by Max Barry
She slung the queen and two aces onto the table. “Catch her if you can.” She flipped them, began to switch them around. “Loves her exercise, does the queen. Always takes her morning constitutional. Problem is, where does she go?” The guy wasn’t even looking at the cards. “Hard to win if you don’t watch, sir. Very tricky.” His ID tag said: HI! I’M LEE! Below that: AUTHORIZED QUESTIONNAIRE ADMINISTRATION AGENT. “Lee, is it? You must be good if you can follow the queen without looking at her, Lee. Very good.”
“I am,” he said, smiling. He hadn’t taken his eyes off her.
She decided to take Lee’s two dollars. If he ponied up again, she would take that. She would ask if he wanted to double up and she would take that and she would be merciless, not give him a single game, because Lee was a dick.
The crowd murmured. She was flicking the cards too fast, holding nothing back. She stopped. Pulled away her hands. There was a collective titter and some applause. She was breathing fast.
“Well,” she said. “Let’s see how good you are, Lee.”
He still hadn’t looked at the cards. The guy behind and to his right, one of the market researchers, smiled at her brilliantly, as if he’d only just noticed her. The other boy muttered to the girl, “Good thing is I’m right where I wanna be, right in the best possible place,” and the girl nodded and said, “Yeah, you’re so right.”
“On the right,” Lee said.
Wrong. “You sure about that? Want a moment to think?” But her hands were already moving, eager to claim victory. “Last chance to—”
“Queen on the right,” he said, and as Emily touched the cards, she felt her fingers slide under and to the right. Her left hand went out in a flashy extension that did nothing but draw the eye, and her right slipped one card below the other.
There was scattered applause. Emily stared. The queen of hearts was on the right. She had switched them. At the last moment, she had switched them. Why had she done that?
“Well done, sir.” She noticed Benny shifting his feet, glancing around for cops, no doubt wondering what the hell she was doing. “Congratulations.” She reached into her money pouch. Two bucks. A difference of four, between winning and losing. That was a meal. It was a down payment on a night of chemical joy. She held out the bills, and when Lee took them, it hurt. He tucked them into his wallet. The girl glanced at her watch, something plastic and shiny. One of the boys yawned. “Play again? Double up, perhaps? A man like you likes to play for real money, am I right?” She was pushing, could hear the strain in her own voice, because she knew she’d lost him.
“No. Thank you.” He looked bored. “There’s nothing here I want.”
• • •
“What the fuck?” said Benny.
She kept walking, hunched over, her Pikachu bag on her back, the floppy hat wobbling about. The sun was setting but heat radiated out of the sidewalk, coming off the brick tenements in waves. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“You never let a guy like that win the first game.” Benny was carrying the table. “He gets ahead, it’s over. He doesn’t care about money. He cares about beating you. You gave him what he wanted.”
“I flipped the wrong card, okay? I flipped the wrong card.”
“That guy was going to play.” Benny kicked a plastic bottle. It spun across the sidewalk and onto the road, where a passing car ran over it with a crunch. “He was good for twenty, easy. Maybe fifty.”
“Yeah, well.”
Benny stopped. Emily stopped, too. He was a good guy, Benny. Until he wasn’t. “Are you taking this seriously?”
“I am, Benny.” She tugged at his arm.
“Fifty bucks.”
“Yeah. Fifty bucks.” She felt her eyes widen. This would piss Benny off, but she couldn’t help it. She was perverse sometimes.
“What?”
“Come on.” She tugged his arm. It was like stone. “Let’s get some food. I’ll cook you something.”
“Fuck you.”
“Benny—”
“Fuck you!” He shook her off, let the table drop to the sidewalk. His fists bunched. A passing man in a collared business shirt glanced at her, then at Benny, then away. Thanks, guy. “Get away from me!”
“Benny, come on.”
He took a step forward. She flinched. When he hit, he meant it. “Do not follow me home.”
