and the pad He also liked how easy it was to pick up models at downtown clubs if you had your own co-op, a Porsche, and were six feet tall with a designer wardrobe.
That was where he met Tanya, also six feet tall, a striking (natural) redhead who did a lot of runway work for Chloe.
He thought he was making a lot of money, but Tanya, who could order a two-hundred-dollar bottle of Dom Perignon to have something to pass the time while the hors d'oeuvres were being whipped up at Nobu, taught him he was just barely getting by. She was accustomed to screwing men who had some depth to their money.
But when he tried a financial endeavor on the side, it turned into a disaster. Time to move on. He sent around his resume and managed to get an interview with BMD, which was looking for someone to help them hedge their exposure in foreign currencies. The next thing he knew, he was trading bonds for Winston Bartlett's personal account.
When Bartlett's CFO died of a heart attack at age forty-nine (while undergoing oral sex in the backseat of a chauffeured Lincoln Town Car), Grant Hampton got temporarily drafted to take over his responsibilities. That was two years ago. He was aggressive enough that there was never a search for a replacement. He had made the big time, and he had done it before he was thirty-five.
But now it all hung in the balance. If this didn't work out, he could end up cold-calling widows out of Dun amp; Bradstreet, hawking third-rate IPOs. Tanya would be gone in a heartbeat.
As Alexa stepped out of the lobby, the morning was glorious and clear. Spring had arrived in a burst of pear and cherry blossoms in the garden of St. Luke's Church, up the street, but here by the river the morning air was still brisk enough to make her skin tingle. The sun was lightening the east, setting a golden halo above the skyscrapers of mid-town. Here, with the wind tasting lightly of salt, the roadways were Sunday-morning silent and it was a magic time that always made her feel the world was young and perfect and she was capable of anything.
This was her private thinking time-even dreaming time-and she shared it only with Knickers, who was trotting along beside her now, full of enthusiasm. Ally suspected that her sheepdog enjoyed their morning runs along the river even more than she did.
As she headed south, toward Battery Park City, she pondered the weird phone call she'd just gotten from Grant Seth Hampton. That was his full name. She called him Grant, but her mother, Nina, always called him Seth. Unfortunately, by whatever name, Grant Seth Hampton, an unremitting hustler, was still her brother. She wished it were not so, but some things couldn't be changed.
In truth, she actually thought Grant had exhibited a kind of sequential personality over his life. When they were kids, he'd seemed rakish but also decent. At the time, of course, she was impulsive and rebellious herself, admiring of his spunk. Now she viewed that as his Early Personality.
Later, when he was pushing thirty and the Wall Street pressure and the coke moved in, he evolved into Personality Number Two. He lost touch with reality and in the process he also lost his inner moral compass. His character bent and then broke under the stress, proving, she now supposed, that he was actually a weak reed after all. Now she didn't know what his personality was.
Grant, Grant, she often lamented, how did everything manage to turn out so bad with you?
He'd been a bond trader for Goldman, and at family gatherings he'd brag about making three hundred thou a year. But he had a high-maintenance lifestyle involving downtown models he was constantly trying to impress with jewelry and expensive vacations, so that wasn't enough. He decided to freelance on the side. He set up a Web site and, with his broker's license, opened a retail business trading naked futures contracts on Treasuries. He managed to get some naive clients and for a while made a profit for them. But then the market turned against him, or maybe he lost his rabbit's foot, and he began losing a lot of other people's money.
A couple of his clients with heavy losses felt that he'd misrepresented the risk, and they were getting ready to sue. They also were threatening to file a complaint with the SEC. There was a real possibility he could be barred from the financial industry for life.
The only thing that would put the matter to rest was if he made good some of their losses. But Grant, who lived hand to mouth no matter what his income, didn't have any liquidity. A reserve? That's for guys who don't have any balls.
She pieced this story together after the fact. Somehow he'd gotten to their father, who bailed him out mainly to save the family from disgrace. In doing so, he had mortgaged CitiSpace right up to the breaking point.
When she finally unraveled this poignant tale, she realized her father believed he was going to have to declare bankruptcy and close the firm, laying everybody off and leaving Nina a pauper. He thought the only way to save the family from ruin was to collect on his life insurance. Unfortunately, however, he botched the plan. Nobody believed his death was accidental and suicide voided the 3-million-dollar policy. ..
Grant had always inhabited another planet from her dad but surely these days he was able to support any lifestyle he chose. For the last two years he'd been some kind of hotshot financial manager for the high-stakes conglomerate owned by Winston Bartlett, or so Nina said. He should be making big bucks. Had he managed to screw that up somehow? Anytime he came crawling back to the family for anything, it was because he was in some kind of trouble.
She hadn't seen him in so long she wondered if she'd even recognize him-not that she had any plans to see him.
But what could Grant possibly want from her now? Also, why would he pick this morning, this anniversary morning, to reappear? Didn't he know what day this was? Or maybe he didn't actually care.
He'd been living on the East Side that fateful morning of their dad’s death, in a doorman co-op he surely couldn't afford, and she'd taken a cab there to tell him in person rather than do it over the phone. When she did, her voice breaking, she could see his eyes already filtering out any part of it that touched him. By today he'd probably purged it out of his memory entirely. ..
She had reached the vast lawn that had been built on the landfill behind Stuyvesant High, the Hudson River on one side and the huge expanse of green on the other. It was manicured and verdant, a
'Come on, honey.' Ally caught up with her, wheezing. 'Time to backtrack. My chest is getting tight again. Goodies at home.'
Knickers glared at her dolefully for a moment, not buying the argument.
'Let's
Her senses must have been slowing down too, because she honestly didn't hear him when he came up behind her three minutes later. ..
'Didn't think I could keep up, did you?' Grant Hampton quipped from ten paces back. 'Guess you didn't know I've started playing handball every other morning. Half an hour, with the Man. Great for the stamina. Not to mention brown- nosing the boss, since naturally I let him win.'
