Closing Costs

by Seth Margolis

“Your performers work for free?”

  “Practically,” Ventnor said. “You’d be surprised the talent you can get for a couple hundred bucks an hour.”

  The talent was becoming uncharacteristically verbal, signaling an impending climax.

  “Right on time,” Ventnor said, checking his watch. “Our subscribers like that we’re prompt on both ends. They schedule their whole day around us. We know this thanks to Positano. We send out automatic evaluation e-mails after every show. You know, did they want to see more oral, for her to maybe sit on his face longer—you missed that, right before you came, her signature move. Real-time feedback is fucking incredible. We do a show every two hours, starting at four in the afternoon and ending at midnight on weekdays, so we can’t wait until the next day to know what’s turning our clientele on. Our competition’s just a mouse click away.”

  Guy heard the same Web clichés every day from his own clientele.

  Ventnor checked the laptop to do a bit of on-the-fly market research and scribbled new instructions based on the latest feedback from his clientele. He thrust the paper directly in front of the male performer: Pull out for climax, it read. He rejoined Guy at the other side of the room.

  “Look, during the IPO, we couldn’t let investors know that our biggest customer was…was this.” Guy pointed to the writhing performers. “They wouldn’t have touched us. But you’re not our biggest customer anymore, so—”

  “Damn straight we’re not. We get Positano for free.”

  Free software had been Ventnor’s first bit of extortion.

  “Exactly my point,” Guy said. “You’re not important to us anymore.”

  “But here you are,” Ventnor said, giving his back pocket an affectionate pat, “check in hand.”

  Guy thought of the upcoming MyJob contract. Needless to say, Ventnor Place was not on the reference list submitted to MyJob or any other client. He could just imagine how Ventnor’s reference would go: Positano? Terrific fucking company. With Positano, we can really understand our clientele. How else would we have known that three-quarters of our customers wanted the chick on top when she comes?

  “This is the first and last payment, Ventnor. We’re not generating cash the way we were a few months ago, and even if we were, I’m through dealing with you.”

  “That’s bullshit about the cash. Your burn rate is two million a month. You got sixty million from the offering four months ago, and even with your stock in the toilet you could pull off a secondary, no sweat.” He stepped a few feet closer to the performers, careful not to get in front of the camera, and whispered, “Jeremy, you’re lying there like a lox. Pump up the volume, okay?” Back at Guy’s side, he added, “Viagra works miracles on the dick, but you still gotta show some enthusiasm. That leaves twenty-eight million in the piggy bank.”

  Beware the pornographer with a business head—that should be lesson number one in every New Economy manual. Ventnor’s employees dutifully shifted into high gear, the man by emitting a steady stream of ohbabyyeahbabydon’tstop’s his dick re-exposed for the world to see—as the world had requested—while his partner launched into a series of rhythmic, high-pitched squeals.

  “You won’t get another cent from me,” Guy said.

  “Let’s wait and see what happens to Positano stock. Fuck’s going on over there, anyway, how come the stock went to hell?”

  “Everyone keeps expecting the nineties to happen all over again. They want them to happen again. They remember when the bubble inflated, not when it burst. Anyway, where you choose to invest your money is none of my business.”

  “Fuck that. I am your business. You were two days from oblivion when I answered your two-bit ad. Christ, I’ve seen classier ads for penis enlargers in the back of Hustler.”

  With nothing more than a few thousand lines of code to his name and not a single customer, Guy had borrowed money on his credit card and placed a half-page advertisement in a few Internet magazines. A week after the issues hit the stands, he hadn’t gotten a single response and was ready to give up when Ventnor called.

  “It wasn’t just the money, either,” Ventnor said. “I practically developed your FastResponse product, which had more kinks than my freakiest customers.”

  He had a point, not that Guy was going to acknowledge it.

  “How many hours did we spend back then, working out all the bugs? You had the basic framework, the theory, but I had a real-world application. You think your customer at Merrill Lynch would have spent all that time with you? Not fucking likely. Can we at least pretend we’re getting off on this?”

