by Jess Bentley
“I was just upstairs,” I start.
“So?”
“So, there are sixteen women in the penthouse,” I tell him.
He raises his eyebrows and stares at me. I count to eight in my mind, calming myself.
“So?” he finally says. “What’s your point? Sixteen women isn’t a record for me or anything.”
He smirks, as though I should be impressed and wondering what he would do with sixteen women. I’m not impressed.
“How many women are on the manifest, Kirk?”
“How the fuck should I know?”
I pull up the manifest on my iPad and then hold it out so he can see it.
“You don't know how many women are on the manifest, Kirk?”
He rolls his eyes at me and then lays back down, dramatically kicking his heels back up onto the arm of the sofa. His eyes close and he crosses his hands over his dick protectively for no apparent reason. In fact, I hadn't actually even thought about punching him in the dick until he made that stupid move right there.
I hate musicians. Hate them.
“Kirk?”
“That's not my name,” he groans. “Kirkman. My name is Kirkman. Use it.”
I shake my head, taking deep breaths. This little wiener mobile is not worth getting my blood pressure up. He would be impossible to reeducate, and it would be beneath me to try to deflate his swollen head even a little bit. There's no point.
“Kirkman, there are only fourteen women on the manifest. That's all that are ever supposed to be in this building, assuming every single one of them is here at the same time. Now, I haven't bothered trying to wake them because I don't think all of them will be able to be awoken at this time. But how many of the women who are actually on the manifest are supposed to be in the penthouse?”
He shrugs. “Things got crazy last night, man.”
“Okay, just try to remember. To the best of your recollection?”
“Dude… I don't even know,” he sighs irritably. “Why don’t you just fucking tell me? Okay? I know you are trying to make a point here, but I really don't get what it is. So can you just tell me?”
He crosses his feet the other way, not even caring that his boots are scuffing the leather sofa arm. That’s not going to come out.
But it’s not my job to point that out.
Then again, wouldn’t I be doing the world a favor? Just to take him down a peg or two? I could teach him some manners. Teach him some Marines-style restraint and respect. Teach him the basics on being a real man, assuming he has the potential to learn even that much.
Alternatively, I could kick his ass. I could dangle him by his ankles out the penthouse window until the TV crew got here. Of course, then everyone would know this location and it would no longer be a secret.
The easiest thing to do would be to simply allow this morning to unfold the way it naturally would without my intervention, let the women sleep, and assume he won’t do it again now that I have pointed it out.
Of course, then I wouldn't be doing my job, now would I?
“To be honest, Kirkman,” I begin again, “the point is that there are definitely at least two unauthorized visitors in the penthouse, but maybe more. I don't actually know yet. I'm about to find out, but before I do… I just wanted to alert you to what your lapse in judgment has brought you.”
I find the picture on my iPad, blowing it up real big and holding it out to him. He finally rolls his head toward me, squinting.
“I don't what that is,” he huffs.
I rotate it back so I can look at it. He's got a point. Doesn't really look like much of anything to me either.
“That's your dick, Kirkman,” I inform him. “On Instagram. At five AM.”
He sits up suddenly, his eyes wide. “What… wait, are you fucking kidding me?”
“That's what I was going ask you,” I reply, tapping the power button and tucking the iPad back under my arm. “After all the shit that I did to get you set up here. After explaining the protocols to you and giving you the manifest, plus giving the manifest to those two stoner halfwits that you call bouncers, I thought we were totally clear on this.”
He’s got his phone out, frantically scrolling through some app, then opening another.
“That's my dick! Oh my God, I'm trending on Twitter too!”
“Yeah, I already sent this to Melanie. She’s on it.”
“Why would you do that?? She's going to be so pissed at me!”
“Well, that's what marketing people are for, right? So she will pissed at you for little while, but she’ll also kind of love it. You probably just made the Ugly Little Wiener Hall of Fame.”
“Shit! Shit!”
He scrolls through his phone, looking for more mentions of his name. I know he is not thrilled, but then he sort of likes it too. These douchebags, they don't even care how their name gets out there, just as long as it gets out there.
“Do you know who did this to me?”
“Well, I would, if I had some idea of who you were with last night! That's why we have the manifest, Kirkman. That's why we have approved visitors!”
“Shit!”
“So, think,” I tell him calmly. “Does anything about the picture jog your memory? Do you remember who was on that blue chaise with you? Do you remember her?”
He scrunches up his face, trying to think. I hope he doesn't give himself an aneurysm.
“Becky… Betty… fuck. Barbara?”
“Nice. So do you just show everybody your dick? Did you just get a first initial?”
“It's the gig, man,” he informs me snidely. “Getting with ladies is part of what I do. It's part of my process…”
“Yeah, fuck your process. We had an agreement, Kirkman. If I was going to work for you, you were going to stick to certain protocols —”
“— just find out,” he groans, staring at the front of his phone. I see Melanie's face, pinched and pink, as her call comes through. She'll give him way more hell than I am, just for doing this without her approval. So at least I got that going for me, which is good.
