Things got worse in the weeks that followed. The whole equilibrium of the community, such as it was, seemed thrown off by the change in domestic circumstances of the First Family. It wasn’t as though it could be kept secret in such tight quarters, and Thom had gone from acting as though it were all perfectly normal, at first, to shooting harsh glares at anyone who looked at him askance when he got in the elevator to go down to his apartment alone.
By the sixth week of the event, defections had begun to pick up. Over the course of two months, the community lost two of the custodial staff, the nutritionist, Dr. Rahman, and, most painfully, the married chefs, the Friedmans. None of them had bothered to go to Thom to explain their reasons for leaving or ask permission; they just got in their cars one day and drove away.
Worse, some of them had returned within a week, apparently finding the outside world unappealing, and they brought family members with them.
These days, Thom never knew who was there, who was gone, or who half the people he saw on the property over the course of any given day were. He might as well have been living in a hotel. Routines were abandoned, rules were forgotten, and there was no hierarchy whatsoever. Or, if there was, Thom knew for goddamn sure he wasn’t at the top of it.
That had been evident a few weeks earlier, when Jimmy and the other three militia members, their sole protection out here in the middle of nowhere, came to see him one Friday morning and “resigned.” Their much-less-than-believable reason for having to slink away in shame was their own “inexcusable lapse in security:” they claimed masked marauders had broken into the facility in the middle of the night, found the interlocking vault rooms on sub-level twelve, and drilled open enough safety-deposit boxes to steal $3 million in cash. Yeah, right.
Thom assumed Jimmy had been planning the heist for some time. Unable to come up with a convincing cover story, it seemed the ex-major had decided on just looking his boss in the eye and telling him an almost laughable lie. His expression practically dared Thom to question him, and Thom did not accept the dare.
Jimmy and his men left, presumably taking the $3 million with them. Thom comforted himself with the knowledge that they hadn’t managed to get into the subsequent rooms and steal the other $12 million, but, really, who gave a shit? He’d been robbed, by his own people, and they didn’t care if he knew it or not. Chloe, unsurprisingly, went with Jimmy. So much for yoga sessions, decent haircuts, and what was left of Thom’s faith in the durability of a personal-services contract. Nobody seemed to give a shit about anything anymore.
And now here he was, finding a new low point once again. Ann-Sophie had gone downstairs to see him that morning and, silly him, his heart had skipped a beat when he opened the door and saw that it was her. Maybe this was the start of the reconciliation he’d been hoping for. But, no, far from it. She was there to ask him to come upstairs and get the rest of his shit. Why this was a sudden and timely issue was beyond him, but he had sullenly agreed, and so here he was.
Fuck the eyeglasses. He decided to leave them exactly where they were. He slammed the drawer of the nightstand, grabbed the big suitcase that contained as many of his things as he cared to pack up, and headed for the door.
Halfway down the short hallway to the elevator, he stopped in his tracks. There was someone else at the other end of the corridor, someone who’d just gotten off the elevator and was walking this way, also with a suitcase in hand.
Marques.
He looked like the mirror image of Thom, one of them coming and the other going, two men of about the same age, carrying their things in a bag, one moving out and the other—what, moving in?
Thom turned his head, like the RCA dog, trying to understand the strange image at the other end of the hallway.
“Shit,” Marques said.
“What the fuck?” Thom asked.
Marques sighed. He set his black canvas suitcase down gently and drew himself up to his full height.
“Awkward conversation we’re about to have, boss.”
“Awkward conver— What the fuck are you talking about, Marques? What are you doing? What is that next to you? What the fuck is going on?”
Thom had been proud of the fact that, other than a few days back when it had all started, he’d stopped tracking Ann-Sophie’s movements on the surveillance monitors in the communication room. Somehow, he had even convinced himself that he’d been wrong about it all, that she wasn’t sleeping with Marques, that she never had been, and the days and nights when she was gone had been mental health breaks, a case of her giving herself some needed space so that she could then devote time and energy to repair the marriage and oh, fuck her, she’s been screwing my pilot the whole goddamn time. That’s why she wanted his stuff out, to make room for Marques’s goddamn epaulets.