Zipper Fall (7 page)

“Is there anything wrong, Mr. Gaudens?”

I sighed. “No…. No, thank you. It’s just… I was wondering, now that you fired me, why the hell didn’t I fall for you instead.”

To my surprise, his lips quirked upward in the slightest hint of a smile. “Because falling for your boss is never a good idea, Mr. Gaudens.” He paused before he exited his office and looked me in the eyes, all serious now. “I wish you the best of luck.”

“
T
HE
bad news is that this is the last round of drinks I can afford,” I told Reyna. “Pillory fired my ass.”

“No way!” Reyna’s eyes widened, her prominent, plucked eyebrows giving her a fierce appearance. “What for?”

“Because Schiffer from BW&B is sick today and your former boss came instead of him. I was supposed to give him a presentation….” My voice trailed off, and I reached for my beer and took a healthy sip.

“No way! He happened to show up a day after he gave you that bruise? What happened, did you two explode at each other or something?”

“You won’t believe me.”

Reyna took in my miserable countenance with a gaze both protective and incredulous, and her fingers began to twirl a strand of her hair in a gesture of impatient anticipation. A sly grin began to spread slowly across her face. “Try me, you nut!”

“Pillory walked into my office just as I was….” I paused, hesitant to fill the expectant silence. “He walked in just as I was on my knees in front of Azurri, giving him head.”

“Fuck!” Reyna’s mouth was full of beer as I said this, and that was a mistake on my part—I should have waited for her to swallow. Her beer spray covered my good suit and white work shirt, silk tie and all.

Reyna looked at me in outrage. “That asshole forced you to go down on him in your own office?”

I cast my eyes down at the round bar table, studying the scarred wooden surface.

“You don’t have to put up with that kind of shit, Wyatt, let alone be fired for it. I want you to go and—”

“Reyna.” I put up my hand, feeling guilty because she was the best fag-hag friend a guy could ever have. “Reyna, I offered.”

Her look turned from protective to disapproving. “So what’s the good news?” she asked.

“The good news is, you can apply for my old job. Pillory’s a pretty nice guy. He never yells, he gives precise instructions, he’s pretty good-looking….” I sighed. I’d miss good ol’ Pillory.

“So what now? Will you apply for my old job now?” Reyna asked, uncertain.

“No. I thought about it, but no. It’s… I want him for myself. As a lover, not as a boss.”

“What will you do, then? Job hunt?”

“I’ll manage.” Reyna might have been my best friend, but not even she knew of some of my more eclectic skills.

T
WO
margaritas, one with salt, one without. Two beers. Nachos
grande
.

I wrote the order down in shorthand, looked at my party of four, and smiled. “Coming right up!”

I’m sure the smile didn’t go all the way up to my eyes—it was that tired, professional smile waiters got toward the end of the night when their feet hurt and their knees ached and they are thoroughly sick and tired of humanity in general. My body might have been surprisingly beaten down by four consecutive days of waiting tables, but my mind was alert and keen, my ears searching for the right stray bit of somebody else’s conversation.

“So I told them we can’t afford that—that’s crazy. I’d rather save the money for my kids’ college
.
”

No use barking up that tree. I moved on.

“Did you call your lawyer? You gotta talk to your lawyer ’bout all this. There’s no way he can do that to ya.”

A tough mother-daughter conversation was taking place in the corner. I felt bad for the daughter. She nursed her strawberry daiquiri and heavy makeup barely covered a bruise by her eye. There was no way I’d touch her, her mother, or their possessions. If I could relieve her asshole husband of some of his toys, maybe….

Suddenly, a song of profit and adventure rose to my ears from two tables over.

“So we’re leaving on the twenty-first, and we’ll be in Prague for the ten days it will take to get my eyelids done. And then! Oh, I’m just so excited—we’ll swing through Paris. I have some shopping to do. Two weeks altogether.”

