by Danny Tobey
“When did it get so cold out there?” He rubbed his hands together briskly. “Now, you’re probably wondering why you’re here.” He grinned at me. “I think you have potential, Jeremy. I liked your answer in class today. It was honest and thoughtful. I’d like you to be my research assistant this semester, if you’re willing.”
“Yes, sir. Of course.”
“Good. It’s settled then. For tomorrow, I’ll need a summary of every case that has cited Marshall v. City of Allegheny. That’s all for now, Mr. Davis.”
He turned his attention to papers on his desk, as if I were already gone. I thanked him and backed out quickly. Research assistant? Holy shit! I thought. Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit. This was it. This was the transformation. I’d always thought of law as a way to help people, the way my grandfather had helped people, but this was something totally different. A window had just opened to power, the good kind of power, greatness even. My grandfather helped a dozen clients a year. I could pass a law and help millions of people. I could negotiate peace between two countries and end a war. That was the game I was being asked to join now. And—I let my mind wander just a bit—there could be travel, to foreign capitals on important missions, perhaps escorted by beautiful women like Daphne Goodwin who one week ago were in a different universe than I was, but now it was suddenly plausible. More than plausible. I imagined myself in a tuxedo in exotic places with Daphne pressed up next to me—Spanish castles, Italian villas, Greek islands . . .
I had to catch myself. It was a research assignment. I had a long night ahead of me in the library. I wasn’t sure I even knew how to do what he’d asked. I hoped the librarians were helpful.
I was halfway down the hall to the elevator, when, from behind, I heard the professor say something strange to himself.
“V and D, perhaps?”
V and D? What was he talking about?
“We’ll see,” said a second voice.
I looked back, just in time to see the door close.
3
“In his office?” Nigel was leaning back in his chair in the student lounge the next day, polishing an apple on the lapel of a three-piece-suit. “My friend, you are in the catbird seat!”
“Nigel, did anyone ever tell you you talk like a 1940s movie?”
“Jeremy, I am a renaissance man in an age of specialization.”
“I don’t even know what that means.”
Nigel laughed and slapped me on the back. His good nature was infectious. Even strangers on the sofas around us looked over and smiled. Most people were studying. A few were hovering around, watching a chess game by the window.
“Ryan Groon,” Nigel said, inclining his head toward one of the chess players. “First in the nation in competitive chess for his age group. He can play blindfolded.”
“Where are you from, Nigel?”
“England, originally. My father was in the foreign service. My mother is an American actress. Penny James, have you heard of her? No? She was very well known in the seventies. Anyway, I grew up in London and Connecticut, went to Princeton, and now I’m here.”
I could picture Nigel on a beach somewhere, splashing around as a kid while people stared at the gorgeous American actress stretched out under an umbrella. Maybe in the background, his father loomed in a white suit and straw hat, speaking into a phone some waiter held for him on a silver tray. I could see both parents in Nigel’s face: the strong, forceful features of the diplomat, the graceful good looks of the movie star. It all made sense now.
“Say,” Nigel said. “I want to show you something.”
He pulled a book from his bag.
“With your permission,” Nigel said, “I’d like to ask Daphne out before you get your claws into her. Eh? Of course she’ll say no, but I’m not one to look back in eighty years and wonder what if? Whad’ya say?”
I admit, the idea of Nigel asking Daphne out annoyed me a little bit. After all, wasn’t I the one she was looking at in class? But still, Nigel and Daphne made sense together. Daphne and me . . .
“Sure, why not?” I told him.
“Excellent! Good man! I’m going to present her with this, as a symbol of my intentions.”
He produced a book. It looked like an antique, leather-bound with gold edging on the pages. It was a collection of essays.
“Nigel,” I said slowly. “Are you sure that’s what you want to give her?”
“What’s wrong with it?” he asked. He actually looked a little hurt.
“Nothing, nothing. It’s really nice. I’m sure she loves political theory. I was just thinking, maybe you could go for something a little more romantic. Flowers, maybe?”
Nigel grinned at me. He waved his finger in my face.
“A Casanova to boot! Yes, that’s exactly what I’ll do. Flowers. Brilliant!”
I sort of shook my head and changed the subject.
