Sidney Sheldon's Mistress of the Game (6 page)

This morning, hungover again, he’d arrived at the office to find his desk piled high with work. It was bonus time at Kruger-Brent, one of the most stressful times of the year. Other board members made most of the big decisions, but since Brad Rogers’s retirement, Peter Templeton was
the nominal chairman. This meant it was his job to manage the expectations of Kruger-Brent’s star performers—an impossible task; good people never believed they were getting paid enough—as well as to reprimand the underachievers.

What right do I have to reprimand anyone? They all know I’m the biggest piece of deadwood in the entire company. I’m a psychiatrist, not a businessman. If only I’d been stronger with Kate Blackwell all those years ago. I don’t belong at Kruger-Brent. No one knows that better than I do.

The fog in his brain had finally begun to clear. Then Robert showed up like a bad penny, announcing that they were kicking him out of St. Bede’s.

“I told you what I did, Dad. I smoked a joint. Jeez. One joint. It’s no big deal.”

The throbbing between Peter’s temples had returned with a vengeance.

“Robert. You smoked a joint
in math class.
What did you
think
was going to happen? Did you think your teacher was going to let that slide?”

Robbie stared out of the window. Normally you could see a panoramic Manhattan skyscape from his father’s office, but today was so cloudy it had disappeared, smothered by an eerie rainbow of grays.

“Goddammit, Robert, I’m at my wit’s end. I can’t help you if you insist on sabotaging your own life like this. Don’t you care about your future?”

My future? How am I supposed to care about my future when I can’t figure out my present? I don’t even know who I am.

“If you think you’re going to spend the rest of the year lounging around at home sitting on your keister, you can forget it, buster.”

Sitting on my keister? Buster? He talks like a character from a 1950s comic book. No wonder he doesn’t get it.

“You’re grounded. As of right now.”

“I thought you said I wouldn’t be lounging around at home.”

“Don’t talk back to me! Don’t you dare!” Peter’s voice was so loud the secretaries at the other end of the corridor could hear him. “You will see
no one.
You will talk to
no one.
You want to waste your life, Robert? You want to wind up in prison? Well, maybe it’s time you had a taste of what prison feels like.”

Robbie laughed. He knew it was the worst possible thing to do at that moment, but he couldn’t help himself.

You want to give me a taste of what prison feels like? Jesus, Dad. My whole life is a prison. With no parole! Can’t you see that? I’m trapped.

“You think this is funny?” Peter was shaking with rage.

Robbie turned to face him. “No. No, I don’t. I—”

Wham!

The slap came out of nowhere. Peter brought his hand down across Robbie’s face with such force it sent him flying backward. Losing his footing, Robbie cracked the back of his head against the glass of the window, then fell to the floor, stunned.

For a few seconds, father and son stood frozen in shocked silence. Then Peter spoke.

“I’m sorry, Robert. I shouldn’t have done that.”

Robbie’s eyes narrowed. His cheek glowed livid red from the blow.

“No. You shouldn’t have.”

Scrambling to his feet, Robbie pushed past his father, head down, and stumbled toward the elevator.

“Robert! Where are you going?”

Seconds later, Robbie was back in the lobby. He pushed through the revolving doors and out into the cool, fresh air of the street. Tears streamed down his face.

God?

Mom?

Anyone?

Help me. Please, please help me!

Running blindly down Park Avenue, Robbie Templeton began to sob.

The depression had started in earnest at the age of twelve, with the onset of puberty.

Before that, Robbie remembered periods of great sadness. Times when he missed his mother so badly it registered as a physical pain, like acute, grief-induced angina. But these were only temporary interludes. By playing the piano, going for a walk, or goofing around with Lexi, he could usually shake them off.

Once he turned twelve, however, something seismic seemed to shift within him. An inner blackness took hold, and this time its presence was constant. Robbie felt as if he’d descended into a tunnel without end, and then someone had blocked off the entrance. There was nothing to do but put one foot in front of the other, hopelessly, for eternity. Voices, sweet voices tempting him to suicide, followed him everywhere. If it weren’t for Lexi, he would have heeded their call years ago. As it was, he struggled for his little sister’s sake to go on. On and on and on, deeper and deeper into the never-ending darkness.

