I’m not gorgeous. I’m just a vulnerable girl who wears lacy bras. But I get it. Even a sociopath likes to hear that she’s beautiful. “I’m not,” I protest quietly, but I’m smiling.
“How about tomorrow?” he presses.
“All right. But only if you promise to mentor me.”
He grins like a cat with too many teeth. “I’ll teach you everything you need to know.” Ha. Not everything he knows, but everything I need to know. Nice touch.
After lunch he walks me back to the building and rides up the elevator with me, so I don’t have a chance to run to a newsstand and grab a protein bar. I hope to God there’s a birthday on the floor today, or I might pass out from hunger.
CHAPTER 7
No birthday cake appears. I’m starving by the time I leave the office, so I hurry home and change into something more comfortable. Tight jeans, ankle boots, a black sweater. I wash off my colorful eye shadow and replace it with a few simple black lines, then pull back my hair into a tight bun. I’ve lightened my hair and I hate it. It’s too soft-looking. I like it dark and straight, no highlights.
I want a meal, and I want a drink too. But, more than food and alcohol, I crave an end to my boredom, so I walk a few blocks into downtown and head into a high-end business hotel. I sit at the bar and order steak frites and a gin and tonic. Both are perfect.
There are several businessmen at the bar with me, all separated by at least one empty chair. Half of them watch me in the mirror above the bar. I watch the news channel behind the bartender’s head.
As soothing as my easy new work is, my brain is starting to crave exercise. Business stories slide across the crawler, and it’s news I haven’t heard before. That never happened in Kuala Lumpur. I heard about most international trade news before it ever hit the business channels.
I finish my first drink, and before I set it down, a man in a suit approaches. “Buy you another?” he asks. I turn to look straight into his face. He’s well over fifty and his cheeks and nose are already pink from alcohol. His suit is expensive and he’s not bad-looking, but I imagine his face turning beet red as he pumps furiously above me.
I don’t pretend to be insulted, nor am I flattered by his attention. This has nothing to do with me. I could be anyone. I am a woman with a hole he can fill. He might have a chance to screw me, so he may as well try. It’s that simple. He didn’t even bother slipping off his wedding ring.
“No.” I turn back to the television and raise a hand to signal the bartender.
“Same?” the bartender asks. I nod. The man in the suit walks away.
“In town for work?” the barkeep asks as he makes my drink. It’s nice of him to make conversation with a woman being bothered by men at his bar. He has the jaded air of a man who’s been serving drinks for a long time, but he’s still young. Twenty-eight, maybe, though he could have a baby face under that beard.
“I live here, actually.”
His dark eyebrows fly high. “Really? We don’t get many locals in here.”
“I didn’t want to go somewhere romantic and sit by myself.” I don’t really mean it, and the way he laughs says he’s picked up on my dry tone. He fills a new bowl with pretzels and slides it toward me. He’ll get a good tip for looking out for me.
Not that I need protection.
Now that one of their kind has been shot down, the men at the bar aren’t studying me quite so closely. They likely thought I was a prostitute. You see them often in bars like this, even more often in the business hotels overseas. Women who look as professional as their clients but with open-necked blouses instead of loosened ties. Not that the men wouldn’t like their whores to dress like classic streetwalkers, but the hotels can’t have that kind of obviousness hanging around.
I watch the men now that their gazes have drifted hazily back to the second TV, which flashes the bright greens and whites of a football game. Two of the men, including the one who already approached, are middle-aged or better, their suits a little looser and more creased from travel.
A third man is younger, his suit pants cut slim, his widespread collar ostentatiously white against blue fabric. Cuff links glint when he raises his drink. He’s handsome in a big-nosed kind of way, and his body is great, but I don’t like the look of him. I imagine that he always watches himself in the mirror during sex, admiring the way his own ass clenches with each pistoning thrust.
My nose wrinkles at the thought. I’d bet he thinks his penis is all it takes to make a woman climax, and he continues to believe that no matter how many women tell him otherwise. I used to be better at giving men the benefit of the doubt, but it’s hardly doubt after all these years. They’re not difficult to figure out.
The fourth man, though . . . the fourth man has potential, and thank God for that. I’m so bored and restless tonight, I might have even given old Piston Ass a try.
But there’s no need. The fourth man is dark skinned and handsome in a boyish way. Early thirties, maybe. His curly hair is cut close to his scalp. No wedding ring on his hand and no oversized Rolex either. He wears a simple white dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up, the fabric a gorgeous contrast to his brown skin. His long fingers loosely grip a bottle of domestic beer: no expensive brands for him. A man with no need to show off. In my estimation, that makes it a decent chance he’s actually good in bed. Oh, lucky day.
His gaze leaves the game and slides along the mirror until I catch his eye. The right side of his mouth tips up and I grin at having been caught. When I don’t look away, the quirk of his mouth widens into a smile. I raise my glass in greeting. He does the same.
I’m not shy about approaching men when the situation calls for it, but there’s no need. He doesn’t strike me as the kind of man who jumps into bed with every woman he meets, but he looks open and friendly, and there’s no good reason not to chat up a single lady on a boring evening. Worst-case scenario is we won’t hit it off and he’ll be out a few minutes of conversation. But I’ll make sure we hit it off.
To give him a little space, I check my email. I don’t have an email address for this new identity, because this Jane doesn’t need one. Who would write to a blank slate? The mail coming into my phone is from my real life. Business news, LinkedIn invitations, junk mail written in Malay, very exciting offers to meet Hot Asian Girls! Plus one actual personal email with a sender’s name that makes my breath catch like a burr in my throat.
Cheryl Peterson. It’s Meg’s mother.
She’s a hapless woman, and I’ve always resented the bad decisions she made during Meg’s childhood, but even I can’t deny that she’d loved her daughter. She’d loved her daughter almost as much as she’d loved having a man in her life. Almost. A pretty typical story.
With Meg gone, there’s no reason to ever interact with Cheryl again; we have nothing concrete or logical in common. She’s a mediocre hairstylist who adores kids, lets worthless men treat her like crap, and seems confused about why she’s perpetually broke.
But emotion isn’t logical, is it? Emotion is sticky as tar, and it’s hard to get off you, which is why I’ve spent my whole life trying to avoid exposing my skin to it. But with Meg I was naked as a babe, and part of me is stuck to Cheryl now. I don’t like it. I’ll free myself as soon as I can.
Resigned to raw nerves and melancholy, I click on Cheryl’s email. It’s quick and to the point and still messy as hell.
Jane, I haven’t heard from you in a while, so I thought I’d check in. Meg’s last letter asked me to take care of you. Are you doing ok?
God, Meg. Why were you so good? If you hadn’t loved me so well, I wouldn’t miss you this much.
Her last letter. I don’t want to think about that. She sent me a letter as well. I get it out and read it when I need a hit of raw pain to cut through the dull throbbing of this grief.
“Hey.” His voice interrupts my sorrow, and I’m so relieved, I turn to him with a blinding smile.
“Hey, yourself.”