Then she turns to me. Not just turns to me, points the high beam of her exuberant gaze at me. “Maybe even bring Max to his knees?”
I narrow my eyes. I love seeing her happy again. But I’m not sure about where this is going. “What are you thinking here, Kelsey?”
“I’m thinking about justice,” she says.
“Yes!” Jada turns to me, too, now. “Justice. You could show him how it feels, Mia.”
“I’m not doing pickup techniques on Max,” I say.
“It’s not about pickup techniques, it’s about showing him how it feels to have somebody work a system on him,” Kelsey says. “He needs to know. It’s perfect karma.”
“Except he wrote it,” I say. “It probably wouldn’t work on him.”
“Or maybe it would work on him better than it would work on anyone else,” Lizzie says. “He wrote a manual on how to get to a person’s heart. How many hearts do you think he knows firsthand? One. He only knows one heart. His own.”
“You’re assuming he has a heart.”
My pals laugh. They think I’m being extreme. I’m not.
By the time Max graduated, he was playing the most demanding pieces with stunning precision…and zero emotion. A wildly impressive robot. I’d call him that sometimes. I’d joke to my friends that he played like the Terminator, knowing it would get back to him.
“Anyway,” I say. “I think he’d recognize somebody running his own golden rules on him.”
“No way. He’d never know. He wrote that book almost ten years ago,” Kelsey says. “My sister writes books. She can’t remember anything she wrote even one year back. She says her head fills up with a new book and crowds out the old one. And this guy, he’s running a billion-dollar business and being all Mister Celeb? Trust me, Max Hilton has no memory of what’s in this book.”
Jada turns to me. “Do it! Teach him a lesson. Make him crawl on his grovelly knees.”
“I don’t know if it can be done by a person who’s just delivering sandwiches,” I say. “And the whole reason he requested my deliveries is to make fun of me.”
“You’ll see him every day. It’s perfect!” Jada says. Antonio and Kelsey agree—they’re full of ideas. Even Lizzie is getting into it.
I bite my lip.
I spent the past few hours dreading tomorrow with every fiber of my being. I even thought about quitting, weighing the pain of going without insurance, without allergy meds, and possibly even without a place to live against being under Max’s imperious thumb.
It never occurred to me to fight back.
The girl I was in high school would be all hell no! to that. The south Jersey girl full of fire and confidence and mile-high plans to conquer Broadway—she’d never buckle under and assume defeat. She’d never quit Meow Squad just because Max may or may not have ordered a sandwich. And she’d raise hell if it helped her friends.
Sometimes I wonder where that girl went.
Admittedly, it’s been a demoralizing few years of scrimping and saving, working menial jobs, trying out for every part under the sun, working my ass off in dance lessons and acting lessons and voice lessons and lessons to get my accent smoothed out. I’ve been out there hustling, but in some ways, I feel like I’m still on square one.
“Use his own system to wrap him around my little finger…” I whisper, trying it out, “and then I bring him to his knees.”
“His grovelly knees,” Jada clarifies.
Kelsey is beaming at me. She’s convinced I can do it. I bite my lip, thinking back over the endless hours of holding her, comforting her as she sobbed over how bad Nathan screwed her over—using Max’s book as his guide. And then there’s Jada. And lord knows who else.
My friends need me.
I stand straight and tall, jam my fists into my hips with a confidence I don’t really feel. “Okay, then,” I say. “I’ll do it. I’m gonna bring Max Hilton to his grovelly knees.”
Kelsey hugs me. And Jada is clapping, and Antonio is insisting it can be done and Lizzie is finding pens and markers and then we open more beers.
2
You are the alpha. Adorn yourself with symbols of your superiority.
~THE MAX HILTON PLAYBOOK: TEN GOLDEN RULES FOR LANDING THE HOTTEST GIRL IN THE ROOM
* * *
MIA
Two hours later, Max’s dart-porcupined face is a distant memory.
