Look Closer

But this part I remember clear as day. You walked over to me. You have a way of sauntering over to me that makes my legs weak. I think the word “saunter” was invented for you, Lauren. There should have been a saxophone playing in the background.

You leaned up and whispered in my ear, “Do you want me to be your whore, Professor Dobias? Tell me. Tell me what you want.”

I don’t want you to be anything but you, Lauren. I don’t need role plays or dirty talk. That’s never been my thing. I just want you, exactly as you are.

But it seemed like the right thing to say at the time, so I went with it.

I gripped your hair and made you look at me. “That’s what I want,” I said.

Your eyes lit up. The corners of your mouth only curved up slightly.

“Then fuck me that way,” you said.

15

Vicky

The lobby register says that Newsome Capital Growth is in suite 1320. I thought most buildings didn’t have a thirteenth floor out of superstition. An omen?

I push through the glass doors, greeted by a young woman seated behind a thin desk, wearing a headset, the sleek professional look of today’s corporate America, I guess. Where I work, at the shelter, we can hardly afford a single landline. We use fans instead of air-conditioning. We use milk past the expiration date, as long as it doesn’t smell.

“Vicky Lanier for Christian Newsome,” I say.

“Yes, Mrs. Lanier, one moment.” She pushes a button on a large phone. “Your four o’clock, Mrs. Lanier, is here? Sure.” She looks at me. “He’ll be just a minute. Can I get you anything?”

“I’m fine.”

Voices from one of the offices behind reception. A strong, throaty laugh. A confident man. Or a man trying to project confidence, at least.

“Mrs. Lanier? Christian Newsome.” He sweeps out of his office and takes my hand, a firm shake. He’s the fourth financial adviser to greet me today but the first to really shake my hand. The other men just gave a gentle squeeze, as if my hand would crumble to dust under the strength of their powerful grip.

He looks like he did in his photos. You never know, but he’s true to it. Mid-thirties, the obligatory well-tailored suit but still no tie, because no, he won’t be tied down by convention, he thinks outside the box, and besides, it shows off his thick neck.

Still rough-shaven, just like his beauty pics on the website, which is interesting because it means he takes the time to shave it just so, not too hairy, but sexy stubble. Still that sweep of the hair made to look messy. This one goes to a lot of trouble to look like he didn’t go to a lot of trouble.

His office doesn’t present like the other sedate ones I saw. He has a leather couch on one side with some fancy lamp hanging over it. A bar with premium liquor. An ego wall, framed articles written about him, some photographs of him with famous people. Three flat-screen TVs on another wall—CNBC, Fox Business, and Bloomberg—plus rolling indices from Nasdaq and Nikkei and the Dow Jones. None of it means anything to me. I understand the financial world like I understand nuclear physics.

“Closest thing in life to a contact sport,” he says to me. “Everyone out there competing. I like to keep an eye on the playing field at all times.”

He sits behind a steel desk and looks me over. He checks me out without trying to be too obvious about it, but men are usually obvious. I have a pretty good idea of what he’s seeing. He wouldn’t mind going a round or two with me, but not marriage material.

My sister, Monica, she was marriage material. Monica was the prom queen, the cheerleader, the A-student, the girl with the radiant smile and infectious laugh every boy chased. Me, I was the trashy younger sister, not nearly as pretty but with bigger boobs and a come-hither smile, who smoked cigarettes off campus with the burnouts and got kicked out of school for having sex in a library carrel.

When I couldn’t be my sister, I was determined to be everything she wasn’t. And at that, I wildly succeeded.

“The great thing is, it’s not a zero-sum game,” he says. “Everyone can win. You just have to play it right.” He drops his hand down on his thin steel desk, which contains nothing but an autographed baseball and two fancy computers. “So, Mrs. Vicky Lanier, how can I help you?”