No One Knows Us Here(15)

“Someone like me? Like a prostitute?”

“NO! No.” He chuckled. “God no. My business manager—Doug—showed me the picture. Bragging. I was intrigued. I wanted to meet you.”

“Well. You met me.” I stood up to leave, and Leo stood up, too, quickly pushing back his chair with an audible scrape across the floor.

“Come by my offices tomorrow.” He handed me a business card. “Same time.”

I took the card and slipped it into my bag without even looking at it. “Why?”

In the background I heard some shuffling and exaggerated coughing. Margorie was standing at the door. “Thank you!” she called out to the hostess. “Got to get back to work!” she said in an unnaturally loud voice. Our eyes met, briefly, and I gave her a quick nod.

“I want to make you an offer,” Leo said.

“Like a job offer?”

He gave me a funny look. “Yes,” he said. “Like a job offer.”

Margorie was waiting for me at the end of the block. As I approached, she jumped up and down. She gestured frantically for me to hurry, to run toward her. I kept my typical brisk walking pace. When I reached her, she screamed in my ear. “Leo-fucking-Glass!”

“He certainly seems impressed with himself.” I said it in a deadpan way, as if I could take him or leave him. “I think he wants to offer me a job.”

Margorie bugged her eyes out. “Rosemary.” She said my name in an exasperated way. “Do you know who Leo Glass is?”

“I’m sure you’ll enlighten me.” Even before she replied, my imagination was running wild. He was not like all the other douchebags I had dated. He was rich! And he wanted me for some mysterious job. He had said it was a job. He wanted to meet me at his office. This did not sound like a sex dungeon situation.

Margorie cleared her throat. She took out her phone and began reading from the screen: “Leo Glass. From Wikipedia, the people’s encyclopedia.” Margorie gave me a pointed look.

“He has a Wikipedia page?”

“Yes, he has a Wikipedia page.” Margorie continued reading. No easy feat while we navigated our way down the sidewalk.

“Leo Jameson Glass is an American computer programmer and internet entrepreneur. He is the cofounder of Lookinglass and operates as its chairman and chief executive officer.

“Glass launched Lookinglass with his cofounder, Jamila Heath-Jackson. The pair created Lookinglass from Heath-Jackson’s dorm room at Reed College in Portland, Oregon. Heath-Jackson left the company before Lookinglass went public, leaving Glass at the helm.

“Glass has been nominated three times by Town & Country as one of the world’s most eligible bachelors, and by Forbes as one of the world’s most eligible billionaire bachelors.”

She held up the screen to my face and scrolled down. “There is a lot more, too. Childhood, education, early career—it goes on and on.”

We walked the next block in silence. “Holy shit,” I said when we reached the doors of La Cuisine.

“Yeah,” Margorie said. “That’s what I was trying to tell you.”





CHAPTER 6


The Lookinglass offices took up one narrow brick building downtown. The outside was unassuming—I’d walked by the building many times without noticing it wedged between an outdoor supply company and a French bakery/coffee shop. It wasn’t labeled with a sign, just the Lookinglass logo, a stylized lowercase g.

The elevator opened up to a reception area on the second floor. Two hipsters, one male, the other female, sat at the front desk. Behind the desk was a living wall made from what looked like assorted varieties of moss and microferns. They invited me to wait for Leo on one of the modern couches in the waiting area, next to a fountain made out of recycled junkyard scraps.

There were no magazines on the tables, and I didn’t want to bury my nose in my phone. I wanted to stay alert to my surroundings. I wondered if Leo was watching me as I sat waiting. A kind of test. I stared up at the walls, and dozens of Glasseyes stared back at me, unblinking, nestled along a shelf lined with potted plants.

I was dressed how I thought someone working at Lookinglass would dress. Blazer. Hair pulled back. If I’d had a fake pair of glasses, I would have worn them. I’d polished up my résumé and had it in my bag, just in case. Leo Glass had said he wanted to offer me a job. Maybe he’d seen something in me; maybe this could jump-start a whole new career in tech. Leo said he liked to work “on instinct.” I’d read it in an interview. Maybe he had a gut instinct that I’d be an asset to his company.

In the back of my mind, I must have known it was too good to be true. That it wouldn’t be this easy. Mira had handed me this new life as an escort, only for it to transition into some legit job in a successful tech company, after every other business in the entire Portland Metro area had overlooked me. Even Plaid Pantry.

Still (I reasoned with myself), why would he have invited me to his office? If he wanted a blow job or something, he would have booked a hotel room. And he had said “job offer.” He had used those words, hadn’t he? Wasn’t it possible, then, that all of this could work out? That I could get a job and make enough money to take care of my little sister like I promised? Didn’t we deserve a break, after everything we had been through?