by Locklyn Marx
“Dear New Roommate,” the post-it said. “This is my favorite book. Welcome to the apartment. Love, Jack.”
This Jack person was obviously some sort of creeper, she thought, as she pulled the key off and then dropped the book into the garbage can. Not because he was into God. It was more of the vibe he was giving off.
She wondered if the Bible thing was meant to be a joke. When she’d talked to Jack on the phone last night, he’s seemed like the type to joke around. He kept asking her all these crazy questions, like what she thought of bologna sandwiches with ketchup or guys who rode motorcycles. He’d assured her that his brother would be fine with her showing up at seven am. And then she’d paypaled him five hundred dollars and hoped for the best. Not her smartest decision, obviously, but she’d been in dire straits. Hell, she still was.
Alexis opened her suitcase and pulled out a tangle of clothes. Her t-shirts were all rumpled from being grabbed and tossed in hastily. She’d apparently forgotten to pack pants completely, because there were none. Which meant all she had was the pair of black yoga pants she was wearing. She closed her eyes and sighed.
When the few clothes she’d brought with her had been completely unpacked, she decided it was time to explore her new digs. She’d already been in the kitchen, and although it didn’t match the pictures online, it was still quite impressive. Light granite countertops with beveled edges, gleaming maple cabinets, and a subzero refrigerator that was so big Alexis wondered how you could possibly use all that space.
The living room was nondescript. It was neat enough, with an expensive-looking brown leather sofa and the obligatory huge flat screen television guys thought they needed in order to watch sports and impress women.
There was a tall oak bookshelf in one corner, filled with autobiographies and non-fiction books on advertising. Boring.
A big coffee table sat in the middle of the room.
She peeked into the bathroom.
Countertops that matched the granite in the kitchen. A chocolate brown shower curtain and matching rug. She expected the bathroom to be a mess, but it seemed as if everything was neatly organized. The room smelled like hair gel, which was standard for someone who liked to “take care of themselves.”
She headed back down the hall, stopping when she got to what she assumed was Reid’s room. The door was closed. She knew it would be wrong to go in. It would be a horrible breach of trust. If he caught her, he’d kick her out for sure. And then where would she go?
But she’d been good all her life, and look where that had gotten her. Running away from home, ending up in New York City where she knew no one. She had no money. No car. No family. Nothing.
She pushed open the door.
A big oak framed bed sat in the middle of the room, covered with a navy comforter and flanked by two nightstands. A small television was mounted on the wall across from the bed.
She felt like a thief, and her conscience screamed at her to stop. But she had to know what she was dealing with. If she was going to be staying here, she needed to know if Reid was some kind of crazy psycho. Not that crazy psychos would leave anything crazy hanging around. At least, she didn’t think they would.
But what did
she know? Her track record when it came to figuring out who was psycho wasn’t exactly stellar.
She took a deep breath and slid the nightstand drawer open. There was nothing of note in it, unless you counted condoms as being of note. Which she didn’t. In fact, it was so predictable Alexis was almost disappointed.
She poked her head into the closet. A line of suits hung on the rod, along with a tie rack. Shoes were arranged neatly on the floor. A quick peek into Reid’s dresser revealed a row of carefully folded sweatshirts. Probably for when he was out “taking care of himself.”
There was a desk against the wall, and on it sat a picture of a smiling Reid with an older couple. Probably his parents. She was disappointed that Jack wasn’t in the picture.
She would kind of curious to see what he looked like. A framed diploma from Harvard was propped up against the wall, like Reid hadn’t gotten around to hanging it up yet.
So that was it. Alexis was disappointed. Reid was exactly what she thought he’d be. The kind of guy who was raised somewhere like Connecticut or Westchester in a normal, wealthy family and who grew up to wear suits and go running and watch sports and go out to bars and pick up girls so he could come home and have sex.
Whatever. As long as Reid wasn’t crazy, it didn’t matter what he was like. She was only going to be staying here until she could figure out what to do next. And then she would be gone.
She returned to her own room, unpacked her laptop, and plugged it in.
The battery was dead -- she’d been using it on the bus to watch a movie in an effort to drown out the woman on the phone behind her.
She decided to take a shower while her laptop charged.
She wandered back into the hallway and opened the small door across from the bathroom, hoping it was the linen closet. It was. She pulled a towel down and sniffed it experimentally. It smelled clean. Reid probably had a cleaning woman. And sent his laundry out. He obviously had the money. And there was no way any man kept their place this spotless.
Alexis grabbed another towel, then took them both into the bathroom. She would take a nice long, hot shower. And then she was going to come up with a plan.