  It took Guy a few seconds to realize that the last statement was not directed at him. It took the performers a few seconds as well to crank it up a notch.

  Ventnor chuckled quietly, shaking his head. “Can you imagine what Merrill Lynch would say if they knew that the software they use to respond to inquiries from millionaire geezers clipping coupons in Florida was originally developed to respond to horn dogs who wanted a little more anal in their life? Probably the same client base, now that I think about it.”

  “I don’t want to argue with you, I just want to make it clear…” The woman let loose a piercing shriek that elicited a thumbs-up from Ventnor. “…that I’m not handing over any…” Two more shrieks, even louder than the first. “…any more money. You can call The Wall Street Journal and tell them all about our relationship, I don’t…” The shrieks were coming at close intervals now, with Ventnor waving his arms at the couple like Leonard Bernstein inciting the New York Philharmonic to a crescendo. “…a lot of Internet infrastructure companies have adult entertainment clients, some of the biggest names…” A sudden pounding from above shook the camera—on the monitor it looked like the woman’s climax was causing a minor earthquake. Ventnors hoved his middle finger at the ceiling. “Just trying to make an honest living, neighbors,” he hissed. Guy tried to remain focused. “…Akamai, Inktomi, Veritas—you think these companies don’t have customers like…like…” Shrieks from the woman now merged with the steady pounding from above. “…like this…this enterprise of yours…” There was abrupt silence as the woman turned off like a stalled car and the upstairs neighbor relented. “…even today these companies have market caps of…” She massaged her breasts as her partner began stroking himself. “…of billions of dollars, and everyone knows that when they started out…” An anguished gasp accompanied Jeremy’s remarkable money shot, which brought his eyebrows into play.

  “Range like that, the guy could play center field for the Yankees,” Ventnor said. “And you notice, no condoms? Our clientele doesn’t want to see condoms, ruins the fantasy. So we have our performers tested. Suck some face,” he whispered to the couple.

  The performers obligingly waged a desultory sword fight with their tongues.

  “Okay, it’s a wrap,” Ventnor whispered. The performers got up from the bed with uncharacteristic energy. “Slooowly,” the director cautioned, then turned to Guy. “Our clientele goes ballistic when the performers race off camera like they can’t wait to take a crap.”

  “I gotta get out of here,” Guy said. He felt a new depth of unease in the bizarrely impersonal postcoital atmosphere. “As far as your relationship to Positano is concerned, consider it finished.”

  Ventnor took a wad of money from a pants pocket and gave a hundred-dollar bill to each performer, who accepted their payments silently as they continued to dress. The man’s chemically enhanced erection, Guy noted, showed no sign of deflating, even as he maneuvered it into a pair of tight jeans.

  “Be back by six forty-five sharp,” he said.

  Guy knew he didn’t want to leave with them. He couldn’t begin to imagine what sort of small talk he could manage with two people who’d just fucked in front of him and a virtual audience of who knew how many pay-per-viewing freaks.

  “I’m serious, Ventnor, I don’t want to hear from you again. And if I do, not only will I not pay you anything, I’ll go to the authorities.”

&nbs
p; “Get your stock back over thirty bucks and you won’t hear from me,” Ventnor said. “Meanwhile, I got margin loans up the wazoo, and if I need cash, I know where to find it.”

  Guy saw no point to responding to what was, after all, just another disgruntled shareholder, and headed for the door.

  Twelve

  Lily didn’t miss Barnett until dinnertime. She’d spent the late afternoon in Central Park with William, who had a baseball practice, and had managed to slip away for a half hour of bird watching in the Rambles, where she’d witnessed a flamboyant blue jay plunder the nest of a dull, frantic English sparrow, sending two eggs crashing to the ground before absconding with a third in its beak. She went to the Rambles for peace and quiet but found drama, anyway. With birds as with people, the story never changed: The strong beset the weak, the fancy tormented the plain.

  “Where’s Daddy?” Sophie asked that evening. She stood tentatively in the hallway just outside the master bedroom.

