by Don Bruns
“Sandy is in line for a huge bonus. So big he can start his own company. So big, he may never have to work again. So big, Skip, that Sandy and I can do just about anything we want to do. Go anywhere we want to go. Once he gets the bonus, he can walk out on his wife.” She finally released my hands, and a big smile covered her cute face. “Skip, we’re looking at property in the south of France. Can you imagine that? The south of France.”
I couldn’t.
She took a deep breath and settled back into her chair. Sipping her cosmopolitan, she looked directly into my eyes. “You and I will have a pretend relationship, Skip. And it’s only for a couple of months at the most. And you aren’t seeing anyone, so what do you say?”
I had no idea what to say. I took a swallow of Blue Moon beer, trying to buy a little time.
“There’s a bonus, Skip. How does ten thousand dollars sound?”
I choked on the beer, spitting it all over the table.
CHAPTER THREE
“And there’s no sex?” Clearly James was disappointed.
I’d come clean on the dinner with Sarah. Of course, he wanted to know every detail.
“Come on, James. Would I even be interested?”
James looked at me, shaking his head.
“Hey, man, keep your eyes on the road.”
He slowly shifted his gaze to the road ahead of us. The rickety box truck chugged along, occasionally coughing and spewing puffs of black, brown, and gray smoke. The old girl burned oil, and we’d never had enough money to fix the problem. The problem being, the truck was old, and if we were going to use a truck as a way to produce income, we needed a new truck. In our current fiscal crisis, even a newer truck would suffice.
“A make-believe girlfriend. It’s very strange, amigo.” James pursed his lips, and affected a frown on his face. He squinted his eyes as if he was assessing the situation. I wished I’d never mentioned it.
“Actually, it’s a make-believe boyfriend, James. She’s the one who has to pretend. Pretend that I’m her boyfriend until this Sandy character gets his big paycheck. Then, it’s off to France, or wherever they’re going. It’s all just a joke.” He’d beat it to death. I know exactly how his mind works.
“This paycheck—”
“Must be a monster. She said he’d never have to work again. They could do anything they wanted.”
“Man. Can you imagine how much that would be?”
“Two million or more?”
James laughed. “Try ten or more. These people live in a different world, compadre.”
“True.” How could someone imagine ten million? How could someone spend ten million?
We’d stopped at Pep Boys and bought a case of oil, then stopped at Gas and Grocery and picked up a case of Yuengling long necks. Much better than the stuff at home. James had an open bottle tucked beside his worn cloth seat and he checked the rearview mirror to make sure there were no cops following us.
“James, I haven’t agreed to do the deal.” The bonus was very tempting. But there was Em.
He took a long, deep swallow of beer, this time keeping his eyes on the road. “But you will get the job, pally. It’s the Lord’s will.” James’s sarcasm was shining through.
“All you have to do is pretend you like the girl and you make an eleven thousand dollar profit. It can’t be that hard, Skip. Think this through.”
I hadn’t told him about the bonus. Man, he would go crazy if he knew. And I knew that sooner or later I’d spill it. I always did. James, love him or hate him, was my best friend, and sooner or later you tell your best friend everything.
Unless you’re sleeping with his wife. And that thought got me thinking about Sarah, sleeping with somebody else’s husband, and that got me thinking about playing make-believe with Sarah, and what Emily would say about that. And then I thought maybe I wouldn’t tell Em. Just not mention it. I wasn’t really cheating on her. I wasn’t really having any physical contact. I mean, how much trouble would that be? A couple of months—keep it low key, and then I get the bonus, the commission, and no one has to know anything.
“So tell me again. She meets this guy online?”
“Some sort of a dating service.”
“Sarah shouldn’t need a dating service. Is she still built like a brick—”
“She’s built, James. Very sexy. And she dresses in really high heels, a tight dress and a plunging neckline. I mean, it was the complete package.”
He pulled into our parking lot and parked the truck in front of our shabby apartment. A rusted-out Ford pickup truck was pulled in at an angle next to my old Chevy, and Jim Jobs’s Odd Jobs Chrysler van was on the other side with its hideous orange and red sign. Jim Jobs’s Odd Jobs/ No matter what the job, Jim Jobs can do it. We’d never explored the veracity of the statement.
“Think about what it would have been like if she dressed like that in high school.”
“I don’t want to think about it. She never would have gone out with me at all.” She would have been propositioned by every good-looking senior guy in our graduating class, and probably by every guy in her class as well.
“Skip,” he stepped from the truck, avoiding the loose running board. He’d twisted his ankle twice on that dangerous piece of aluminum. Someday I was going to get a hacksaw and just cut the damned thing off. “Skip, I love you like a brother—”
“But?”
“But you were never in her league.”
I smiled and got out of the truck. “Tell me, James. Am I in Em’s league?”
“You got me there, pard. No one is in her league. Your snotty little rich bitch? Just ask her.”
He was right, but it didn’t seem to matter to Em. She seemed to “get” me, and I was very happy about the relationship.
I put the case of oil behind the passenger seat, in the narrow closet of the truck. James took the case of beer inside. By the time I hit the front door, he’d popped the cap on his second bottle.
