Pent Up (41 page)

Ruben gave his best Aztec asshole, heavy-lidded, hawk-nose, shadowy glare.
Retaliation
would be his part in all this. Tibbitt took a swallow. “You must be a sinner.”

“’Cause I’m brown? I’d lay off,
puto
.”

Andy coughed. “Look, uh, I don’t want any more trouble, Herb.” On cue, he went into his goofy, clueless routine. “The Apex Fund is only one part of—”

“Don’t be such a pussy, Bauer.” Ruben set the bait. “He’s halfway to the pen.”

Tibbitt muttered, “Mr. Oso, I don’t take kindly—”

“You’ll take what I give.” Ruben scowled, kept his voice just low enough. “Kidnap. Assault. Attempted murder. Extortion.” A drop of spit arced across the table. He bared his teeth. “Man, you’re such a tool, they ought to sell you at Home Depot. I would like nothing more than to shove that chair up your ass sideways in front of all these nice people.” He raised his chin at Andy. “He’s the only reason I haven’t, but he’s the reason I will.”

Tibbitt stared at the spittle as if it were a rattlesnake. “Another suitably juvenile bit of posturing.”

“Try me.” Ruben sat forward and growled now.
Time to play.
“You think we’re joking? By the time the feds get to you, they’re gonna need a wet vac to clean you off the wallpaper.”

Nearby someone gasped, and dropped silverware clanked. The other diners had begun to eavesdrop.

Tibbitt swallowed and flushed a greasy salmon pink as if he’d shat his pants.

Andy hissed, “Oso.”

Ruben spoke directly to the old man. “You got some balls.” If nothing else, Ruben knew how to look like a criminal. “Mr. Tibbitt, I got enough legal problems without you adding to ’em.”

“I’m willing to let you take a leadership role.” Andy glanced at his stepfather.
So that’s the play.
They’d appeal to Tibbitt’s ego and prejudices and leave him holding the bag.

Ruben popped his neck. He could play this part. “You got no idea,
boludo
. If this is the bullshit way you people do business, I want out.”

In the pause, Andy encouraged him, a slight nod.

“And if I’m out, then Andy’s out. We’re partners. Yeah?” He raised his eyebrows at Andy. “And playing around in this white-bread sewer feels like a waste of his talents. He’s working with me now.”

Tibbitt looked to his stepson. “What is he saying?”

Andy took his hand under the table and squeezed. Ruben flushed.

Tibbitt sighed. “You’ve been disrespectful, to me and to your mother. After all I taught you, all I’ve done.”

“
¡Gilipollas!
” Ruben ladled contempt over them. Andy had only taught him a few curses. “The two of you dancing around. Fucking Wonder Bread pin dicks.”

The brunch crowd gave him a few disapproving looks, but not enough to make Tibbitt take the bait.
Retaliation, retaliation.

Exasperated, Ruben glared at Tibbitt and pounded the table with his fist till the silver jumped. “Hump his mom, cheat your partner, and trash his place. Please, can I play with Apex?” He snorted.

Andy sat straighter but didn’t interfere.

Tibbitt seemed genuinely startled. “Andy, you let him talk to you like that?” So far so good.

“Sir.” A teenage waiter stood by the table. “Is there a problem?” All of a hundred and thirty pounds and ready to piss his pants.

Ruben ignored him and glared at Tibbitt. “Did you see that on cable, jackass?”

Andy smiled at the waiter and made a joke of it. “Family dispute.”

“He gave me….” Tibbitt’s voice was level, considering. “No choice.” His hands settled on the tablecloth. “I had a rough spell. I’m just trying to recoup some of my losses.”

Ruben didn’t sit back. “Tibbitt, you disrespect us again, and I’m going to make a fucking warning out of you, one slimy chunk at a time in front of all your neighbors here.” He let his face finish the thought.
Aztec asshole.

The old man swallowed.

Andy scolded and smiled. “Ruben, I don’t think that’s helpful.” The waiter looked dubious till Tibbitt nodded.
All in good fun.

“Let me be clear.” Ruben thought of Andy’s sharkiest moments and rested his dead gaze on the old man. “Apex no longer interests me.” If he could sell this to Tibbitt, they’d be home free. “So it no longer interests him.”

Tibbitt went for it. “It’s the least you can do. Lord knows you can afford it.”

Andy said, “I don’t want my mother involved. This is between us, and she’s no part of it.”

Tibbitt exhaled. “Your mother trusts me to make the financial decisions.” From his tone, he could have been talking about a golden retriever or a potted plant.