The aches and pains of the preceding week dissipated as adrenaline surged through my veins. Having deposited the two margaritas, two beers, and nachos grande where they belonged, I reached for a pitcher of water and hovered by the table occupied by two middle-aged couples, waiting for an unobtrusive time to top off their ice water. A well-maintained blonde was holding court, her husband in attendance. I noticed her fifty-dollar manicure and her upscale haircut.

“Where will you shop?”

The question was posed by her brunette lady-friend, who did her best not to show signs of jealousy. Her jewelry was understated by comparison; her fingers didn’t drip gold and diamond pavé rings, she didn’t wear a Cartier watch, her neck didn’t sport a heavy gold necklace, and her ears were decorated with discreet, delicate pearl studs instead of all those multiple hoops. Her jaw was a bit tight, perhaps, but other than that, her decorum didn’t slip one bit.

“We’ll go to the Galleries Lafayette again. Their styles are so different from what you can get here in the US—so feminine and elegant and so avant-garde….”

I topped their water off and eyed their half-empty plates.

“Are you enjoying your dinner? Is there anything else I can get for you?” My smile was on, and I was unobtrusive, just as they expected. I had to make sure not to serve them too poorly, nor too well. I was shooting for dead average. No sense standing out in the crowd.

The blonde’s husband, a thin man with a shiny pate surrounded by still-dark hair, looked at me with apology in his eyes. “No, thank you. Everything is very good.”

“Oh, but, honey.” The blonde’s whine cut through the din of the restaurant’s dining room. “I thought you didn’t get enough of that guacamole.” She lifted her hooded, heavily made-up eyes at me. “Bring us more of that guacamole. And I’ll have another martini, with a twist of lemon this time.”

I nodded. “Sure. Right up.”

I brought them the guacamole and another martini. “Would you care for some dessert and coffee?” I asked. “We have a new specialty….”

The discussion over coffee and dessert always sparked an argument over dietary shoulds and should nots.

“Go ahead, Janet,” the brunette said. “You won’t have Tres Leches cake in Prague!”

Her name was Janet. That’s all I got to find out.

When they were all done, the brunette’s husband picked up the tab, which was highly inconvenient because I didn’t want to burgle
them
; no, she’d been kind and always said “please” and “thank you.” I wanted to burgle her overbearing blonde companion, who probably had a whole treasure-trove of gold jewelry she never even wore anyway. Gold sold for a good bit these days.

However, not all was lost. They left an average tip—no more and no less than I’ve earned, and now I had the brunette’s husband’s credit card information. That was enough, really. He wasn’t on Facebook, but he was on LinkedIn, where he shared some personal details, from which I learned that his wife’s name was Suzanne Gould. Suzanne Gould was on Facebook, however, and she shared some of her interests in the publicly visible profile, so I friended her immediately. I used my faux identity.

Dear Suzanne, we’ve met at the Library Benefit a few weeks ago and only now I remembered to friend you—we talked about some possible projects for offsetting the government cutbacks. We should talk some more, this is a worthy cause.

Now, having learned Suzanne Gould sat on the public library’s steering committee, I deduced that she attended benefits all the time as part of her job. Everyone was talking about the state funding cutbacks, and fundraising was indeed a worthy cause. I loved my library—how else could I set up a hard-to-trace Facebook and LinkedIn account?

She friended me back the next day, using that sort of obscure language people use when they have forgotten who you are but are embarrassed to say so. I grinned and perused her “friends” list. Sure enough, there was a Janet, and her picture indicated she was indeed the blonde I saw at the restaurant.

My parents always taught me to be modest and not to brag, and I took it to heart for the most part. Their wisdom was now apparent to me. Had Janet Barnaby not crowed about that upcoming trip to Europe and had she not posted pictures of a recent landscaping and remodeling project, I would have never known where she lived. As it was, I recognized the street, and I had a street number from above their mailbox by the road; all I had to do was wait a few days.

