on my jeans. The girl laughed again.

  “I’m sorry. Let me clean you up.”

  As if we had met a year ago rather than about five seconds, she took my hand and dragged me into the kitchen. She found a towel and blotted it against my leg.

  “I’m sorry. Rebecca shoved me, and I tripped over something.”

  “It’s all right. It’s just beer.”

  She wiped at my jeans for another few seconds before standing straight.

  “Anyway. I’m Kate.”

  “I’m Tom. Nice to meet you.”

  She noticed the pin on my shirt.

  “Are you a freshman?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Me too. Where are you from?”

  “New York City.”

  “Oh, cool. I’m from Newport. Do you like it up here?”

  I slowly checked her out as I talked to her, getting a better look at her under the brighter lights in the kitchen. She wasn’t quite conventionally pretty, yet something attracted me to her anyway. She was about average height and build, dark hair, and big hazel eyes just brimming with energy.

  I spent the rest of the party with her, thinking we had somehow hit it off immediately. A cute meet, right? I would learn the truth soon enough. Kate was simply like that with everyone.

  I texted her a few days later, asking if she wanted to go see a movie. After we discussed what was playing that weekend, she agreed. I picked her up at her room, and we drove to a theatre near campus. We had arrived early, and we went to a cafe across the street to get something to eat.

  I had, by then, begun to think that she was kind of cute. She seemed to be the sort of woman who got more attractive the longer you knew her.

  “What do your folks do?” I asked.

  “Do? You mean work?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well . . . nothing really. My family has a lot of money. My granddad did work when he was younger, but my dad never really has.”

  “What did your granddad do, then?”

  “His grandfather, my great-great-grandfather, was one of those railroad barons back in the 1800’s. He started a bunch of companies, and my granddad inherited all of it. He managed it himself until it got too big for him. Then he just retired and let someone else run it. That’s basically what my dad does. Let other people manage his money.”

  A wave of dollar signs spun through my head as I absorbed this. My mother had joked about my finding a rich girl to marry at Yale, but I doubt she had expected anything like this.

  “What about your folks?” she asked.

  “My dad is a lawyer. My granddad is a judge.”

  “Wow. What does he judge?”

  “He’s a federal judge in New York, an appeals judge. That’s one level below the Supreme Court.”

  “Are you going to be a lawyer too?”

  “I don’t know. Everyone kind of expects me to. My dad and grandfather both went to law school here. I’ve got a lot of expectations to live up to.”

  Kate nodded.

  “I know what you mean. Before I left home in August, my mother gave me this big speech about remembering who I was and where I came from and how I had to be careful about who I dated.”

  Uh-oh, I thought.

  “Are they picky about your boyfriends?” I asked evenly.

  She rolled her eyes.

  “Beyond picky. Don’t get even me started.”

  I tried to grin.

  “Parents suck sometimes.”

  “Tell me about it. I figure I’m just here to have fun and go to school, and I’ll let them worry about who I’m allowed to marry.”

  I spent most of the movie trying to work up the guts to hold Kate’s hand, but I couldn’t quite make myself do it. She didn’t want to go home right after the movie was over, so we found a coffeeshop nearby and got a table out front.

  “Tell me something embarrassing,” she said when we sat down.

  I twitched in surprise. “What do you mean?”

  “I hate small talk. I want to know something important about you.”

  I began to blush without even having thought of what to say. Kate laughed and touched my arm.

  “I’ll tell you something, too. Come on, don’t be shy.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I think this is the best way to make friends with people, if you exchange secrets. Then you’ve kind of got this bond, you know, where you’re equally embarrassed. Plus it’s a way to test whether you think you can trust the person.”

  I was beginning to doubt whether Kate was capable of being embarrassed, by anything, but I saw what she meant.

  “Okay. Give me a minute.”

  She grinned as she watched me think.

  “Well,” I began, blushing more intensely, “I’m a virgin. Is that embarrassing enough?”

  She smiled warmly, then squeezed my hand.

  “No. I think that’s cool. I know most guys would rather die than tell a girl that. It’s nothing to be embarrassed about. If it makes you feel any better, so am I.”

  “Oh.” I tried to smile back at her. “Does that count as your secret?”

  She giggled.

  “No. Because I’m not embarrassed about it. Okay, listen to this. Did you ever catch your parents doing it?”

