Epilogue

Todd Evergreen

I never ate bark. Or lived in a yurt, for that matter.

It was a normal house. Running water and everything. And, yeah, we didn’t celebrate Christmas, but that was because everyone thought it was too commercialized. Which it is. And true, there was a lot of Goddess Mother Earth stuff happening, but that didn’t involve blood or animal sacrifices. Mainly it was a bunch of old hippies meditating outdoors, calling on nature’s love. It was kind of beautiful, actually.

Sometimes there was chanting and drums, but you see that on every college campus across America.

There was no TV, though. And homeschooling was kind of lonely. But you can live with all that. You can live without a lot.

Kids are pretty resilient. They don’t know what they’re missing.

That was before I touched my first computer.

My mom was a sweet woman. Totally flighty, whacked out of her mind . . . but sweet. Dad hadn’t been around for a long time. I didn’t even remember his face. Which is how we ended up there in the first place, in an eco-settlement in Oregon with a bunch of ex-hippies. I knew they were ex-hippies because they’d get stoned and tell me.

There was a lot of getting stoned. And that part wasn’t great, I guess. I smoked my first joint at six.

Just like Mom, they’d all pretty much had it with life. So maybe it was just an excuse, all that live-natural, don’t-use-up-the-resources, fuck-the-mall shit. A reason to drop out of a world that was in overdrive.

Not that I knew what a mall looked like.

I was always the one asking questions. And sometimes, after a big spliff, they’d answer them. It would always end with the line “And you couldn’t pay me to go back.”

I had no idea what paying anyone was like. We didn’t use money. We grew everything we needed. And for everything else, there were the yearly trips to the Town.

I was never allowed to go.

But I wasn’t abused or anything. I always had clean clothes, which Mom scrubbed in the lake. Dead of winter, she was out there, making sure I had fresh stuff to wear. Hand-me-downs from the older kids, but clean, and I didn’t know different either way.

A washing machine would have been nice, I guess.

And Mom was a good teacher. I was reading at a fifth-grade level when I was seven. And there were plenty of kids to play with. Artemis and Pan and Bacchus. Some of them had different names before their parents showed up. Pan had been Richard when he came at four. By nine, he was more Pan than any Richard could ever be.

Since I had been born there, I was always Yum. I wouldn’t understand how embarrassing it was until I was gone for good.

I left for the first time at ten.

Because here’s the secret, the one I never mentioned to anyone, not even Pan, and he was my best friend: if this place was paradise, paradise kind of sucked.

Paradise was boring as shit.

That first time, at ten, I’d hitchhiked to the Town. Everyone had looked at me walking down the main street—only a couple of stores, but it seemed like a huge city to me—like I was some sort of alien. “Son,” said the Old Man. He owned the local convenience store. The only convenience store, but I didn’t even know what one was at the time. “Do you know where you are?”

“Sure. This is the Town. I may live with a bunch of hippies, but I’m not an idiot.”

“Well, might as well come in. Have some lemonade.”

I didn’t know about strangers being bad. Lucky he wasn’t one of the bad ones.

When I got home, Mom had not been angry. “You want to see things,” she said. “I understand that.”

“I’m going back.”

“We all have free will.” But she looked kind of sad.

I was back in the Town by the next afternoon.

Old Man—Jerry, but I always called him Old Man, which he always liked—gave me candy. Hershey’s bars, Snickers. They blew my mind. TV was even crazier. He only watched old movies, mainly the black-and-white ones, which didn’t matter, since it was a black-and-white TV. And how was I supposed to know nobody used VCRs anymore? To me, they were magic boxes.

We saw all the classics. Garbo, Hepburn, Grant. The Esther Williams ones, a bunch of girls swimming in a pool, their moves like mirror images. There were the 1940s films, where everyone talked fast and lived in loud places. Cars honking, ambulances wailing, and everything dirty. Except the women, who wore long, sparkly dresses instead of faded-out robes. The City looked kind of horrifying. I couldn’t wait to see it.