“Nigel, can I ask you a question?”
“Anything.”
“Have you ever heard of something called ‘V and D’?”
Nigel looked up from polishing his apple. He seemed to pause for a second.
“No.”
Then he smiled, an easy, casual smile. “I’m having some friends over for dinner this weekend. Would you like to come?”
“Nigel, did you hear my question? V and D. That seemed to mean something to you. I just thought, with your background . . . you seem to know about everything . . .”
“Nope, never heard of it,” Nigel said, rising and taking a bite from his apple. “I think I’m going to watch Groon finish trouncing this young man over here, and then I’ll take a walk. Think about my dinner invitation. I promise good wine.”
One day, curiosity is going to kill me. Once an idea gets into my head, I can’t let it go. What was V and D? Why did Nigel get so weird when I mentioned it? He was such a know-it-all. V and D seemed like the only thing he didn’t want to brag about knowing.
I searched on the web and didn’t find anything useful, mostly sites about venereal disease. The world’s largest library was a hundred yards from my room, and I didn’t find anything there either.
That night, I met one of my oldest friends, Miles Monroe, in a dark booth at the back of The Idle Rich, a pub near my dorm. Miles was a man of voracious appetites. I found him with a pint of Guinness and a few empty glasses, a basket of onion rings next to a basket of fries, a cigar burning in the ashtray, and his head buried in a thick book of Durkheim essays. His leather satchel sat next to him in the booth, bulging with books. Miles was immense, nearly six-seven with the physique of someone who read philosophy and ate onion rings all day. Miles might not live to be forty, but he was having a great time.
“How’s the search for the holy PhD going?”
Miles looked up and saw me. A smile opened in the middle of his shaggy philosopher’s beard.
“Great,” he said. “Just twelve more years to go.”
He rose and gave me a giant bear-hug and slapped me on the back. I smelled a faint hint of marijuana on his tweed jacket.
“It’s good to see you, Jeremy.”
Back in high school, Miles Monroe always looked out for me. He was three years older, the captain of our debate team when I was just a freshman. They called him “The Beast,” because he was a force of nature on the team, throwing his gargantuan body around and jabbing his finger while speaking in his rich, booming voice. We all knew he would go to college, but when he got into college here, the news shot quickly around our town. Everyone was surprised, because he was the first person from Lamar to get in. Ever. But no one was surprised that he was the one to do it. According to town gossip, passed from mom to mom in grocery stores and carpool lines, he made perfect grades in law school and had an amazing job lined up at a blue-chip New York firm after graduation. And then something happened. At the last minute, he rejected his job offer, grew a beard, and enrolled in the philosophy PhD program. His earning potential shrank from three million a year to thirty thousand. After that, the news
about Miles tapered off. He became just another bright kid who peaked early and fell back into normal boring life. But, he’d always had a love for all things gossipy and arcane, so I thought he’d be the perfect brain to pick.
“Ever miss home, Miles?”
“Not a bit,” he said. “Why? Do you?”
“I’m not sure yet.”
“Hey, you just got here. I’ve been here, what, seven years now? It’s culture shock. You’ll get used to it.”
He took a drink of Guinness and wiped his beard with a napkin.
“How was your summer?” I asked.
“Excellent. I was a counselor at philosophy camp.”
“Philosophy camp? Is that where nerds go when they die?”
“I see you haven’t lost your mediocre sense of humor.”
“So, you had a good time?”
“Yeah. They wouldn’t let me teach Nietzsche, though. They said teaching Nietzsche to high school kids was like handing them a bottle of Jack Daniel’s and the keys to a Porsche.”
Miles was deep into his dissertation on Nietzsche, whom he liked to call “the bad boy of philosophy.” “Nietzsche probably didn’t believe half the things he wrote,” Miles once told me. “He just liked to stir the pot. Plus, he was crazy. The syphilis went to his brain. One chapter in his autobiography is called ‘Why I am so great.’”
“Miles, can I ask you a question?”
“Sure.”
“What does V and D mean?”
He rubbed a napkin across his beard and started laughing through the french fries in his mouth.
“That’s what I love about you, Jeremy. You haven’t been here a week and you’re already asking about all the interesting stuff.”