“Internet dating services.”
“A dating service. You could use one, James. It’s been a dry spell the last several months, hasn’t it?”
“Screw you.”
He sat down at the computer and booted it up, sipping on his beer. Actually, I’d picked up the tab on the case. It was my beer. Very seldom did James have enough liquid capital to buy the brown stuff.
“Internet dating services. If I just Google dating services, and put in her name, maybe I could—”
“She’s found the guy, James. I’m sure she’s not still listed.”
“Yeah, but sometimes these people keep their profile up for a while.” He stared at the screen, running his fingers over the keyboard. “You know, in case it doesn’t work out.” Click, click, click.
I wondered if Em had a profile on a dating service. I’d never even considered it.
“And his name was?”
“Sandy Conroy. Or try Sandler. And I’m positive he’d put his name up on there so his wife could find it and destroy the poor S.O.B.”
“No need to get sarcastic, pardner.”
“Think about it, James. It just wouldn’t be a sound idea. The guy would not advertise his own name, saying he was looking for an affair. He’s a big-time business executive. He didn’t get to be president by being stupid. Got it?”
“You never know, Skip.”
“Whatever.” There was no way he could figure this one out.
His fingers flew over the keys. I went into the kitchen and opened a beer. Yuenglings. They brewed it up in Tampa, so James’s reasoning was it had to be fresh. Bud was brewed up there too, but when I had a couple of bucks, he opted for Yuengling.
“We should have started an Internet dating service, Skip. Could have made a killing.”
“Do you understand anything at all about setting up computer systems?”
“No.”
“Do you understand anything about women?”
“Now that you mention it—” his eyes were laser focused on the screen.
“Point well taken.” He kept stroking the keyboard, and as I sipped the lukewarm beer I could see images racing across the screen.
“If I take the job, we’d have installers come in and tear out the old system. Then, they’d do all the wiring, with the motion detectors and everything.”
“Uh-huh.” He was leaning into the computer screen, studying the pictures.
“James, you’re not going to find her.”
“So, there will be installers?”
“A job this big, we’ll need a couple of supervisors. A couple of people who get to know the layout of the building and will be able to work with the installers, getting answers for their questions, assisting the operation and stuff like that.”
“Uh-huh. Gofers, right?”
“Any chance you can get a week off from Cap’n Crab?”
“What?”
Cap’n Crab was the seafood shack where James worked. He cooked the crab. A far cry from his dream when he attended culinary school. But my security company was a far cry from my dreams when I attended business school at Samuel and Davidson University. James and I were still trying to find the American Dream. I was starting to think maybe, just maybe, I’d found a piece of it. “Can you get a week off?”
“Why?”
“James, I just told you. We need some supervisors.”
He glanced up from our computer, with it’s $40-a-month access fee that I usually ended up paying. “Me? A supervisor?”
“I was thinking.”
“How much does it pay?”
“Got to be more than you get boiling crab. And you won’t come home smelling like shellfish.”
“How much, amigo?”
“Twelve an hour. Eight hours a day. One hour for lunch.”
He gave me a big smile.
“Makes you happy, eh?”
“No. I’ll do your supervisor job, Skip, but that’s not why I’m happy.”
“What then?”
“Remember the movie Ten?”
“The little guy who played in Arthur? Dudley somebody?”
“No, a Belgian movie, came out about 2002.”
Usual obscure movie from James. While I watched most of the movies with him, I didn’t remember all of them. “What about it, James?”
“There’s a line in there. Two ladies are talking. One says, ‘You are wholesalers, we are retailers.’ ”
The movie didn’t ring a bell. James saw a lot of films and remembered a lot of quotes. To be honest, I didn’t have the interest in remembering everything about those movies. Sure, I saw the movies with him, but memorizing movie quotes happened to be a somewhat useless talent. I didn’t want to be reminded. “Get to the point, James.”
“I’ve got Sarah’s picture.” He nodded an exaggerated head bob and pointed at the screen.
“How did you find that?” On top of being a movie quote buff, James was also a whiz on Google and Yahoo.
“You just keep plugging in words, pard.”
“Give me a break. You found her?”
“Words like, Miami, date, executive, services. Stuff like that.”
When I needed information, James was always on top of it. “Sarah? She still has a profile?”
“No, Alexandra has a profile.”
“Alexandra?”
“Look.”
I took a swallow of beer and leaned over the screen. There she was, smiling back at me. There were face shots, upper-body shots, full-figure shots, and some casual shots of her in tight jeans and a halter top. God, she looked good. Sleek, tan, showing off a lot of smooth skin.
“Says here her name is Alexandra, Skip.”
She’d been a little cagey when I asked her about the dating service. And, when I’d asked if she knew Sandy was married, she said something like, “It wasn’t important.”
So she didn’t want anyone to know who she was. That’s no big deal.”
“You’re right. She didn’t want anyone to know who she was. Why do you think that is?”
“Don’t know, James.” With my roommate it was like playing Twenty Questions. He wanted to play it out to its conclusion.
“I’ll tell you, friend. This isn’t a dating service.”