“Fine,” she said. “Jesus, fine.” She waited until the violence drained out of him, then put out her hand. “At least give me my money. I made a hundred twenty today; give me half.” Then she ran, because Benny’s eyes popped in the way that meant she’d pushed him too far, again. Her Pikachu bag bounced against her back. Her floppy hat fell off and she left it on the sidewalk. When she reached the corner, Benny was half a block back. He’d chased her, but not far. She was glad she’d held on to her bag. Her jacket was in there.
• • •
She slept in Gleeson’s Park, beneath a hedge that people didn’t notice and that had escape routes on two sides. She woke to a midnight screaming match, but it was nobody she knew and too far away to be a threat. She closed her eyes and fell asleep to fuck and cunt and mine. Then it was dawn and a drunk was pissing on her legs.
She scrambled up. “Dude. Dude.”
The man stumbled back. “Sorry.” He barely got the word out.
She inspected herself. Spatters on her pants, boots. “Dude, the fuck?”
“I . . . didn’t . . . see . . .”
“Fuck,” she said, and pulled her bag out of the hedge and went looking for a bathroom.
• • •
There was a public restroom in a corner of the park. It wasn’t a place she went if she could help it, but the sun was rising and her pants were stiffening with urine. She circled its cinder block exterior, carrying her boots, until she was sure it was empty, then stood in the doorway, thinking. Only one way out, was the problem with public restrooms. One way out and you could holler all you wanted; nobody would come to help. But she went in. She checked the lock, just in case it had been repaired since the last time she was here. No. She tugged off her pants and stuffed them and her sock under a faucet. Concrete air tickled her skin. She threw glances toward the doorway, because this was a really bad position to be in should anyone appear, but no one came, so she got confident and lifted her leg to wash beneath the faucet. The paper towel dispenser was empty, so she mopped herself dry with translucent squares of toilet paper.
She opened her bag. Maybe better clothes had materialized while she wasn’t looking. No. She closed the bag and wrung out her jeans as best she could. What she would have liked to do was carry them over to the park and dry them on the grass while she lay in the sun, legs bare, eyes closed. Just soaking up rays. Her and her jeans. Another time, maybe. Another universe. She began to pull on her damp pants.
• • •
As she wandered down Fleet, her stomach tweaked. It was too early for the soup kitchens. She thought about hitting up a friend. Maybe Benny had cooled down. She chewed her lip. She felt like a McMuffin.
Then she saw him: Lee, of the long hair and cheap suit, Lee who had taken her two dollars. He was planted on a street corner, clipboard in hand, approaching commuters with a fake smile. He was in market research, she remembered; she’d seen that on his ID. She watched him. It felt like he owed her.
When she approached, his eyes shifted to her briefly from the man he was quizzing. “You owe me breakfast,” she said.
“Thank you so much,” Lee told the man. “I appreciate your time.” He wrote something on his clipboard and flipped the page. When he was done writing, he smiled at Emily. “It’s the hustler.”
“I let you win,” she said. “I took pity on you. Buy me an Egg McMuffin.”
“You let me win?”
“Come on. I’m a professional. You don’t take a game off me unless I give it to you.” She smiled. It was hard to tell if this was working. “Fair’s fair. I’m hungry.”
“I’d have thought a professi
onal could afford her own Egg McMuffin.”
“Sure,” she said, “but I’m letting you pay because I like your face.”
Lee looked amused. It was the first nice expression she’d seen from him. “Okay.” He tucked his pen into his clipboard. “Tell you what, I will buy you an Egg McMuffin.”
“Two Egg McMuffins,” she said.
• • •
She bit down and it was as good as she’d imagined. Across the Formica table, Lee sat with his arms spread along the back of the booth seat. Outside, children yipped and chased each other around a neon playground. Who brought their kids to McDonald’s for breakfast? She shouldn’t be judging. She gulped coffee.
“You are hungry,” said Lee.
