Page 64 of Old Money
“What?” Alex answers sharply. “That night? Both of them. All of them. But it’s not like—”
He stops, scrubbing at his forehead, mumbling to himself.
“What’s that?” I lean forward.
“It’s not like theyasked,” he repeats, his anger surfacing again. “Nobody pulled me aside and said, ‘Tell the cops you were with him or else.’ ”
Alex looks at me affronted.
“It was like—I’m just standing there, and Patrick’s talking to his parents, saying we were doing coke in the locker room. And at first, I’m thinking, ‘Coke? Shit, where was I?’ Like I don’t even know why he’s telling this story. I thought—”
“Wait,” I cut in again. I have to. “Just to be clear. Are you saying it’s not true?”
Alex’s face goes from irate to confused.
“You werenotwith Patrick during that time frame?”
He looks at the wall, then back to me, his brow knit tight.
“Are you recording this?”
“No,” I answer quickly.Shit, why am I not recording this?
“If you are,” he says a bit louder, “I do not consent.”
“I’m not recording,” I huff, pulling out my phone and dropping it face up on the table.
“Fuck it. Doesn’t matter,” he says, more to himself than me. “No, I was not with him. Yes, I lied. All clear now?”
I nod, speechless, my whole body beating with adrenaline.
“Where were you?” I squeeze the words out.
“Fuckin’ passed out in a bathroom stall,” Alex replies. “We’d been going pretty hard that week—last hurrah, whatever. I didn’t even want to drink at the club party. We’d been up the whole night before, and I literally remember thinking,Shit, I just wanna go to bed. But we always got shit-faced at those things. It was like a rule. So yeah, I was tanked by dinner.” He shrugs. “Then I went to the bathroom and next thing I know, I wake up falling off the toilet.”
He chuckles at the table, his face briefly lifting, then slowly sinking into a mask of bewilderment as he continues, following the memory.
“And then I clean up and go back upstairs, and the music’s stopped and everyone’s—everyone’s running around, and it’s like, I can hear all these voices but can’t tell what anyone’s saying? And Patrick’s there, in the gallery with his folks, and he just sort of pulls me in, the way he does. The cops weren’t even there yet, and already he’s telling this story about the coke and the sauna in the locker room, and then they all just—” Alex tilts his head, slowly. “They just turn to me. And I don’t know what’s going on, but I know what they want me to say. They want me to say yes to all of it. I didn’t have a choice.”
I turn my head, hearing the distinct note of self-pity in his voice. “You did though.”
Alex stiffens and looks back at me through lowered eyelids. I’m starting to realize how backward I had it. Alex is more than willing to talk to me. He just doesn’t want me to talk back.
“Yeah, okay, I had a choice,” he says. “And I made it, and I paid the price.”
“The price,” I repeat, my own patience thinning now. “Alex, I’m sorry but—come on, you didn’t get a drug charge. You got to go to Princeton. You’re hanging out on his yacht.”
Alex pulls his lower lip in, nodding at the floor.
“I’m not ‘hanging out’ anywhere. I’m a paid employee.” He flicks a glance upward, checking my face. “I go where he goes. That’s how it works.”
I freeze, seized by a sudden, vise-tight panic. What ifhe’srecording? What if he’s not alone? I look behind me at the empty coffee shop and the empty terminal beyond. I can barely hear the security guards chatting in the distance. When I turn around, Alex has a small, satisfied smile on his face.
“Guess you didn’t know that part.”
“What do you mean you go where he goes? What do you do for him?”
“Uh,” Alex says, looking up. “Let’s see, back in San Francisco, I was his ‘house manager.’ After the first rehab trip, I was ‘sober companion,’ for, like, a year. The second rehab, they had me go with him, so that was another title change—I can’t remember. Then we moved back east, and I think I’ve just been ‘consultant,’ ever since.” He shrugged. “It’s just what they put on the checks. Really, I’m just Patrick’s full-time friend.”
