The Suite Life (34 page)

Marvin and Gregory helped me with those decisions, and they commiserated with me about the marble columns, the tile,
and the massive, dark-wood antiques that would fill my new home no matter what small decorative details I decided on. The way I saw it, my new home was going to be as cold and sexless as my marriage.

By the time Alec, Isabella, and I moved into our palatial aerie that June, my husband had amassed a private helicopter, a private jet, and two summer homes, and he had access to the highest levels of society. He used his new toys to whisk himself to Washington, D.C., to Albany, where Senator Ross was now angling to be governor, and to any other city where a critical business meeting or a huge event, such as the Super Bowl, was taking place.

The wealth that surrounded me had long ago ceased to shock or even impress me, but our new, six-million-dollar home on the thirty-eighth floor of the Luxe Regent Hotel took my breath away. The columns, the marble, and the furnishings may have been gaudy and not to my taste, and the script
D
engraved in the foyer tile may have been over the top, but looking through the floor-to-ceiling windows for the first time in the finished space was still spectacular. The Manhattan skyline was on one side of the sunken living room, New York Harbor and the Statue of Liberty on the other.

For the first time in years, I felt myself filling up with a renewed sense that the world was at my fingertips. I couldn't help thinking that my mother and grandmother would have been as blown away as I was, but also that, ultimately, they would have been as critical of the flash as they had been of the flashy gifts Tony Kroon was always giving me. Still, in the midst of it all, I had the nagging feeling that I was standing in quicksand.

One wall of the foyer was covered in a mosaic mural that a sweet Jewish lady had created on-site, sweating under a wig she refused to take off. Flowing water spewed from the mouth of a ceramic fish into a marble fountain just beyond the
D
. I
was surrounded by Italian antiques and custom pieces; I had Versace rugs and china and Biedermeier tables to beat the band; there were gold fixtures in all five of the bathrooms. I had eleven rooms—a “mini-mansion,” Mirabelle, our saleswoman called it—that were filled with only the best, and my daughter had her own wing, which was at least ten times larger than the room I grew up in. And still I had an empty feeling in the pit of my stomach. I couldn't be farther from the Brooklyn I had so wanted to put far behind me, I had everything a girl could ever want, but I was no closer to the dream I had been certain would be mine in Manhattan—my dream of being a bestselling author, making my own way by sharing my story with the world, and having a loving and supportive family to come home to.

Over the next few months I discovered that the services and staff at the Luxe Regent lived up to their reputation for delivering luxury. I was truly living “the suite life.” Whatever I needed would show up at my door; whatever I wanted done they would do. Since we were connected to the hotel any service they provided we received as well. Room service at 3 a.m., massages and manicures at midnight. Groceries and dry cleaning were promptly delivered and stowed in my refrigerator and cabinets and closets, whether or not I was at home. If Alma was off or out on an errand and I needed a babysitter, one magically appeared in a manner of minutes. If I needed nonscheduled maid service, all I had to do was pick up the phone.

Alec was in his element with an army of servants scrambling for the outrageous tips he gave them like pigeons going after breadcrumbs tossed from a park bench. Everyone was happy to assist Mr. DeMarco, which made him happy, too. He was particularly fond of Eddie, one of the doormen, who delivered his weekly supply of pot and extra painkillers whenever he requested them.

Kevin O'Brien continued to show up regularly for training sessions in the spa and HGH injections in our bedroom. Even the staid, generally unflappable crowd who populated the Luxe Regent went gaga whenever Presley Warren and other baseball cronies joined Alec's workout sessions. He extended Caryn's concierge services to anyone in the building who needed that impossible reservation or ticket, and it didn't take long for Alec to be “the Man” around the Luxe Regent, just as he was around Wall Street. He basked in all the attention.

One night later that fall, our house phone startled us awake with its blaring ring just as we were starting to fall asleep at around midnight.

“What's up, Rob?” Alec mumbled, and I could hear the raised, frantic voice on the other end, although I couldn't make out the words.

“I'll be right down,” Alec said, as he hung up and bolted from the bed at the same time.

Moving fast yet again.
“What's the matter?” I asked as he pulled on his pants and a shirt.

“Nothing,” he said. “Go back to sleep.”

Sure. No problem. Right.

I spent a fretful half hour sitting up in bed, all manner of scenarios playing out in my mind, until Alec returned and, without saying a word, crawled into bed, rolled over, and turned off his night table lamp, throwing the room into darkness.

“You gonna fill me in?” I asked.

“I told you it was nothing.”

“Had to be something.”

“Just the usual business. No concern of yours.”

I switched on my night table lamp. “The usual business doesn't usually disturb my home, Alec.”

“It was just some crazy broad,” he said, without rolling over.