I just back out the door, leaving him with her wrath. There's no point in even trying to sort out the women who already submitted to background checks, and whoever else he picked up last night. I’m not going to find the culprit in the penthouse. Anybody who was bold enough to do that was not going to hang around.
But I am thinking that his reaction was genuine. He really did seem surprised and upset. So maybe he’s not just an attention-whore inventing “leaked” photos to keep himself in the news. Someone really did do this to him, even if it’s a one-off.
When I got this detail, I thought it was all bullshit. I figured it was all just some marketer’s cynical plan to get him on the news, and he was playing along. But I don't think he's playing along. Somebody actually is doing this to him. Now I’ve got a whole hell of a lot more work to do.
Chapter 5
Dahlia
I reach over and flip up the lock on the passenger side, watching Bunny as she talks her way out the front door of the diner where she works. She's all smiles, clearly laughing and joking around with someone else she works with, halfway hanging inside of the diner while I just sit here and wait for her. My fingertips drum impatiently on the steering wheel.
Finally she flings open the car door and flops inside, sighing dramatically.
“What a day!” she exclaims. “I think I got like twelve-, maybe fifteen-thousand steps today.”
I pull away from the curb and try not to scowl at her as she taps on the tiny LED of her Fitbit.
“13,763!” she continues, not even picking up that I might be a little bit irritated with her. “That's great, I might even be able to fit into those Gucci jeans I got at the thrift store if I keep this up!”
“Just think how much more exercise you'd get if I didn't drive you home,” I suggest calmly. “In fact, that really would be good for you, don't you think?”
“No, then I would get runners’ butt,�
� she muses, picking at the tips of her gelled fingertips as she stares distractedly out the window. “Too much of a good thing. I kind of want to slim down without bulking up, you know?”
“If you say so.”
I gun it through a yellow light, safely making it to the other side. But Bunny gets edgy, glancing around and sucking the inside of her cheek.
“You mad?” she finally asks me.
“Oh, what would give you that idea?”
“Well, you're driving like kind of a jerk, for one thing,” she shrugs. “Also, I suppose you're not making eye contact, and you are holding the steering wheel kind of tight…”
I don’t want to say anything, afraid that everything will come out all at once and just bury the interior of my little red Escort like an avalanche.
“Bad day at work?”
“I don't want to talk about it.”
“Oh, okay. Well, here's how my day went… first, my new boss, Giorgio, was all excited about —”
“— why are you always late?” I interrupt her.
I feel her eyebrows go up, but I don't bother to look over at her.
“I wasn't late,” she replies irritably. “Were you early or something? I got off right at five, like I always do.”
“Well, maybe you got off at five, but you didn't come outside at five. I wasted ten minutes of gas sitting outside the diner while you were laughing it up with those guys.”
“No you didn't.”
“Yes I did!” I huff, getting irritated now. If she wants to argue the details, I'm all for it.
“I wasn't laughing it up with anybody.”
“I saw you!”
“Whatever,” she sighs, waving her hand in front of her face. “I’ll be sure to rush right out next time, okay? I didn't realize that finishing a sentence was going to set you off like this, Dahlia, geez.”
“I'm not set off,” I mutter, realizing I sound fairly petty.
I should not say anything else. I've already complained, and that should be enough. I should let it go. Try to do some deep breathing or something for the few blocks I have before we get back to Bunny's house. I hate leaving her on a bad note like that. It’s kind of a superstitious thing, but I always want to be able to say goodbye on a positive note, just in case, you know. Sometimes people don't come back home.
But as I pull into her driveway, I finally feel my irritation sink below the full mark. I'm only at one third of a tank of irritation, so I twist toward her and smile before she gets out.
She pauses, her hand on the door handle. “I'm sorry I made you wait,” she mutters grudgingly. “You want to come in? Have a beer?”
“I should head on home. There's dinner… maybe some vacuuming…”
“Maybe some white wine?” she suggests. “Perhaps some aimless venting of internal frustrations that you are clearly having and yet not willing to admit?”
Her big brown eyes bore into me, like a tractor beam. She doesn't want to let me go, and maybe she's right.
“One glass of wine, maybe,” I mumble.
“Whatever it takes!” she quips, flinging open her door and climbing out of the car. She crosses the grassy hill diagonally instead of sticking to the concrete walkway, opening the front door and dropping her gym bag and purse unceremoniously next to her old-fashioned waitress shoes under the hall table. I follow behind, feeling slightly better.
“So, what's on your mind?” she asks as she unscrews the gold colored lid on the bottle of a suspiciously pink wine. I know everybody's drinking rose these days, but I don’t know if this qualifies.
“Actually…” I start, trying to think of how to put it all together. I plop down in a stool next to the kitchen sink and accept the small glass she hands to me, the one printed with painted yellow daisies. The wine is way too sweet, but it's nice and cold. I feel it trickling through my insides on its way to my stomach.
“Just spit it out,” she suggests. “You said you were only staying for one glass of wine, so you gotta pace yourself. Just in case it's a long story, you should start now.”
“Okay…” I start, feeling myself smile wanly, “well, first thing this morning Lori said that we lost a few contracts.”