“I get the feeling it’s kind of a touchy subject.”
“Let me guess. You asked some law student about it, and they got all weird and quiet?”
“One guy. Yeah. How’d you know?”
“Oh, it’s a cliché around here. I guess he thinks he’s a contender. Doesn’t want to screw it up.”
“Okay, contender for what?”
“V and D is a club. That’s it. Some people like to call it a secret society, but it’s really just a club for rich kids. I’m not sure what the initials stand for. Some people say Victory and Destiny. Lame, right? As a former classics major, my personal favorite theory is Vitium et Decus: Latin for ‘fault and distinction,’ loosely translated; or, in modern terms, ‘vice and virtue.’ But who knows? It’s not like they advertise.”
“So it’s just a club? Why do people get so weird about it?”
“Well, according to rumor and gross speculation, each year they select a group of law students to ‘try out,’ if you will, for the club. They call it striking the club. Ultimately, they induct three students into the society. Think about that. Three and only three out of the most selective law school in the galaxy. Once you’re in, you can’t say you’re in. I guess people who want to be in assume they’re not supposed to talk about it either. And, if you really do have a shot, you don’t want to screw it up, because your life is pretty sweet if you get in.”
“Pretty sweet? How?”
Miles leaned back, savoring the suspense and taunting me. He smiled.
“Why do you care so much about this?”
I thought about what he told me, about secrecy and people screwing up their chances. But I trusted Miles.
“Can you keep a secret?”
“Clearly not.”
“I’m serious.”
“Okay. Yes, I can keep a secret.”
“I heard someone mention my name for it. A professor.”
“Mention . . . What professor? Who was he talking to?”
“Bernini said it. I don’t know who he was talking to. It was weird . . . I thought he was alone when he said it.”
“Spooky.”
“Are you making fun of me?”
“No, no,” Miles said, slapping me on the arm and laughing his booming laugh. “I hope for your sake they are thinking about you. You know what one of the rumors is?”
“What?”
“If you don’t make your first million by the time you’re thirty, they give it to you.”
I nearly choked on my drink. A million dollars by age thirty? My dad wouldn’t make a million dollars in his entire life, much less at the beginning of his career. The last few days had definitely planted dreams of power and glory in my head, but somehow I hadn’t really thought about wealth too. I’m embarrassed to admit that for a brief moment, an image popped into my mind. I saw myself holding hands with Daphne. Somehow, in this flash of a daydream, it was implied that we were very rich.
“Really?” I managed to get out, doing my best to sound nonchalant and failing miserably.
“So they say.” Miles leaned back in the booth and flipped his book closed. “But who knows? It’s all speculation.” He rubbed his wild, fuzzy beard. “Can I offer some advice?”
“Sure.”
“If you want it, forget about it. Whoever these people really are, you can’t do a damn thing about it. You don’t come to them.” He shoved another handful of french fries into his mouth and said in a muffled voice: “They come to you.”
When I got home to my room late that night, a little drunk and reeking of bar smoke, I unlocked the door and turned on the small lamp by my desk. A dim light filled the room. I was about to grab my toothbrush when I saw something on my neatly made bed. I paused, then reached behind me to make sure I’d locked the door. I had. I pulled on the knob, and the lock was indeed working. I checked my windows—each one was still locked from the inside. But someone had been in my room. I went for the object on my bed and stumbled over a wastebasket, barely catching myself on my desk so I wouldn’t do a complete face-plant. I cursed. Could you imagine the moms in Lamar whispering in the checkout line? Did you hear about Susie Davis’s son? Yeah, he was going to be president. Too bad he tripped on a trash can and died. I laughed and steadied myself. Maybe next time I’d stop at two Guinnesses.
Lying flat on the middle of my bed was an envelope, plain and white. I picked it up and examined it. Nothing on the outside. No address. No To or From or Attn. I tried to open it quickly, but my hands were shaking. Inside was a card with three lines of text:
YOUR PRESENCE IS KINDLY REQUESTED FOR COCKTAILS
ONE WEEK FROM TOMORROW NIGHT.
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 Ernesto Bernini? 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 ass 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 skyscraper 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 embarrassing, 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?”
