Money to Burn

2

IVY LAYTON WAS ABOUT TO BLOW HER BRAINS OUT. NOT LITERALLY-but sudden and certain death did seem preferable to the conversation that surrounded her. Ivy stepped away from a circle of women she didn’t care to get to know and grabbed a frozen rum runner topped with a floater of 150-proof Trinidadian spirits.

“Careful,” said the waiter holding the silver tray of cocktails. “Those be strong, love.”

Ivy smiled and thanked him. Since stepping foot on the Saxton Silvers yacht, she’d been “darlin’,” “honey,” and “love,” all of them as harmless in the islands as “mon.”

“Strong is good,” she said. And after a day like today, she really meant it. “Mon.”

Ivy and Michael had ended up returning to Miami International Airport, flying to Nassau, and catching up with the private cruise there. As far as Ivy was concerned, though, one less day with the top young producers at Saxton Silvers was a blessing. There was only one she cared to be with: Michael Cantella, a veritable rock star among the firm’s fiercely competitive under-thirty-five-year-olds. Michael had an uncanny knack for making the rich richer, which earned him seven-figure performance bonuses and plenty of free trips-South African safaris, New Zealand wine and adventure tours, and other five-star destinations around the globe, none of which he could fit into his relentless schedule. But this time was different. He had made a point of planning their first trip out of New York together after dating for three months. Ivy had been excited about it-until tonight. Michael didn’t know it, but if she had to spend one more cocktail hour on deck with the spouses and significant others while the Wall Street wonders smoked Cohiba cigars with the captain on the bridge, either she or Michael was going over the ship’s rail.

She hoped he wasn’t too drunk to swim.

“Did you hear about Dwight Holden?” asked Shannon Ware, one of the wives.

Here we go again, thought Ivy. Shannon was married to a high roller in the L.A. office who, according to Michael, owned more sports cars, more jewelry, more high-end toys than any human being should ever own-in short, the worst damn case of “affluenza” on record. Ivy had known Mr. Affluenza’s better half for only twenty minutes, and Shannon had already earned the title “World’s Biggest Gossip/World’s Smallest Brain.” The five other wives in the circle were riveted.

“Do tell,” said the tall blonde.

“Totally blew up,” said Shannon.

“No!”

“Yup,” said Shannon, snapping her fingers. “Just like that.”

“I thought Dwight was set for life and on track to retire before his fortieth birthday.”

“Was,” said Shannon. “Apparently the boy wonder wasn’t quite ready to cut the cord with the mother ship and manage his own hedge fund. Their house went on the market last week. Total fire sale. Only listing on the water under ten million.”

“Poor Gwen. Where are they moving to?”

Shannon lowered her voice, as if this part were particularly delicious. “I hear they’re moving in with her parents.”

“NO!” said blondie.

Ivy rolled her eyes. Somehow she knew it wasn’t true-worse, Ivy would have bet that even Shannon knew it was just a vicious rumor.

“Where is it?” asked another.

“It’s some little town…” Shannon cringed, as if it pained her not to have every juicy detail at her command. “Oh, hell, I know this. It’s-shit, how’s a left-coast girl supposed to know? It’s like…Gonorrheaville. But not Gonorrheaville.”

“Gonorrheaville?” said Ivy, coughing on her rum runner.

“You know what I’m trying to say,” said Shannon. “It’s that town in Connecticut with the same name as the disease.”

“You mean Lyme?” said Ivy.

“Yes, that’s it!”

The other women laughed, and Shannon was clearly embarrassed that she’d drawn a blank on Lyme. Ivy hated to be mean, even if Shannon did deserve it, but she was feeling the effects of her rum runner and couldn’t help singing to the tune of the old Jimmy Buffett song: “Wastin’ away again in Gonorrheaville.”

“Very funny,” said Shannon.

“Searching for my lost blood test results.”

The laughter continued, but Shannon was getting pissed.

“Some people say that there’s a pool boy to blame.”

“Okay, enough. Who died and made you sorority president?”

Shannon was glaring. The other women fell silent, unable to believe what they’d just heard. The tropical breeze blowing across the deck suddenly felt ice cold.

Ivy could have stood her ground-hell, she could have shattered Shannon’s jaw with a 540-hook kick worthy of Bruce Lee-but the mean girl wasn’t worth the effort.