Then I saw my first musical, and I was hooked. Fred Astaire, dancing on surfaces you weren’t supposed to dance on. Stages full of girls whose shiny legs kicked at the same time. It was big and crazy and I thought, Wow, that must be what heaven is like.

Old Man explained heaven to me. It was nothing like the Great Goddess After. There was no mixing with the dirt and growing into trees.

Heaven sounded a lot better.

When I left for good, Mom hadn’t cried. She said, “I will see you again, I know I will.”

I had cried, but I waited until I was a good mile away. Then I stuck out my thumb. This time, I was going to a Bigger Town, like the ones Old Man had shown me in his movies.

He had patted me on the head and given me a Hershey’s for the road.

I was fifteen.

There was a lot of scraping by in the next few years, shacking up in trashed-out squats with all the other street kids. I learned to beg for dollars, then to steal them. But I only did that a few times. I’d rather be hungry than feel the guilt.

All the kids had big plans. They wanted to start rock bands and move to LA, where you could sleep on the beach.

I didn’t know what a rock band was, so one of them played me a song on his headphones. “Fuck,” I said. Because I couldn’t think of anything else. It was too good for words.

“Bob Dylan,” he said. “Guy is rad.”

He was a friend, and there were others. But none are worth naming. They were the kind of friends who went in and out of my life. And when they went out, I knew I’d never see them again.

I got a job. Stocking shelves at a grocery store. I worked hard and fast, and the manager let me sleep on a cot in the back. It was a good deal, especially since there was a computer I could mess with at night.

That’s when I discovered the internet.

On the hot summer days, I’d drag the screen and whole setup to the freezers, log on, and discover everything I had been missing.

An entire world was in that screen. I could go anywhere, see anything. I was still in the back of the grocery store, but not really, because I had the universe at my fingertips.

This blew my mind even more than the Hershey’s bars, or even the TV.

I had always been good with numbers. Patterns, really. I used to find them in the dirt, the tree bark.

The bark I never ate. I mean, who eats bark? That shit is crazy.

Computers were just layers of patterns, and if I looked at them long enough, they would unfold and unfurl before my eyes. They would answer their own questions and tell me what they wanted to do, where to place them so everything buzzed to life.

Within a year, I had revamped the system for the store. They saved a lot of money. Then the district manager came to me and asked, “Can you do that for all the stores?”

“No problem,” I said. “There’s a computer in the back.”

He’d looked at me like I was insane, then just laughed.

Nine months later, I had a staff of ten. I had an office and a car. I had even fucked a girl, Milly, who had thrown herself on me one day in the 7-Eleven line.

I liked her a lot. But in the end, it was easier being alone with the computer. Machines didn’t ask questions, like why I’d rather sleep on the outdoor porch than cuddle, or why I refused to mow the lawn or cut back the trees.

I wasn’t Yum Caax anymore. I hadn’t been for a long, long time. But I was still Yum Caax inside, I guess. At least partially.

And I’d always be Todd, too. It was a perfect name. Completely ordinary, just like everyone else’s. And the Evergreen? That was for my mom.

Just like those first friends, I knew I’d never see her again.

Rock Exchange just made sense. If I wasn’t working, I was out hearing bands. I never cared what kind of music it was, country or death metal or pop. I just liked the excitement of the crowd, the way they pushed in as close to the stage as they could.

People started recognizing me. “Hey, Todd,” they would say. They invited me backstage, to their parties. Got me passes to their gigs.

They seemed to like me. Most everyone who met me liked me. I didn’t say much. Just listened to them talk. I knew how to be quiet and listen. Growing up with chirping birds and rustling leaves, you learn to appreciate the details.

People liked you when you listened.

They knew what I did for a living, called me the Man and made fun of my corporate job. “What do you do exactly?” they’d ask. “Just sit there and enter codes all day?”

“Yes,” I’d say. Because it was true.

“Can you do websites?”

