I dug into my purse and pulled out my wallet. I had three dollars in it; just enough to go squat in a Starbucks until the rain passed. I crossed the street and passed a man on the sidewalk holding a worn, folded cardboard sign.
“Out of work. Need meds. N-E-thing helps. God bless,” it said. I felt my stomach turn over. The smell of iced coffee had already hit my nose as two well-dressed young professionals rushed out of the warmly-lit coffee shop. They nearly tripped over the guy, knocking over his cup of coins onto the sidewalk. The woman grimaced sheepishly but didn’t bother to apologize or offer to clean up the mess.
The man leaned forward with dirt-covered knuckles to pick up the pennies and quarters off of the piss-stained ground.
I rushed forward to help him, hoping I wouldn’t rip the skirt in half as I did so. I gathered up the coins that were out of his easy reach and scooped them into the worn Styrofoam cup.
“Thanks,” he said, tilting his head forward in appreciation.
I took the crumpled wad of dollar bills that I’d reserved for my iced coffee and shoved them into his cup, walking away in the wind that was rapidly gaining power. There was nowhere free to go in this city outside of libraries; but that was the case everywhere in this capitalistic society.
I cringed as I thought about how capitalism was exactly the problem I was trying to solve with my business. It was the ultimate irony that I still had to play the game to try to break the game, even in a small way.
I assessed the sky, which was spitting out more and more raindrops by the minute. There was the possibility that I could run from overhang to overhang to dodge the water that was about to pummel me from the sky.
The library was only two blocks away. If I ran, I could make it. I remembered reading once that Jennifer Garner had trained for an acting role by running a track in five-inch heels. If she could do it, so could I.
In a moment of good luck that had been avoiding me for the better part of the last year, I made it to the brass doors of the library just as the heavens opened. The rain was so heavy it felt like God was dumping several million garbage cans full of water onto the streets. I stood with a knot of other people in the threshold of the library. We all watched the water come down.
A young white guy with hipster glasses held up his iPhone. “My weather app says it’ll be fifty minutes more of this.”
Several people groaned and I barely resisted the urge to join them in the disappointment. So much for missing rush hour traffic on the bus lines. Hopefully Callie wouldn’t be too worried about me. I couldn’t afford a reliable cell phone and had no change to use the payphone on the wall.
I was a millennial oddity out of fiscal necessity, not by choice. I turned into the library, the dusty smell of old books, paper, and hushed silence washing over me like its own rain. I went into the periodicals section and grabbed a newspaper without looking at what it was. I just needed something to make it look like I was busy.
I hated accidentally making eye contact with strangers and did my best to avoid it if at all possible. I could daydream while I held the messy newsprint in my hands. That was the best I could do for now. An old man who smelled like musty mothballs had fallen asleep in the worn armchair next to me. The soft snore emanating from his wrinkled mouth reminded me of a kitten purring. I settled into the chair and opened the paper.
My stomach flipped and my heart beat a little faster as my eyes rested upon the image above the fold. The handsome, gorgeous, sculpted face of Chicago’s own billionaire Chosen One, Zane Reid, smoldered up at me.
It was rare to see a photo of him these days. I remembered a time not too long ago that he had been on the cover of the Sun-Times on a weekly basis, though it was usually a photo of him in football gear holding the winning touchdown ball as his teammates swarmed him on the field.
The headline read Reid to Join Boiler Room As Newest Investor. The story detailed how he was moving the most popular primetime show on television to Chicago. I’d caught a few episodes here and there. Okay, that was a lie. I’d been engulfed in more than one binge-watching marathon of all five seasons over the course of the last year of my unemployment. The show was a humiliating, ridiculous affair. It involved ninety-nine percenters begging for money from one percenters.
Yet I’d eaten up every second of it in secret while Callie was at her professional, lucrative job as a lawyer, Callie’s dog curled up next to me on the sofa.