  “He must have an appointment,” Lily replied.

  “Like he ever has appointments anymore.”

  “Well, things have changed.” Lily tried to sound optimistic. “Is this hard for you, sweetie?”

  “Not really.” She stepped into the master bedroom, however, indicating a willingness to face further questioning.

  “Kids at school don’t mention your father’s situation?”

  “We talk about it all the time.”

  “Really?”

  “Mary Katherine says that her father said that people like Daddy never go to jail. They just write a check to the government or whatever. Alison says her father told her that it’s all one big cat-and-mouse game.”

  Lily imagined a daisy chain of charming bedtime scenes in cozy children’s rooms up and down Park Avenue, fathers and daughters intimately discussing the Granthams’ legal predicament.

  “Well, it may not be that simple,” Lily said. For one thing, she did not add, any check they wrote to the government would bounce into orbit. “But it will work out one way or another, and I’m glad you’re handling it so well.”

  “Yeah, well, I mean, you know…” Sophie raised and lowered one shoulder. “Are you doing okay?”

  “Me? Of course, sweetie.” Sophie looked unconvinced. “Why do you ask?”

  “You seem different, that’s all. Like you don’t…you know, care as much.”

  “Care?”

  “About, you know, how you look and stuff.”

  Lily raised an involuntary hand to her head and felt an unfamiliar swelling of hair behind her ear. She was weeks overdo for a cut.

  “It’s not just your hair. I mean, I never saw you with your shirt not tucked in.”

  Lily stole a quick glance at her waist. “I was in the park…”

  “Like that ever made a difference before? I’m not saying it’s bad. You look, you know, kind of younger this way. Cooler. Almost.”

  “I do?”

  “Like, before? You always seemed so, you know, like…stiff. Marnie’s mother told her you’d commit suicide if your hemline was the wrong length.”

  Lily tried to recall if she knew Marnie’s mother and what the implications were of being considered suicidal over hemlines.

  “I mean, you’re my mother, so it wasn’t, like, wrong to look like, you know, formal. But now you’re like…” She completed the thought with another one-shoulder shrug.

  Nanny was next to check in.

  “It’s just that I made pot roast, and it’s going to dry up if I don’t serve it soon,” she said from the bedroom doorway.

  They’d fired Consuelo as an economy measure and had tried to axe Nanny as well, but she’d had a complete and utterly unexpected meltdown at the prospect of unemployment. There were plenty of positions for a skilled child-minder with good references, as Nanny must have known. But not with these children, she’d wailed, exhibiting a depth of feeling for William and Sophie that Lily had never suspected. They’d allowed her to stay, at a reduced salary, on condition that she chip in with the cooking and cleaning.

  “Fine, we’ll eat now.”

  “Shall I put a plate in the oven for Mr. Grantham? So it will be nice and warm when he gets back.”

  Nanny’s voice and attitude could make the most innocuous statements sound fraught with accusation. Something about “nice and warm” seemed vaguely reproachful…or was it the “when he gets back,” which seemed laced with sarcasm?

  “Good idea.”

  “I’ll gather up the children.”

  “Yes, gather them.” Why had they so easily given into Nanny’s histrionics? Hadn’t she mentioned a sister living nearby she could stay with until a new position materialized?

  Barnett’s absence was not mentioned during the quick dinner in the breakfast room, but by eight-thirty Lily was worried. She wandered restlessly from room to room, joined periodically by the children, who kept asking where their father was. She longed to confide her anxieties to them, but what exactly would she say, that she’d discovered their father spending his entire waking life surfing sex sites on the Internet, and that he may well have flown the coop in embarrassment? Did she believe that?

  The doorbell chimed at nine-thirty. She hurried to the foyer.

  “FBI,” came a male voice from behind the front door.

  She unlocked the door. Two men stood outside, both in dark suits. She thought she recognized one of them from the Temple of Dendur.