Oh. And here I was thinking it was something to worry about.
“
What
broad?” I screeched.

Alec rolled over, narrowing his eyes and pursing his lips. “I don't want to go into it,” he muttered. “I've got a big day tomorrow and I gotta get to sleep.”

“Well, before you do, I gotta know what the hell is going on.”

“Suit yourself, then.” He sighed, raising his massive form on one elbow. “Ted Ross scored fifty mil when the company he put together went public. Seems he promised to take care of this dame.”

“For what?”

“Services rendered, Sam.”

I'm sure she wasn't providing stellar financial advice.
“What's that got to do with you?”

“She did a few favors for some of my clients, and she came to collect.”

I shuddered, as a scene from our past burst into our present. “Like Heather Frankel's pimp?”

“Something like that.” Alec grunted.
Business as usual.
“I got rid of her.”

“What'd it cost you?”

“Nothing.” Alec grinned. “But ol' Ted is gonna be a mil lighter.”

“Oh, is that all?”

“Can't have a crazy broad shooting her mouth off about Ted when brother Robert is about to become governor, not to mention the senator's married aide, who had a heart attack while he was doing her in her bed.”

And white-collar workers supposedly don't get their hands dirty?
“Still delivering the coffee and lunches, I see.”

Alec slumped into his pillow. “Not for long, Sam,” he said, closing his eyes. “Not for long.”

I switched the light off and sank into my pillow knowing that my eyes would remain wide open for much of the night.

Franco and Monica ended up in divorce court just a few months after we moved. She wound up with everything after discovering that for years Franco had been secretly involved with a black woman from the South. But that was just a sidebar to Alec's relentless march toward starting his own mortgage and bond trading company. Nothing would stand in his way: not the hemorrhoid condition that had reappeared, or the strange bumps and shingles on his back that came and went—which he claimed were the expected result of the growth hormone injections he was taking—and certainly not a wife who often felt like just another decorative object in his mansion.

It pained me to feel that way on the sunny morning when he was finally able to leave the stock exchange; when I stood with him at the official ceremony on the floor as he and I rang the closing bell with Filomena and a wide-eyed Isabella at our side; when cakes in the shape of his and his dad's badge numbers, 3333 and 788, were rolled in, and when I presented him with his and his father's badges, which I'd had dipped in gold; and at the bash to beat all bashes, held at the Downtown Athletic Club afterward. Alec beamed with pride. Marvin and Gregory weren't among the two hundred invited guests, since Alec wouldn't hear of their attending, so once again I felt utterly alone. In the midst of that joyous crowd, I was as much a trophy as the Heisman award, which the Club had displayed for years. If I hadn't had a chance encounter with Olivia, a beautiful raven-haired woman who was about my age, the best day in my husband's life would have been a total loss for me.

We greeted each other politely as people do when they're circulating among strangers at these events, and as soon as
she said hello I could tell that she was as indifferent to all the wealth and power in the room as I was.

“Is this decadent, or what?” she remarked.

“Par for the course in this game.” I smiled in return.

“I often wonder if my career is even worth it.”

“So you work on Wall Street? How long have you been at it?”

“Ten years already,” Olivia said wistfully. “Where did the time go?”

Tell me about it.

“If I weren't sleeping with the boss,” Olivia continued, “I think I'd be off on an island somewhere, or back in Madrid where I came from.”

As she seemed to ponder that, I stole a glance at her ring finger, which was bare.

“So what's your story?” Olivia continued after a moment.

“I sleep with the boss, too,” I said wryly.
That's about all I do in bed with him.

“Oh yeah, Alec,” she said. “Brendan and he are thick as thieves.”

“Will you two get married?”

“I gave that up a while back,” Olivia said softly, shaking her head. “His Irish Catholic mob family would crucify him if he got divorced.”

“You're still young,” I offered.

“I suppose,” she replied. “But . . . the devil you know and all that.”

Do I ever know.

It didn't take more than that brief conversation for me to be convinced that this was a person I wanted to know better, one of the few people in the Wall Street world I could relate to, and I was equally certain that she felt the same way. So, before we went our separate ways, we promised each other that we would stay in touch.

At long last Alec had what he wanted. He was calling all the shots and spending his backers' money—along with fifteen million of his own that he'd put up—left and right to get DeMarco Futures off the ground and flying high. Victor Falco and the rest of Alec's team had followed him to his new offices and were rewarded with hefty raises. A support staff of twenty also joined them, enticed by generous salary and benefits packages.

Deep-pocketed investors couldn't get in line fast enough to cash in on the funds Alec put together, and ungodly sums of money kept flowing into his hands. I truly hoped that his friends as well as his colleagues really appreciated all that he was doing for them—all the money he made them and everyone on the Street, and all the sacrifices being made by his family.