Against my better judgement—and because I’ve already committed to answering the call in front of my present company—I press the pad of my thumb against the green circle and exhale.
A second later, I answer with a cold and curt, “Hello?”
“Calder?” It’s a woman’s voice.
Not what I expected.
“Who is this?” I glance at the caller ID on my phone again, half wondering if I was dreaming those three little words before.
“Marta.” She states her name like a question. “Marta McDaniel.”
Oh.
Right.
My father’s assistant.
I’ve seen her name at the bottom of those letters he used to send me. What kind of man dictates his personal business and has his secretary transcribe them?
Calder Welles Senior. That’s who.
I pull the glass screen away from my ear, half-tempted to press the red button and put us both out of our misery right this instant.
I haven’t heard from the bastard in four years—after I told him off for the ninth time. I’m saving the tenth and final time for the day that sorry excuse for a man is lying helpless, frail, alone, and unloved on his deathbed—which I’m sure will be a Duxiana mattress covered in thousand thread count sheets because only the best will do for a man who has everything.
“I’m so sorry to bother you, but your father needs to set up a meeting with you as soon as possible,” she says.
Needs.
That’s rich.
I have needs too, Marta, I want to tell her. Needs that have never meant a fucking thing to the narcissistic pig who named his one and only son after himself, only to spend decades pretending he didn’t exist. Amongst other atrocities.
“I’m afraid I’m busy,” I say.
It’s not a lie. I have a life. One that doesn’t involve that selfish old bastard and his shiny bald head and beady eyes and those papery, wrinkled hands he never could keep to himself for more than five minutes at a time.
Just ask my childhood nanny, a perky college coed who had no idea what she was signing up for by agreeing to work for the Welles family.
Or the striking, honey-skinned Puerto Rican housekeeper he hired.
And my mother’s hospice nurse … Brittany — who subsequently went on to become the second (but not the last) Mrs. Welles, a marriage that lasted a mere two-hundred and forty-six days.
“Of course,” Marta says, her voice colored in gentle persuasion. I’ve never met Marta (and never intend to), but her jovial voice reminds me of a pleasantly plump Midwestern grandmother with wavy silver hair and chunky jewelry that she couples with bedazzled sweater sets. I picture her work desk littered with pictures of her extended family, each photo ambiguous enough to silently persuade others to ask where she fits into the mix, just so she has an excuse to talk about her family.
If I’m right about her, Marta would be the first secretary my father has had in decades who didn’t come equipped with fake breasts and a too-eager-to-please mentality.
But all of this is one hundred percent based on probability.
I haven’t seen the self-centered mogul since my eighteenth birthday, when his wife (at the time) insisted on throwing a graduation party more befitting for a child finishing kindergarten than a strapping eighteen-year-old man child who spent the majority of his teenage years counting down the days until he could get the hell out of Bridgeforth Military Academy—the well-to-do’s private version of juvenile detention.
The only crime I ever committed was being born the first, last, and only son of Calder Hereford Welles.
Guilty. But not of my own volition.
A gorgeous gypsy-looking woman in Rome pulled me aside at a bar several years ago, told me she “knew things,” and then proceeded to tell me I was a reincarnation of a fifteenth-century prince, and that I chose the life I have now because I needed to exact revenge on someone who wronged me in that life.
I think she was full of shit, but I liked the idea of what she said.
“I understand,” Marta hums a little before she speaks again. I must make her nervous. “But as I said, it’s extremely urgent. He wouldn’t bother you if it wasn’t.”
Right.
The girl in my bed, whose name suddenly escapes me, stares dead-eyed at her phone screen, the bright light illuminating her face as she scrolls with the methodical mechanics of a robot.
I don’t know much about her, other than what she told me over drinks at the hotel bar last night. She’s a drug rep from Minnesota, here for a medical conference, and she’s the youngest of seven. Catholic if I recall correctly. She made a point in telling me her parents didn’t believe in birth control. My expression must have ashened when she told me that because she immediately proceeded to reach into her purse and pull out a pale pink compact filled with birth control pills. I responded by reaching into my wallet and retrieving a magnum-sized rubber.