Annihilate Me 2: Vol. 1 (11 page)

“Dufort knows how to do it,” I said.

“To say the least.”

“How many people do you think are
here?”

“Four hundred?
 
Maybe five?” Alex said.
 
“It’s tough to tell in a space this
large.
 
It’s huge.
 
I know I’ve asked you this before, but
I’ll ask you again.
 
Would you like
something like this?”

“No.
 
We’re fortunate enough to have an
apartment that overlooks the Park on Fifth.
 
That’s our place.
 
That’s our corner of the world, and I adore
it.
 
If we ever need to entertain,
we’ll rent a space.”

“God I’m happy I married you.”

“You don’t even know how happy I am
that I married you—but I hope that you can feel it.
 
I hope you know what’s in my heart.”

“I can—and I do.”

At that moment, a horn blared, causing
me to jump as an elderly man jetted past us in a motorized wheelchair.
 
He had round spectacles at his eyes, his
thinning white hair was perfectly trimmed and slicked away from his pale face,
and clenched in his teeth was one mother of a cigar that left a ribbon of blue
smoke in his wake, almost as if he was an aircraft getting ready to drop from
the sky and crash to the ground.

“Who the hell is that?” I asked.

“That’s Henri’s father,
Audric
Dufort.”

“That’s
Audric
?
 
Your mentor?
 
I can’t wait to meet him.”

“He’s a card.
 
I’ll introduce you to him later.”

“I’m surprised Henri lets him smoke
in here.”

“
Audric
can do any damned thing he wants.
 
He’s wealthier than his son—and everyone here knows it.
 
But beyond that, people really do love
him.
 
Because he’s so well-liked,
they overlook the smoke.
 
He’s a
character—you’ll see.”

“Let’s brave the crowds and get
ourselves that drink.”

Alex reached for my hand and led
the way.

Thankfully, the bar was indeed just
to our right—but it was three-deep in people, and the masses looked
thirsty despite the servers milling through the crowds with flutes of champagne
on silver platters.
 
Clearly, they wanted
something stronger—and who could blame them?
 
Thankfully for us, Alex was nothing if
not well known, and it wasn’t long before a bartender spotted him in the crowd
and called out to him.
 
Alex ordered
cocktails for each of us, and—in what seemed like only a matter of
minutes—we each had our martinis.

“You’re a magician,” I said,
touching my glass to his.

“I wish,” he said while he took a
sip.
 
“Because if I were, I’d make
her disappear.
 
Don’t turn around,
but your old friend
Tootie
Staunton-Miller is here
with her husband,
Addy
.
 
And they’re coming our way.”

“And so it begins,” I said.
 
“And naturally with her.
 
I’m too low-class for her.
 
I’m not in her league, and she’s never
liked me because of it.
 
But at least
I like
Addy
.
 
I just wish he’d be brave enough to come out of the closet and ditch
that bitch.
 
He deserves better than
her.”

“Maybe one day he will.”

“If he’s hung in this long….”

“I hear you.
 
But you’re right—he’s a
gentleman.
 
As for her?
 
Well, you already know all about her.”

I flashed my eyes at him.
 
“And guess what?
 
I’m ready for her.”

“You’re in a mood tonight.”

You have no idea….

“Alex!”
Tootie
said as she closed the distance between us.
 
She was wearing a sleek, ivory-colored
evening dress that, even at her age, didn’t betray an extra pound of body
fat.
 
She was nothing if not fit and
well preserved.
 
She gave Alex an
air kiss on each cheek and made a clear point of ignoring me.
 
“You look as handsome as ever,” she
said.

“Hello
Tootie
.
 
Addy
,” Alex
said.

“Good to see you, Alex,”
Addy
said.
 
“And
also you, Jennifer.
 
You look more
beautiful each time I see you.”

“Thank you,
Addy
.
 
You look pretty swell yourself.”

“My wife couldn’t disagree more,”
he said, ignoring
Tootie’s
disapproving glance.
 
“She thinks my tux is ill-fitting.”

“It is.
 
You’ve lost too much weight.”

“I’m low-
carbing
it,” he said to us.
 
“I’ve given
myself over to the revolution—and it’s working.
 
By the way, Jennifer, might I just say
that red is your color?”

I was about to respond to that when
Tootie
said, “Do you really think so, darling?
 
Red?
 
I find it an interesting choice.”

“Oh, hello
Tootie
,”
I said.
 
“I wasn’t sure if you saw
me.”

“Do forgive me,” she said.
 
“I was just trying to process everything
before we spoke.”

“Process what?”

“Please don’t take this the wrong
way, but I was wondering if red was the correct color to wear tonight.
 
Of all nights?”

“I don’t understand.”

“For the past two days, all
Addy
and I have seen on CNN and CNBC are all of those awful
red graphs showing Wenn’s stock collapsing.
 
The moment I saw you, that’s the first
thing that entered my mind—all of those red graphs plummeting down, down,
downward.
 
All pointing toward
despair.”

I blinked at her.
 
“You’re equating my red dress with those
graphs?”

“Oh, everyone is.
 