***
Reid’s run was all off. He couldn’t get into any kind of rhythm, and his favorite playlist – the one he’d entitled GET IT DONE – had inexplicably disappeared from his iPod. Actually, it wasn’t that inexplicable, when you took into account the fact that Jack had borrowed the iPod a few days ago. He’d probably deleted it by accident.
It was this girl, Alexis, showing up at his apartment that was throwing him off, Reid decided. He hated when anything came along that messed with his routines.
Especially on a day when he was supposed to be working on a huge pitch.
Reid was the creative director at The Lawson Agency, an advertising firm his father had founded twenty years ago. Today Reid was supposed to be spending the day trying to come up with campaign ideas for Vista Collection, a new women’s clothing company. It was a huge account, and getting in on the ground floor with a sophisticated brand like Vista could mean millions of dollars of business for years to come. But first Reid had to come up with something amazing. And he couldn’t do that if he couldn’t concentrate.
He just needed to focus, he told himself. He’d feel better once he had a shower and got to work.
But when he got back to the apartment, the bathroom door was closed, and the shower was already on. The door to the linen closet was open, and two towels were missing. Great. Now there was going to be no hot water.
He went to his room and picked out the suit he was going to wear for the day.
Then he came back to the hallway and paced around. How long was she going to be in there? He waited five minutes, and was just about to knock, when the bathroom door opened and Alexis emerged.
She was wearing nothing but a towel. Her long blonde hair clung to her cheeks in wet tendrils, and her face was scrubbed clean. Her skin was glowing. His gaze dropped down to the towel. It barely covered anything. The slight curve of her breasts peeked out from the material, and the bottom of the towel hit just above her knees.
She was drying her hair with another towel, and she flipped her head over, giving him a peek down the top of her towel. Her breasts looked luscious and firm, and he felt himself harden. She flipped back over, twisting the second towel around her hair.
“Hey,” she said. “Um, sorry. I didn’t know when you’d be back. You probably want to shower.”
“Yeah. We’ll have to work out some kind of schedule in the future.” And you’re going to have to stop walking around half naked. He pushed past her and into the bathroom. Or else I’m not going to be responsible for what’s going to happen.
***
Alexis watched as
Reid pushed past her and into the bathroom. Her heart drummed in her chest. She should have thought about the possibility that he’d be home before she came out into the hallway dressed in just a towel! She’d tried to act like it was no big deal, but she was totally embarrassed. The towel barely covered anything.
She took a deep breath and told herself to relax. Just because some guy she’d just met saw her in a towel didn’t mean she had to get all weird about it.
Once she was safely back in her room, she dressed quickly in her yoga pants and a fresh t-shirt, and then opened her laptop. She needed to find a job. She’d been a teacher in Pennsylvania, but the last thing she wanted to do was go back to teaching.
She’d never wanted to be a teacher. In fact, the only reason she’d ended up teaching was because of Leo. Thinking of Leo made her pulse pound and her head start to spin. Don’t think about him. Just focus on what you’re doing. Take it one step at a time.
Alexis was only licensed to teach in Pennsylvania, which meant if she wanted to teach here, she’d have to do a bunch of testing to get recertified. Plus, there was no way she was going to get a reference from her old principal. Not now. Not after what had happened.
She clicked around on monster.com, not really sure where to start. What did she want to do? How did she want to do it? There were so many different job categories–
public relations, hospitality, publishing….there was even a category for aviation.
And the requirements! She had no idea how anyone could even be a candidate for any of these jobs. They all required you to have degrees and experience and speak foreign languages.
She shut her computer and looked around the room. It was defeating, looking for a job. Suddenly, she felt claustrophobic, like she needed some fresh air. Maybe she would go out and do a little shopping. She still had her credit card. It was supposed to be for emergencies only, but didn’t this count as an emergency? She had no pants, for God’s sake.
The shower was still going, so she knew there was no way she’d run into Reid.
She grabbed the key Jack had left for her, then took the elevator down to the lobby and out onto the sidewalk.
As soon as she walked outside, she felt better. It was early enough so that the summer morning was still cool. She gulped air and raised her face to the sun.
After a moment, she looked around. The city was overwhelming. All the people and cabs and cars and honking and yelling. She didn’t really feel comfortable hailing a cab, especially since she didn’t know exactly where she was going.
She decided to stick to places that were within walking distance. There were plenty to choose from, and Alexis didn’t mind walking. In fact, she found it kind of relaxing. She’d been so tightly wound when she’d left Pennsylvania that she needed the physical release.
She headed into the first shop she saw that looked remotely interesting, and filled her arms with pants. She tried them on and picked out two pairs of jeans, a pair of black pants, and a pair of grey leggings.
“Looks like you found something you liked,” the salesgirl said, giving her a smile.