  I laughed.

  “Once. Why?”

  “Well, I bet it was nothing like what happened to me.” She closed her eyes to gather some fortitude. “I mean, it’s so gross I don’t even like thinking about it. It was about four years ago, when I was in ninth grade. One Friday night, I was supposed to be spending the night at a friend of mine’s, but she got really sick that night so I had to go home. Her mom tried calling my folks to let me know, but no one answered. We figure someone’s just on the phone, right? So home I go.

  “Now you have to understand that we have a really big house. It’s got like three wings and twelve bedrooms and more rooms than we’ve ever really used. My great-granddad built it around the turn of the century. Anyway, the point is that there was no way my folks could have heard me come in, and our servants are all in bed. I go upstairs to my room, which is right next to my parents’ bedroom. The door to that wing is closed when I get up there, which strikes me as kind of weird, but I don’t really think about it. As I go down the hall, I can hear my mother making all kinds of noise, just going “Oh!, Ah!,” that kind of thing. I was old enough to know what they were doing, but not old enough to leave well enough alone. So I peek in their door, which is open a couple of inches.”

  She paused, taking a deep breath.

  “And there is my mother, wearing nothing but black stockings and a garter belt, bent over a chair with her hands tied to the arms and her ankles tied to the legs. And my dad is behind her, you know, and I have somehow arrived at the precise moment that he is . . .” She paused again, closing her eye and trying not to laugh. “Finishing up, you know? He doesn’t see me looking in, but my mother does.”

  “Oh, my God,” I laughed.

  “She freaks out completely. She tries to jump up, but the problem is that she’s tied to the chair, right? So she just loses her balance and falls over, and my poor dad is standing there suddenly jerked back to reality with his . . . stuff . . . going all over the place. And that was the point that I ran back to my room in terror.”

  I struggled with myself for a few seconds to keep from laughing out loud. Kate shook her head wearily.

  “I thought they were going to ground me for a million years. I didn’t realize until a long time afterward how mortified they must have been. My mom came into my room a few minutes later and tried to give me some explanation for what they had been doing, but I was too traumatized to really listen to her.”

  “God. I guess.”

  She sighed, still laughing weakly.

  “So that’s my most embarrassing secret. If you ever meet my parents, you can’t let on that you know about that.”

  I laughed again.

  “I’ll try.”

  ---

/>   Kate and I went out again the next week, and the next, and I often ran into her around the first-year residential college. We rapidly reached the plateau of being “good friends,” but somehow it went no further.

  This is not to say that we stopped going out, for we continued to do so with some regularity. We just didn’t “date.” We went out to dinner, we went to the movies, and though on occasion we did engage in some casual smooching (nothing beyond friendly pecks on the cheek or the lips), she made it quite clear that she was not ready to be tied down to anyone.

  What I learned, slowly, was that a prospective suitor was going to have to run a rather harrowing gauntlet with Kate’s family to be welcomed into the fold. Her great-grandfather had used his fortune to build one of those palatial mansions along the Newport coastline, where Kate’s family still lived and her mother still held court among Newport society. The great-grandson of a West Virginia coal miner, as I was, had no chance whatsoever of gaining her parents’ approval, never mind that the son of that coal miner was now a judge on the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. More than one scion of a WASP establishment family far more prominent than mine had been judged and found wanting. Kate had finally decided to deal with this issue by dating no one at all. She had armies of friends, but of boyfriends, none.

  This hardly meant, I would often tell myself, that I meant nothing to her. I was one of her better friends, and when I was feeling bold enough, I would let myself think I was her best friend. I might well have been, but even then, that fact would have changed nothing of substance. We stood on opposite sides of a great divide, and nothing was likely to ever bridge it.

  III.

  I got my supervising partner’s blessing to take a day off and drove up to Newport. The restaurant was a block or two away from the Fort Adams pier. It was mid-April, still early spring for New England, and the day, though pretty, was not warm. A few sailboats were out on the water, chasing the elusive breeze that had bedeviled generations of America’s Cup skippers, before the Aussies had finally broken the New York Yacht Club’s monopoly in 1983.

  Kate was waiting in the lobby, and she gave me a warm hug and peck on the cheek when I walked in. As she withdrew, I looked down at her left hand, seeing a glittering four-carat diamond on her ring finger.