into an ashtray I didn’t even know I had. I nod at it. “Where’d you find that?”
“Outside in the smoking area,” he tells me. “Thought it’d be polite.” He winks. “You know me, friend to the little people. I don’t want to make the cleaners’ job harder than it needs to be.”
He’s talking like Levi, he’s making jokes like Levi, but there’s something off. It’s like he’s pretending to be Levi, which makes no sense. When you have known somebody your entire life, you know when there’s something subtly off with them, even if you’re not sure exactly what it is.
“How is Madolina?” I say.
He flinches. “She’s fine, Angelo. Still giving me shit about the nursing home, but she’s fine.” He looks away, nonchalant.
But he flinched. I saw it.
“You said you had a long night,” I say, trying a different tact. “What happened?”
Levi strokes his mustache. “Nothing like that,” he says. “I was with those bottle girls we met the other night, and I got carried away. That’s all.”
“Okay,” I reply. I’m watching him closely, wondering if he’s lying to me. But Levi has never lied to me, nor I to him. We are brothers in all but blood. “Shall we get this fucking charade started, then?”
Levi narrows his eyes. “Charade?” he asks in surprise. “This was your idea.”
“If I recall correctly,” I say, “it was yours.”
“The fake marriage, yes. But this whole dog and-pony show—that was all you, brother.”
“Whatever. Let’s just get it over with.”
I sit back in the chair, tossing the opener from one hand to another. Abstract art hangs on the walls, not that I’ve ever really looked at any of it. I let the decorator do what she wanted: sleek bar, black leather couches, ceiling-high windows that look out onto the city and the clouds.
My only stipulation was this wooden desk, because I like playing five-finger fillet. It keeps me sharp.
The first woman who comes in is named Samantha. She crosses, uncrosses, and recrosses her legs in what I suppose is meant to be a seductive way. She talks for a long time about how caring she is, in a clearly prepared speech, and references her three dogs—Gucci, Poochie, and Smoochie—at least five times apiece.
“So, I know what it is like to take care of wild things.” She flutters her eyelashes. I wonder if a previous version of me would want to fuck her, because the current version of me sure as fuck does not. Her eyes flash to the opener, which I’m flipping absentmindedly around my fingers. “Whoa, so you’re good with your hands. Good to know. Really good.”
“Thank you,” I tell her, laying it aside. “We’ll be in touch.”
“Wait—we’re done?”
I nod. “We are done. Levi, please show her out.”
Levi does as I ask and then returns to me, looking at me in that suspicious way again, as his fingers twitch toward his pocket where I’m guessing his cigarettes are. “What was wrong with her?” he asks when she’s gone.
“She was …” I trail off. How can I explain it to him in a way that will make sense?
Then I realize there’s an intrinsic problem with that notion, because it does not even make sense to me.
They are not her.
Who is Dani? Nobody, absolutely fucking nobody. Worse, she is somebody I would not be able to control, whose fire would give me problems.
Levi tilts his head to the side. “Well?”
I smile coldly. “Gucci, Poochie, and fucking Smoochie. Need I say more, really?”
That gets a laugh out of him. He goes to get the next one, a leggy brunette with a surgically-enhanced rack.
But it soon becomes clear that all of them have the same problem.
They are not Dani.
They don’t have any fire in them. They talk to me how they think I want them to talk to me, all submissive and coy, but I can tell it’s an act.
Perhaps the problem is that everything they do is an act. They think I’m one of those rich, absent-minded men who will pretend not to know that his woman is only with him for the money.
I’m not some old billionaire who needs to buy a trophy wife. But these women are just—vanilla, I suppose. They’re bland. I’m sure they are pleasant people. I am sure they’re as kind and generous and empathetic as they want me to believe they are, and every bit as gymnastic in bed as they seem eager to convey.
Or maybe they’re not. Maybe they’re mean and spiteful and would try to take everything I’ve