“Yes.” If it had to do with the computer, I could probably do it. The keyboard was just an extension of myself.

After the first fifty sites, I realized how many good bands there were. Some great. And they’d get their website, and maybe a few gigs. If they were lucky, maybe even an album for their family to buy. But most of them would never get heard. Not by anyone other than their friends and, if they lucked out, a few fans.

That seemed kind of fucked to me. If you make something well, people should appreciate it. That’s how it had been when I was growing up. If your birdhouses were great, people wanted them. If you cooked the best stew, you were the stew guy.

Shouldn’t it be the same with songs?

It didn’t take long to make Rock Exchange. I had the contacts already.

I figured people would like it. Just not that much.

It happened too fast. Too many people coming at me. Prospective investors, publicists, bands, advertisers. And that was just for starters.

“You have contracts, right?” asked Luanne, the girl I was fucking at the time.

I liked her a lot.

I had shaken my head.

“You have to have contracts, Todd. Someone could get screwed. Lucky my cousin is a lawyer.”

Now I know lawyers work out of offices, not their kitchens.

Fifty-fifty split. That was what I told him. I guess I didn’t read the fine print.

I didn’t even know what fine print was.

Those contracts they released were fakes, by the way. The real ones were far worse.

By the time I figured it out, it was too late. The artists were already suing, and he’d skipped town. With $10 million he’d skimmed off the top.

And by then, I’d already sold to Hoff.

It was like a bear hug, meeting Hoff. He just jumped headfirst into my life with his big voice and excitement. He pulled me right into his embrace.

Yeah, I wanted a dad. Always had. But there’s no sin in that.

He swept me up. Made plans for my future. You’ll make something big. You remind me a lot of myself. You got the goods, kid, he’d say.

Now I was Yum Caax, Todd Evergreen, and the Kid.

I liked the Kid the best.

Now I don’t like it at all.

I guess I loved Hoff. He was my friend. And this one, I decided, might stick around.

Then there was his daughter. Her boyfriend. The guy from Hollywood, the girl with the loud voice. The one with the smile. The one from far away who also made things well.

I liked them.

And they liked me, just like everyone else did. The only difference was everything.

They had stuff. Lots of stuff. Big shit I’d only seen on the internet, on TV. Whole boats and lots of houses, some you could only get to by plane.

They had planes, too.

I could buy some of this stuff myself after selling to Hoff. But I’d never needed stuff, and it just seemed weird. Spending all that money on more stuff than you could ever use.

I bought an apartment, though. It didn’t have a porch, but it had a patio thirty floors up. Unless it was winter, I planned on sleeping out there.

I liked their things, don’t get me wrong. Not for the things themselves, but how excited they got about them. How their faces lit up when they talked about them.

But I liked the people for other reasons. Better reasons.

Phillip could see beneath the layers of people, just like how I did with the computer codes. He wanted them to be happy. If they got hurt, he wanted to be the one to heal them.

Desy never said she was sorry for anything, and she made me laugh. Also, she could sing. Really sing. She could dance, too. I’d heard a lot of performers on Rock Exchange, and she just had that thing that makes you want to watch her, even if what she did was a little insane.

There was M.C., who gave a fuck. He wanted his life to mean something.

I got that.

Cordelia was the same way. I only met her a few times, mostly that first night in the Hamptons. But I could tell she believed the best in people. When they messed with her, it broke her heart.

I got that, too.

Christian was almost a stranger, but he knew beauty. He made beauty. And anyone who made things, I’d always believed, was cool.

Annalise? Well, she was Hoff’s daughter, and I loved her for that alone. Just like him, she went after what she wanted. She refused defeat. And I admired that, because I was a survivor, too.

I loved them all. I couldn’t help it. I’d never met people who were more lost.

I guess I was a little lost, too.

But each passing day with them, I was more found.

Then everything went upside down. It was that shitty lawyer, who probably didn’t have a law degree.

Then the calls started coming. The threats and attacks. Did I have a comment? What did I think of the case?