  “I’m Jay DiGregorio, from the Federal Prosecutor’s Office,” said the familiar one. “And this is Special Agent Sammet, from the FBI. I believe you are Mrs. Grantham?” She nodded. “Mrs. Grantham, do you know where your husband is?”

  She shook her head and let out a long, slow breath. If Barnett were dead, he wouldn’t have begun that way.

  “May we come in?” the other man, Special Agent Sammet, asked. Though he looked no older than thirty, his hair was as white and lustrous as ermine. Jay DiGregorio appeared to be about ten years older, and his scant remaining hair was gray. Both men had thick, sinewy necks that strained against buttoned white collars. They looked fit and predatory.

  “Where is my husband?”

  “May we come in?”

  “Tell me where he is.”

  “We have a search warrant,” said Special Agent Sammet, removing a document from his jacket pocket. She declined to take it and stepped aside to let them in.

  The two men entered the foyer.

  “Your husband boarded a plane for London this afternoon, Mrs. Grantham,” said DiGregorio as he gaped brazenly at the decor. “He left the country using his own passport.”

  “Well, why wouldn’t he?”

  “Exactly. Unfortunately, we didn’t confiscate his passport.” DiGregorio’s frown dug angry dimples into his jawline.

  “Why is Daddy in London?” Sophie asked. She and William stood on either side of Lily.

  “The British authorities have no record of him checking into a hotel,” said Special Agent Sammet. “Do you have any friends in London, Mrs. Grantham?”

  “A few, but we never stay with them.”

  “I’d like their names and contact information.”

  “But why are you—”

  “We don’t think your husband is still in London, or in England for that matter,” said DiGregorio. “We assume he transferred at Heathrow to someplace without an extradition treaty with the U.S.”

  “He ran away?”

  “He’s supposed to check with our office before any travel, even within the country,” said Special Agent Sammet. “He didn’t.”

  “But he…” He didn’t check in with her, either.

  “He didn’t tell you,” said DiGregorio quietly. She shook her head. “We’d like to see what he took with him, check his computer…it might help determine his whereabouts.”

  She was paralyzed by conflicting emotions: hurt, anger, isolation, confusion. Part of her thought of calling a lawyer, another part wanted to say, What the hell, ransack the apartment for all I care, it
won’t be ours much longer.

  “This won’t take long,” Special Agent Sammet said. “Which way is the master bedroom?”

  She led them down the long hallway and pointed out Barnett’s closet, which, along with her closet and dressing area, had been converted from a guest bedroom. Barnett’s suits, dozens of them, hung with grim precision on a long rod, his shirts nestled neatly on a column of specially designed shelves, exactly two shirts to a shelf, his shoes in custom-built, size 8½ slots. He’d spent days designing the closet. After Lily showed guests the living room, the dining room, the children’s rooms, Barnett would take them into the master bedroom and proudly fling open the double doors of his closet. Behold the dazzling order of my life. Nothing is beyond my control! It seemed unthinkable that he’d leave all that behind, almost as hard to accept as his deserting the family.

  “What was here?” Special Agent Sammet asked, pointing to a large empty shelf.

  “A suitcase,” she said. Then she noticed a few missing shirts, a missing sweater or two. In the precisely ordered closet, the absent items left painfully obvious holes, each as unexpected and unsettling as a missing front tooth. “There are clothes missing, and…” She glanced down. “Shoes.”

  Both children gaped at the empty slots in the closet as if they foretold a parlous future, which perhaps they did.

  “We’d like to see his computer,” DiGregorio said. When Lily ignored him, distracted rather than uncooperative, he took the warrant from his colleague’s hand.

  “I don’t care what you do,” she said, barely mustering the breath to speak. She led them back down the hall to Barnett’s study, the children following closely. DiGregorio sat in Barnett’s leather chair while his colleague stood behind him. Lily and the children watched from the other side of the desk.

  If she needed any proof that Barnett was gone, perhaps for good, she had only to look at the two men at his desk, violating his sanctum sanctorum. After a few minutes she circled the desk.

  They were opening, perusing, and quickly closing documents.

  “What exactly are you looking for?” she asked.