Inflated Ego novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Sunday Dinner

Victor humiliates Mason again at his own table; Margot walks out with him, and Mason photographs her keycard.

Victor Langhorn's townhouse had a doorman, a dog, and a dining table for fourteen.

Tonight it was set for four.

I wore the only good tie I had left, and I sat across from the man who had torn me in half on stage.

He had not said a word to me yet.

"Soup," Victor said to the housekeeper, as if I were part of the furniture.

Margot sat at his right hand, and a thin man named Dale Schuler sat at his left.

He wore a pink shirt and a gold watch, and he smiled at me.

"Mason, isn't it?" Dale said. "Such a shame about last night."

"It was memorable."

"I'm sure it was. I'm sure it has been memorable for everyone who watched it eleven million times."

Margot's spoon stopped halfway to her mouth.

"Dale."

"I'm only saying, my dear. It's a lot of views for a man who won't work again."

I kept my face smooth.

I had been trained to do that for eight years, under every light and every camera.

"I'll find something," I said.

"I'm certain you will," Victor said.

He spoke for the first time, and his voice was dry and quiet.

"A man with your face should always find something. Hotels. Underwear. A man like you can make a living standing still."

He sipped his soup.

"It is such a modest talent that one hardly needs an ego for it."

Dale chuckled into his napkin.

I put my spoon down.

"Grandpa," Margot said, very softly.

"Yes, darling?"

"You promised."

"I promised to feed him. I have fed him."

I looked at Margot, and I saw her jaw go tight.

I looked at the cane leaning against Victor's chair, silver-topped and polished, and I thought of every model he had broken before me.

Then I smiled.

"Mr. Langhorn, may I say something?"

"By all means."

"When I was nineteen, I came to your office with a bus ticket and a bad suit."

"I remember the suit."

"You said I had a face that would sell anything and a mouth that would sell nothing."

Victor's eyes sharpened.

"I remember that too."

"I spent eight years proving you half wrong. I'd like to finish the other half."

He leaned back.

"How do you propose to do that?"

"I'll tell you at dinner next year."

The room went very quiet.

Dale made a small, offended noise.

Victor looked at me for a long, flat moment, and for the first time I saw the old man behind the stage.

He was not amused.

He was calculating.

"Margot," he said, without looking away from me. "Your friend is rude."

"He's my guest," she said.

"He is a man I fired."

"And he is sitting at your table because I asked him to."

Her voice had a ring to it, quiet and steel.

Victor's mouth twitched.

"You were always the one with the spine," he said.

"Then you should listen to it."

She stood.

She put her napkin on the table and held out her hand across the corner to me.

"Come on, Mason. I'm not eating this."

I took her hand and stood.

Victor didn't stop us.

He only said, as we reached the door, "Be careful with her, boy."

I stopped.

"She is the only thing I have that cannot be replaced," he said, and he said it like a warning and also like a plea.

I didn't answer.

In the front hall, Margot was shaking with anger, and she dropped her handbag on the marble table to look for her coat.

The bag fell open.

Her keycard slid out, a white plastic rectangle with LANGHORN TALENT in gold and a magnetic stripe along the back.

I picked it up, because that is what a man does when a woman drops something.

I turned it over once in my fingers.

I took my phone out as if to check the time, and the camera was already open.

One photo, front and back.

It took two seconds.

My heart pounded.

Then I handed her the card.

"You dropped this."

"Thank you," she said, and put it away without looking.

She had her coat on and the door open before I could say anything.

We walked down the stoop and out onto the cold street.

A black car idled at the curb.

Margot stopped, put her face in her hands, and took a long breath.

"I'm sorry," she said through her fingers. "I'm so sorry. I thought he'd at least pretend."

"He pretended to be exactly who he is."

She dropped her hands.

Her eyes were bright, and her mouth was trembling, and she was beautiful in the streetlamp.

I wanted, with a hard sudden ache, for none of this to be a plan.

The car door opened.

Margot slid in first and I followed.

She told the driver an address in Midtown, and then she stopped.

She looked at me in the dark leather quiet.

"Actually," she said, "take me home. Your home, if you have one."

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