Chapter 1
There are so few moments when I can relax. Here, in this NOHO club, for just the smallest of seconds, I can.
Everything about this place is opulent, Old Hollywood. The booths are hand-carved and leather-upholstered, the wood grain rich and dark. The waitstaff flirt and fawn without ever speaking, and the black marble of the floor shines like uncommitted sin. Even the volume of the band has been carefully regulated to allow conversation to flow while still showcasing the singer’s talent.
And oh, what a talent.
Monica Faulkner’s voice is rough velvet. Soothing and heavy, it settles on my skin, a blanket of sound that insulates me completely from everyone else here. It’s the aural equivalent of the Barolo in my glass.
As rich as every man in this place.
And twice as old.
It’s not like I can completely let my guard down. I know what all these late-twenties princes of technology and movie magic do to women that do. But I don’t need to be on with them, either.
I don’t want them, and hell knows I don’t need them.
They’re so busy buying up the best views of other people’s neon, the most designer drugs no one can find on a piss test, the most advanced Big Brother to watch over their shiny new lofts that they never notice what they’re missing.
Those views onto city streets mean everyone outside can see who comes and goes from your place.
Those drugs make women look and feel interchangeable— though we aren’t.
That new construction uses shoddy materials to make lightweight doors that close silently, tiled “wood” that never creaks, and employs security for such a pittance that they’re almost begging for a bribe.
In short, no challenge at all.
Not to mention that none of these idiots would recognize fine art if it offered them a bump and a blowjob.
I close my eyes for only the barest of seconds, listening to the song beneath the music— clinking glasses, and flirtations. Murmurs and secrets.
Wants.
Of course, that’s when he chooses to pause by my booth. He does it on purpose, hoping to catch me off-guard, hoping to find a flaw to exploit even though finding one would mean needing to find a new me.
Just because my eyes are closed doesn’t mean every other one of my senses hasn’t gone on red alert the second that Michael comes within ten feet of me.
As he slides the piece of folded paper onto the table, I slide my hand on top of it, eyes still closed.
“Good girl,” he chuckles.
One by one, my senses lose him. First, the hairs on the back of my neck go down as the heat of his body moves off. Then the faint tap of his shoes fades. His scent of money and danger leaves my nostrils, but the taste of excitement lingers in my mouth.
Michael’s brought me a job.
And I really want to work. I’ve been bored.
So much of our modern world is convenient. 24-hour drugstores and diners, a ride anywhere and anytime, people we’ve never met becoming our Insta-Besties at the touch of our skin on a screen.
It leaves us hungry.
The slow food movement tries to bring society back to a place where farming is appreciated, where spending five hours on a stew is applauded, not a decried as a waste of time.
Perhaps I’m starting the slow theft movement. Certainly I research online, but my talents are old-fashioned and analog. I try to bring men back to a place where they are appreciated for their brains, not their bank accounts. For their bodies, not their connections. Where spending a weekend in bed is a pleasure, not a weakness.
I feed them what they want most of all.
And then I steal their shit.
I don’t open the paper Michael slipped me right away. Savoring these moments is part of the fun. Instead, I open my eyes, catch those of the bartender, and drop one false lash-adorned lid. In half a minute, my glass is full again, and I have another little slip of paper— his phone number.
Like a twenty-three year-old bartender has anything to offer me but a hangover.
I let a smile linger on my burnt-umber-painted mouth when he glances over, but the ink is already dissolving into my wine as I stand, smoothing the beaded fringe of my dress over my thighs. My heels click on the marble in a most satisfying tattoo as I drain the glass and leave it, with the soggy remains of the bartender’s hopes in the bottom, on an empty table.
As I pass through the heavy metal employee door on my way out the back, no one bothers to stop me. Look like you have a purpose, and people assume that you do.
Although I can more than afford it, there were two reasons not to pay my tab. The first was the number, which was unasked for. The second was that the bartender had failed to secure a method of payment before bringing me two very expensive glasses of wine. More fool him.
I suppose it was only one reason in the end. And I abhor unprofessionalism. Leaning up against the brick wall of an alley down the street from the club, watching my ride’s avatar move excruciatingly slowly towards the pin I’d dropped in the app, I finally unfold the paper.
Read it twice, just to be certain. If it’s good enough for Santa…
There are two lines on the paper I place into my mouth and swallow, a primitive technology that far surpasses any encryption device they can invent.
First: Rhapsody. $5-8 m
A half-finished watercolor sketch by Hopper that few people have ever even heard of, and the projected worth. The first number would be likely at an auction house, the second more likely in my particular situation.
I know this picture. Rhapsody. A redheaded woman, nude, reclines on a beach that fades out first into pencil lines and then empty paper. The unfinished nature of the painting makes it all the more poignant. We are all incomplete works, staring into the void.
My last boyfriend said I was too intense when he broke up with me. I’m sure he would have called this picture valuable for its potential, or some other optimistic bullshit.
He also thought his framed vinyls were art.
I don’t date anymore.
The second line on the paper: the man who owns Rhapsody. The one I’ll research, stalk. Meet-cute, and then fuck. Seduce, and rob.
Jonathan Drazen.