I
HAD
the next night off, which was a financial killer for a waiter, because tips are always heavy on Saturdays. I had to see Reyna, though.

“So, have you applied?” I asked, twirling my beer glass in my hands.

“Yeah. He didn’t like my red nails. He said they’re too long. And the tattoo on my neck wasn’t covered up; he said it was unprofessional.”

The huge, black banana spider still sat on the nape of her neck. The tattoo was part of Reyna’s individual style; she had always been the kind of a girl who would never give a damn what others thought of her appearance, and she aimed to please only herself. If a black, lace-edged camisole revealed her poison-green bra straps and she happened to like it, that’s what she would wear. Sporting a bit of ink on her skin was a personal matter, as were her long, red nails. Or so she said. This attitude of supreme confidence, together with her athletic figure and ravishing hair, swept away most of the people she met, her quirky fashion choices notwithstanding. She was like a force of nature, and I’d always been a bit jealous of the way she could wear a garbage bag and nobody would notice because they were so focused on the sparkle in her eyes. I always looked like a pity date by her side—or her little brother. It was virtually impossible to cruise for guys with Reyna around—but I digress.

“And I was good and all. I had a blouse on I totally despise, and my hair was put up in a conservative bun. What else does he want, anyway?”

The image of the good and honorable Auguste Bernard Pillory III, with his old-blood pedigree and old-money backing, popped into my mind, and I found the image of him and Reyna in the same room rather amusing: there was Reyna, doing her level best to wear the clothing that would make her fit in, and there was Pillory, unable to take his eyes off the gigantic spider on the back of her neck.

“Did he look at your resume?”

“Yeah…. He looks a bit cold, your Mr. Pillory. He didn’t say anything one way or the other. I think I have a better chance elsewhere.” She popped a salted almond into her mouth, raising a groomed eyebrow in my direction. “So… how is it with you?”

I grimaced. Finding a real job was hard enough with a good recommendation, let alone with a tarnished record on account of my extremely poor judgment. “My infatuation cost me dearly, I’m afraid. When I tell my prospective employers that I won’t get a good recommendation from Pillory, I get the ‘don’t call us, we’ll call you’ treatment.”

Reyna sighed. “That’s tough. But, hey, think out of the box for a minute, will ya? What is it you’re good at?”

Breaking and entering.
“Um…. Nothing….”

“Bullshit!” Reyna crowed, ready to give me a professional makeover. “Didn’t you say you have prepared analyses of your clients’ existing customer base? And you have developed those marketing strategies and stuff?”

“Yeah?”

“You could freelance, you know. You don’t have to work for anyone else—you have a computer and a printer, and a phone… and you know the ropes. You could pick up the accounts that are too small for your old firm. Didn’t you say Pillory specialized in larger clients with fatter budgets?”

I nodded, twirling my tepid beer some more and noticing my blunt nails and the way they were all broken from rock climbing. How Reyna managed to climb
and
keep a good manicure, I’d never know. Not that I cared for painting my nails—I was too manly for that—but still, it boggled the mind. I drank some. Her suggestion wasn’t so bad, so I drank a bit more, thinking.

“Here,” Reyna said. “I’ll help you with your business plan. That’s what I’ve been doing a lot of at my old job. I’ll e-mail you this blank form….”

We drank some more beer and ate some stuffed hot peppers and chicken wings. My tongue burned, contaminated with a side order of that awful habanero sauce Reyna favored. I didn’t bitch, though, because she had some good ideas. Most people figure Reyna’s a slow child because of her bottle-red hair and tattoos, excessive gypsy jewelry, and dragon-lady crimson nails. The fact that she gets flustered when she has to speak in public doesn’t help her image, either. She doesn’t make a really great first impression, but when it comes to results, she can deliver.

She was doing good by me and I owed her one, and suddenly I realized how I could pay her back. I smiled and chased the potent hot sauce with more beer.