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“But of course. Have you met my family?”
“Your husband, yes. His research isfascinating.” He’s an evolutionary biologist. We teared up together over the tawny frogmouths, who mate for life and let themselves starve by the body of their dead partner. Good times.
“What about Austin, my son? He just got home. He’s staying with us—currently between... careers. Looks like spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to major in golf management was not a good investment.” Her smile is tight. “Did you know Jack and Austin hang out?”
“Oh.” I look between Jack and Monica, who seem to find the fact, respectively, amusing and teeth-grind worthy.
“We play basketball at the same gym,” Jack explains. His voice vibrates through me, like he’sveryclose.
“On Sunday nights. Right during our family dinner—which Austin hasn’t attended in weeks.”
“Maybe you should install a hoop in your living room.” He points at the wall. “Right there, between those two fossils?”
“Maybeyoushould install a hoop up your—oh, there he is. Austin, dear, let me introduce you to our guest of honor.”
A tall man resentfully stops staring at his phone to come to us. He’s handsome in a common, forgettable kind of way, and initially I think that’s why he looks vaguely familiar. But as I watch him exchange a friendly handshake with Jack, I realize it’s more than that. I’m positive that I’ve seen him before. Where, though? I cannot place him. One of my students? No. He must be in his late twenties.
Then it hits me. When Monica says, “Austin, this is a future potential colleague, Dr. Elsie Hannaway.”
Because Austin’s response is to give me the once-over, snort, and then say, “No, she’s not.”
And that’s when it occurs to me that the last time I met Austin Salt, he offered me seventy dollars to have sex with him.
9
ESCAPE VELOCITY
Fuck.
Fuck,fuck, fuck.
It was my fifth or sixth date through Faux, four years ago, and Francesca, the app manager, was scrambling to find someone last minute. “The client doesn’t even want a preliminary meeting,” she told me over the phone. I was running across campus, from an astroparticle seminar to an Intro to Physics TA meeting, frantically dodging gaggles of undergrads. “All he needs is ‘arm candy’—his words. It’s the formal inauguration of a new golf course, and he wants to impress his boss. If someone asks, you met through friends a couple of months ago and work in insurance. Background check’s good, and he’ll pay extra for short notice—you in?”
Rent was due in a week, and I had a grand total of two rotten bananas in the fridge. So I wore one of the three cheap cocktail dresses Cece and I had gone halfsies on, watched a winged eyelinertutorial, and in the cab ride to the suburbs, got myself carsick editing a fellowship application due the following day.
Austin had gelled-back hair and answered the phone with “Talk to me.” Not a bad client as much as an absentee one. “Arm candy” seemed to be code forpretty wallpaper, which meant that my job was to sit at our table, smile widely when he introduced me as Lizzie, and wonder why the fancy asparagus crepes were decorated with strawberries. There was lots of downtime, which I used to do some grading, phone hidden under the expensive linen tablecloth. At the end of the night he gave me a ride. We chatted about the hows and whys of golf till we got downtown, at which point he offered me seventy bucks to have sex with him. I said no.
To be fair, he started lower. And to be fairer, I had to say no several times (peppered with a few yeses when questions veered to “Are you serious?” and “Are you saying people pay you to just look hot next to them?” and “Are you really going to act like a bitch?”). I wasn’t too scared, because we were on a non-deserted sidewalk. I turned on my heels and ignored him as he yelled, “You’re not even that hot! Your tits are tiny and your makeup is shit!”
The following day I told Francesca, who made a gagging noise on the phone, asked the million-dollar question (“God, Elsie. Whyaremen?”), and blocked him from the client database. For the following fake dates, I made an effort to do better makeup and use push-up bras. As a people pleaseranda graduate student, I was primed to take all sorts of constructive criticism to heart.
And that was the end of it.
Or just an intermission? Because when Austin looks at me and snorts and says, “No, she’s not,” the temperature around me drops. I look into Austin’s resentful eyes, and my nerves screech. My brainices over and then shatters into a million tiny razor-sharp fragments that crash noisily into my skull.
I know that I am fucked. Well and truly fucked.
Monica gasps. “For God’s sake, Voight’s about to spill his wineglass on my Fendi chair.” She scurries away, and I cannot breathe.
“What are you doing here?” Austin takes a step closer, and the smell hits: he’s been drinking. I’m going to puke in the cow skull.
“Hi, Austin. How are you?” I sound solid, I think. Self-assured, but he ignores me.
“Honestly, it’s a good move. You kind of sucked as a hooker.”
My shoulder blades make sudden contact with something hard and warm. I must have physically recoiled. And pushed back into—
Jack is behind me. Witnessing all of this. Cross-referencing notes about how terrible I am with Austin. Shit.Shit—“What did you just say?” he asks.