The thought of Zane being on the show was an even more enticing proposition to me; not to be on the show, but to watch him for an hour each week in private. I blushed at the thought, looking around me nervously and pulling the paper up around my face. He was rich, handsome, and a living legend. Who didn’t blush looking at him?
***
“It’s just me!” I called down the light-filled hallway of Callie’s house. Fresh flowers were sitting on the polished, burl wood table. I looped my messy keychain onto the hand-carved wooden hook rack by the door. Callie’s was there as well; hers was an engraved, polished silver monogram key fob. Mine was a Stormtrooper LEGO figurine with the printed face long worn off.
Those two key fobs were a wonderful metaphor for the contrast in our lives.
“Oh thank God!” Callie cried from the kitchen. I turned the corner to find her standing in the kitchen in her designer dress, a glass of red wine on the countertop. “I was so worried.”
“Rainstorm,” I explained. “I didn’t want to ruin your shoes so I holed up in the library for an hour until all the water drained off the sidewalks.”
Callie waved a hand in the air dismissively. “Don’t worry about it, honey, I’ve got plenty more pairs where those came from.”
The acid taste of bile filled my mouth as I considered the ramifications of that statement. I knew that she hadn’t meant it that way, but still it was hard to not take it as an insult. “Is Patrick coming home for dinner?” I asked, tossing my purse onto the counter and sitting on a polished chrome barstool.
“He’s bringing home Lou Malnati’s,” Callie said, tapping into her smartphone with one thumb.
“Whoa, really?” I asked. That was my favorite pizza and Callie hated it. Too much sodium and fat, according to her. I gazed down at my increasingly round midsection. The only good thing about my recent weight gain was that my rack was now bigger than Callie’s. I swept my long auburn hair over my shoulder. I needed a cut but couldn’t afford it.
When Callie ignored me for the contents of her phone, I knew not to interrupt her any further. She was likely sending a decision-making email that would impact the lives of all five hundred people at the law firm where she was partner. I drummed my fingers on the countertop and stared around at the gleaming kitchen. Her husband, Patrick, had recently supervised the redesign during their full-apartment renovation. It was a tasteful blend of country and modern, just like Georgia debutante-turned-city-girl Callie.
I never had a debutante ball. My mother had given up on me by then.
When my sister had offered to let me crash here last year, some of my fellow students at the university were empathetic. They thought that “I’m crashing with my friend and her husband” was going to involve me sleeping on moldering futon. I hadn’t disabused them of that notion. My eviction was bad enough and I didn’t mind the undeserved sympathy for my living situation. The truth was that instead of a moldering futon? I was living in the second master bedroom with an en suite Jacuzzi tub. Callie and Patrick refused to let me pay for rent as well. I doused my guilt by walking their dog, Peaches, every day for two hours through the city.
It kept me fit, got me out of the house, and made Peaches sleep like a baby at night, which was a first for the puppy apparently. I loved Callie and Patrick, but I had to admit that the dog was a vanity project for them. They really shouldn’t have become pet owners.
The front door opened and Patrick called out. “Hey!” he yelled.
“In here, honey!” Callie called back.
The smell of the pizza arrived before Pat
rick did. That was good. I was starving.
“I got the deep-dish Hawaiian, just like you like,” he said to me, setting the heavy brown box on the counter and kissing Callie on the cheek. She blushed slightly. They really were in love.
“That’s my favorite,” I said, feeling odd. They hardly ever ordered pizza, and when they did, it was always an artisanal, gluten free, thin crust from some hipster place in Lincoln Park.
“I know,” Patrick replied. He had a pile of envelopes tucked under his arm. He tossed them on the countertop.
“How was your bank meeting?” Callie asked, sitting next to me and pulling a slice out of the box. She rested it neatly on a porcelain plate. Patrick handed her a fork so she could carve into the steaming bit of cheese, ham, pineapple, tomatoes, and thick, chewy Chicago crust.
“A bust,” I replied heavily, taking out my own slice of pizza. It was all I could do to not inhale it. I needed to chew carefully; if I ate this too fast I was liable to vomit it all up.