Once, he’d confided to his uncle Barney about his feelings. The
next day, his father came bursting into his bedroom, pressing Prozac into his hand and forcing him into sessions with a therapist three times a week. Robbie listened politely to the therapist for a year and flushed the Prozac down the toilet. He didn’t know much anymore, but he knew that his father’s guilt pills were not the answer to his problem.

That was the last time Robbie Templeton sought help from adults. From then on, he was alone.

As if the blackness weren’t bad enough, Robbie was painfully aware that he was not “normal” in other ways either. Girls were a problem. His so-called friends, the group of kids who hung around him because he was rich and good-looking and who knew nothing of the tortured boy within, were all obsessed with girls. Specifically with their breasts, legs and vaginas.

“Did you see the tits on Rachel McPhee this semester? Those babies have, like,
tripled
over the summer.”

“Annie Mathis has the sweetest, tightest little pussy in tenth grade. Talk about the Tunnel of Love!”

“If Angela Brickley doesn’t wrap those lips around my dick by the end of this year, I swear to God I’m gonna kill myself.”

Of course, there was a lot of bullshit being talked. A lot of bravado. Robbie knew full well that most of the boys in his class were still virgins, for all their talk about pussies and blow jobs. But that wasn’t the point, or the problem. The problem was that they were all
interested
in girls. All of them.

Robbie Templeton wasn’t.

He remembered how his heart had stopped a few weeks ago when Lexi announced blithely: “I know why you don’t have a girlfriend.”

Skipping around the kitchen in her favorite neon-pink princess dress, sipping cherry Coke through a swirly straw, she fluttered her eyelashes at Robbie like Mae West.

Four years old, and already she’s better at flirting than I am.

“No you don’t, Lexi.”

“I do.”

Did she? Was it that obvious?

Robbie tried really hard never to look at other boys in public. So hard it sometimes made his eyes ache. Certainly he never did it at school. Not because he was scared of what the other kids might say, but because he was disgusted by his own feelings, consumed with a shame he could neither understand nor express. He couldn’t be gay. He
refused
to be gay. Besides, if you never did anything about your urges, if you
never acted on them, then you weren’t technically gay at all. You were just confused. Weren’t you?

Lexi gazed up at him adoringly.

“It’s because you’re waiting for me to grow up so you can marry
me.
Right?”

The relief was so overwhelming, Robbie burst out laughing. Scooping his sister up into his arms, he twirled her around till she squealed with delight.

“That’s right, sweetheart. That’s exactly right.”

“
I’m
your princess.”

“Yes, Lexi. You’re my princess.”

Suddenly a voice yelled, “Open your eyes, moron!”

Robbie glanced up. He’d been so engrossed in his own thoughts he wasn’t looking where he was going. He’d bumped into a businessman on his way to lunch, knocking him clean off his feet.

The man bellowed, “What are you, retarded or something? Freak.”

“Sorry. I didn’t see you.”

Robbie kept walking, head down. Inside his head, the tape kept playing, over and over:

He’s right. I am a freak.

He had no idea where he was going. He knew he’d have to go home eventually, but he couldn’t face it right now. Walking into Grand Central station, he bought a ticket for the first train to anywhere and jumped on board.

F
OUR

THE GIRL WAS A REDHEAD. SHE HAD HUGE BREASTS THAT seemed to wriggle like puppies beneath her tight angora sweater. Her black leather miniskirt was so short that Robbie could see the daisy pattern on her white cotton panties.

Her name was Maureen Swanson. She was captain of the cheerleading squad, the most popular girl in school. Every guy at St. Bede’s wanted to fuck her brains out.

Almost
every guy.

Maureen Swanson stared at Robbie. “Don’t I know you?”

Robbie looked at his shoes.

“Hey. Rain Man. I’m talking to you.
Hellooooo
?”

It was just his luck. Of all the hundreds, maybe even thousands, of trains leaving Grand Central that afternoon, he had to pick the one with Maureen the Mammary Monster on board.