Or will be.”

“Seriously,
Tootie
?”

“After all of these horrid calls
for Wenn’s demise, most of which have been underscored by jagged arrows
pointing toward hell in that exact shade of red, it isn’t that much of a
stretch, my dear.
 
You’ll see.
 
That dress is going to be labeled as a
warning call by evening’s end.”

“You know,
Tootie
,
you should write a book.”

“Well, there’s a change in
subject.”

“Actually, I’m right on subject.”

She put her hand to her chest.
 
“Oh, I suppose you mean my memoir?
 
The tell-all everyone wants me to write,
but that they’ll never get out of me.”

“No, I was thinking that your genre
might be fantasy.”

“It might be what?”

“Fantasy.
 
With your imagination, I think you’d be
a shoo-in for it.
 
And Wenn
Publishing could help you cobble your story together and get it quickly into
mass-market paperback.
 
You know, so
that you could do signings at airports.”

“You expect me to sign where?”

“At airports.”

“But what about my memoir, and the
long-anticipated hardback edition of that?”

“As you’ve pointed out,
Tootie
, things are collapsing at Wenn—and we need to
cut costs in an effort to save money.
 
Besides, as you’ve admitted yourself, you don’t want to write that
book.
 
That said—after what I
just heard from you about my dress—you really should think about writing
fantasy.
 
I think you’d take to it
as a surgeon to a knife.”

“Oh dear,”
Addy
said, though I saw that he was suppressing a smile.

“So clever,”
Tootie
said, patting her hair.
 
“You know I
have to ask—when are you going to give Alex a son?”

“Excuse me?”

“A son,” she said.
 
“An heir.
 
It’s what he married you for.
 
Essentially, you’re a brood mare for the
Wenn empire.”

“I’m a what?”

“Oh, you know what I mean.”

“Actually,
I
don’t,” Alex said.

“And neither do I, especially since
I’ve never associated myself with a brood mare.”

“All I’m asking is when can we
expect a little Wenn?”

“Then why don’t you ask that
question?” I said.

She just blinked at us.

“We’re not going to get pregnant
for a couple of years,
Tootie
,” Alex said, trying his
best to temper the tension that threatened to fuse
Tootie
and I together into one fiery brawl of hatred.
 
“Jennifer and I want to enjoy and focus
on each other during the early years of our marriage before we have a family.”

“And whose idea was that?”

“Both of ours.”

“Really?
 
Was it?
 
Hmmm.”

“By the way,”
Addy
said.
 
“Congratulations on your
marriage.
 
Well done.”

“Yes,”
Tootie
said.
 
“But I have to say that you
made such a curious decision about where you were wed.
 
I hear that it took place in your
office, Alex.”

“It did,” he said.

She glanced over at me and sipped
her champagne.
 
“Well, I suppose,
considering the situation, that sounds about right.
 
But still, I have to ask you, Alex…what
would your mother think?
 
You know
she would have wanted a big church wedding for you.
 
You were her only child.
 
You know she would have wanted that for
you, even if this is your second marriage.”

“My mother and I never got along,
Tootie
.
 
She was
abusive to me.
 
You know that.
 
You also know that my mother is
dead.
 
My father killed her before
he turned the gun on himself.
 
Furthermore, this is only my second marriage because my first wife,
Diana, died in a car accident.
 
You
remember that, don’t you?”

“I—”

“Naturally, you must.
 
So, knowing all this, I need to
ask—why would I even consider what anyone other than my wife would have
wanted when it came to our wedding?”

“Oh,” she said.
 
“Oh dear.
 
I’m afraid I’ve over-stepped.”

Neither of us responded to
her.
 
Instead, we just stared at
her.

“Well, I’m sure it was beautiful,”
she said.
 
“In the office and
all.
 
With that questionable
lighting.
 
You probably had lovely
flowers.
 
And ribbons.
 
Festive things.”

“The sentiment was beautiful,” Alex
said.
 
“And it remains
beautiful.
 
I’m a lucky man,
Tootie
.
 
I’m married
to the love of my life.
 
Going
forward, I hope you’ll understand just how much Jennifer means to me.
 
As for the ceremony, you’re actually
wrong—it really was quite plain.
 
But it got the job done, didn’t it?”

“Yes, I suppose it did.”
 
She looked nervous for a moment as she finished
her champagne.
 
Then, she flicked
her gaze over to me.
 
“May I ask
what you wore, Jennifer?
 
I assume
it was white since tradition really doesn’t matter anymore.
 
Was it something casual?
 
You know, like a pantsuit?”

Did this woman never stop?

“Actually,
Tootie
,
I wore pasties,” I said.
 
“And a
thong.
 
It’s all the rage in
Paris.
 
You should have seen it.
 
But, oh, the struggle I had with my
clitoria
.”

“With your what?”

“My
clitoria
.
 
It’s a rare flower that hails from the
warm, moist environs of Southeast Asia.
 
You can imagine where I held the bouquet, and what the flower looks and
smells like.
 
But they’re such a
fragile flower, you need to handle them with extreme care or the petals will
fall away from the buds.”