Closer (2 page)

“One point for short girls then.”

He muted his smile and held out his hand, insisting that she take a seat.  Closing her eyes and cringing like he was scratching his nails across his mahogany desk, she sank into the chair, barely able to fathom the fact that her ass was being supported by something that cost more than her entire college tuition.

He rested his cane against the edge of his desk and reclined in his black executive chair.  “So tell me…why is a smart Northwestern graduate, who knows the worth of a Mies van der Rohe chair, seeking an office job through a temp agency?”

“Because Northwestern didn’t do their job training me to do anything else.”

“I find that hard to believe.”

She shrugged and fell silent.  He was fishing for something and she didn’t feel like making it easy for him.  Crossing her legs, she tested him, wondering if he would shift his gaze away from her face.  She had been told by the temp agency to wear pantyhose and a skirt.  Her experiment failed.  He didn’t flinch.

“And you haven’t walked out of the room—yet,” he continued.  “Perhaps because the temp agency told you that this was a special interview for a significantly higher wage than usual.  Which means you need the money.  More than usual.  Why?”

She shrugged.  Now, she
definitely
didn’t feel like making it easy for him.  “Doesn’t everybody need money?”

He threw his weight back into his chair.  “Okay, I’ll guess.”

Inez rolled her eyes—
big time
.  She wanted him to see it, but he ignored her.

“By the way you disrespected your own alma mater, you seem to realize it’s a cut below true Ivy League schools.”

He paused and waited.  Inez suddenly wondered if he had fallen asleep.

“And…?” she pressed him, seriously annoyed.

“And your silence confirms that I’m right, which tells me you don’t need money to pay off student loans since you most likely received a full scholarship to attend Northwestern, despite the fact that you actually preferred to attend Harvard or Yale.”

“Princeton,” she corrected him.

He nodded.  “Of course.  Harvard is…

“For nerds,” she inserted.

“Too traditional,” he overrode her.  “And Yale is…”

“For trust fund babies.”

He smiled slowly, as if he had recorded the exchange in his mind and now was replaying it for entertainment.  At least she was amusing someone.

“You failed to list your college major on your résumé,” he added.  “Which means it’s something unemployable like drama or dance.”

She smirked at the thought of herself in a ballet tutu.  “Art history.”

“Ah, yes…your knowledge of Mies van der Rohe and the fact that you visited a somewhat obscure architectural exhibit at the Art Institute.  I should have gotten that one.  An oversight on my part.”

“Next time, Billions,” she sassed back.

It just came out.  She couldn’t help it.  She didn’t want the job—whatever the hell it was—so at this point, she was free to insult him as much as she thought she could get away with.

“And so, you don’t need tuition money because Northwestern gave you a free ride to study whatever you wanted, so where does that leave us?” He tapped his fingers along the sleek surface of his desk.  “Credit card debt?  However, you sound far too exacting to have frivolously gotten into credit card debt.  Wedding?”

She snorted, then covered her nose and tried hard to compose herself.

“Ahhh, I see,” he replied.  “No boyfriend.”

He registered her silence with a smug smile. 

“Maybe I just need a job, like everyone else.”

“I’m sure that’s true.”  He smiled, like he finally had figured her out.

“You’re kinda into acting like Hercule Poirot, aren’t you?  You’ve even got the same quirky accent.”

“Poirot was Belgian.  I’m Dutch.”

“Ah, I assumed German.”

He huffed, like she had finally succeeded in insulting him.  “Hercule Poirot—that’s another unusually obscure reference for a young woman of your age.  Agatha Christie isn’t something most girls read widely anymore.”

“Maybe I’m older than you think.”  Inez shifted in her seat. He hadn’t moved his gaze from her face since she sat down in his two hundred thousand dollar Barcelona chair.

“You’re twenty-seven.  Perhaps twenty-eight,” he replied.

“You’re good,” she conceded.

He nodded and continued with his interrogation. “What are your table manners like?”

“I generally try to eat with my hands as much as possible.”

He ignored her.  It unnerved her.

“What about your cursing?”

“My what?”  For a moment, she was certain she misunderstood the lilt in his accent.

“Cursing,” he repeated.  “Right now, you’re on your best behavior because this is an interview.  But in your real life, how much do you curse?”

“Never.”

He shifted his unpatched eye onto her.  They both knew it was a lie.

“Okay, a whole fuck load.”  It was the first honest thing she had said all interview.

“Yes, that’s more likely the truth,” he mused.  “And what about your posture?”

“Worse than Quasimodo.”

“That will have to change.”

Inez started to sit straighter in her seat, and then realized she wanted to do the exact opposite of what he wanted.  A whole fuck load of opposite.

“First tell me whether or not I’ve got the job.”

He fell silent and leaned back in his chair.  “I’m not sure.”

“About what?”

“About you.”

“Yes, I got that, but which part?”

“Well…you’re clearly verbal.”

“Geez, thanks.”

“And sufficiently intelligent.  Certainly smarter than the last five girls that the agency sent me.”

“Somehow, I doubt that’s saying much.”

“But you’re sarcastic.”

“Can’t handle it?”

He stared her down. “Sarcasm is a sign of weakness.”

“I like to think of it as my best asset.”

“It means you don’t have the confidence to say what you honestly think.”

“Trust me,” she insisted.  “Get me going, and I’ll be more than happy to tell you.”

He leaned into the edge of his desk and folded his hands across its gleaming surface. “And you’re a bit too cocky and I’m not sure why.”