“Then get to the point and tell me what it is.”
“The Empire Club.”
“Empire Club?” I took another swallow of my Yuengling, waiting for James to finally spit it out.
“It’s an escort service, Skip. The prostitute says to the housewife, “You’re in the wholesale business, we’re in the retail business.’ Your Sarah is a high-class prostitute. A hooker.”
CHAPTER FOUR
“Sarah, you remember James?”
She did. “James,” she reached out and took his hand. His eyes were wide and slightly out of his head. He was thinking about this hot Sarah, and the Sarah he used to know, and the Sarah now who was for hire. I only hoped he’d just shut up and do his job. Knowing James—
“Sarah, James is going to be one of our supervisors. As I told you and Mr. Walter, there will be seven guys who are doing the installation. It shouldn’t take over five days, and we will be as unobtrusive as possible.”
She gave me a sly smile. “Skip, does he know?”
He did. Em didn’t. “Yeah.” He knew I was the pretend boyfriend. He didn’t know anything else. At least he couldn’t prove it. And even if he could, he’d better keep his damned mouth shut.
“Sarah, if I was Skip, I’d play any kind of role just to be around you. You’re even better looking than when you were in high school. And I thought you were hot back then.”
She giggled. “Thank you, James. This,” she spread her perfectly manicured hands out, as if to emphasize the massive lobby of the building, “this is only temporary. I told Skip, probably a month. Sandy and I are out of here. Out of this crappy community, out of this state, maybe out of this country. But you can’t say anything, James. I’m really relying on you two to keep this confidential. Just between us, okay?”
Sarah the looker. Sarah the hooker. I can’t describe the feeling, but it was kind of cool and kind of creepy to know that I’d dated a girl who had become a high-class prostitute. A hooker. I mean, as a kid—maybe in junior high—we used to talk about hookers. Girls who made money having sex. There were jokes, stories, rumors, and legends about hookers. And now, I was the pretend-boyfriend of one. Too strange for words. God, I wanted to ask her all kinds of questions, but I knew if I let her know what I knew, it would all be over.
“Ralph will be by in a little while to walk you guys through the building. He wants everything to go as smooth as possible.” She pointed at the entrance door to the company’s inner sanctum.
Ralph Walters was Sandy Conroy’s right-hand man. As VP of the company, he pretty much ran things as he saw fit, and he’d let me know he was in charge from the second I’d met him.
“Nothing happens in here that I don’t know about. Got that Mr. Moore? Nothing at all.”
First words out of his mouth, swear to God. I’d just been offered twenty grand, so I wasn’t in a position to argue. “I won’t do a thing without consulting you, Mr. Walters.” My mother wasn’t stupid. She wasn’t a great mother, but she taught me to be nice to people who signed my paycheck.
“We’ll get along fine then.” The short, balding man gave me a curt nod, glanced at his watch, and walked away.
And now James was about to meet the second in command. I just hoped he’d use his charm, and not revert to the smartass he could easily be. “Twelve bucks an hour, James. Just suck it up and agree with whatever the man says.”
Ralph Walters had been with the company for ten years. He told me that he’d been born to work at Synco Systems. “Let me tell you something, young man. The first thirty years of my life were simply preparation. This company is the final result.”
I’d nodded, not wanting to say anything to jeopardize the financial situation. Nothing to jeopardize what
would amount to over $20,000 in my pocket. I know, believe me, I know there are more important issues than money. I haven’t found them yet, but I’ve been told by so many people, I have to believe it.
We sat in the expansive lobby, studying the artwork on the walls. Abstract paintings, appearing to be originals, with flashes of bright colors, bold strokes of pastel colors, and solid scrapes done with palette knives. Em had explained those things to me on a tour of her parents’ mansion. I couldn’t appreciate the talent, but I had the feeling that they were expensive pieces.
“She’s hot, amigo.”
“James, you know and I know. But you can’t let on. I’m serious, man. You tend to wear your feelings on your sleeves. Don’t.”
“She’s hot, Skip. You don’t want to bring Em into this, trust me.”
“No.” I agreed with him. The minutes became an hour. The hour dragged on twenty more minutes.
“Guys, I am so sorry.” Sarah stuck her pretty head into the lobby, like a nurse in a doctor’s office. “I’m going to find out what’s taking him so long.”
“If he’s in his office, why don’t we just come on back with you?” James, being the pushy son of a bitch that he can be.
She hesitated. “Okay.”
“Sarah. We don’t have to.”
“It’s okay.”
We stood up and followed her lead. Through the lobby doors, down the hall into a large room with computer stations, workbenches, and several dozen employees, all quietly working at their stations. Some ran small machines at the workbenches, but most were glued to their computer screens. I swear you could hear a pin drop. Five offices opened into the room from the far wall. Each office was numbered.
Sarah paused, turned and looked at us, and smiled. Bright white teeth, perfect in every dimension. Whatever she made in her escort life, she spent wisely. On cosmetic dentistry to start with.
She knocked on door number five. Knocked again, then louder the third time.
“Must have stepped out.”
“Should we come back? Later this week?”
“Skip. We set the appointment. He’ll be here.”
