If I take the plunge, I don’t know where I will land. It might be the biggest mistake of my life. It could well be the end of me.
43
Vicky
I sit in a high-back chair outside the ballroom at the Peninsula Hotel, where inside, eight hundred of the wealthiest people in Chicago mingle and play casino games to raise money for autism awareness. I am not dressed for a night like this and have no invitation, but I wore a dress, anyway, to generally fit in.
In my lap is my phone, in my ears, AirPods. I look like I’m watching something on my phone. I am not. The screen is blank. But the words from inside the Gold Coast Room come through the AirPods with decent clarity: HE: “So are you staying here tonight?”
SHE: “No. Are you?”
HE: “I have a suite.”
SHE: “I see. And why are you telling me that?”
HE: “Uh-oh. Am I being inappropriate?”
SHE: “You tell me. Tell me what you’re thinking right now.”
HE: “I’m not sure that’s wise.”
SHE: “Why not?”
HE: “I might get my face slapped.”
A pause.
SHE: “You think I’d slap you in the face.”
HE: “Or maybe my wife would, if she heard me.”
Well done. A test. He’s cautious. He dips his toe in and gives her openings but allows himself an easy retreat.
SHE: “Well, then, I guess it’s a good thing your wife’s not here tonight.”
? ? ?
Seventy-five minutes later. Quicker than I expected. The sound is better inside the hotel room than in the ballroom, far less noise and interference. His moaning is annoying but helpful.
HE: “You are just . . . full of surprises.”
SHE: “Do you like that?”
HE: “I like that . . . I like that a lot.”
SHE: “Does your wife do this for you, Paul?”
HE: “My wife? Give me a break. She just lies there like a sack of potatoes. I have to check her for a pulse.”
They laugh.
? ? ?
Melanie comes down the stairs over an hour later, past midnight, wearing her dress from the night, a small jacket over her shoulders. I know Mel from our days in the “entertainment” business, which she has yet to leave, though she’s going to school for a degree in sociology. I hope she completes it and gets out of this business. You can tell yourself whatever you need to tell yourself to get through the nights, but you can’t survive this work for very long.
I hand her an envelope. She opens it and counts the money. “This is more than we discussed,” she says. “This is too much.”
“Consider it a bonus. You got some good stuff in there.”
“Yeah, well, he doesn’t like his wife, does he?”
She unpins the crystal brooch from her dress and hands it to me. “Pretty sure we captured the whole thing on here,” she says. “If you use it, you’ll black out my face.”
“Of course, Mel. And I don’t think it will ever come to that, anyway.”
I give her a hug and we say our goodbyes. “Get that degree,” I say to her. “Promise.”
“I promise. I’m about two semesters away.” She looks around and leans in to whisper in my ear. “So what did this guy do, anyway, to piss you off?”
44
Christian
Vicky lies on me, twisting her finger in and out of my chest hair, thinking about something, though I don’t know what. She keeps her thoughts to herself, and I’m too cautious to push too hard lest I push her away.
I guess I don’t need to know if I’m anything more to Vicky than a financial whiz who also happens to be easy on the eyes and terrific in bed. Gavin is right. All that matters is that money. I need to keep my eye on the prize, a prize that is less than a month away now.
But the closer November third gets, the more I worry, like a pitcher throwing a no-hitter who’s just rolling along doing his thing, but now it’s the ninth inning, and the prize is in sight, and you feel yourself tightening up.
“What was it with you and Simon’s father?” I ask because the whole thing with Theodore Dobias is something I should understand better. If Simon Dobias can be pushed as far as murder, I should probably know that before I help Vicky steal all his money, yes?
“Well, he obviously thought I wanted Simon for his money. Maybe it was personal to me, or maybe that’s just how he felt, generally, about women.”
“Maybe he didn’t trust Simon.”
“Oh, that’s definitely part of it. Simon . . .” She puts her chin on my chest and looks at me. “You look at Simon, he’s a nice-looking man, he can be charming and funny, but he never really had many good relationships with women before he met me. As far as I know, he only had one real girlfriend, back when he was like eighteen, this woman named Lauren who broke his heart. That was right around the time his mother died, and his world kind of crashed after that.”