There is something new on the wall: a giant chart made up of taped-together sheets of butcher paper that Lizzie borrowed from an artist on the third floor. Across the top, in heavy blue magic marker, Kelsey has written Operation Bring Max Hilton to his grovelly knees!
There are ten checkboxes for his ten golden rules, which are more like techniques. The hot cold move. The power play. Pulling out the praise rug. Every time I do a technique on Max, I get a checkmark.
The idea is that I’m supposed to do at least one technique on him per visit. And at the end of ten visits, he’ll be on his knees. I don’t know if I can pull it off, but it means something to Kelsey and Jada that I’m fighting for them. And it makes me feel like less of a victim with these visits.
I point to the first box. Adorn yourself with symbols of your superiority. “This one is already a problem.”
Kelsey turns to the page with the rule and reads, “‘Demonstrate your alpha status by wearing standout clothes and otherwise adorning yourself with symbols of your utter superiority.’ Seems pretty straightforward.”
“I have to wear the cat outfit. You get fired if you cover it up or don’t wear it. Seriously, they’d fire me if I showed up in a gown or a tiara or something.”
Kelsey wants to see the employee handbook. I grab my laptop and find the PDF of it.
Jada reads over our shoulders. “It says that you can’t hide the ears or put other clothes over the cat suit, but what if you became the most fabulous cat? There’s nothing here forbidding you from jazzing up the outfit.”
“You guys, the fact that I’m a delivery girl who has to wear an embarrassing cat outfit is not a quality I want to play up.”
“Unless you work it!” Kelsey says. “You know how to work an outfit better than anyone.”
“I’m not working the Meow Squad delivery outfit.”
“I have a glue gun downstairs. And sequins and rhinestones—” Jada says.
“—that are staying downstairs,” I say.
“Yessss,” Lizzie says. “And you’ll need fake eyelashes.”
“Oh my god, no!”
“I have those silver go-go boots,” Kelsey says. “Go get your outfit, Mia. We’re going to make you the most fabulous delivery cat of all.”
“Don’t you want to bring him to his grovelly knees for all of womankind?” Jada asks. “While turning the tables on him? And then crush him under your sparkly silver heel?”
Lizzie is grinning. “This is going to be perfect!” She reads more from the alpha-signaling chapter.
Meanwhile, Kelsey grabs the magazine picture of the insanely expensive Louboutin Solibria pumps in starshine pink that I’ve been coveting.
I sigh when I see them, like I always do. They’re the ultimate fairy godmother shoes.
She waves it in the air. “If you do all ten of the golden rules to Max over the course of your deliveries, I’m putting one hundred dollars toward your Louboutins.” She tapes it at the far-right side of the Operation Bring Max Hilton to his grovelly knees! chart.
“I’m in for a hundred,” Jada says.
“Two hundred fifty!” Lizzie says.
Antonio shrugs, throws down some twenties. Just like that, we’re almost halfway to the shoes.
“Wow,” I say.
“As thanks,” Kelsey says.
Ten minutes later, we’re all hard at work on blinging up my cat delivery outfit while Antonio reads the book aloud. He’s discovered a concept called prize baiting where you’re supposed to go places with a really beautiful women on your arm, and ideally two. It’s all about seeming pursued by others while appeari
ng unavailable to your target.
“I don’t know about going around with two beautiful women on my arm,” I say.
“What about two beautiful men?” Jada asks. And suddenly everyone is staring at Antonio.
“I do not share,” Antonio says. “Please. One of me is enough, no?”
We all groan, but we’re joke groaning, because one Antonio is worth two if not three or four normal hot guys.
“I’ll do it. I’ll be your suitor,” Antonio declares. “But I’ll need a good backstory.”
“No backstory,” I say. “It wouldn’t be a speaking part.”
“I follow you in on your delivery,” Antonio says, “so jealous am I when you so much as look at another man.”
“You can’t follow me on my deliveries,” I say. “You’d get me fired. We’ll have to think of something else.”
Antonio’s bummed, but my outfit is looking kind of wonderful, though that might be the beer talking. Kelsey’s calling for me to model it.
