The Deal

by Sarah J. Brooks

  “Is my restaurant a good one?”

  “Yes, sir,” he said and I decided I wasn’t going to be able to get him to stop calling me ‘sir.'

  “How many weeks have you been working eighty hours?” I asked.

  “About a year, sir.”

  “How much do you get paid each week?”

  “Seven hundred dollars, sir.”

  “Okay, here’s what I’m going to do. I need a new manager, and I think you can handle it. I’m going to give you a bonus of fifty-two thousand dollars and an annual salary of eighty thousand dollars. Does that seem fair?”

  Scott’s face drained of color, and I thought he might pass out right there. I grabbed a chair and slid it behind him and pressed him firmly into the seat as he looked up at me in bewilderment.

  “Sir, I can’t even thank you,” he said as tears started to fill his eyes.

  I wasn’t about to have a soldier crying in my office.

  “No need to thank me. You’re salary now, and you’ll probably still not have a life. Hopefully, you won’t need to work eighty hours a week, but I expect you’ll work whatever is necessary to keep the business functioning at its best.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I’m going to be more involved, and I want you to come to me with any questions, and we can work them out together. I also insist that this door remains open and you work on building positive relationships with the staff. I want a happy staff here, and that means they need good leadership.”

  “Sir, I will make you proud, I promise,” Scott said as he started to shake my hand and didn’t let go.

  “One more thing,” I said as I stood up and pulled him with me.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Spend some of your bonus money on getting a couple suits that fit you, please. You are going to need to look sharp if you are running this place.”

  “Oh, yes, sir. Thank you, sir. I promise I will be the best manager you could possibly imagine.”

  “Alright, well no time like the present. I need you to start right now,” I said, pointing to the door to have Scott leave.

  As he left the office, I noticed his slight limp and was pretty damned impressed by the kid. He had done more for our country in his life than I had done for anyone my entire life.

  “Thank you again, Mr. Stern,” Scott said as he walked away.

  Scott was an impressive young man, and I lucked out that he was there to help with my restaurant. Having him run things and Philip out of the way might even be what I needed to be more successful.

  I spent the rest of the afternoon at the restaurant and talked to everyone that worked there. Many of them had been hired by Philip, and I had never met them. I relayed the information that Philip had been fired, and Scott would be the new manager, and everyone was really excited. Scott seemed to be the one everyone had been dealing with anyways, and they liked him. It was a good day at my legitimate business, and I couldn’t wait to see how the next few weeks turned out. But I also couldn’t wait to get over to Jack’s place and see Abby. My day had been busy, so I hadn’t had too much time to think about her, but as soon as I got onto the subway my mind swarmed with thoughts of what I should talk to her about and how I could find out what happened with Aldo the night before.

  Chapter 17

  ABBY

  “Okay, so tell me all about Jack?” I said as I sat with Isabella in one of the bedrooms of Jack’s apartment.

  “Oh, my God, Abby, I can’t even tell you how perfect things are. He’s so smart and not like the rest of the guys. I really think I could keep him around for a long time.”

  “Why? What’s so great about him?” I asked.

  I had heard it all before from Isabella. She fell for guys way too quickly, and I assumed Jack was just like the rest of them. She didn’t see their faults at all and instead focused only on their positive traits. Isabella would ignore glaringly obvious issues only to look at something she felt was so good she could overlook the bad.

  I tried to be a good friend to her as she went through boyfriend after boyfriend, but it was exhausting to watch her say the same thing about each guy and then have the same results. I really wanted her to find happiness, but I didn’t think that was going to happen with a guy she met at the club.

  But then I realized that I had also met Theo at the club, and I had fantasized that he might be the one for me. It was hard being such a romantic, but I did think that I finally had a small taste of what Isabella felt like when she fell so head over heels for the guys she met.

  “He’s rich, so let’s start with that. Look at this place. Plus, he’s helping me work, and I’m going to start making my own money. I said I wanted to get my own apartment, and he was all for it.”

  “Work? How is he going to help you work?”

  “He’s got a few friends that need a date for special events and stuff like that. I’m going to be their arm candy and get paid some serious cash. So if we want to get an apartment, you and I could do that now.”

  What Isabella was talking about sounded a lot like what I had just done with Aldo, and I suddenly didn’t feel all that great about things. When Isabella said it out loud, it sounded a lot like being an escort, and that was the one thing I always told Isabella I wouldn’t do.

  We had friends that worked as strippers, and we even had friends that prostituted themselves out. None of it was what we wanted to do, and that was how Isabella and I had become such good friends. We both wanted more for ourselves and weren’t going to sell our bodies to the highest bidder.

  “So you’ll go out with these guys, and they will pay you?”

  “No, they will pay Jack, and he’ll pay me. Of course, he’ll keep a fee since he is setting up the dates.”

  “So you’re going to be a prostitute?” I said before I could stop the words from coming out of my mouth.

  “No! Geeze Abby, not everything has to be horrible, you know. These are just nerdy guys who need a cute girl to go with them to something. Don’t make it into a horrible thing. You know you could do this too and make plenty of money to send back to your sisters.”