Was I evil?

It sucked, but not like the I’m-gonna-die kind of suck. I wasn’t in a squat anymore, I had enough to eat.

Most of all, I had Hoff.

Until I didn’t.

Gone. Just disappeared one day. And it was like someone ripping out my operating system. I didn’t quite work anymore.

Was this how my mother had felt? The day I walked away and never came back?

I wished I could call her. I cried, too, I’d say. Just a mile down the road.

Only I wouldn’t call, even if she’d had a phone.

I shouldn’t have gone to the magazine launch. I was stupid. I just thought, I don’t know. That people forgive? People forgive, right?

Now I know better.

They had laughed at her. Not out loud, but I saw it in their eyes. All these people in their fancy clothes, laughing at my mom. She was a joke to them.

But I was an even bigger one.

And the people who made it happen? They were my friends. Friends I had started to believe—no, fully believed—would stick around.

You can’t trust people, I know that now.

The headlines. My name everywhere. And now I started reading the articles. Seeing the lies. Those interviews on TV with people I knew. Had known. Pan, all grown up now. Wearing robes, just like the adults.

We were the adults.

He looked confused. Upset. It hadn’t been paradise to me, but it was to him. And now I’d taken a big chunk from it.

I didn’t mean to, but I did.

And then there was my mother. There’s not much to say about her. Especially since she was with me every day in my mind. The image of her face as she searched the crowd for me.

Now they were laughing out loud at her.

It burned me up. My body was on fire with it.

I wanted to hurt someone. I paced the apartment at night, prowled like a coyote looking for prey. Only there was nothing to attack.

I wanted to destroy them, just like they had me.

I’d never felt this before. Hatred.

Yeah, I’d gotten frustrated. Even pissed. But hatred? That was new.

I wanted their raw flesh, their meat. I wanted to rip them to shreds, tear them to sheds. Leave the parts of them in so many places they’d never be whole again.

The problem was, they were protected. Hidden away in their padded cocoons. I couldn’t touch them.

They had everything you could possibly want. If I took something, it wouldn’t make a dent. They’d just replace it with a newer, better one.

That’s when I realized. You have to take something irreplaceable. You have to take something from the inside out.

You have to take a piece of their paradise. The one they keep inside.

But how to draw them in? I thought about it for days, then realized it was easy. Just give them what they cared about most.

In other words, stuff.

I rented a warehouse in Brooklyn. Ten floors. Ceilings so high you had to bend your neck all the way back to see the top.

I got the stuff. Lots of it.

Then I got the cameras. Installed them everywhere. And in case that wasn’t enough, I hired a few people to get extra, covert shots.

The Bygones Be Bygones Party.

They came by BMW and Bentley, Aston Martins and limos. Some were chauffeured, and a few even drove themselves.

Nobody came by subway.

For my VIPs, I’d hired helicopters to pick them up in Manhattan. It took under four minutes for them to arrive, just as the sun was setting, to a helipad in Brooklyn.

Champagne was waiting.

Click.

They all ended up—VIP and other—near the red carpet. A ton of people were waiting outside the ropes. Some whom I’d hired, others who had just come for the spectacle.

I knew who was on the list. I’d picked them carefully and hired tight security.

They were the unpredictable type, the ones who could explode at any moment. The ones who would make things—good or bad or both—happen.

And if they needed help? Well, crystal bowls were stocked with powder, girls in pink maid uniforms offered up trays of pills.

The girls had been an easy hire. They’d been more than willing after that magazine launch. But just in case, I had them sign an NDA.

I had a real lawyer at this point. A team of them.

Besides the powders and pills, I had liquor. Every kind you could imagine. Some legal, some not. Some that even made you hallucinate.

That stuff hadn’t been easy to get. I’d had to call in favors. But there are lots of guys out there like me, ones who lived behind a screen and spoke in code. They were people I’d never met yet I knew well. And even with the press, they respected me. Some even considered me a hero.