Ruben frowned. If someone spoke about his mother like that, he’d have hauled them out back, but his mother would beat him to it. What kind of family was this?

“What do you care where he invests his money?” Ruben turned.

Andy said quietly, “I don’t want him bankrupting her.” Ruben could see the rage simmering and the gears grinding.

Tibbitt shrugged. “Music to my ears. One less thing to explain.”

Andy nodded, eyes narrowed. “Then here’s my offer. I’ll give you a fifty-fifty split, but I retain control of the company.” And there was Andy’s retirement. So far so good. “A silent-but-deadly partner. All holdings, accounts, and shares split. But the assets and the liabilities in your name alone. I don’t want my mother at risk because of our business bullshit.”

Poor Hope.
Ruben hated the idea that she’d invested all that time, gotten her degree, and now Tibbitt had cut in line. She deserved better, but she also didn’t need the crooked bullshit attached to her career. Andy was making a
serious
offer, and he knew why.

“We’ll own Apex together,” Andy finished.

Tibbitt’s eyebrows floated toward his hairline. “What guarantee do I have?”

“My business with my most lucrative fund ever, and I’m giving you half of it, old man. What better guarantee can I offer?”

“How do I know you won’t bring in some other greaseball thug to scare me off?” Tibbitt pursed his lips.

Andy kept his gaze directed at the floor. “I’ve known Ruben—”

“For about five weeks. Yes. Noted.” A mortician’s sniff of competent displeasure. “This is what comes of sending my bastard to prep school. Pretensions to justice and—” A sniff at Ruben. “Low-hanging fruit.”

Ruben kept his face still.

“I wouldn’t say that,
Herb
.” Andy coughed. A dark smile as his shark fin broke the surface. “I didn’t hire Ruben.”

What?

Andy lifted their hands onto the table. Ruben let him, shock making him jittery.

Tibbitt huffed. “Andrew, we have business to—”

“And he certainly doesn’t work for me. Hell, he doesn’t even do what I tell him half the time.” Andy smiled softly, teeth knife-bright. “Ruben and I are together. Whatever you want to say to me, you say to him.”

Tibbitt slowed. He stared at their linked hands as if at rattlesnakes fucking. “You think you can scare me off? You can’t embarrass me.”

Andy snorted. “Understatement of the decade.”

Ruben blinked slowly and raised his voice. “We’re not the ones making a scene, Señor Tibbitt. We didn’t injure ourselves. I don’t even like brunch.”

Silence.

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

Andy kissed Ruben. Right on the mouth in the middle of the Scarsdale Golf Club. Grabbed the back of his head and mashed their mouths together.

Ruben rolled with it and gave a show. As the kiss deepened, silverware clattered around them and some low comments. They had an audience now. Finally they pulled apart.

The horror on Tibbitt’s face said plenty.

Andy sat back and licked his lip slowly. “Ruben is my boyfriend,
Herb
.” He snuck a glance back at Ruben. “Well, I think he is.”

Grin. “He is.”

A circle of country clubbers now eavesdropped without apology.

The old man spluttered. “Not here.”

“Uh, no. There are vile homos right here in Scarsdale, I can promise. In this room, even.” Andy dropped a hand into Ruben’s lap.

Ruben was too startled to protest, too pleased to be embarrassed. Instead he leaned back and gave Andy access. This was his show. “We can prove it to you. On the fucking table if you want.”

Andy cupped Ruben’s balls. “Wouldn’t be the first time.”

Tibbitt’s face and neck turned the color of raw liver. “You’re disgusting. Both of you.”

“I’m so glad to hear it,
Herb
.” Andy grinned, full dimple deployment. “Now that we’re all in business together.”

“Don’t be preposterous.” The old man looked ashen. He glanced round the room of suburbanites. “This will kill your mother.” He looked out at the course again, anxious and morose.

“
This
will. Not you bankrupting her. Not you ruining my father’s company. Not you kidnapping and assaulting us. Not you going to federal prison as a fraud and a coward.” Andy crossed his arms. “Me being with a guy.”

Ruben grinned. “A brown one,
vato
.”

“Doesn’t matter. You can’t shake me. You’ll only hurt your mother.”

“No. She survived divorce, mah-jongg, and faking orgasms under you twice a year. She’s indestructible.”

Tibbitt raised his voice finally. “God—” Guests turned. His voice dropped to a low whisper as he held up his mobile phone. “Damn it, Andrew. All I have to do is dial the SEC.”