  “I’m not going to be a prostitute just so I can send money to my sisters!”

  “Let’s calm down a little. No one is talking about sex here. For example, tomorrow I’m going with a computer salesman to his work convention. Nothing too exciting, I’m just going to help him talk to people and make his friends jealous.”

  “Sounds like prostitution to me,” I said without thinking about Isabella’s feelings at all.

  “You’re such a bitch sometimes,” she said as she stormed out of the room.

  The truth of the matter was, I was feeling like a prostitute myself. Everything Isabella was describing was exactly what I had just done the night before with Aldo. I was judging Isabella for something I had done pretty freely myself. It was wrong, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that I had crossed some sort of boundary that I had set for myself, and it was all because of money. Reluctantly, I made my way out to the living room to apologize.

  “I’m sorry, Isabella. I need to tell you something,” I said as I sat with her on the couch.

  She had her legs pulled up to her chest, and I could tell I had made her feel like shit. It wasn’t the first time we had fought, and it certainly wouldn’t be the last time, but I did need to tell her the truth.

  “What? Are you going to call me some more names?” Isabella said without looking at me.

  “Theo took me to Vegas and bought me a bunch of shoes and dresses after we met. I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want to seem like a horrible person for taking them from him. Then when you told me about your day with Jack, I didn’t know exactly what was going on, and I didn’t want to make your day seem less special.”

  “Okay, so what? Theo is a nice guy with money just like Jack. I don’t see anything to worry about.”

  “There’s more. Theo introduced me to one of his friends who had a busi
ness event he needed a date for. I agreed to go with him last night, and he gave me this,” I said, handing her the envelope with the $10,000 in it.

  “Jesus Christ Abby! How much is in here?”

  “Ten thousand dollars. You see, I was just saying those things because I feel horrible about my night, and I’m sorry. It was all about me and not about you.”

  “Did you sleep with him?”

  “Theo? Yeah, I slept with him.”

  “No, the guy you went to the event with? Did you sleep with him?”

  “No, his name is Aldo. But no, I didn’t sleep with him.”

  “Then why are you getting down on yourself. You went on a date and got ten thousand dollars. That’s much better than going on a date purely for a place to sleep for a night.”

  Logically, I knew that Isabella was right. I knew that what we had been doing before was pretty damn close to being an escort. But in my mind, there had always been a separation. In my mind, things were different, and I was an upstanding citizen who wouldn’t sell herself for money. Unfortunately, I was starting to feel like I didn’t have as great morals as I thought I had.

  “I know. I just don’t like this feeling,” I said, holding my stomach.

  I had crossed my own imaginary line, and it just wasn’t sitting well with me. I didn’t feel proud of the decisions I had made and certainly wasn’t going to do it again. I had my own standards of what I thought was acceptable and wasn’t going to give into them again, not for any amount of money.

  “Stop it Abby. You stop feeling guilty right now. Your whole life has been you doing things for other people and not worrying about yourself. It’s time you did what you had to for yourself and your sisters. This isn’t any different than when we meet guys at the club and go back with them. In fact, this is much better. These guys want our company and are willing to pay for it.”

  “You know they want to have sex too, don’t you?” I asked her.

  “Well, so do the guys that we go home with from the club. You and I have skills, Abby. We can use those same skills to go on dates with these guys and get some serious cash. We don’t need to sleep with any of them. Just use all the same techniques we have always used to get out of not sleeping with a guy if we didn’t want to.”

  “Sickness, periods, emotional breakdowns …I’ve used a lot of excuses,” I laughed.

  “Yes! You’re much better at it than I am. Just use those same things, and you’ll be fine.”

  “Maybe you’re right.”

  “Maybe? Um, I’m always right; when are you going to learn this Abby,” Isabella said as she hugged me.

  We fought like sisters sometimes, but we always made up really quickly. Isabella and I were different, yet we both really fit well together. She was all I really had in New York City, and I wasn’t about to push her out of my life.

  “You know, I’m getting pretty pissed off at Theo though. He didn’t say a damn thing to me at all about running an escort business or whatever it is that he and Jack are doing. He made me believe I was just doing Aldo a favor. What a jerk!”

  “He didn’t tell you he got the date for you?”

  “Well, he didn’t really get the date for me. I was with him when we went to his friend’s business to talk to him. His friend, Aldo, invited me on the date to his business event and offered to pay me the ten thousand dollars.”

  “So this Aldo guy paid you directly?”

  “Yep.”

  “Then maybe Theo didn’t set it up. Maybe this Aldo guy just really liked you. Perhaps he fell in love with you when he first laid eyes on you.”

  Isabella liked to mock me because one time a guy I had gone home with said he fell in love with me when he first laid eyes on me. He continued to text me and call me for weeks, saying that he was in love with me and couldn’t stop thinking about me.

  “Actually, I had seen him before. At the restaurant. He was that incredibly handsome guy who I couldn’t stop looking at.”

  “Then he probably just asked you out on your own. Maybe Theo didn’t want you to know about his business? What did he say he did for work?”

  “I don’t know; I think he said he owned a restaurant and made investments. So basically, he totally lied to me.”