These were the kinds who could hack the unhackable, and their access extended beyond the screen.

They could get me whatever I wanted. And I wasn’t just talking about the drugs.

Their reach brought what I needed to create alternate worlds. Whether it was imported from the Australian outback or a warehouse in Queens, I had everything I needed to create a maze of different universes, twisting hallways that led to rooms, each one more wild, more decadent, and more surreal than the last.

All my VIPs’ fantasies were here, I’d made sure of that. And each one ripe for picking. If it could take them over the edge, they’d be sure to find it. And if that wasn’t enough, there were always more drugs.

I wanted my VIPs to feel special. And that started outside on the red carpet.

All of them—Cordelia, Christian, Annalise, Phillip, Desy, M.C.—ushered to the front, like movie stars. Now, for the first time, they were the real-life celebrities they’d always been in their heads.

As for the VIPs themselves? Their biting remarks and catty infighting? In that moment of being worshipped, all was forgiven.

When they’d reached the entrance, there was a brief photo op. Shot after shot of them posed while the onlookers—both hired and not—shouted their names and I love you!

One by one, their hands were stamped. Now they were ready.

Can we get one last shot? asked a photographer. A fist pump would be cool!

They were more than happy to oblige.

As for April Holiday, she just jumped the rope and stepped right in.

I could not control everything.

Click.

That would be the first picture, and last camera, they’d see for the night.

Of course, there were the countless others they couldn’t. And I knew the location of every single one.

From my hidden room on the top floor, I kept a close eye on developments.

In front of me, a whole wall of monitors.

This was where I belonged. Had always belonged.

And they were the same, only with the limelight. They’d belonged in the center of the action. They were meant to be adored.

And I was meant to be far away. Watching. Sort of a part of the whole thing and sort of not.

M.C. was the first to go. He found his mean streets after all. The underground club in the basement with the kinds of guys he admired. The ones who’d never give him the time of day unless I’d hired them to.

I’d even gotten LL Cool J to sing.

You can buy pretty much anything you want. People included.

There was top-shelf liquor and real criminals telling stories of their time served. There were badasses to spin, badasses to perform, badasses to tell him he was a badass himself.

There were hot, slutty girls in skintight short-shorts. They’d do anything he wanted.

There were drugs. Really hard ones. He had a tolerance, so I made sure to stock the hard ones.

When he was really messed up, could hardly see straight, the gift was delivered with a little note. With sincerest apologies, Todd Evergreen.

He’d loved that gun right away. Stroked it like you would a woman. Ran it down his flesh, pointed it like a killer. Shoved it in his waistband and posed, head thrown back, for the women to admire.

Click.

That would be the shot I’d use.

There’d been empty rooms with huge, floating balloons, silver like Andy Warhol’s. White-fur tunnels led you to white-fur rooms, every surface covered like a soft cloud. There was a playground with swing sets, an old-fashioned merry-go-round, and a bar.

There was always a bar.

And if you began to feel tired, a maid would appear, her pink uniform glowing neon in the dark.

“Refresher?” she would ask.

Click.

Christian and Cordelia had been a surprise, but not because of the room they’d chosen. The fact they were together at all.

Some secrets I didn’t know. Though everyone in the world seemed to know mine.

The location had been expected, one of the hidden rooms on the third floor. The circular bed with crimson covering, the walls draped in lush fabrics imported from India and Nepal. Soft, bloated pillows scattered across the floor.

The only light a faint, warm glow from an oil lamp.

They’d circled each other for a while. Argued. She’d cried and he’d pleaded. Then they were tackling each other, laughing and rolling across the floor. His pants came off, her shirt.

They were both very, very drunk.

Her skin looked abnormally white against the crimson, and his jewels beautiful against her bare flesh.

Click.

Later, I made sure she found the purses in the dead-animal room. She hadn’t been afraid of their stiff, furry bodies or lifeless eyes.

On seeing the purses, her own eyes had gotten as wide as theirs, and even wider when she found my note.