Inez tempered her urge to smile and slouched deeper into her seat—her two hundred thousand dollar chair.  “Because I know whatever this job is…whatever weird fetish office tasks you need me to perform, like balancing your coffee mug on my head because you like watching me take orders, or taking dictation while you’re getting your nose hairs trimmed, or reading aloud pages and pages of painfully boring legal memos while you ignore me and then ask me to re-read them again, but this time, in Pig Latin, I know I can do it.  I can do any of it.”

“I need you to pretend to be my girlfriend,” he said flatly.

Busted
.  Inez felt her sassiness slide off her face. 

“Yes, I’m not sure you’re up for it either,” he confirmed.

As a general rule, Inez never let anyone tell her they didn’t think she could do something without serious ramifications.  But this time, she had to admit it: Billions had pegged her. 

“On the other hand, you may have a certain…potential.” His unpatched eye scanned the details of her face.

“You mean I’m not ugly.”

He reclined in his chair.  It was exactly what he meant; she didn’t need him to confirm it.

“You realize it’s kind of illegal,” she said.

“Hiring you to pretend to be my girlfriend?”  The suggestion caught him off-guard.

“Yeah, it’s kinda an awkward form of prostitution.”

Billions laughed and swiveled in his chair.

“Don’t worry.  I don’t want to fuck you.  You’re far too opinionated for my tastes.  I prefer women who—”

“Have one brain cell?”

His mouth spread into a sly smile.  “Talk less and obey more.”

“Sorry for them.”

Billions eyed her, silently, gauging whether or not to proceed.  It was a familiar moment during all her interviews—the moment when the man across the desk was sizing her up, calculating whether or not he wanted to hire her to be his whipping girl, and whether or not she would happily go along with it.

“So why would you need me to pretend to be your girlfriend, anyway?” It seemed like the most natural question in their whole interview.

“Because the fact of the matter is… I’m losing my sight.”

She glanced at his eyepatch. 
It wasn’t a masterful revelation, Billions
.  “Well, you are wearing a pirate patch.”

“You’re right,” he acknowledged.  “That’s an obvious confession.  I’ve already lost my sight—in my left eye, my
pirate
eye,” he clarified with subtle amusement.  “The eye beneath my patch has nearly zero vision.  I can register shades of light, but not much else, so I wear this patch to cut out all light and reduce all distractions.  It helps me focus all my attention on my right eye—my good eye—
good
being highly subjective because ‘good’ implies a relatively high level of functionality.  And unfortunately for me, that is not the case at this point in my life.”

“But you knew I wasn’t wearing heels?”

“Because I heard how quietly you crossed the room.  All the other girls clicked like exotic dancers.  You were silent like a mouse.”

“Or a ninja.”

He relaxed in his seat.  “Preparing for my execution,” he confirmed, almost charmed. “Now, the problem is that I’m fighting a deadline. I’m losing my sight in a way that I never expected.  I can see you now, but not very well.  I can see that you’re young, younger than me by almost ten years.  I can see that you have long black hair and red lips.  I can make out that you’re fairly well-dressed.  Conservative, like an uptight Northwestern graduate, but still well-dressed.  But I can’t see much else, although I did make out the way you scowled at me when I confessed I didn’t want to fuck you.”

“Indigestion,” she countered.

“Of course.”  He confirmed with a nod, betraying a hint of amusement.   Then, he hesitated, the first time the entire interview.  “But the reality of the situation is that the doctors cannot tell me my fate.  They cannot explain why I am losing my sight in my right eye.  Unlike my left eye, it was not damaged in the…incident.  And so, they tell me it is a problem with the way that my brain is receiving the optical image—or rather, choosing
not
to receive it.  I could fully regain my sight tomorrow or I could awake and find myself completely blind.  And while everyone knows that I’m sightless in my left eye, no one suspects that I’m losing my vision in my right eye as well.  I’m an architect.  My sight and my ability to design buildings are paramount to both my career and my reputation.  Complete blindness is not something I can endure without severe consequences.  I’ve become quite proficient at maintaining this extraordinary charade, but now I must admit that I need…” he paused and hesitated again.

“A seeing eye dog.”

“Yes.”

“Basically a really attractive, but capable bitch.”

He nodded. “Crudely put, but yes.”

Inez peered down at his hand. 
No ring
.  “Why can’t you just get your real girlfriend to help you?”

The expression on his face hardened like stone.  “You have your reasons for interviewing for the job, and I have my own reason for offering it.  Let’s just leave it at that.”

She had dug into him so many times before, but this time was different.   This time was the first time that Billions betrayed discomfort. “This is all kind of weird…you know that, right?”

“Unfortunately, I do.  We will have to work as a team.  I’ll have to…depend on you.  And I’m not used to that dynamic in my life.  I’m used to being the boss and getting exactly what I want whenever I want it.”

“Boy, you really know how to sell a job, don’t you?”

He paused, underscoring the gravity of the situation with the intensity of his gaze.  “I am willing to pay five thousand dollars a day for the next four days, including the opening night gala of The Spire.  It’s one of the most important buildings of my career and one of the most important new additions to Chicago’s cityscape.”

“The Spire?” Inez heard the question escape from her lips.

“Yes,” he confirmed.

“Are you telling me you’re Sven van der Meer?”  It wasn’t a question.  It was a revelation.

“Yes.”  He repeated, as if he enjoyed the fact that she obviously knew exactly who he was.

“Well, then…it’s impossible.  We can’t work together.”

He arched his brow.  “Why not?”

“Because I hate that building.”

“Well, that’s not particularly original.  Most of Chicago hates The Spire.”

“Because it’s a garish eyesore on our skyline.”