  “No, I heard Jack talking about some problems with Theo’s restaurant today. He definitely owns a restaurant,” Isabella said.

  I wanted to believe that what happened with Aldo and me had been spontaneous, but it was highly unlikely. I had not told Isabella about the beautiful women and the envelopes of money that I had also seen over the last few days. But if Theo thought he could trick me into being his working girl, then he had something coming, and that was for a fact. I hated being lied to and despised anyone who would purposely try to trick a woman into doing something she didn’t want to do. At least, Aldo had been honest with me and talked to me like I was a partner in the night’s events. Theo couldn’t even be honest with me at all.

  “Where is Jack at?”

  “He had to run out. He’ll be back soon and said that Theo would be here shortly as well.”

  “Oh, yeah, I don’t think I want to stay. I don’t want to talk to him at all.”

  “You are going to stay here with me tonight, and I’m not going to take no for an answer. If you don’t want to hang out with Theo, that’s perfectly fine. But I won’t have you at the shelter or anywhere else tonight. There’s plenty of room here.”

  Jack’s apartment wasn’t nearly as fancy as Theo’s, but it did have three bedrooms and seemed plenty big enough for Isabella and me to stay there. It made me a little sick to know that Jack and Theo were making so much money off of selling women to men who wanted to buy time with them. I couldn’t get over the feeling that they were just glorified pimps.

  “Are you and Jack dating then?” I asked as I looked down the hall at the bedroom we had been in.

  “I like him. I really like him a lot, but we are just casual. Nothing serious. How about you and Theo?”

  “I have no idea what’s going on with us. Obviously, I don’t know as much about him as I thought I did.”

  “Well, then it’s settled. You will stay here with me,” Isabella said with a wide grin.

  “I guess I could do that if Jack doesn’t mind, of course.”

  “Oh, it was his suggestion when I told him we had been sleeping at the shelter.”

  “You did what?” I yelled as I stood up. “Oh, shit Isabella. He’s going to tell Theo, and oh God …Why did you do that?”

  “We were talking, and it just came out. I didn’t want to lie to him.”

  Jack and Isabella seemed to have a pretty honest relationship. Jack was telling her about his escort business, Isabella was telling him about her and me staying at the shelter. It was clearly not the same kinds of conversations Theo and I’d had.

  “It’s fine Abby; he’s not going to go blabbing to Theo.”

  “I can’t take this, Isabella. I don’t want to be involved with these guys anymore. Let’s just go back to the way it was before.”

  “No. Absolutely not. This is a much better life than either of us could have imagined. You are just getting wrapped up in your emotions toward Theo. That’s all there is to it. How about you look at this as an opportunity instead of some guy who has done something wrong to you. Theo is better looking and richer than most the guys you’ve gone out with in the past. Stop looking at it as something real, and just use him for what you can get.”

  The way she said it made me sound like the worst type of human being. Not only had I been using guys for their apartments, meals, etc. for the past few years, I hadn’t even thought it was bad at all until that very moment. Only when the idea was combined with thoughts of Theo did I finally feel like I had been living my life very deceitfully.

  “I can’t do that to him,” I said as we both looked at the door as the lock was being unlocked.

  “Why not? You’ve done it before.”

 
“I like him,” I said quickly before the door opened.

  It was Jack, and Theo was right behind him. They had a bag full of what looked like Chinese food and both seemed really happy to see us. I felt myself light up at the sight of Theo before I remembered that I was mad at him.

  “Abby, it’s nice to see you,” Jack said as he came over and kissed Isabella on the cheek. “And you, it’s pretty fucking nice to see you too.”

  Isabella and Jack promptly started in on a make out session on the couch, so I got up to help Theo with the dinner. Neither of us said a thing as we took the food out of the boxes and put it onto everyone’s plates. I wasn’t sure if Jack had told him about where Isabella and I had been sleeping or if there was another reason he was so quiet, but I wasn’t about to be the first person to talk.

  “So Theo, I hear you had some commotion at your restaurant today,” Isabella said when she finally came up for air.

  “Yes, I had to fire my manager and a waitress. But luckily, the assistant manager is a good guy, and I think he will work even better as the head guy out there.”

  “So you own a restaurant and run an escort business?” I asked, crossing my arms and staring at Theo.

  His jaw dropped open as he looked at Isabella and Jack and then back toward me. I could tell he didn’t know what to say, and he hadn’t wanted me to know about it. He had that look on his face that every man got when their horrible secrets were finally revealed. I knew there had to be a fatal flaw in Theo. I knew he was too good to be true.

  “It is one of my businesses, yes,” he said without showing any emotion.

  “So you guys picked us up to get us to work for you? Is that what this has all been?”

  “Abby, I think you should cool down a bit,” Isabella said as she pulled me toward her.

  “I don’t really feel like cooling down. I feel like someone telling me the truth. Did you pick me up because you wanted me to work for you as an escort? It’s not a hard question. Yes or no?”

  Theo looked at Jack and then back at me, but he still wasn’t showing much emotion at all. I couldn’t read him or what was going on in his mind. He no longer looked surprised by my confronting him. Instead, he just looked blankly at me.