“You’re the Blackwell kid, aren’t you?”

Robbie looked around for a means of escape but there was none. The car was packed with commuters. He was hemmed in like a sardine in a tin.

“Bobby, right? Tenth grade?”

“Robbie.”

“I knew it!” Maureen couldn’t have looked more triumphant if she’d
just solved the riddle of the Sphinx or discovered the meaning of life. “Robbie Blackwell.”

Hearing the name Blackwell, other passengers turned to look at Robbie. Some of them stared quite openly. Was he really one of
them?

“Actually, my name is Templeton. And you don’t know me. We never met.”

Maureen rose to her feet, eliciting admiring glances from the more circumspect businessmen and wolf whistles from the braver ones. The women in the car glared at her.

“Well, Robbie
Templeton
.” Maureen smiled lasciviously, easing herself down onto Robbie’s lap. “We can soon fix that.”

Robbie felt his insides liquefy. Not with desire. With fear. Why the hell hadn’t he thrown himself onto the tracks when he’d had the chance? Anything would have been better than the death by smothering he was about to endure in the rift-valley of Maureen Swanson’s cleavage.

“Where are you headed?”

It was a good question. Where
was
he headed? He still had no idea. The train had started to slow down. A disembodied voice informed the passengers that they were approaching Yonkers.

“Yonkers. This is my stop.”

Extricating himself from Maureen’s viselike embrace, he began to elbow his way through the human wall of commuters, only just making it out before the car door closed. He stood on the platform as the train pulled away.

Thank God. She’s gone.

Maureen Swanson’s voice rang out behind him: “What a coincidence. This is my stop, too.”

Robbie’s heart sank.

How had she made it off the train without him noticing? Who was she, Harriet Houdini?

Maureen Swanson was two years older than Robbie Templeton. Maureen Swanson was also a goddess. The type of girl who could have any guy she wanted. Of course, the guys Maureen Swanson wanted were college linebackers built like O. J. Simpson. Robbie was built more like Wallis Simpson. Handsome undoubtedly, but at fifteen still small and slight and looking every inch the tenth grader that he was.

On the other hand, Robbie was also the heir to the Kruger-Brent fortune. For $10 billion, it appeared, Maureen Swanson was prepared to make an exception to her usual dating criteria. Robbie Templeton might not be built like a football player, but he was worth more money than most pros.

Maureen smiled. “I know a guy who lives around here. There’s always a party going on at his place. You wanna check it out?”

Robbie weighed his options. He did
not
want to check it out. He did
not
want to go to a party, especially not with Maureen Swanson. He wanted to be left alone so that he could go and kill himself somewhere, quietly, without his last memory being a pair of Dolly Parton breasts or daisy-patterned panties from JCPenney. Was that so much to ask?

And yet…A party meant other people. Noise. Drugs. Distractions for Maureen.

Drugs.

Robbie shrugged.
What the hell.

“Sure, why not? I’ve got nothing better to do.”

When Peter Templeton got home that evening, he expected to find his son waiting for him.

“Robert!”

He let the front door slam shut behind him.

“ROBERT!”

Peter Templeton no longer felt guilty about slapping Robert that afternoon. He was against physical violence generally, especially as a form of parental control. But desperate times called for desperate measures. Robert had stood in his office, laughing at him. Actually laughing. After all the trouble he’d caused the family: the expulsions, the run-ins with the police, the shoplifting. After all the money and time that Peter had personally spent trying to help him, all the therapists and vacations and hundred-dollar-an-hour piano lessons, Robert still thought of the situation as one big joke.

Well, the joke was on him this time. Peter Templeton had had enough.

Bounding up the stairs two at a time in the direction of Robbie’s bedroom, Peter ran into the housekeeper, Mrs. Carter. She was standing on the landing. She looked apologetic.

“I’m afraid Master Robert’s not here, sir. We haven’t seen him since he left for school this morning. Is something wrong?”

Peter scowled. “Damn right something’s wrong. He’s gone and gotten himself kicked out of St. Bede’s. I doubt there’s a school left in the state of New York that would take him now. Frankly, I can’t say I blame them.”