“You’re all
hiding
from me.” A woman’s hoarse voice cut the air in a broad mid-Atlantic saw, like Katharine Hepburn with a quart of bourbon in her. Then she caught Ruben’s stare and revealed eyes the same blue-gray flannel he knew so well. This had to be—

“Mother.” Andy turned.

“Andrew Bauer. Brunch at the club. There’s pork in the treetops.” She winked at Ruben as if he’d laughed along with her. Her accent and elocution made her sound as if she’d learned English abroad. She said nothing about their injuries or odd clothing. Maybe it was impolite to ask?

Cilla stopped and crossed her thin arms, a fragile, blowsy woman, her auburn hair shot with gray. “With a handsome stranger.”

Andy sighed. “Hardly hiding.”

His stepfather began to fidget and signaled a waitress for a refill. “And a vodka grapefruit for my wife.”

“Well, I had no idea where to look.” Cilla gave a lonely, frazzled smile. “I’m not clever like that.”

“I bet you are, ma’am.” Ruben blinked at her with genuine warmth.

“He called me ‘ma’am,’” she said to her son, husband, and anyone else in earshot. “Are you Southern?”

“Florida.”

“Ohh.” She made that one syllable sound as though he’d announced he’d survived leukemia. “But you’re in the city now.” She giggled hoarsely until he nodded. Without a doubt, she was the source of Andy’s goofy charm and his sense of fun.

On the other side of the table, Tibbitt eyed his wife with unfiltered contempt.

Ruben thought of his own mother changing a tire. Andy’s mom had never had her hands in cold water. She didn’t act like a snob at all. She acted like a prisoner. She resembled nothing so much as a bird with clipped wings, flapping in circles and staring at the sky.

Down in Florida, Ruben had sat in a hundred AA meetings with ladies like this: dutiful dolls who realized they’d sold themselves for pennies on the dollar. Ruben loved his parents, but he’d always felt separate. As if his invitation to their party had been lost in the mail. Cilla’s ditzy intimacy made him feel like a fellow conspirator, part of the family.

She looked up at Ruben. “Who might this big fellow be?”

“Ruben Oso, ma’am.” He took her fragile hand and squeezed lightly, winking to disguise his crook face.

“Greek. Or Egyptian. You have to be. Portuguese?”

He corrected her gently. “My family is Colombian.”

The waitress returned with drinks. Cilla’s had a salted rim.

“Mom.” Andy took a breath. “Ruben is my boyfriend.”

Long pause. She blinked at him and at the floor. She squeezed Ruben’s fingers back, with light involuntary pressure.

“Really, Andrew.” Tibbitt crossed his arms. “Cilla, we were talking business. I had no—”

She finally beamed up at Ruben, then her son.
Those eyes.
“But that’s marvelous.”

Andy blinked. “It is?”

Tibbitt glared at the other brunchers who were pretending not to watch. “This is not the place—”

Cilla touched her hair absently. “Oh honestly, Herbert. You’d think I’d been packed in cotton my entire life. I watch cable. I’m a big girl,” said the woman who probably weighed a hundred and five pounds in a full gown.

Ruben grinned at Tibbitt, then at her. She finally let go of his hand, but only to pat his arm.

“Where did you meet?” Cilla sipped her Salty Dog carefully.

Andy asked, “You’re not surprised?”

“Well, of course I’m surprised, Andrew. I had no idea you were… that way, but you work too much, and you’ve never been
serious
about your women. Any of them.”

Ruben considered Tibbitt’s purple face.

She scrunched her face at Ruben and blinked warmly. “Not
serious
, serious.”

That word.

“Thanks.” Andy hugged her and kissed the side of her stylish head. “Mom.”

That warmth lit something in her. She patted Ruben’s arm conspiratorially. “You’re very sturdy, Mr. Oso. And so handsome.”

“He is.”

Cilla straightened her wedding ring. “And if you ended up like your… father, hiding in tax exile, I’d have felt such a failure.” She glanced at her husband, unaware she was keeping a secret everyone knew.

Across the table, Tibbitt did a good impression of a gray trout choking on the air.

Andy sat back. “Herb is going into business with me, so I’ll be seeing much more of you.” Eyes on Tibbitt. “Both.”

Tibbitt’s weak smile felt better than a crisp hundred.

Ruben exhaled, finally and fully. Now brunch sounded excellent. He wanted to sit here and watch this asshole squirm in front of his neighbors for hours. He stroked the back of Andy’s head, smoothing and teasing at the cowlick.

Cilla eyed the pair of them, pausing on their injuries. “Now, how did you get so mashed up the pair of you? Is that some kind of rough sex thing?”

Ruben’s face heated.