All yours, with apologies. Todd Evergreen.

Click.

Later—a few hours? Many? Phillip and M.C. had found the hot tub full of models. Real models who I’d hired to sit there and drink champagne in the bubbles.

This was a good gig.

M.C. hadn’t wanted to get inside. He didn’t want his gun to get wet. And there was plenty to occupy his time without.

There was a pool table and rows of arcade classics, but that’s not all the game room had to offer. There were people to play with as well.

Pin the pastie, and you couldn’t miss. The targets were huge, as I’d hired a porn star to assist.

Later, Phillip surprised me as much as Cordelia and Christian. For such an enlightened man, he really took to the anal ring toss.

Click.

In the end, they’d gotten in the hot tub, just as I expected. You couldn’t see them in the picture, though, as it was just a lot of slippery flesh.

Still, it was a good picture.

Click.

As for Annalise, she snorted and danced, popped a pill. and had a few drinks. Somehow she’d ended up in the bathroom. Alone. For hours.

Phillip had come to find her, but it had taken a bit. His steps had grown wobbly, and he’d crashed into walls and fallen a few times.

When he’d finally discovered her, she was huddled on the floor, a crying, rocking mess.

He couldn’t find a Kleenex. Just the only $100 bill he hadn’t already stuffed down a bikini bottom. This one he’d saved for snorting.

Click.

I’d never know what made Annalise cry, as there was no audio feed. But maybe—or I’d like to believe—it was the demons of guilt inside her head.

On their way out of the bathroom, a still-wobbly Phillip attempted to carry the weight of his drunk, slightly drooling half sister.

A passing girl had laughed at them and stuck out her tongue.

Click.

Downstairs, in the cavernous center room, the disco ball spun over a packed dance floor. The music thumped and bodies writhed and people screamed from drugs and excitement. Michelangelo’s masterpiece was projected from the ceiling. God and Adam, fingers touching, watched the fun from above.

Though Adam, it seemed, was touching the disco ball instead, almost spinning it with his finger.

Click.

The big finale, and this one for me. Or really, the Old Man.

All those Esther Williams movies we watched, his favorites, the identical girls in swimsuits, rising from the water, arms first, like graceful swan necks.

I had my girls rise from the floor instead. And water was great, but a champagne fountain is even better.

Click.

It was late in the evening, or early in the morning, or late the next afternoon. Nobody seemed to care which. The pink maids just kept coming, the bowls of powder miraculously refilled, empty champagne bottles replaced with full ones.

Even the ones attached to hats.

Click.

More hours. A lot of them.

For those still on their feet, the dancing was more of a staggering, and sprawled-out bodies needed to be dodged.

Nobody would OD. I had a team to make sure of that.

I wasn’t evil, just angry.

In the end, a few stomachs would be pumped, but those weren’t fatal. Besides, I’d hired on-site medics, so it would have been a shame not to use them.

But where was Desy? Every monitor drew a blank. Then it occurred to me: right over my head.

The roof. After all, Desy always wanted to be on top.

I zoomed in.

The pool was now littered with empty bottles, but Manhattan shone just as bright. Desy took off her top and stood there for a moment, letting the warm summer breeze embrace her. She was finally where she belonged, the center of everything. She looked at the city, probably thinking, I own this place.

Then she backed up, did a running jump, and dove, headfirst, right in.

Click.

At some point, the place began to clear out. It wasn’t empty until five the next evening, and even then my people kept finding them passed out in dark corners.

Then there were the cleaning crews, the dismantling team, the workmen to haul out supplies. I watched the progress on my monitors while making my final image selections.

Iggy Pop meowed, weaving between my legs as I worked. Rubbing up against my leg and purring while I decided fates.

Did I ever hesitate? Just for a second. Then I pictured my empty apartment, my mother’s face from that stage. Mr. Hoff smiling at me and Annalise huddled in a crying mess.

These people had played by different rules, and now so would I.

That thought in mind, I entered a code and, at exactly 7:00 a.m. the following day, my anonymous site went live.

