Walker episode was not going to end well, and on top of that, tonight I had a very special problem on my hands. It was the enormous dude who was now watching Walker and me from the hallway, who had been keeping his eye on me all night and looked none too pleased that I was clearly about to paint the town with a reputed poonhound. And why should I care?
Because that particular dude was Lawrence Clark—forgive me, Sir Lawrence Clark, whom you may know as the chairman of PMG, a hedge fund that controls about thirty billion dollars in capital. More important, he was Annie Clark’s father, and a former player for England’s national rugby team. Annie was at my place right now, since that was easier for her than schlepping all the way back up to her house in Glover Park. And remember how the whole Annie thing seemed too easy, seemed like there must be a catch in it somewhere? Lawrence Clark was the first catch I discovered. I sure as hell didn’t want him seeing me heading out to some cathouse with Walker. Clark had me pinned with a furious stare, Walker was begging to go, and Marcus was just standing there watching me squirm as I tried to decide between no good options.
CHAPTER FIVE
BEFORE I MET Sir Larry, I’d pretty much given up my class-resentment chip-on-the-shoulder bit. No matter how hard life has dicked you over, at a certain point (actually, I think it was when I bought a two-bedroom house for myself and maxed out my Roth), that attitude just starts to feel a little ridiculous. I decided to keep a few scraps of my checkered past around, strictly to add character, and let any bitterness go.
He lived in “hunt country.” It’s only about forty minutes from where I grew up in Northern Virginia. Yet I had no idea that a short drive from the pastures of my youth—where I spent so many idyllic summer days in the woods behind the strip mall making out to the flavor of Juicy Fruit, lighting things on fire, and playing with Rich Ianucci’s father’s pistol—was a paradise for Washington’s wealthiest.
It’s all green rolling hills between Middleburg and the foothills of the Blue Ridge. The land is parceled out into huge estates, dotted with quaint hyperexpensive towns where the economy depends on lunching ladies and cute bric-a-brac. The whole place is Anglophile in the extreme: social life revolves around the Saturday fox hunts and taverns with names like the Old Bull & Bush, where George Washington invariably did something or other. It’s where Annie grew up. And after we’d been going out for a few months, she took me to her dad’s estate.
If I may indulge in a little real estate pornography: twenty-five hundred acres overlooking the James River. An eight-bedroom 1790s Colonial mansion. Six-thousand-bottle wine cellar. Twenty-stall stable. Indoor and outdoor pools, and tennis courts, rugby field, pistol range, skeet and driving ranges, softball field with dugouts and a scoreboard and bleachers (because what’s the point of a backyard game of ball unless you have seating for sixty spectators?). I could go on.
Annie’s friend Jen from the office went out there for the weekend once, and she raved about it, so I was pretty excited. She’d gone on and on about Annie’s cool dad, the incredible chef, getting drunk on grands crus and having the run of Sir Larry’s private Xanadu.
The driveway was easily a half a mile long. In front of the house, Annie and I stepped out of my Jeep with the peeling paint and turned to see six black-and-tan Dobermans galloping toward us, covering the distance across the great lawn faster than seemed possible. Their mouths were moving as if they were barking, but there was no sound. It was scary, sure, but it was more eerie than anything else, seeing these sleek muscle torpedoes snapping their jaws but hearing nothing. It made me wonder if maybe I was just a little slow on the uptake, like maybe they’d gotten here already, and maybe I was already dead.
“Leave it,” a
Because that particular dude was Lawrence Clark—forgive me, Sir Lawrence Clark, whom you may know as the chairman of PMG, a hedge fund that controls about thirty billion dollars in capital. More important, he was Annie Clark’s father, and a former player for England’s national rugby team. Annie was at my place right now, since that was easier for her than schlepping all the way back up to her house in Glover Park. And remember how the whole Annie thing seemed too easy, seemed like there must be a catch in it somewhere? Lawrence Clark was the first catch I discovered. I sure as hell didn’t want him seeing me heading out to some cathouse with Walker. Clark had me pinned with a furious stare, Walker was begging to go, and Marcus was just standing there watching me squirm as I tried to decide between no good options.
CHAPTER FIVE
BEFORE I MET Sir Larry, I’d pretty much given up my class-resentment chip-on-the-shoulder bit. No matter how hard life has dicked you over, at a certain point (actually, I think it was when I bought a two-bedroom house for myself and maxed out my Roth), that attitude just starts to feel a little ridiculous. I decided to keep a few scraps of my checkered past around, strictly to add character, and let any bitterness go.
He lived in “hunt country.” It’s only about forty minutes from where I grew up in Northern Virginia. Yet I had no idea that a short drive from the pastures of my youth—where I spent so many idyllic summer days in the woods behind the strip mall making out to the flavor of Juicy Fruit, lighting things on fire, and playing with Rich Ianucci’s father’s pistol—was a paradise for Washington’s wealthiest.
It’s all green rolling hills between Middleburg and the foothills of the Blue Ridge. The land is parceled out into huge estates, dotted with quaint hyperexpensive towns where the economy depends on lunching ladies and cute bric-a-brac. The whole place is Anglophile in the extreme: social life revolves around the Saturday fox hunts and taverns with names like the Old Bull & Bush, where George Washington invariably did something or other. It’s where Annie grew up. And after we’d been going out for a few months, she took me to her dad’s estate.
If I may indulge in a little real estate pornography: twenty-five hundred acres overlooking the James River. An eight-bedroom 1790s Colonial mansion. Six-thousand-bottle wine cellar. Twenty-stall stable. Indoor and outdoor pools, and tennis courts, rugby field, pistol range, skeet and driving ranges, softball field with dugouts and a scoreboard and bleachers (because what’s the point of a backyard game of ball unless you have seating for sixty spectators?). I could go on.
Annie’s friend Jen from the office went out there for the weekend once, and she raved about it, so I was pretty excited. She’d gone on and on about Annie’s cool dad, the incredible chef, getting drunk on grands crus and having the run of Sir Larry’s private Xanadu.
The driveway was easily a half a mile long. In front of the house, Annie and I stepped out of my Jeep with the peeling paint and turned to see six black-and-tan Dobermans galloping toward us, covering the distance across the great lawn faster than seemed possible. Their mouths were moving as if they were barking, but there was no sound. It was scary, sure, but it was more eerie than anything else, seeing these sleek muscle torpedoes snapping their jaws but hearing nothing. It made me wonder if maybe I was just a little slow on the uptake, like maybe they’d gotten here already, and maybe I was already dead.
“Leave it,” a
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