“No one died,” said Ivy, leaving her final thought unsaid:

Yet.

She turned and walked away, absolutely certain that Shannon and her troop of character assassins would spend the rest of the cocktail hour gossiping about the bitch Michael Cantella had brought along this year.

Ivy went to the portside rail and gazed toward the magenta-orange afterglow on the horizon. With her back to the gossip, and as she soaked in the last vestiges of a spectacular Caribbean sunset, it was hard to argue that this wasn’t paradise. The three-hundred-foot private yacht-one of three “boats” owned by Saxton Silvers’ CEO-was totally pimped out with a wave pool, a seventy-five-foot dining table custom made by Viscount Linley, and a Sikorsky S-76B helicopter with a landing pad that doubled as a basketball court. Ivy had yet to see all the toys, but the vessel was supposedly equipped with a retractable beach resort, which slid out over the sea from just below the starboard side deck, complete with sand, palm trees, and deck chairs. A crew of fifty served the passengers’ every need. Their first stop would be the Exumas, followed by Harbor Island, and then an undisclosed destination that catered to British royalty, Grammy-winning rappers, and every multimillionaire in between. Wall Street certainly knew how to reward its winners. Despite the pampering, however, the thought of so much structure to her week with Michael left Ivy wanting. Five days in the islands could have been perfect-without the Saxton Silvers crowd.

Her frozen rum runner was melting in the warm night air and losing its kick. Ivy poured the remaining half overboard, watching the wind catch the potent slush and turn it into cherry-red vapor before it could fall into the sea. Then she smiled to herself, a brilliant idea coming to mind. She turned quickly, her flats squeaking on the polished teak stairway as she climbed up to the promenade deck, that tune still stuck in her head.

Wastin’ away again in…

She found Michael with six other guys, each of them exhibiting the kind of athletic good looks that were almost a cliché at Saxton Silvers. The entire investment banking world was in many ways a cliché: elite firm No. 1 dominated by humorless grinds, No. 2 by straitlaced rich kids, No. 3 by backslapping Irishmen, and so on. Even before meeting Michael, Ivy had regarded Saxton Silvers as the Duke lacrosse team of Wall Street frat houses. She loved Michael anyway, this grandson of a blue-collar Italian immigrant made good-even if he was plainly playing the game tonight, pretending to care as one of the boys waxed on about an exceedingly rare Super Tuscan that he’d scored in Hong Kong last week.

“Michael?” she said.

The men kept talking, but a woman in a nearby cluster of superstars threw her a not-so-subtle look, as if to say, Please go back to your place downstairs with the other spouses. Amazing, thought Ivy, the way women were always tougher on other women. Michael excused himself, and Ivy led him away.

“Hey, having fun yet?” he asked.

She gave him a half smile, trying to be a sport. “Honestly?”

“This is the only event like this,” said Michael. “Some genius in New York thought the spouses might enjoy one cocktail party where they could get to know each other without us at your hip.”

“It’s not that.”

“What’s wrong?”

She turned her head slowly, drawing Michael’s gaze toward the lower deck. He caught on quickly.

“Ahh,” said Michael. “I see you met Shannon and her gosse.”

“Gosse?” said Ivy.

“Gossip posse.”

“Good one. That’s exactly what those women are.”

Ivy stepped closer, arms at her side as she laced her fingers with his. Their bodies weren’t quite touching, but she flashed an expression that would have tempted any man with an ounce of imagination.

“Can we get out of here?” she said.

“You mean go back to our cabin?”

She shook her head. “I mean ditch this cruise and lose these losers.”

“But…we just got here.”

She glanced across the glistening sea, toward the moon rising over the island’s silhouette in the distance. “This is such a beautiful place. Let’s hire a captain and charter our own sailboat. Just you and me.”

“Are you serious?”

“Does a Shannon Bear shit on her friends?”

Michael smiled. “You really want out of here?”

She draped her arms atop his shoulders and looked into his eyes. “I’m very possessive of my playthings.”

“All right,” he said. “I’ve had enough of these blowhards myself. We’re in port tomorrow morning. Consider it done.”

She rose up on her toes, hugged him around the neck, and whispered, “This is one move you will never regret, Michael Cantella. I promise.”