I had wanted to humiliate them. To expose them just as they had me. To lay them naked across a chopping block for the world to see.

What they cared for most? How they were seen. And after I was done, no one would ever look at them the same.

I succeeded. Only not in the way I had expected.

Within a few days, everything had changed. Within a week, it had changed forever.

With his newfound street cred, Miller was inundated with potential investors. He’d found a space, hired an architect and a lawyer, and within a few months his recording studio would be up and running.

For his parents’ sake, he’d stayed at Columbia, which had agreed to allow him back in. He never did an hour of the mandatory community service, and eventually, he would graduate without having attended a single class.

The first track he planned to lay down? Desdemona Gold. Or Berg. They were still working on the specifics.

As for Des, she had gone from It girl to the It girl. The pool shot had done it. She was recognized on the street, whispered about by strangers, and made Page Six every other week. Beyond her music career, she’d been fielding calls from reality-show producers.

Impressed with her audience draw, her father, Hymen, already had a cameo for her in his next Broadway show. Two scenes, one dance solo, a ballad, and just the quickest flash of full frontal nudity.

If it was for the sake of art, Des was on board.

Within a few days of the photos’ going online, Cordelia was fielding editorial offers. Cosmo liked her modern, Southern-­belle style, Vogue her fresh perspective, and Vice her breasts. While her past’s being revealed hadn’t been easy on her, that, coupled with the topless, jewel-clad photos, had given her the allure of mystery, danger, and edge.

The fashion community had gone into overdrive with buzz. Cordelia Derby, they believed, had vision.

She was featured in the Times Style section as The 5'5'' Next Big Thing in Fashion and became a cover girl in a national ad campaign, that of her on-again, off-again boyfriend’s hotly anticipated jewelry line.

The world had been waiting for Christian’s unique mix: artistry and regal sophistication with a rock-and-roll edge. Within three days, his signature piece, Cordelia’s Crest, had received over a hundred orders, some from as far away as Denmark.

His mother had been the first to call in.

With his upcoming launch and new factory space, Christian was in need of help. Someone to guide the brand.

He had just the butler to fit the bill.

While waiting for his new apartment to be renovated, Johan crashed with Christian in his. In this open-air loft in SoHo, Johan, though not on staff, regularly brought Christian tea.

As for his love life, it’s complicated. Though often at each other’s throat, Christian and Cordelia were widely referred to as the hottest young power couple in New York, even going by the moniker Chrisdelia.

Phillip had been horrified by his photo, but not as much so as his mom. As an advocate for women’s rights, she told him, in no uncertain terms, she needed to distance herself from such things.

He could have the deed to the Trump apartment, though. As well as an early release of his trust fund.

Phillip could not have been happier.

His father, Gerald Hoff, had been equally delighted.

Chip off the old block, he’d called him and was already thinking of Phillip for a managerial role at Hoff Films, the new movie studio Gerald had in the works.

Phillip still talked to his brother, who, though it was several years off, was already planning on NYU for college.

As for Annalise, by next spring she got her first-choice Ivy. And, after Gerald put his foot down, debuted at cotillion that fall.

Hoff dumped Candace Lilliput a few weeks after his daughter took her bow.

Even without M.C., Annalise’s success was clear: she had gotten everything she had ever wanted. She didn’t want him anymore. His new lifestyle choice, she believed, would not reflect well on her.

Which is why she kept her boyfriend, Pablo, on the DL. As soon as she got him into Harvard Law and he’d graduated with honors, she’d launch him onto the world.

Marrying a Latino would be hip, she had decided. After all, this was a new world.

And Annalise Hoff? She was just the kind of new money to guide it.

And what of Todd Evergreen, aka the Kid, aka Yum Caax?

I would just have to wait and see. With the lawsuit settled and plenty of Rock Exchange stock money rolling in, I could pretty much do what I wanted.

And the first thing I wanted to do?

Get the hell out of New York.