“Tough times.” She chewed her muffin. “It’s the economy.”
Lee wasn’t eating. “How old are you?”
“Eighteen.”
“I mean really.”
“Eighteen.” She was sixteen.
“You look young to be on your own.”
She shrugged, unwrapping the next McMuffin. Lee had bought her three, plus the coffee and hash browns. “I’m okay. I’m fine. How old are you?”
He watched her devour the muffin. “Why did you want a McMuffin?”
“I haven’t eaten in, like, a day.”
“I mean a McMuffin in particular.”
“I like them.”
“Why?”
She eyed him. It was a stupid question. “I like them.”
“Right.” He looked away for the first time.
She didn’t want to talk about herself. “Where are you from? Not here.”
“How can you tell?”
“It’s a gift.”
“Well,” he said, “you’re right. I travel. City to city.”
“Asking people to fill out questionnaires?”
“That’s right.”
“You must be really good at that,” she said. “You must be, like, extremely talented at asking people to fill out questionnaires.” His expression didn’t change. She didn’t know why she was trying to needle him. He had bought her food. But still. She didn’t like him. It took more than McMuffins to change that. “What brings you to San Francisco?”
“You.”
“Oh yeah?” She hoped this wasn’t a running situation. She’d had enough of running. She swallowed the last of the McMuffin and started on the hash browns, because it would be good if she could get all this down first.
“Not you in particular. Your type. I’m looking for people who are persuasive and intransigent.”
“Well, bingo,” she said, although she didn’t know what intransigent meant.
“Unfortunately, you failed.”
“I failed?”
“You let me take your money.”
“Hey. That was a pity win. I already said. You want to try again?”
He smiled.
“I’m serious. You won’t win again.” She meant it.
“Hmm,” he said. “Okay, tell you what. I’ll give you another shot.”
Benny had her cards. But she could get more, then she’d push this guy to a hundred, ask to see color, and the second the bills touched the table, she’d grab them and run. She’d go to Benny and tease him awhile. Guy was good for about twenty, you said? She loved the look he got when she brought him money. Maybe fifty? “Let me finish my coffee, we’ll go to the store across the street—”
“Not cards. A different kind of test.”
“Oh,” she said doubtfully. “Like what?”
“Like, don’t blow me.”
She was startled, but his expression hadn’t changed, so maybe she heard this wrong, or it was an expression, somehow. Maybe he meant: Don’t blow me off. There were plenty of people nearby, so no immediate problem. But she’d need to find a way to leave alone.
“My job is not actually to administer questionnaires. My job is to test people. Think of it as a job interview that you don’t know you’re having.”
She swallowed the last of the hash browns. “Well, thanks for thinking of me, but you know, I’m pretty happy with what I’ve got going on now. Thanks, though.” She gulped coffee dregs. “Thanks for the breakfast.” She reached for her bag.
“It pays.”
She hesitated. “How much?”
“How much do you want?”
“I make five hundred a day now,” she said, which was an outrageous lie, of course. She made between zero and two hundred dollars a day, and split that with Benny.
“This would be more.”
“How much more?” She caught herself. What was she thinking? He was wearing a plastic watch. He would take her to some dingy apartment and lock the door. There was no job. “Look, you know what, I’m just gonna pass.”
He reached into a pocket and opened his wallet. She’d noted yesterday that he had no more than twenty dollars in there. He unzipped a section and tossed notes onto the table. She stared. There were a lot of them.
“We wear cheap clothing because it would seem odd if we stood around on street corners in ten thousand dollar suits.”
“I see,” she said, not really listening.
“Let go of your bag.”
She looked at him. Apparently it was obvious that she had been thinking of snatching that cash and running like hell. She released the bag.
“You get a first-class air ticket to our head office in DC. You spend one week there, doing a round of tests. If you pass, you become a trainee on a starting salary of sixty thousand dollars. Fail, and we fly you home again with five thousand in an envelope for your trouble. How does that sound?”
