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season every year.”

 
    CHAPTER 3
    Clayton—My Side
    Sorry to interrupt but you need to know my story too. Here it is in a nutshell.
    This is what you do when you have too much money—you blow it on stupid stuff or you hoard it. And I’m as guilty as the next guy. I had too many suits, too many shoes, too many custom shirts, watches, and ties—so much that I kept a double wardrobe, one in New York and another in Charleston. And my bank accounts were bulging. I would never admit my extreme self-indulgence to Liz or anyone else. But it was true. And I earned it, didn’t I? I didn’t steal it and I didn’t inherit it. It was mine. I’ve always held a strong conviction that everyone should earn their own money. It was good for self-esteem and it strengthened character to say you built your corner of the world with your own two hands.
    I’d been a Wall Street banker via Charleston my whole career, on my own terms, with a firm that made the conversion from gentlemen to animals with such ease and speed—think of Ivan Boesky back in the 1980s—it was terrifying. After the whole insider trading thing started sending some of my colleagues to state and federal facilities for character rehab, we all developed new habits for survival. We put little to nothing in writing, never spoke in an elevator or at a restaurant or while traveling commercial about any kind of hearsay, and of course we came by what we earned honestly. If you repeated this, I’d have to kill you, but the truth is that many a night passed that I thanked God my office wasn’t wired.
    When you’re a young buck, you go into investment banking because you get off on the thrill of the deal. The money doesn’t hurt either. After you’ve done a couple of hundred deals, the thrill is gone and you start looking for other, bigger thrills. Pretty textbook stuff—Psychology 101. My current thrill was Sophia Bacco. I never meant to have an affair with anyone. I’m not that kind of a man. An accidental screw is one thing but to really fall for someone? I guess it just happens sometimes. That’s all.
    I began commuting back and forth to New York almost thirty years ago when I decided I wasn’t leaving Charleston. I wanted to spend my weekends smelling pluff mud and salt. I never wanted to live in Manhattan. It’s too crazy for a Charleston boy. So I flew north on Sunday nights and south on Fridays except during August. For years I stayed at the New York Athletic Club during the week, which was not terribly expensive back then. After I did a few IPOs that made us all an obscene amount of money, the firm gave me a private plane to use. They knew I was ready to pack it in, but they didn’t want me to retire. So they made it as easy as possible to stay. I bought a little one-bedroom in the East Fifties and just recently, I rediscovered Sophia. She was an old friend I hadn’t seen in years, a model and a friend of Liz’s back in the day. How’s that for karma? Sophia once was a Victoria’s Secret model. And to be fair to Liz, Liz was a swimwear model and even had the Sports Illustrated cover one year. But all that history aside, it started when Sophia recognized me in the lobby one day.
    I’d never forget the first time we spoke.
    “Clayton? Clayton Waters? Is that you?”
    I had just hopped out of a black car and hurried into the foyer and was shaking out my umbrella. The skies were dumping snow outside and it was dark, windy, and bitter cold. It was March and everyone knows March weather in New York can be really miserable. Anyway, I looked over and there she was, wearing a red fox coat to her ankles and a big fox hat to match. She opened her coat, put her hands on her nonexistent hips, and stared at me, waiting with a smirk. She looked like a movie star and I think I stopped breathing.
    “Oh, my . . . Sophia? What are you doing here?”
    “I just moved into the penthouse. How about you?”
    “I’ve got a pied-à-terre here on the second floor. A