by Donya Lynne
“So, I went to the interview, got accepted, and the payments started coming in.”
“What did you have to do for the money?” I ask cautiously.
“Nothing I didn’t want to.”
Another vague answer.
“Is that when you started stripping?”
She nods. “I was able to make extra money that way. My friend convinced me to include that in my agreement.” She says the word like it’s something evil. “There were parties, and my friend and I often teamed up to provide entertainment. It was all surprisingly proper. No one ever got out of line. I was never pawed or manhandled, but going from wannabe prima ballerina to stripper was a lot more degrading than I thought it would be. I felt so cheap taking off my clothes while men watched. But I’d already agreed to do it, so . . .” She shrugs and sighs.
Just the thought that someone could have treated her inappropriately awakens my protective instincts, and I pull her to me, securing her in my arms.
“You’ll never have to put yourself in that position again.” I kiss her hair. “Not with me. Never.”
She cuddles closer even though I sense she still has a wall up around her.
“That’s not all,” she says quietly, her shoulders tensing.
In the silence that follows, I get the impression she’s trying to choose her words carefully.
“My involvement with this . . . employer started out well enough. I was given a place to live and provided with living expenses and an allowance to buy clothes. All this was in addition to my twenty thousand-dollar monthly salary. Everything seemed great. Honestly, I had no complaints.”
“Surely, you were expected to give something in return.” And I could only imagine what that something was.
She curls against me, almost cowering. “There was, but it’s not what you think. I only gave what I wanted to give. Everything was my decision. I even thought I was happy. I was even allowed to stop stripping when it became clear I didn’t enjoy it as much as I thought I would. Then things changed.”
I hear no deception in her tone. Disgrace, maybe. The kind that comes with hindsight. But she’s not lying.
What I do hear loud and clear from her shame-filled, guilt-ridden body language is that sex was part of the deal she made. I know it’s true. She doesn’t have to admit it for me to know she had sex as part of this agreement she seems so resentful of now.
For several seconds, silence wraps itself around us. Somewhere down the hall, a door slams, and the muted music from some faraway outdoor concert rises on the desert air, reaching our ears as if mocking our intimate yet solemn mood.
When she speaks again, her voice is soft and low. “After things changed, I felt trapped. The situation wasn’t permanent, but I had committed to a year. That’s how it worked, and I was into my second term. If only I’d known what I would find, I wouldn’t have renewed my agreement when the first year was up. It was that second year when the arrangement started to sour.”
“How? What happened?”
“I opened the wrong door at the wrong time and saw something I wasn’t supposed to see.”
I’m not sure if she’s speaking figuratively or literally, but it doesn’t matter. The point is, she found herself in a corner. One that seems to be at the crux of everything troubling her.
“Are you in trouble?” I instinctively hug her more tightly.
The pregnant pause before she answers makes me uncomfortable. “Let’s just say I’m between a rock and a hard place. I’ve been given a way out, but I have to do something I don’t want to do first.” She wraps her arms around my torso and pulls herself up until she’s nuzzling my neck.
“Is that why you’re here? In Vegas?”
“Partly.”
“So, you’re not here to become a showgirl?”
She lifts her head and offers me a sad grin. “Actually, I am. That’s the other reason I’m here. If becoming a principal isn’t in my future, I may as well put my dance training to work elsewhere, and Vegas showgirls make good money.”
“But not stripping?”
Her grin widens but remains sad. “Only for you.”
This makes me smile. “I’d like that.”
She drops her cheek back on my shoulder and lets out a cleansing exhale that sounds like absolution. “So would I.”
I caress her arm as she brushes her fingers back and forth on my chest, both of us losing ourselves in the growing closeness that comes with sharing who we are. As the dirty past is revealed . . . as secrets are confessed . . . as the magnifying glass closes in on the details of all the shameful things we’ve done, the intimacy between us deepens.
“This thing you have to do, is it dangerous?”
“Define dangerous?”
“Can you get hurt?”
Her fingers stop moving, and her palm flattens on my chest, right over my heart. “There’s always a chance of getting hurt,” she says carefully.
“Can I help?”
“No.”
“Can you tell me what it is you have to do?”
She shakes her head. “No.”
Either she doesn’t want me to know what she’s been tasked to do to free herself, or she can’t tell me.
I tuck my face against her hair. “That’s okay, you don’t have to tell me. Just promise you’ll be careful.”
She nods briskly. “I promise.” Her voice sounds watery.
“And when you’re done doing whatever it is you have to do, and you’re free from this . . . agreement . . . no more.” I push her away and bend my neck so I can look into her eyes. “No more agreements. No more doing whatever these people want you to do. No more doing anything you don’t want to do, period. Okay?” I search her face.
Hope lights in her gaze, and tears well on her lower lids. She blinks several times, nodding, and the tears drop onto her cheeks. “Okay.”
Using my thumb, I wipe away the salty tracks and kiss her. “I’ll take care of you from now on, Nash. I promise.” Finally, I get to be the hero. I’m not the bad guy, anymore. I’m the savior.