Bunny shrugs, wrinkling her nose and sniffing her overfilled glass suspiciously. “Does that happen a lot? Is that normal?”
“It didn't seem normal. She seemed pretty upset about it,” I explain. “She said if we don't get replacements for that income, we will have to make some changes around the office.”
Bunny's eyes go wide. She blinks several times. “Oh my God, did she fire you?”
“No, nothing like that,” I shake my head. “She said we have options, whatever that means. I think she's offering me a chance to save my job… but it means coming up with something creative. Maybe taking over somebody's workload? I'm not really sure.”
“Wow, are you ready for that? You're so new there.”
“I know, right? I barely know what I'm doing. But I feel like I could do more. Like, something anyway. Just not entirely sure what to do.”
Bunny nods thoughtfully, scowling. She can be really helpful when she puts her mind to it. She has a way of wiggling out of complicated situations. It's a skill.
“What can you do?” she muses. “Is there somebody else there you could get fired, maybe? Automatic promotion?”
“Ha, I hadn't thought of that,” I chuckle. “I don't think I'm really cagey enough to get anybody fired, Bunny. But… I might have made a bit of a mistake.”
I shrug and look away, but I feel terrible about it. I know she can tell.
“A mistake? What could you possibly have done?”
“Well, she said something about new business… something about protection details…”
Bunny shakes her head, not understanding. “I have no idea what you are talking about.”
“I might've mentioned Kirkman East? Like, just in passing?”
Her eyebrows go up, way up. She takes a healthy swig of the wine and then dramatically refills the glass almost to the brim.
“Are you telling me that you just swiped a contract from August? And gave it to your boss? Seriously?”
“I did not swipe anything! I don't have anything to swipe! I just mentioned… that I might have thought he was around…”
Wincing, I sip my wine, then gulp a little bit more.
“Oh my God, Dahlia. You're insane.”
“Actually, I didn't even really mention it. I just said his name, and asked if she knew him. That's not so weird, right?” I babble, trying to cover up my humiliation. “I mean, I'm sure I can come up with something else. I didn’t even know what to say. I just thought that… actually I don’t know what I thought.”
She nods seriously, looking around the room and deliberately not meeting my eye.
“Wow, Dahlia. Have you talked to August about this?”
Suddenly, I don't feel so good. For a moment, I was eager to get this off my chest, but now that I'm hearing it out loud it actually sounds terrible.
“God, Bunny, what was I thinking?”
She rolls her eyes and rubs the top of her forehead. Then she sighs dramatically and slaps her thighs with her palms. “You know what you do, Dahlia? When somebody threatens your job? You think about saving your own ass. People do that. It’s okay. Don't beat yourself up.”
She's got a point, but I still feel shitty. “So, what I do now?”
“Well, do you know of any other celebrities in the area? Or perhaps some unsolved mysteries that you could solve in a hurry and get paid by a secret millionaire or something like that?”
“This isn't an episode of Scooby Doo, Bunny.”
“Oh, isn't it?” she quips. “I'm not the one with the harebrained scheme, Dahlia. You're the one who's turning your life into a cartoon.”
“You're not helping!” I bark, a little bit more seriously than I meant to. I thought it was going to be funny, but it comes out sounding desperate and a little scary.
“Okay, okay. L
et's just figure this out,” she says reasonably, lowering her voice to a calming tone. “If you don't have any other ideas… could you maybe… oh, I don't know? Try to actually get next to Kirkman East?”
I almost spit out my drink. “Wait… I thought that we decided this was a stupid idea. Why would I do that?”
“Just bear with me for a second. I'm trying to think on my feet here,” she explains, beginning to pace back and forth across the yellow linoleum tiles in front of the avocado green fridge. Her kitchen is so outdated, it is practically falling back into style again.
“Okay. What if you just got next to Kirkman? Got a picture with him? And then you can tell Lori that there was no business available there, but at least you could prove that you tried?”
“So, like… I wouldn’t be taking anything away from August? You're sure?”
She chews on the knuckle of her forefinger, bouncing her head back and forth as though following imaginary timeline.
“Yeah, I think this will work,” she finally pronounces. “You just get in the room with Kirkman, snap a selfie, get out… and tell Lori there was nothing there for you to pursue. No questions asked. Nice and neat.”
I run it all over in my mind. Instead of trying to find new business, I guess I'm just trying to find an escape hatch out of the dumb thing I said today. At least the fallout of this would be much less disastrous than trying to follow through on what I foolishly said I could do.
“You know what, I think this could actually work. At least, I can back out of the trouble I just got myself in.”
“Exactly!” she declares. “And then you will be free to find all new kinds of trouble to get in!”
“Brilliant!” I say, toasting her in the air. She refills my glass and I take a sip before I remember I was only going to have one drink. Suddenly the world seems a little bit brighter. At least my screwup will not be permanent.
“So, now we just need to get August to put you in a room with Kirkman! Simple!”
My mouth falls open a little bit. I guess I forgot about that tiny detail.
“Wait. How am I supposed do that?”
She grits her teeth, grimacing. “Can't you just ask him?”
