Tiffany jutted her chin. “Yes. My husband. Mark Thompson. You know, the CEO. Maybe you’ve heard of him since you people all work here.”
David turned to me. “Do you need me to take over, or are you enjoying yourself?”
“Check back in five minutes.”
He folded his arms and stayed.
The executive elevator opened two minutes and forty seconds later.
Mark stepped out wearing the face I had seen him wear exactly twice before: once when a private-equity representative threatened a hostile proxy fight over board composition, and once when our son split his chin open falling from a bicycle and the emergency room physician said the word concussion. Fear sat badly on Mark. It made him look younger and cheaper at the same time, as if the polish of adulthood had rubbed off and left only appetite.
His tie was crooked. The top button of his shirt stood open. He had clearly run a hand through his hair too often on the ride down.
He scanned the lobby, saw the crowd, saw me, and stopped.
Then Tiffany saw him and broke into relief.
“Mark, baby!” she cried, hurrying toward him on stiletto heels. “Thank God you’re here. This woman is insane. She shoved me and—”
He did not embrace her.
He looked at her the way a man looks at fire spreading faster than he expected.
She reached for his arm.
His hand came up and struck her across the face with a crack so sharp the whole lobby inhaled at once.
Tiffany spun sideways and lost her grip on the gimbal. The phone flew from her hand, bounced twice, and landed screen-up on the marble, still live. She crumpled to the floor with one palm pressed to her cheek, shock blanking her features.
“I don’t know this woman,” Mark shouted.
The lie hit the room and died there.
“I’ve never seen her before in my life,” he went on, louder now, as if volume might rehabilitate impossibility. “She’s unstable. She’s been harassing people. Security, remove her immediately.”
Even Tiffany, kneeling on the floor with mascara already beginning to run, looked stunned beyond vanity. “Mark?” she whispered. “What are you talking about?”
My stomach turned. Not because I still had illusions about Mark’s character—I did not—but because cowardice at close range is always uglier than anticipated. Whatever else Tiffany was, and she was very far from innocent, she was not prepared to be erased in real time by the man who had clearly spent months encouraging her to feel chosen.
Mark saw me and pivoted. “Cath,” he said, abandoning command for supplication in under a second. “Thank God. This girl is deranged. I’ll have legal handle it. I was literally just upstairs in the investor meeting—”
