Kate Racculia - Tuesday Mooney Wore Black

But what had he really had?

He’d had a wife, Constance, who’d assumed control of ACE in his absence, and presumably still ran it. He’d had a daughter, Emerson, made internet famous by a meme of her clotheslining Paris Hilton at a Halloween party (Paris was a devil; Emerson was a unicorn). Before his disappearance, Edgar Arches was a staple on the Forbes list of billionaires. Constance, as the surviving scion, currently held that honor, though there were rumors – even at the time of the disappearance – that Nathaniel was champing at the bit to manage the family fortune.

Most people with that kind of life did not have a sense of humor, and if they did, it was not about themselves.

“Look under Man,” Nathaniel Arches said. His voice was slow and deep. “Man comma Bat.”

“Look under Arches,” Tuesday said to Kelly W., soft enough not to embarrass her, loud enough for him to hear. “First name – there. Nathaniel.”

He smiled like a flashbulb.

“Would you like to make a nametag?” Kelly W. handed him a permanent marker and a HELLO MY NAME IS sticker.

“Sure,” he said, uncapping the marker and inhaling. “I do love a fresh Sharpie.”

Tuesday’s mental file on Arches, Nathaniel fluttered in this breeze of personality. Nathaniel, since his father’s disappearance and his mother’s takeover of ACE, had funneled his share of the family fortune into N. A. Arches, a venture capital firm that invested in biotech, the next generation of MIT-spawned companies ACE was built on. There were rumors he had dated Gisele before Tom Brady. There were rumors he had dated Tom Brady before Gisele. In every interview Tuesday had read about him, he’d sounded like an out-of-the-box corporate venture dude, a walking jargon machine. He talked about synergy, about leveraging his assets. He made not one joke, possessed not a hint of wit or irony or self-consciousness of any kind.

He’d come to her attention last month, when one of the fundraisers she worked with – Watley, who raised money for primary care – asked for research. Nathaniel had no apparent connection to the hospital; he’d given no money, expressed no interest. He was just a name Watley discovered, probably after Googling “rich people in Boston.” She tried to tell Watley that good fundraising required a slightly more strategic approach, that it wasn’t worth her time to research and write up a full profile on a prospect with no Boston General connections and no history of, well, anything other than being a wealthy douche.

But Watley was new to the office and eager, Nathaniel Arches was rich as hell and his family was bonkers, and it was the dull deep end of August when everyone was down the Cape, so Tuesday dove into the cool information-soaked sea of the internet. His Facebook account was locked down, but he tweeted pictures of sunsets, the beers he was drinking, and the kind of vague motivational quotes that were usually accompanied by photographs of soaring eagles and windsurfers (REACH! IT’S CLOSER THAN YOU THINK). He did have a record in the patient database, but he had seen specialists (plastic surgeons, years ago), and technically that wasn’t public information; it was a violation of the hospital’s privacy policies to use that information to initiate contact.

So she focused on everything else. Nathaniel had been profiled on Boston.com and the Improper Bostonian . He barely opened his eyes in photographs. He was listed as a director of a private family foundation that gave, relative to its potential, offensively nominal donations to every nonprofit organization in Boston – the equivalent of giving a kid a nickel and telling her not to spend it all in one place. He owned no property under his own name, though he lived in the family’s luxury condo at the top of the Mandarin Hotel – when he wasn’t at the family compound on Nantucket – and he’d shown up on five separate lists of Boston’s sexiest: Sexiest Thirtysomethings, Sexiest Residents of the Back Bay, Sexiest Scenesters, Sexiest New Capitalists (he was number one with a bullet), and just plain Sexiest.

Tuesday had compiled all the hard and soft data she could find on Nathaniel Arches, and found his self-satisfied, megamonied, essentially ungenerous, ladykiller affect the exact opposite of sexy.

In person, though, was a totally different story.

This was why she volunteered for events.

He peeled the paper from the back of his nametag and slapped it gently on his chest. “How’s that?” he asked. “Is it on straight?”

Under HELLO MY NAME IS, he’d written ARCHIE.

“One edge is a little – higher—” Kelly W. pointed.

Tuesday stood and leaned over the registration table. “I can fix it,” she said.

Archie leaned toward her without hesitation. They were close to the same height, and he turned his head slightly to the side. “I’ve always wondered if two heads colliding really make that coconut sound,” he said, “but I don’t need to find out tonight.”

Tuesday gave him a long smile. “The night is young,” she said, and slowly pulled his nametag from his suit. Holding the sticky corners level, she repositioned it, pressed, smoothed it flat with her fingertips.

He stepped back and held out his hand.

“Archie.”

“Tuesday.” She squeezed his hand.

He gave a little finger-gun wave and glided away.

Tuesday plunked back in her chair.

“Holy crap,” said Kelly W. “What just happened?”

“Research,” said Tuesday. “In the field.”

At the Four Seasons Hotel, in a ballroom full of smiling men in suits, Dex Howard waited to be hit on.

That was it, right there: that was why he’d decided to come. As pathetic as it might be, he wanted a pity pickup. A distraction from having broken up with Patrick, even though everyone – seriously, everyone, including his own subconscious – had seen it coming. They had chemistry, they had fun, but they didn’t have much else. Patrick was a wet-behind-the-ears erstwhile ballet dancer turned barista. Dex was a Vice President. Richmont, which had no more than fifty employees, had fifteen Vice Presidents. All employees who had, at other firms, started as Coordinators, transformed into Analysts, then Senior Analysts, and then, having no further room in the chrysalis, burst into fully mature Vice Presidents. He was a Vice President who Managed Marketing, whatever the hell that meant, and his hairline was receding at the same rate as his childhood dreams.

He hated to think it – it was mean, it was shallow – but Dex was pretty sure Patrick had seen him as a meal ticket, a sugar daddy, a sponsor. Dex bought dinner. Dex bought tickets. Dex bought gifts. Patrick gave: support, compliments, sex. (Not for money, Dex told himself; not like that.) He liked buying things for Patrick, and Patrick liked receiving them. That Patrick liked his money didn’t mean he didn’t also like Dex as a person. Dex took a slug of open-bar whiskey – God, he hated this thing that his brain did, the way it looked at a man who professed to want him and asked, But why? Then answered, without waiting for a response, Because I can buy you things .

At least in a crowd of senior vice presidents and higher, Dex’s ability to buy things was relative, and puny. Though it wasn’t all that different from the crowd in The Bank. It had a higher tax bracket, was older and less visibly douchey, but there was still that slightly desperate undertow of desire threading through like a hot wire. Desire to make some sort of impression, to outperform, to draw attention, or at least to numb yourself to the day you’d just had with free booze – not to mention the next day, and the next.

Tuesday, as was her wont, was suddenly, silently there.