Someday_ADE Read Online Free PDF Page B

fast. But all bearers of wishes and jokes are also serious. In the future, she would be her own benevolent despot, spend what she had accumulated, and indulge herself. Maybe study Chinese or Arabic, certainly Latin, shave her head, if she wanted, because, literally, she would have earned it.
    From her desk, Abigail reveled in the Chrysler Building’s beautiful austerity, the sun dropping away in its own time. She admired nature’s independence. Her Harvard Law School friends wondered why she worked in an investment bank, no adventure, no social meaning, they teased her, but she believed everyone had a right to happiness, and that took money. Mostly her friends came from privileged families and didn’t have her special fervor, so, in a crucial way, they didn’t get her. But as a scholarship student, Abigail grew up observing them and learned to recognize the secret operations of class and power.
    Nathaniel Murphy walked past her glassed-in office. He still had most of his hair, his good looks, he was almost too handsome, though his nose had thickened since she’d first seen his picture when he was twenty-eight. The Internet golden boy had grown fleshier, even as his world had shrunk, but there he was in his Armani suit. She could smell his aftershave lotion, Vervain probably.
    The numbers on the accounts blurred, Abigail pushed her glasses to the bridge of her nose, thrust her face closer to the papers, and self-consciously tugged on her short skirt. He was headed to the vault, distracted or worried, she thought, and he should be. He would soon open a security box, which probably held birth certificates, his parents’ wills, some gold, jewelry, certificates. Abigail had helped the elder Mr. Murphy draw up his will; he had left most of his fortune to charitable foundations, but his son’s fortune had vanished, along with other dot-commers.
    Nathaniel Murphy stayed in her imagination. His fall had been dramatic, public, and she wondered at his profligacy and hubris. While the sun sank at its own speed, Abigail imagined the younger Murphy’s hand hitting the sides of the metal security box. He was in a dark hole, yet everything surrounding him gleamed. He was like a character from a Patricia Highsmith novel, not Ripley, but others whose guilt registered on a human stock market. Abigail felt she had suffered too much to be guilty about anything, but Nathaniel had cost people millions, he’d wasted everything he had from birth and more. Being poor again terrified her, the thought made her sick, but he had no idea what it was like, and, rather than provoking resentment, it added allure to his mystery, even innocence.
    The elder Mr. Murphy once revealed that Nate’s wife had asked for a divorce right after the crash. He couldn’t help him, Nate made terrible choices; he gambled, not invested; he’s a playboy, his father confided, with time to kill. He’s drinking too much, and the girls sail in and out of his life. She liked Mr. Murphy, who was a gentleman, but she would have protected his son better, guided him. Abigail kept close watch on her own money, talked to her broker daily, and flushed with warmth when, each month, she saw her accounts swell.
    A guard closed the vault’s massive doors behind Nate. He turned a corner and walked down a hall, where Abigail encountered him. Abigail hadn’t planned it, she’d gone to the women’s room, and their paths crossed. They had several times before, when they would nod indifferently, but Abigail was never indifferent, she’d admit later. This time she stopped, and he did also.
    —I’m sorry about your father, I liked him, Abigail said.
    —Thank you, he said. He liked you, too.
    She had never noticed how green his brown eyes were, almost olive, then she realized they were just standing, not talking, and she must have been staring into his eyes. She tugged at her short skirt, meaning to return to her office, when he smiled familiarly at her.
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