Patrick had a look on his face caught somewhere between anticipation and skepticism.
“You look like the cat who swallowed a goddamn canary-filled aviary,” I said through a mouthful of burning cheese. It would scald my tongue but I would regret nothing. I needed fat, salt, and calories like a sex addict needed cock.
Patrick pulled out a thick manila envelope from the mail pile and handed it to me.
“Patrick!” Callie exclaimed, her Southern accent showing itself. “We were going to wait until after dinner…” she raised an eyebrow pointedly.
“What are you all on about?” I asked them, perplexed. “First off, you brought home food that isn’t free-range pork hand-fed by milkmaids. And now…what is this?” I took the heavy envelope in my hands.
“Hopefully you avoided the press today,” Patrick said slowly.
“Yeah, usually they swarm me,” I replied sarcastically, setting down my fork with a twinge of regret at putting off eating even for a second. “But I managed to give them the slip after lunchtime.”
Patrick rolled his eyes. “I meant I hope that you missed the news today. But it’s not like this will be any less surprising if you didn’t.”
I had literally zero idea about what could be in this envelope. I hated surprises. I could see Callie’s face showing that she knew that. And she would know that. In third grade our mother had thrown me a surprise birthday party; I’d walked into our kitchen and when the lights flicked on and I saw the HAPPY BIRTHDAY, RACHEL! banner I’d turned around without a word and fled the property for the library. That was the last time anyone in my family ever did anything like that for me.
I feigned surprise to throw off my own discomfort and went for a sarcastic joke to further protect myself from their combined gazes. I put on a Southern accent that approximated Callie’s. She loved when I did that. “Is this when y’all tell me I’m actually adopted?”
Patrick and Callie laughed. “Just open it, Rach,” Callie said.
I tore the tape off the envelope and undid the brass brad with the tip of my finger. I slid out the thick packet of papers and read.
Dear Ms. Cobb,
We are pleased to inform you that you have reached the final audition round for Boiler Room. We look forward to seeing you in person to meet with our producers Thursday, July 10th, at seven in the morning.
Attached is the address, map, and directions of the screen test you will be doing. Please bring your business plan and do not be late.
Warmly,
Jane Adkins
Boiler Room Production Assistant
I had the good sense to hold onto the packet of papers without dropping them on my greasy pizza. I cleared my throat and set them down, digging back into my plate.
“Well?” Patrick asked, looking panicked. “Are you excited?”
Callie gave him a dark look. “I warned you that she’d be like this. Trust me, the fact that she’s still even in the building is a great, positive sign. I’d take what you got, Patrick.”
“You went behind my back to do this?” I hated feeling like I owed anyone anything. Hated it. It was bad enough that I was living on their dime in their million-dollar Lincoln Park townhouse.
Patrick looked panicked. “I thought…I thought you’d be excited. I know one of the producers and I made a few phone calls.”
I white-knuckled my fingers around the fork. The only thing I hated worse than owing someone was preferential treatment based on who you know.
“I told you, she hates owing people,” Rachel intoned in an I told you so voice.
Patrick guffawed. “This isn’t owing people! It’s a mutually beneficial business relationship. You need money for your business; the investors earn money in return!”
“But my entire business plan is based upon earning as little money as humanly possible,” I objected. “The investors are going to eat me up and swallow me alive. That's if I even make it past the producers.” My mind flashed to my marathon viewings of the show. Scott Friend, known ironically as “Mr. Friendly” would laugh me off the set. I blanched at the very thought.
Patrick swallowed and tilted his head back and forth. It was something he always did when he was nervous. The sound of his spine crackling always freaked me out. As per usual, it was doing absolutely nothing to calm my nerves. “Look, Rachel. The producers know that. If you make it through, you’ll be part of a special Chicago’s Finest episode to kick off the new season. Complete with Zane Reid returning to the spotlight.”