I go in my bedroom and put it all on, including the cat ears. I inspect the transformation in the mirror. Jada has edged the V-neck of the cat suit with sequins, which spray outward over the bodice—there’s a definite figure skater vibe going on. The apron got the same treatment. I fit the ear headband onto my head; the ears are trimmed with sequins except for crystal jewels at the tops. Jada did a very creative job.
Somebody’s Flawless by Beyoncé. I shove my feet into Kelsey’s silver boots and dance my way out. Everybody oohs and aaahs. I don’t know if it’s the beer or the fun night or what, but I’m feeling pretty good.
We hang out a bit more after that, me in the outfit. At one point, I pick up the book, looking to see if there are even sex tips. He’s rumored to be amazing in bed, but I tell myself it would be all precision, like his piano playing.
Heartless tricks where he amuses himself with you and then casts you aside. Working a system.
Now he’ll see how it feels.
3
Men of worth pursue big goals.
~THE MAX HILTON PLAYBOOK: TEN GOLDEN RULES FOR LANDING THE HOTTEST GIRL IN THE ROOM
* * *
MIA
My blinged-out outfit isn’t feeling all that fun in the grim morning light of our cold kitchen. In fact, rather than improving the look, the sparkly stuff seems to be saying, in case you haven’t noticed, check it out! I’m wearing a dorky delivery outfit!
I pull on my winter coat and hat and trudge to the subway station. The closer I get, the more my heart sinks. I’ll have to do my entire route in it, including a likely delivery to Max Hilton.
But I remind myself that I’m not doing it just for me. I’m doing it for justice. For Kelsey and Jada and all the other women who got worked.
I reach the Meow Squad truck. I don’t see our driver, but my work frenemy, Sienna, is there.
I stroll with confidence that I don’t feel.
Sienna has pretty strawberry blonde hair and a dusting of freckles on her perfect nose, basically, the kind of looks that allow her to look either beautifully scrappy or beautifully elegant, depending on the needs of whatever part she’s competing with me for, and she has amazing fashion sense and cool friends who seem slightly futuristic.
She feels confident about her superiority to all of us, and she’s 98 percent right. I like to pretend I don’t care about her opinion, but I actually do.
Sienna also has an amazing talent for posing. It helps that she has a really long, willowy body and long limbs, so when she leans against a wall, it’s willowy girl leaning cool, whereas when I do it with my considerably shorter and less willowy limbs, it just looks like pasta-fed girl of sturdy Italian stock is sooo weary. Pasta-fed girl needs to work on cardio. Pasta-fed girl shouldn’t have gotten bangs, but she’s doing the best she can so give her a break already.
Sienna is eyeing my boots. “What’s up with the boots?”
“Nothing. Just…” I decide it’s now or never. I pull off my hat and take off my coat and shove the stuff in the back of the truck. And then turn and try to look natural.
Sienna is staring at my uniform with a stunned look and let’s just say you wouldn’t call it stunned admiration.
She devotes extra staring time to my sequined ears, her pretty features twisted into horrified yet delighted confusion. “You lose a bet or something?”
I’m about to explain the whole thing, but then I decide not to. An actress commits to a part. “No, I’ve decided that I’m the queen of delivery cats.”
Sienna adds a lip twist. “Are you trying to be funny?”
“Do I look like I’m trying to be funny? Do you see the work that went into this? I’m the queen of the delivery cats.”
“What? You just…decided that?”
“That’s right.”
She gapes at me a bit longer.
I smile and pull out my phone.
“Oh-kaaaaaay.” She pulls out her phone with an attitude of, done with the crazy person.
I scroll through Instagram miserably. I just have to get through this one day.
It’s possible somebody else at Maximillion Plaza specifically requested me as the delivery girl assigned to that tower. I don’t know anybody else there, but maybe somebody who saw me in a show or something?
