he didn’t want to need anything. Or anyone. Even getting too comfortable in any one town bothered him.
Mostly he wanted to float. His great weakness was laziness, he figured. The least of the seven deadlies. What was sloth compared to greed or wrath? No one killed anyone for the chance to sleep all afternoon. Still, it was on the list.
A realist, then. But in one way he was exceptional. In bed he was the opposite of lazy. He wanted to please, to win, to leave his conquests stunned by how hard and often they came. A performer with an audience of one. Grand passion was beyond him, but in a boozy one-night stand grand passion took second place to technique. And his technique was impeccable.
Besides, the girls he brought home were mostly comparing him to drunk nineteen-year-old boys who wanted to get off and pass out. The bar was low.
He didn’t always succeed, of course. Sometimes the girls were too drunk. And occasionally, he came across a female version of himself, a woman who had seen every trick, knew his games.
But he usually sent his women home happy. Most seemed to know intuitively that they were one-night stands, that like any good magician Brian preferred a new audience every night. Though sometimes they weren’t in on the joke. Back in Seattle he’d woken up to Samantha—Susannah?—beating on his door. You can’t fuck me like that and then not call me, she’d whimpered.
To which he’d said, Why not?
These days Brian defined himself by his prowess as a seducer. A cocksman, the word both archaic and strangely modern. If Charlottesville bored him, he could pack up, throw his bag in his truck. A day later, in a new bar in a new city, he’d have a solid chance of walking out with a woman on his arm. Without an expensive car to impress her or friends to laugh at his jokes. Pickups were a kind of alchemy. Only a fellow practitioner could truly appreciate the skill they required.
Two years before, he’d set a number for himself. One hundred. He wanted to bed—okay, fuck—an even hundred girls. And they had to be solid sixes and up. He reached the number on a cold January night in Charlottesville, a few flakes trickling from the gray sky.
* * *
The next night he met Becks.
He was at the Fox ’n’ Hound, one of Charlottesville’s classier bars. Meaning its bouncers actually checked licenses. Brian usually avoided it. Nineteen-year-olds were his preferred targets. Like Matthew McConaughey had said in Dazed and Confused, his new favorite movie, I get older, they stay the same age. But that day he had built his first working website. He’d decided to reward himself with the Fox ’n’ Hound’s cheeseburger, voted Best in Charlottesville by the UVA student paper.
It wasn’t even eight. The place was mostly empty. Soon as he walked in, he saw her, sitting with three friends in the corner. He knew right away she wasn’t from Virginia. She was angular, a hint of hardness in her face. Not his usual type. But he liked the way she looked at him. The style here tended to hair flips and side glances. This one checked him out straight on. Fearless. Not the late-night courage alcohol brought, either. No booze shine in her eyes.
He parked himself on the short side of the bar, where he could keep an eye on her table. When she stood up he saw that she was tall, taller than he’d expected, and that her angularity extended to her body. She was skinny, narrow-hipped, almost flat-chested under her simple black T-shirt. Any local girl with tits that small would have insisted on a push-up bra.
She strode to the bar, positioned herself at the corner, three stools away.
Some guys hesitated in these moments, waited for a clear go signal. Not Brian. Waiting was weak. Anyway, the quicker he found out if he had a chance, the quicker he could move on if he didn’t.
He edged off the stool, stepped toward her. “Hi.”
She turned his way. Cool, appraising. Not pretending to be surprised at his interest. Some tall women seemed ashamed of their height. She held herself up confidently. Even if her face was a bit too planed to be beautiful, her nose too beaky.
“Hi.”
“What are you having?”
“That’s your opening, dude?”
He liked her even more for calling him on his line. “It’s friendly and casual. Not too intrusive.”