The Assistants(52)

“I guess I panicked. I was so caught up in the moment.” I knew what Emily was going to say: that I was socially inept, emotionally stunted. And she was right. I was basically the Holden Caulfield of adult dating.

I sat up to shoo away the cookie crumbs that had gathered on my chest just as the apartment’s buzzer rang out.

“Oh my god.” I locked eyes with Emily. “I bet it’s Kevin. He’s been doing this supposedly romantic thing lately called ‘surprising’ me.”

“Or he just wants to hear you say I love you back, you idiot.” Emily glanced out the window and then back at me. “You can’t let him see you this way. You’re a goddamn mess. You have Oreo all over your mouth.”

“What do I do?”

“Go hide in the bathroom and run the showerhead. Quick!”

I did as she said. I could have probably used an actual shower, but instead I put my ear to the bathroom door, trying to hear the action over the whooshing water.

The apartment door opened with a squeak, followed by heavy footsteps.

A gruff voice penetrated the quickly rising steam, nothing like Kevin’s consistently agreeable baritone. “You’re not who I came to see.”

Emily called out to me. “False alarm!”

I skulked out of the bathroom to find Wendi sitting down at our kitchen table. She eyed Emily from head to toe. “This robe you’re wearing,” she said. “It’s bordering on racist.”

Emily swept her hands down the front of her robe’s silky, cherry-blossomed surface. “It’s not like I taped my eyes back or something.”

“I will let that one slide because today is such a happy day.” Wendi reached across the table for Emily’s laptop, pecked it to life, and tapped at a few keys, bringing up the Assistance website.

“Holy cannoli!” I said, sounding like the Italian version of the chick from Fifty Shades of Grey. “Look at all the money!”

The Money Raised ticker had hit $406,813.54.

“This happened overnight?” Emily scrambled for the chair closest to Wendi. “While we were asleep? Do you think people were drunk-donating?”

“Still counts.” Wendi scrolled through the thousands—thousands!—of members who’d already submitted their debt statements to the site.

“I’ve got to hand it to you, Tina,” Wendi said. “This was not my original vision for my program, but it’s working out pretty nicely.”

“This wasn’t my original vision for becoming a millionaire either.” Emily’s face shone with the radiance of her laptop screen. “But it is working out nicely. It’s like, who even remembers anymore what we took from Titan?”

For a moment, I feared Wendi might gore Emily with her horns.

“It’s okay.” I cautiously touched the elbow of Wendi’s hoodie. “She knows not to talk like that outside of this apartment.”

Wendi contorted her face into a sneer and then shifted the laptop away from Emily and closer to me. “Let me show you how the new site works.” She continued scrolling through our many members. “Until we can make this a more perfect science, I suggest just picking a winner at random, like a lottery. Watch me now.”

She double-clicked to open a debt statement for $81,101 that belonged to a twenty-nine-year-old woman in Chicago.

One click, two clicks, three clicks, and an e-check for $81,101 was sent to the woman’s account. The ticker labeled Money Donated flipped accordingly.

“That’s all there is to it,” Wendi said. “The only tricky part is to pace yourself with the money.” She turned the laptop toward me. “Your turn.”

It was so idiotically simple a Gen X monkey with no computer training could have done it. I clicked on a debt statement for $108,023 that belonged to a twenty-six-year-old woman in Portland, Oregon.

One click, two clicks, three clicks, and an e-check for $108,023 was sent to her account.

The Money Donated ticker flipped to $189,124. It made me light-headed, like my first adolescent drag of a cigarette, which by the way was not electronic.

“This could get addictive,” I said.

“Let me do one.” Emily slid the laptop back toward herself.

“Just a moment, Memoir of a Geisha.” Wendi placed a bullying hand on Emily’s silken shoulder. “You have to be careful to limit the amount you give out each day. It has to be a ratio, so people recognize there’s a direct correlation to the giving and receiving. Like supply and demand, understand?”

Emily glanced up from the screen. “Do you honestly think there’ll ever be a supply to meet this much demand? That’s absurd.”

Wendi erupted in inexplicable high-pitched laugher. “You’ve got a better head for business than one would think. You’re correct, this site is the technological equivalent of throwing a bunch of money onto the street. There’s not going to be any left over when you walk away.” She turned to me. “But the more money we take in with time, the more we can distribute. For now, send out five checks a day. No more, no less. This’ll make people excited about it, like a contest or a sweepstakes. Try to mix it up, some small debts with some large ones each day. But obviously you can’t exceed the amount we’ve got in the Money Raised bank at any time.”

“That’s it?” I’d already snatched the laptop back from Emily and was scrolling through the statements, searching for our next winner. “Only five a day?”