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Club. Yes, that was the ticket.
    Preston entered the club through the Thirty-Seventh Street doorway, waved at the blue-uniformed doorman, and immediately wrapped himself in the familiar invisible cloak of protection. He climbed the bilateral marble staircase on the right and proceeded past the pool tables and up the two steps to the bar. With a nod to Eddie, a Chivas Regal, neat, appeared on the old mahogany bar top. In one swallow it disappeared.
    The turnaround of his dealerships had allowed Preston to finally push back, if not completely overcome, his fear of failure. He’d put aside the dread of repeating the mistakes of his father, the insecurity he had carried since hiding as a fifteen-year-old in the butler’s pantry off the kitchen, where he had listened to his mother tell his father,
You have failed to deliver on every significant business matter you have ever undertaken,
and learned that his father had nearly exhausted the money his grandfather had left to his mother with nothing left for his son. That he was an abject failure.
An abject failure
.
    He knew he owed Joe Hart for the turnaround. Still, Preston told himself he had earned his success, achieved it with skill sets Hart did not possess, and that he had fulfilled his obligation to his rescuer. Besides, Joe was gone. And Preston had named his son after Joe. At what point was enough enough? He recognized he’d never be able to satisfy Marcia on this subject.
    Enough of the Collectibles
.
His thoughts turned to P.J., but that only made him more somber.
I finally have a son and he’s born deaf.
He tried to look at the bright side. The boy could hear some sounds. And the pediatrician Preston sought for a second opinion had counseled a wait-and-see approach about P.J.’s hearing, feeling that he might gain hearing as he developed. That advice conflicted sharply with the collective opinion of the ear-nose-and-throat specialist, the audiologist, and P.J.’s original pediatrician, the team Marcia’s maternity doctor had marshaled for consultation. The trio of doctors had emphasized the value of early screening, and finding significant loss, wanted P.J. fitted with hearing aids in his first six weeks. They stressed the critical importance of stimulation to P.J.’s brain from various sounds, without which they argued the brain would not develop the necessary speech, language, and cognitive functions.
    Preston desperately wanted his son to have the best medical advice and treatment possible. But he also believed the physicians he’d consulted and wanted to at least give his son the chance to develop his hearing. The conflict opened old emotional wounds between him and Marcia, and Marcia’s intensity combined with her confidence in the rightness of her position made Preston once again doubt that she viewed him as her equal, that she saw him as lacking the horsepower upstairs to fully understand. He sensed he was losing Marcia once again.
    The second and third scotch didn’t mend matters at all, and Preston hadn’t even gotten to the third theater in his head—whether or not he had a daughter, and whether he should take the test to find out. He ordered a fourth scotch. Eddie complied.
    Preston pushed back from the bar, looked at the tables behind him, and then glanced around the corner into the wood-paneled dining area.
    â€œWould you like anything to eat, Mr. Wilson?”
    â€œThat’s a good idea, Eddie—all the way around. I’ll have a steak sandwich and some potato salad, please. I’ll be in there. Thank you.”
    â€œOf course, Mr. Wilson.”
    Drink in hand, Preston carefully lowered himself into his seat at the wooden table alongside the wood-paneled windows overlooking the majestic rising marble staircase and entrance to the grand room and elevators. He fidgeted with the silverware. He stole glances at his watch, his restless legs moving up and down more than usual.
    Suddenly Preston