She nestles against me, and for a while nothing is said. She’s safe in my room. We’re safe together, finding a certain kind of fidelity with each another even within the deceitful shadows of our pasts.
Despite not knowing the finer points of whatever agreement she’s bound to, I feel closer to Nash now than I did an hour ago. With each passing minute, I’m more convinced our paths crossed for a reason, and that they’re meant to be joined from now until forever. She’s the other half I hoped I would someday find but feared I never would.
“I want you to be there tomorrow,” I whisper.
“Tomorrow?”
“At the tournament.” This is right. So very right. “I want you there. For luck.” For once, I’m open to the idea that luck really does exist, even for a guy like me.
She remains silent.
“Nash?”
_________
Nash
I sniffle and wipe away my tears. Max still has no idea he’s the reason I’m here. I told him as much as I could without violating my confidentiality agreement—maybe even more than I should. I all but confessed I’m here to take something from him that has protected him for over a year. Something my employer only recently became aware of, but which gives me the chance to get out of my contract.
“Nash, will you come tomorrow? Watch me play?”
What can I say? If I tell him no, it will be the truth, but he’ll be devastated. If I tell him yes, I’ll be lying, but at least he’ll have hope. I don’t want to lie to him, but I also can’t ignore my job.
“Yes,” I say, feeling awful about lying. “I’ll be there.”
My heart aches. All I’ve done is trade one kind of entrapment for another.
Why did I ever sign that agreement with Infidelity? Why did I ever let Simone convince me to have that interview? How could I have been so naïve as Karen explained what would be expected of me, and what I could expect in return?
> I was desperate. Times were tough. Money was tight. I’d been only weeks from being out on the streets. Being in a situation like that is highly motivational, and when Karen placed that agreement in front of me, with dollar signs followed by a lot of zeroes, like a fool, I’d said yes.
Not that I didn’t enjoy myself that first year. I did. I thought I’d found happiness. My companion and I seemed like such a good fit. He brought me out of my shell. He helped awaken a part of me I didn’t know existed. Then everything fell apart in an instant.
I’d like to say that if I could go back, I would do things differently, but I’m not sure I would. I’m in a different frame of mind now. Not only do I possess new knowledge about what I was getting into that I wasn’t aware of two years ago, but I have money in the bank. A lot of money. And when I complete this job, there will be even more. Enough for me to start a new life. When I accepted the terms of my agreement, I had nothing. It’s easy to look back and say you’d do things differently once your circumstances have changed, but when you’re deep in the heart of the moment, the choices aren’t as obvious or as simple.
Like now. My choice becomes harder to make the longer I’m with Max. Love is as powerful a motivator as desperation, and, right now, I know that better than anyone.
Using my fingertips, I trace the engraving marks in the rectangular pendant resting on his chest. Looking at it up close like this, I notice it’s a lot bigger than I thought. Fatter. More like a locket.
“What made you become a con man?” This is the one thing I haven’t been able to figure out about Max. “I mean, you had parents you loved, who loved you back. I know they died when you were young, but by then, you were who you were going to become.”
“How do you figure?”
I prop myself on my elbow. “They say that a child has formed the moral compass and characteristics he’ll need as an adult by the age of four. Beyond that, it’s a matter of honing those characteristics into an adult. It doesn’t sound like ‘criminal’ was even on your radar at that age.”
He shrugs. “I didn’t consciously choose a life of crime. Before I decided I wanted to be a magician, I wanted to grow up to be like my father. A hero. I was proud to be his son and worshipped him.
“When he died, I remember thinking how unfair it was, then I remembered what my dad always used to say. ‘Life isn’t fair, Miles. It’s a competition.’”
“Miles?”
He chuckles. “My first name is Miles. My middle name is Maxwell.”
His dossier said nothing about this. “Miles. I like that name.”
“Yeah, well, I got sick of people cracking jokes about how my name was Miles Davis. You know, the jazz musician?”
The light bulb goes on in my mind. “I thought the name sounded familiar.” How could a parent do that to a child?
As if reading my mind, Max explains. “My mom always loved the name Miles and vowed that’s the name she’d give her first son. It was just dumb luck she married a man named Davis.”
“I see, but still . . .”
He shrugs. “When they died, I started going by my middle name. It felt easier. A new start, a new name.”
“Easier isn’t the word I’d use to describe starting a new life after your parents died.”
He gives me a warm smile then returns to his tale. “So, there I was. New name. New neighborhood. New home. New school. That’s when I met Shaun. He came from a stable, wealthy family. A boring family, as he put it. But after what I’d gone through with my dad and mom, I envied his definition of boring. In fact, I craved it.
“Shaun and I hit it off right away. I was the broken kid who’d lost everything, and he was the rich, restless kid looking for an outlet for all his pent-up intellect.” He smirks. “They say geniuses sometimes turn toward criminal pursuits to alleviate boredom. That was definitely Shaun. I can’t say he was a genius, but I’d say he was at least borderline. The guy’s brilliant.
“Shaun taught me the ways of the streets.” He halts as if he feels the need to back up a bit then starts over. “Before I met him, I became fascinated with card tricks and magic.” He casts a cursory glance toward his cards on the nightstand. “As you know.”