“Isn’t that kind of like declaring yourself the queen of the latrine?” Sienna’s staring at me again. “Or like declaring yourself to be the most Burger Bob’s-iest of the Burger Bob’s fry crew?” Burger Bob’s is a greasy burger place we make fun of.
“It’s not like that at all,” I say, pocketing my phone. “I am queen of the delivery cats. It’s a desirable thing.”
She frowns. “So you think you’re the manager now?”
“No. It’s like, the queen of England doesn’t actually run the country. I’m queen of the delivery cats like that. I’m queen in spirit, in enthusiasm, in adornment. I’m alpha cat, and these shiny things signify that.”
“Well, they’re signifying something,” she grumbles.
“They signify my superiority,” I say, really, really committing.
She furrows her pretty brows. She is liking this less and less. Maybe these things won’t work as part of a diabolical plan to bring Max Hilton to his knees, but they certainly work as a Sienna Carlisle annoyance device. “That’s not the word I was thinking.”
I’m all smiles and utter conviction in my role. If there’s one thing you learn as an actress, it’s that the show must go on, but I so wish I could rip off the sequins and rhinestones and glam eyelashes. “I’m the top cat now. I’m the queen of the cats.”
There’s this little pep talk in the alpha-signaling section of Max’s book where he talks about how difficult it is to stand out from the herd. “When you alpha-signal, it’s not just about looking amazing, it’s also about communicating that you have enough personal power to pull off a bold look. The more you own your look, the more power you communicate,” he writes.
Thinking about that passage comforts me, which is ironic on about five different levels.
“What if I want to be queen?” Sienna asks.
“Too bad,” I say. “There can only be one queen.”
She laughs, like it’s all a big joke. “I can’t believe you’re going to deliver in that.”
“Watch and weep,” I say, though actually, I’m the one liable to weep, considering I’ll be delivering a sandwich to my legendary rival dressed as the most ridiculous cat of all the cats.
What have I done?
Our sector driver, Rollins, comes around to the back of the truck. He gives me a startled look, then starts pulling out carts.
Meow Squad delivers food-truck food to people in office towers and residential high-rises throughout Manhattan. The stuff gets ordered and paid for through an app. We’re a well-oiled network of food dispersal—people in cat costumes whose job it is to wait in line and bring food to drivers like Rollins, who assemble the carts and bring them us runner cats, and us runner cats who do the deliveries.
Our high-style carts are more tall than wide, all the better to fit into crowded elevators. They’re made of brushed stainless steel with the orange Meow Squad logo on the sides and hot and cold insulation compartments. We’re adding new buildings and new cats all the time.
Rollins lifts my cart out of the back and onto the pavement, turning the handle to me with a nervous smile.
Rollins is a sweet, naïve farm boy who grew up in the rural hinterlands of some western state, and then came to the city as part of a really religious production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.
He thinks tattoos and facial piercings are Satanic and says nerdy things like, We give 110 percent of ourselves in every rehearsal! We’re all kind of shocked he’s lasted this long in the city.
We go through our carts, checking our condiments and chips stash.
“This is going to be great,” I say to nobody in particular, trying to exude personal power. “I’m the ultimate delivery cat. And the ending meow? I’ve got something better.”
That gets Sienna’s attention. We delivery cats are supposed to say meow after each delivery. It’s a fire-able offense not to say it. Most of us say it to the tune of thank you. It sounds least dorky that way.
“What are you going to do?” she asks.
I mimic putting down a meal, then I put my hands on my hips and strike a pose, focused on channeling personal power. “Meowwwwww!” I say, all style and moxie.
My co-workers just look stunned.
Rollins barks out a laugh.
Okay, I’m officially ridiculous. I can’t even meet his eyes. What a dork I am. When I turn back to him, he has this odd look on his face. Have I finally put poor, wholesome, wide-eyed Rollins over the edge? Is he wondering how he can switch with another driver? Or just go back West?
“Cat got your tongue?” I say. Because if he has something to say, I just want it out there.
“It’s just that…” Long pause.
Breaking the Billionaire’s Rules Page 3
