No One Knows Us Here(17)
“How did people find each other, before all this? They went to bars. They went to coffee shops. They’d sit there for hours nursing a warm beer, trying to summon up the nerve to talk to the girl sitting up at the bar, right? Now that same dude can keep an eye on girls in every bar with Glasseye compatibility, every coffee shop. He can sit at home in his tighty-whities creeping on fifty girls at once.”
We exchanged amused smirks.
“You go to Starbucks, and strangers watch you,” he went on. “You go to the same one every day, so does some guy, you get to talking in line one day—who knows, right? Anything could happen,” Leo went on. “With Lookinglass, it’s the same thing. The same exact thing. Some guy watches you, you watch him back. Maybe you start chatting. Maybe you meet up in real life. You just increase your odds is all.”
“That’s your idea of a relationship? Watching each other doing all their boring things through a screen?”
“What’s your idea of a relationship?” Leo smiled at me like I was finally getting it, like I was answering the question he had brought me here to ask.
“I don’t know. Having a real connection with someone? Knowing someone—everything about them—having them know everything about you, too. And choosing to be with them anyway.”
“You’re a romantic.”
“Nah,” I said. “What I described—it doesn’t exist.”
“What if I told you that wasn’t what constituted a successful relationship? That it’s not about knowing someone deep down, soul connections, hearts in your eyes, any of that fairy-tale stuff?”
“Tell me. What does make a successful relationship?” I smiled now. Easy, confident. I was killing this interview.
“It’s making a decision. It’s choosing someone, and them choosing you—and simply choosing each other again and again.”
I nodded, taking it in. It made sense. It seemed to make sense. “So you’re saying that Lookinglass—”
“This isn’t about Lookinglass,” Leo interrupted. “This is about you.”
“Me?”
“I choose you.”
Everything dropped out from under me then: this wasn’t a job interview. Maybe Leo noticed something change in me, something flicker across my face, but I didn’t think so. I’d dressed all wrong for the part. My blazer. The résumé tucked in my bag. I should have worn one of Mira’s dresses. I should have curled my hair. When my voice came out, it sounded perfectly composed, no different than before. “And you choose me. Based on—what? A picture? One lunch?”
“That’s what I’m telling you. It doesn’t have to be based on anything. I decide, you decide, boom. That’s it. That’s all it takes. Look, I get it. It goes against every little fantasy you ever had about how this is supposed to go. And how does it work, on practical terms? I’d need to find someone who was on board, someone willing to test it out. That’s when it occurred to me. I’m in a unique position to get exactly what I want. All the problems I usually have—I can make those disappear.”
“You want to pay me to—what, exactly?”
“To be my girlfriend.”
To my credit, I didn’t show my disappointment. My posture was perfect, shoulders back. In an instant, I let it drift away, my entire fantasy of being a legitimate businesswoman, coming home to Wendy wearing a business suit, kicking off my sensible heels and flopping my briefcase on the kitchen counter. I was too stunned to think much beyond that, that absurd, deflated dream.
Leo walked over to his desk and held up a folder embossed with the Lookinglass logo. He returned to his seat across from me and slid the folder across the coffee table. Then he gestured for me to open it up and look inside.
I had seen job offers made like this on television and in movies, but never in real life. Offers slid over tables in folders, as if everything tucked within was too serious, too important to utter out loud.
Inside was nothing but a hot-pink Post-it with a number written on it in black ink.
I looked up at him, incredulous. “Twenty-five hundred dollars? A month?” I tossed the folder back on the table. It was barely more than I was making now, and I lived in a closet.
He lifted both hands up in a lazy shrug. “I’ll be gone a lot.”
“Not to be crass, but if I were hooking up with dudes like your pal Doug, I’d only need to do it three times a month to make that much. To make more than that.”
“Well, sure,” Leo said. “But if you take this offer, you won’t have to.”
All right. He had me there. But still. Twenty-five hundred dollars? “I need a job, Leo,” I said. “A real job. I need a place to live, a place for my sister to live. I have responsibilities. Social services is hardly going to let me turn tricks out of my apartment.” In that moment I was a triumphant young woman, refusing to be bought, standing up for what she believed she deserved.
I strode to the door and banged up against it, almost stumbling backward.
Leo was standing over me. He pulled the swipe card that was dangling over my neck and touched it to the pad by the door. A little green light turned on, and Leo opened the door. “I’ll be in touch,” he said.
CHAPTER 7
The next morning I stumbled out of my apartment, and there was Alejandro waiting for me on the sidewalk, a tall Starbucks cup in each hand. I had almost run into him in my rush to get out the door and make it to work on time. I stopped short, startled. “What are you doing here?”