I’m more than aware of his talents with a deck of cards.
“I remember sitting in hospital waiting rooms while my mom received treatment, shuffling a deck of cards and practicing tricks until I mastered them. I watched videos and read everything I could get my hands on about magic.” He chuckles abruptly. “I probably had more decks of cards by the time I turned eight than most people ever see in a lifetime. I had all kinds, too. Not just the standard decks, but the collectibles and the ones magicians use. I had a deck that was all clowns, another that was modeled after the zodiac, and one that was for horror fans. I had a whole drawer full of cards.”
He’s smiling in the absent way people smile when they don’t realize they’re smiling. Then his contentment begins to fade, extinguished by what I can only assume is the memory of his mother’s death.
It takes him a moment to continue, and when he does, it’s with a somber air tinged by regret.
“For Shaun, it’s always been so easy. I can tell he loves pulling cons. Big, small, lucrative or not, he loves the risk. It’s a drug for him. I can’t say I’ve ever loved it. For a while, it thrilled me, but then it just got old. Then it scared me. I played along because cheating people was all I knew.
“Anyway, when we met, Shaun saw how good I was with cards and convinced me we could make a lot of money by luring our friends to bet on card tricks. He told me about a game called three-card monte, which became our first con.
“I didn’t know at the time that what we were doing was conning, or that it was illegal. To me, we were just playing a game. One we got our friends to wager their lunch money on. We even hustled the class bully—a kid everyone called Nero—out of an expensive Nike coat that was the envy of all our classmates.
“I got the shit beat out of me for that, and I had to lie my ass off to Elizabeth and her husband so they didn’t wise up to what Shaun and I were doing and ground me, but it had been worth it to see Nero’s jaw drop as I turned over the cards to reveal he’d picked the wrong one three times in a row.” He laughs, which makes me smile. “Nero always thought he was so smart and tough, but there I was, a scrawny kid half his size who sat in the back of the class and never spoke to anyone, and I’d beaten him.”
“Sounds like a pivotal moment,” I say.
“In a way, I guess it was.”
He has that faraway, pensive look about him that says he’s reliving the events of his childhood as he gives voice to the memories. I wonder if he’s ever told anyone this story as he’s relaying it to me now. Something in the looking-glass glaze in his eyes says he hasn’t. That this is the first time he’s recollected his childhood influences without his rose-colored glasses on.
“By the time we were thirteen, Shaun had learned to hack. Small stuff at first, but his conquests grew bigger as he got older, bolder, and more skilled. Hacking seemed like a good fit for someone like him, with nothing but time and money on his hands and an overactive mind. He joined online hacker chats and spent hours every night learning how to break through all kinds of systems. Sometimes he didn’t even sleep.
“But while he was pounding the keyboard, I discovered I could talk anyone into anything. It was a gift, really. It still is, but as kids, we quickly saw how good a team we were. He broke computer systems. I talked my way through human ones. We were the ultimate social engineers.
“But I never thought it would become my life. I thought all this hacking and conning nonsense was just a way to pass the time and earn a few bucks. I still wanted to become a magician when I grew up.” He glances at the cards again then returns his gaze to mine. “You know, I still enjoy learning new tricks.” He settles his head back on the pillow as fond sadness washes over his features. He’s wearing the kind of expression associated with opportunities lost and what-ifs. What if he hadn
’t taken up with Shaun? What if he’d become a magician instead of a con man? What if he’d chosen a life along the straight and narrow instead of one drenched in crime?
With a sigh, he continues, telling me about how he and Shaun worked with a team of international hackers to pull off investment scams. How he went dumpster diving in search of financial statements and reports to know where to focus their investing dollars. How they managed not to get caught by keeping transactions modest and throwing in a few small losers to offset the big wins.
He chuckles quietly.
“What?”
He rakes his palm through his hair, pulling it off his forehead. “I just realized that pulling cons is a lot like playing poker. You have to know how big a risk to take, when to bluff, and when to go all-in.” His gaze settles gravely on mine. “And you have to know when to fold.” He lets out a derisive snort. “You know, for the last year, I don’t think a day has gone by that I didn’t worry my luck had run out. I haven’t had a good night’s sleep in ages. I’ve felt completely trapped.” His eyes meet mine. “Until now.”
My heart goes out to him, and before I can stop myself, I swing my leg over his body and lie down on top of him, kissing him. Kissing away his worry, his fears . . . his past.
I lay my cheek on his chest, hearing the steady thump-thump of his heart. “You’re no longer that person. Everything will be better now. You’ll see.” Am I trying to convince him or me?
“My past could still come back to haunt me. I could still be taken in by the authorities. Shaun has threatened to turn me in.”
I sit up, straddling him. “What? Why?”
“He doesn’t want me to get out. He says he brought me into this life and that I owe him.”
“You don’t owe him anything. You’ve done your time.”
“Yeah, well, Shaun doesn’t see it that way.”
“Screw Shaun.”
“I’d rather screw you.”
His remark comes from so far out in left field that I can’t stop myself from laughing. “Well, that’s a given.” I bend forward and take his lips with mine.
