Chapter 14

You’ve heard the adage, “No good deed goes unpunished”? Well, guess what? It’s true, and it happened to me.

Back at the penthouse the following Thursday night, we got a call from my father. Liz was with us, of course, but all she had been willing to say about her day was that she had a nice lunch and liked The Yale Club very much. Anyway, Dad reported that Liz had done exactly what Kris had done the previous week, and with the same result. She had been admitted to practice in New York.

You all know what my biggest problem was — and is: It’s getting rid of money, not making it. So what happens? Liz Williams happens, is what. Like Kris, she also had her MBA and was now a corporate law specialist. So how did that harm me?

It’s easy. Before Liz was admitted to practice, my investing was confined to listed securities. But that came to a screeching halt with her admission to the bar. We started doing private placements and mezzanine-level investing. The last is often second-round financing before a company has its IPO [Initial Public Offering]. What it means is that we were getting founders’ stock at very low prices but in companies that were actually operating; they were no longer just someone’s dream.

Liz quickly emerged as the top corporate lawyer in the city, and that was her specialty. The fact was that lovely brunette was making it coming, going and standing still. When the deal was good, we were in it. When it wasn’t so good, all she got was a monster legal fee. The four of them — all four of the girls — were engaged in a vicious plot to bury me under money!

And that’s how Terry came to get a husband.

“Say what?” you respond.

It was in the spring of the following year when Terry told me we had a meeting with an analyst at our “office” a block away. It seemed that she was doing the guy a favor. It was about the fifth meeting that had been scheduled, but we had never met. Terry canceled one and he canceled the rest with increasing embarrassment each time. Our meeting was scheduled for ten o’clock, and it had to happen, Terry said, or it meant his job.

So at ten o’clock we were in the office when a man came in and introduced himself as Tom Allison. He was about five feet ten, weighed probably 165 ... and looked like hell! He was death warmed over. Introductions were performed and he began his presentation. It was awful! Talk about being right out of the can...

Suddenly, he stopped cold and just began to cry. Terry rushed around the table and took him in her arms. When she did, he just came apart.

“What’s the matter?” she asked softly.

Allison just slowly shook his head.

“Tell me!” she demanded.

“It’s my wife...” he stammered.

“What about your wife?”

“She’s dead!” he replied and then completely broke down.

Using her now-great strength she lifted him from the chair and walked him to the sofa and sat him down. Sitting beside him, she put his head on her shoulder and just listened to him cry.

Finally, he recovered enough to explain that his wife, Barbara, had died the night before of bone cancer. She was only 27. Moreover, she left two small children, Tommy, age 5, and Ginny, age 3. A neighbor was staying with them while he came over from New Jersey.

Terry looked at me with her eyes pleading.

“Get a car and take him home right now,” I said. Then to him I asked, “Why in hell did you come over anyway?”

“After losing Barbara, I couldn’t afford to lose my job, too. And I would have, had I not come.”

Terry came back a few minutes later driving a white BMW 745i. I helped Allison into the car and they were off.

Back at the apartment, I told Kris what had happened.

“Two small children?” she asked.

I nodded.

“Oh, God,” she murmured, “please make it happen...”

“Make what happen?”

“Cam, there’s something you don’t know about Terry: Probably as a result of a fallopian-tube infection that developed when she was working the streets, she can never have children of her own. But she adores them! And Tom has a little girl only three years old?”

I just nodded.

The next afternoon the four of us drove over to New Jersey. Tom had a lovely home near Saddle River although we didn’t go there. Instead we went to the funeral home for the visiting hours.

When we entered, we found Terry and Tom with two small children. Terry had the little girl in her arms. She was utterly adorable with golden hair and gray eyes exactly like Terry’s. Furthermore, as a result of being in the sun so much, Terry’s hair was sun bleached to a golden color, too. The little girl, Ginny, was hugging Terry for dear life and kissing her. It was clear that Terry was caressing the child all over, and the little girl loved it.

The girls were able to talk very briefly to Terry. They learned that she had seduced Tom the night before and was found in his bed by the two children that morning. While they were certainly bewildered, Terry explained to them that their mother, Barbara, was so good, God wanted her beside him right away.

The scene was repeated the next day at the cemetery. Terry never even came back for her clothes. The girls packed them up and shipped them to her. She immediately became Tom’s housekeeper and mistress and that summer she became his wife.

To get away from the bitter memories, she built a magnificent new home for them in Troy Hills. It was utterly gorgeous! Beyond that, though, she persuaded Tom to resign from his firm. He almost died when he learned how much money of her own his mistress and housekeeper had. By that time, it was pushing ten million and growing fast.

She enlisted Tina’s aid to design some investment management software. It tracked the values of all the securities held by Tom’s clients. Moreover, working with him, the two became unbeatable money managers. Not only did they tell clients to buy, they also told them to sell, and in no uncertain terms. The result was they built a very large — and immensely profitable — investment business at home. And that’s the way Terry loved it. She immediately began home-schooling Tommy and teaching little Ginny to read.

There were frequent breaks during the day, except instead of coffee breaks, they took fucking breaks. The kids soon got used to seeing their parents making love anyplace in or around the house. Terry started off as Mommy to the kids, and that’s the way it stayed. The love in that place is truly palpable and as for Terry, it couldn’t have happened to a more wonderful woman.

My parents came into the city to celebrate Thanksgiving with us, and all four of us spent Christmas with them at their place. Thanksgiving was pretty hectic, and I was sort of out of it. Christmas was a different story, though.

When I saw my mother at the door when we arrived on December 23^rd, I almost passed out. She was utterly gorgeous! From about 150 pounds or so, she had dropped to about 125 and looked utterly spectacular. In spite of her white hair — or possibly because of it — she looked incredibly youthful. There was not a line or a blemish on her skin anywhere.

So then what happened? What do you suppose? The four women disappeared to confer, I later learned from Kris, on techniques of making love. Can you believe it? The Carriers — Kris, Liz and Tina — were giving my mother lessons on the finer points of cocksucking and cunt eating.

When I asked Kris why they did that, she replied, “So she can teach your dad how to do it right, of course.” To her the answer was self-evident.