Wes set his beer down without drinking while the Ledger buzzed once more on the counter between them, the screen washing the dark kitchen in cold white light.
[Associate 714: performance rating under review.]
“That thing is your whole life now, so whatever you do, don’t lose it, because there’s no replacing it and there’s no second channel,” said Reggie while he reached over and swiped the screen dark.
“Money, bookings, warnings, everything comes through that phone and nowhere else, so it sleeps next to you and it goes where you go.”
Wes turned the bottle in his hand while the knot from the hallway was still sitting somewhere behind his ribs, and the words came out of him before he could vote on them.
“It wasn’t Dana,” said Wes.
Reggie stopped halfway through his sip.
“Come again?”
“The woman in 714. It wasn’t her.”
Reggie set his beer down slow, like Wes had just told him the building was on fire.
“What’s the deal, man, you didn’t like it? I’ve handled Dana a bunch of times, she’s got a world-class ass and she never disappoints, so what’s the face for?”
“It wasn’t her because she lent her card out,” said Wes.
“Is that even possible?”
“I mean yeah, I’ve seen it happen once or twice,” said Reggie with a shrug like Wes had asked if the elevator worked.
“Sometimes one of them lends her card to a friend who needs a night away and doesn’t want her own name anywhere near it. They just make them sign NDAs, confidentiality stuff, and it’s no big deal, because the company doesn’t care whose pulse is behind the card as long as the account clears.” He squinted at Wes.
“Why, was the one who showed up that ugly?”
Wes stared at him while the whole night rearranged itself in his head, because the ticket had said Dana and the timer had said Dana and nobody anywhere had checked a single thing beyond the name on the account.
The Company had sold a room to a name and sent a boy to match it, and that was the entire quality control, and somewhere inside that machine a woman who wasn’t Dana had paid good money for exactly that kind of invisibility.
“No,” said Wes.
“She wasn’t ugly.”
“Then what’s with the funeral face, man?”
“I just feel weird.”
“Say it like it is, you feel like a whore,” said Reggie, and he didn’t say it cruel, he said it like a weather report.
“A rich one though. A very expensive whore, haha.”
He crossed to the little bar in the corner, pulled down a heavy bottle of whiskey and two glasses, and dropped two ice cubes in each.
“Here, you look like you need this.”
“It’s not about that,” said Wes, but he came over anyway.
He wasn’t a drinker but right now he felt like he actually needed the burn, so he took a sip that scorched a line down his throat until a weird warmth spread out through his chest, and Reggie watched him do it and laughed into his own glass.
“Right, I forgot, you don’t drink, take this,” said Reggie while he grabbed a Coke out of the fridge and poured half of it into Wes’s glass, the fizz hissing up against the whiskey.
“There, that’s called a Blackjack, half and half, beginners’ drink. One day you’ll take it straight like the rest of us but tonight you’re not there yet.”
He leaned back against the counter and studied Wes over the rim of his glass.
“You should learn to smoke too, because it’d be a real mess if you’re with a client, she offers you a cig, and you die on the first puff.”
Wes took another sip of the Blackjack and the burn came easier this time.
“It was good service,” said Wes.
“I just feel weird about it.”
“Feel weird tomorrow. First night’s always the worst, and it’s a cliché from the movies but it actually happens, because this isn’t the same as screwing some girl because you want to or picking somebody up at a bar. The second that money hits your phone you think, shit, I’m a bitch.”
He tapped his own chest with two fingers.
“Then more money comes and you’re a higher-priced bitch, then more after that, and eventually the guilt just dies, man, it just dies, and you do it because it’s the job. That’s the entire career in one sentence. The money kills the guilt, and then the guilt stays dead.”
Wes looked at his glass and felt the back of his neck go hot, because he had already watched the first half of that sentence happen to him on a bank screen two hours ago, and somewhere under the warmth of the whiskey his memory played Colleen’s voice against his ear, good boy, and his body reacted to it from across a whole hotel floor, and he hated that his body got a vote.
“That’s exactly how it feels,” said Wes quietly.
“Everything was going fine and then I saw the number and it was like a slap in the face.”
“How much did they drop on you anyway?” said Reggie.
“Two and a half.”
Reggie whistled long and low and leaned back against the counter.
“Damn. That’s a lot for a first mission.”
“What do you mean?”
“My first time was only a grand, and I had to grind a few more jobs before they bumped me up to the two-point-five rank,” said Reggie.
“Later I met some five-thousand-dollar clients, then ten, and once I had a hundred-thousand-dollar job, man that was insane, though I can’t tell you much about that one yet.”
He pointed his glass at Wes.
“Point is, you opened at two and a half on night one. That means they’ve flagged you. Unusually valuable. They don’t hand that number to rookies, they don’t hand it to most guys ever, so whatever you did in that room, the machine liked it.”
“Flagged how?” said Wes.
“What does that even mean for me?”
“Flagged like a stock they expect to move,” said Reggie, and the way he said it made the kitchen feel two sizes smaller.
He checked his watch then pushed off the counter and grabbed his keys. This story is hosted at g.com.
“Come on, I’m taking you to dinner, food helps clear the head, and I know a spot. Let’s just say there are plenty of fish there, maybe you’ll catch a shark.”
“What?” said Wes.
“Nothing, nothing, let’s move.”
They took the elevator down to the basement garage and Reggie led him to a black polished luxury sedan that looked like it belonged to a CEO, the chrome catching the overhead lights in one long clean line, and in the tinted window Wes caught his own reflection and barely recognized the man standing there in a tailored suit with a haircut he’d paid for.
“Nice car,” said Wes.
“It works for the job because there are three looks you gotta maintain in this business,” said Reggie while the lights flashed twice as he unlocked it.
“First there’s the work look, that’s the suit, the watch, the executive profile, because rich women love a man who looks like money. Then there’s your public life, that’s the flash car, a Mustang or a Ferrari, something that makes picking up girls easy for the nights you just want to have fun for free.”
“And last there’s your private life, and that’s the armored vehicle, because you never know in this world, and the day you forget that is the day they find you in a ditch.” He tossed his jacket inside.
“Image is survival in this game, Wes. You wear the right skin or the world eats you.”
Wes looked at the leather seat where the smell of new money was everywhere, and then at his friend, this guy who had been sleeping three floors above a life Wes had spent eight years begging at the edge of.
“Can I ask you something,” said Wes.
“And you answer straight.”
“Shoot.”
“All of it, this whole building, the money, the women, what’s it even for at the end of the day?”
Reggie grinned and dropped into the driver’s seat.
“A good life, man. I just want a good life. And you’ll be fine in it, because you’re an actor, right? That’s the whole trick.”
” Most of these women don’t want a man, they want a character, they pick one out of a catalog and you become him for the night, and your drama club years are about to pay better than any degree ever could.
Because strip it all down, all the candles and the champagne and the silk, a pussy is a pussy.”
“They all want the same three things, and the ones with money just pay extra for the show around it.”
Something cold moved through Wes’s stomach, quick and sharp, the first real flash of disgust he’d felt since the hallway, at how easy that sounded, at how much of Colleen’s voice, of the way she had said you’ve always been mine like it was the only true thing left in her life.
That one sentence threw away, and for one full second he wanted to open the door and walk home in the dark.
Instead he got in and closed it.
The engine woke with a low expensive growl and Reggie pulled out of the space while Wes stared through the windshield at the concrete pillars sliding past, because he wasn’t just in a new job anymore, he was in a whole different world.
“Where are we going?” said Wes.
“To eat,” said Reggie.
“And to talk. Because you asked me a question I can’t answer in a garage, and there’s a place where I can.”