I finished off my pizza slice and went in for a second one. Callie was nearly chugging her can of flavored, sparkling water and had hardly touched her meal. Stress caused her to not eat. More for me, I thought drily. “So I get the human interest pity story treatment, and Boiler Room’s inhuman investors get to feel better about themselves for entertaining me for a few minutes?”
Callie laughed darkly. “She’s taking this just as well as I thought she would, Patrick.”
Patrick put his hands up in surrender. “Okay. Fine. I get it. I really, really do. I just think what you’re planning on doing is fantastic. But it’s not getting off the ground. You need a huge influx of cash. Huge. Enormous. We could sell this apartment, cash out our 401(k) and Roth IRAs and still only have only ten percent of what you need.”
This rankled me, but only because it was the truth. Patrick had an MBA from Wharton. He knew what he was talking about. “I’m getting a ton of press,” I pointed out pitifully. “That has to count for something.”
Patrick exhaled slowly. “Rachel. You and I both know that translates to absolutely nothing if you don’t have the product ready to go out to consumers.”
“I don’t want to get my start from a reality show. It feels like…cheating, somehow.”
Callie finally spoke up. “You need to do this, Rachel. The world needs your idea. Desperately. You know that.”
She was right. So was Patrick.
I had to do this. It was the only shot I had left in the world.
It had to work.
CHAPTER THREE
ZANE
People always cleared the room for me.
It didn’t matter how little I was in the press, how few interviews I managed to do: no one would ever let me forget who I’d been. I was Chicago’s Golden Boy. I’d made history here in the NFL. And then I disappeared.
“Mr. Reid,” said a woman who I was mostly sure was named Jane. “I didn’t think you wanted to be here for the interviews.”
I shrugged. “What the fuck else am I going to do?” Everyone spends their lives saying the only thing they need to be happy is lots and lots of money. The thing billionaires never admit is that it’s the most boring life in existence. Which is precisely why I agreed to do this television show; on the condition that they bring it closer to me.
Despite what I’d said to Jim Smithson: I hated California.
Jane laughed nervously. “Well, this is wonderful. We’ll grab another seat for you.”
I shook my head. “I�
�ll be behind the two-way mirror,” I said, jerking my thumb behind us to the poster-sized rectangle of glass built into the wall. “Can’t use up all of my people skills in one sitting.”
She clearly didn’t know whether to laugh or not. “Mr. Reid, we’ll be getting started with the first of the final dozen candidates. Of those twelve, six will be a part of the show’s season premiere.”
“Great,” I said dispassionately, turning around and heading toward the buffet table. I honestly didn’t care. I looked around to see who else I could intimidate for fun, but the entire staff seemed to be catching the energy I was emanating. They were busy avoiding me.
I filled a plate up with lox and bagels and grabbed a cup of coffee before climbing into the hidden room. It was small and dark with six folding chairs placed in rows.
Just as I was taking my first bite of bagel and salmon, the door opened. “Hey, asshole.” I looked up to see Roger standing there with a grin and a Red Bull. “Fancy seeing you putting in an honest day’s work.”
I smiled and set down my plate, standing up to do the one-harmed hug with back pat that all men seemed to intuitively recognize as the universal sign of brotherly love. “Right the fuck back at you,” I replied.
Roger smiled and sat down, popping open the energy drink with a snap.
“That shit will kill you, bro,” I said cautiously.
He shrugged. “Live fast, die young.” He exhaled and put his feet up on the chair in front of him. His pristine Italian leather shoes sparkled even in the dim light. “You ready for all this bullshit?” He gestured around him. “Television’s not like football. Or the tech industry. You actually have to interact with human beings.”
I grunted in response, setting down my food. “Bagels are dry.” I brushed my hands off on one another. “Why do you do this?”
Roger laughed. “Because this show’s the most popular on primetime and it’s the easiest way I know of to make millions of dollars.” He ran his hand over his perfectly slick-backed hair. Roger resembled a young Christian Bale circa the American Psycho era. To my knowledge he wasn’t dismembering people in his apartment, though. “Hey, looky here. Seems like we’ve got contestant number one.”
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