“Like a scam.”
He laughed. “I know. It does sound like a scam. I thought the same thing when they approached me.”
She kept looking at the cash on the table. She didn’t want to. It was irresistible.
“You went to school,” Lee said. “I mean, at some point. And it didn’t suit you very well. They wanted to teach you things you didn’t care about. Dates and math and trivia about dead presidents. They didn’t teach persuasion. Your ability to persuade is the single most important determinant of your quality of life, and they didn’t cover that at all. Well, we do. And we’re looking for students with natural aptitude.”
“Okay,” she said. “I’m interested; I’ll take a ticket.”
He smiled. She remembered his comment about the blow job. She must have gotten that backward. He must want her to blow him in exchange for the air ticket. That way made sense. She wondered if there really was a job. He was kind of believable.
“Show me something,” she said. “Something official.”
He slid a business card across the table. His full name was Lee Bob Black. She tucked this into her bag, feeling better. This card enabled her to call Lee’s boss and explain what Lee had asked her to do in exchange for a job. She hoped it was a big company, the kind that hated publicity. She hoped there was really a job, because she would be awesome at it.
“Now you know who I am,” said Lee. “Who are you?”
“Emily.”
“Are you a cat person or a dog person?”
“What?”
“Cats or dogs? Which do you prefer?”
“What do you care?”
He shrugged. “I’m just making conversation.”
“I hate cats. Too sneaky.”
“Ha,” he said. “What’s your favorite color?”
“This is your idea of conversation?”
“Just answer the question.”
“I’m just saying, as someone who knows about banter, you’re really terrible at it,” she said. “Black.”
“Close your eyes and pick a number between one and a hundred.”
“Are these from your questionnaires?”
“Yes.”
“You’re surveying me? Is this the test?”
“Part of it.”
“I’m not closing my eyes. Thirty-three.”
“Do you love your family?”
S
he didn’t move. “Are you serious? You think I’d be here if I had a good family?” She almost got up. But she didn’t. “No.”
“Okay, then,” said Lee. “Last question. Why did you do it?”
She stared.
“Don’t manufacture an answer,” said Lee. “I’ll be able to tell, and it will invalidate the test.”
“This is a bullshit question, isn’t it?”
“How do you mean?”
“You don’t even know what you’re asking. You just want me to think you do.”
He shrugged.
“This doesn’t sound like a survey.”
“It’s a personality test.”
“Is this Scientology?”
“No.”
“Amway?”
“I promise it’s not Amway. It’s no one you’ve heard of. You’re very close, Emily. What’s your answer?”
“To your bullshit question?”
“You don’t have to believe it. You just have to answer honestly.”
“Fine,” she said. “I did it because I felt like it.”
Lee nodded. “One disappointing thing about this job. People always turn out to be less interesting than you hope.” Before Emily could decide whether he’d insulted her, he spoke a jumble of words. They slid by her and were gone. She felt dazed. “Go to the restroom,” he said. “Wait there for me.”
• • •
She walked to the counter. She was leaving her bag behind, but that was okay. Lee would look after it. She asked a boy behind the register for the bathroom key and he gave her a look but handed it over. There was a single stall. She closed the toilet lid and sat on it.
After a minute, the door opened and Lee came in, talking on a cell phone. Her heart thumped. He was kind of handsome. His face grew on you. She even liked his hair. She sort of loved him. “Yeah,” Lee told his phone. “But hey, we’re here, let’s give it one more pass.” He stopped in front of her. She watched him fumbling with his zipper. She was in an interesting place. She was present, but remote. Everything was curious and amusing. Lee jammed his cell phone against his shoulder, dug into his pants, and pulled out his penis. It was longer than she expected. It bobbed in front of her, curving upward before her eyes. “I’m actually with her now,” said Lee. “Thought there was something there, for a minute.” He covered the phone. “Put it in your mouth.”