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Right.
Before he inherited his father’s empire, he used to run a camp for troubled kids. We’d spoken of this briefly during my interview with him, but he’d steered that to talking more about Trail Blazer, and not about his time at that camp.
“Do you miss the camp?”
“Every day,” he said cheerfully, his tone not matching his answer, which set more alarm bells ringing inside my head. “I’d rather be hiking or pitching a tent or building a fire or one on one with a kid who has a lot of shit to get out and I’m the first person he’s met who’s willing to take it from him.”
I wasn’t surprised in the slightest that was how Hale would prefer to spend his days.
“Do you ever go back there?”
He shook his head. “Rarely. It’s part of Trail Blazer now and there’s a good man at the helm. His name is Frank Rossi. I don’t want to step on his toes. I’m out for good, he doesn’t need to think I’m looking over his shoulder.”
“Are you? Out for good, I mean?”
He nodded. “You run that joint, you live there. You live it with the kids. You don’t have your driver drive you to your mansion in the Pacific Palisades at night, drink martinis with actresses, then come back the next day.”
“So maybe you can segue into working more with Trail Blazer. It’s bigger. Its reach is going to be massive. That seems to fit both things that are now you.”
“That’s Judge’s baby.” He angled his head to the side, his eyes narrowing. “What’s with the interrogation?”
“It’s not an interrogation,” I replied. “I just realized that it’s been all about me so I thought it might be a nice change for it to be about you.”
“Exciting things are happening for you. And dramatic things are happening to you that you don’t want to happen, but you don’t have a choice. So it’s natural it’s been about you. My life is boring.”
Boring?
“You’re the chairman of the biggest company in the world,” I remarked.
“If people knew how mundane the day-to-day of that is, they’d be surprised.”
“Can you step away?”
His brows knit. “And let them fall back to past practices? I promise you, I could handpick someone to replace me, and they’d figure out how to corrupt him or her in about a month.”
“So it has to be you,” I said softly.
He seemed to distance himself from me, even if he didn’t move.
I understood why when he asked, “Do you have an issue with what I do?”
“I have an issue with the fact you don’t enjoy doing it.”
“Christ, you sound like Tom.”
Even if his tone was impatient, I didn’t take offense, since Tom loved him and would want to look after him, and I might not love him, but I liked him a great deal.
And I wanted to look after him.
“We can drop it,” I offered, even if not only didn’t I want to offer, I didn’t want to drop it.
But there was me, falling into a new pattern of backing off at the first indication it was getting too deep for him.
Maybe at this early juncture between us, that was the right thing to do.
It just didn’t feel like it.
“That’d be good,” he muttered, sucking back some wine then going to the oven to check the temperature.