“Will that be cash or credit?”
“Credit,” Alexis said. But as she pulled out her card, she started to get slightly nervous. Was paying with a credit card dangerous? After all, the bill went to her apartment in Pennsylvania. She could change the address, of course, even get a new card, but that would take at least a few days, maybe even longer.
Don’t worry about it. You’re just being paranoid.
But when she out of the store and back onto the sidewalk, her breath was coming in short bursts, and her eyes were watering. It was hot out, she realized suddenly, and she felt like she needed a drink.
There was a lunch truck up on the corner. If she could just get there, she could buy a bottle of water or something. But the pavement was starting to curve below her feet. Why was it doing that? Why was the street moving?
She looked around for someone to help her, but everyone was moving too fast, rushing by her, bumping into her as they passed.
She tried to open her mouth, but she couldn’t talk. She couldn’t speak. Her voice was caught in her throat.
The pavement continued to move beneath her feet, and the sound of car horns echoed through her head. She tried to take another step forward, but her legs felt wobbly, like she was trying to walk on cooked spaghetti.
“Are you okay, miss?” a woman asked.
Alexis tried to nod her head. She reached for the woman’s arm, but all she felt was the material of the woman’s shirt slipping through her fingers.
And then everything went dark.
***
Reid was in a completely bullshit meeting, the first of many bullshit meetings he was going to have to sit through before they actually made the pitch to Vista Collection.
“Look,” Reid said. “We’ve come up with a pretty good idea of what they want.
Now we need to work on coming up with a tagline and concept.”
His team groaned. They were all gathered around the conference table in the middle office of the Lawson Agency. Most advertising agencies these days had open concept spaces and relaxed atmospheres. A lot of them were decorated in modern colors, with oversized, comfortable furniture and big tables instead of desks. It was supposed to foster creativity. But not the Lawson agency. Reid’s father, David Lawson, refused to redo the offices. David’s belief was that if you relaxed things even a little, your work would suffer.
“I really don’t think this is the direction that Vista Collection wants to go in,”
Richard Mueller said from his spot on Reid’s left.
“And why’s that, Richard?” Reid asked, trying to keep the edge out of his voice.
The last thing he wanted to do was get into it with Richard. Actually, that wasn’t completely true. He did want to get into it with Richard, wanted to yell at him and scream at him in front of everyone.
But that would be unprofessional.
“I just don’t think the client is looking for something fun and whimsical,” Richard said now. “They seem like they want the brand to be more sophisticated.”
“Except they brought up the word ‘whimsical’ about ten times in the briefing, which you would have know if you were there.” Not that it would have mattered.
Richard loved to fight about everything.
The other people at the table exchanged nervous glances, wondering how far the two men were going to push each other.
“Look, all I’m saying is that sometimes you can get hemmed into one idea,”
Richard said. “One idea that makes you blind to other possibilities.”
What the fuck was he talking about? Reid was completely open to different possibilities. He opened his mouth to defend himself, but before he could, his cell phone buzzed on the table in front of him.
He looked down. It was a 212 area code, but a number he didn’t recognize.
“I have to take this,” he said, standing up and moving out of the room. He hoped Richard Mueller thought it was some kind of important business call that didn’t include him.
“Reid Lawson,” he barked into the phone. It had better be a new client.
“Yes, hello, is this Reid Lawson?” a timid woman’s voice asked on the other end of the line.
“Hence me answering the phone Reid Lawson,” he said. It never paid to waste time being nice to someone when you could tell they had no idea what they were really calling about. He got a few calls like this a week, usually from someone who was starting some small business and wanted to inquire about advertising. What these people didn’t realize is that the average cost of a Lawson Agency advertising campaign was half a million dollars.
They’d done work for Coke, Old Navy, The Gap, and Taco Bell. They certainly weren’t the kind of agency who worked on Mom and Pop’s New Pet Store. Although they would, if Mom and Pop had the money to spend.
“Yes, well, Mr. Lawson, this is Mount Sinai Medical Center, and we have a woman here
who was brought in by ambulance.”
“Who is it?” he asked. His pulse quickened and adrenaline pushed through his body. Could it be his mother? She lived in Connecticut with his father, but she’d been known to come to the city for a day of shopping. Maybe she’d fallen, maybe she’d been -
“Her name’s Alexis Castalano. We found your information in her purse.”
Shit. He rubbed his temples. “Is she okay?”
“I’m not at liberty to give that information out over the phone, sir.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means that I’m not privy to the patient’s condition, and even if I were, I wouldn’t be at liberty to discuss that kind of thing over the phone.” The woman, who just a second ago had seemed timid, was now starting to sound slightly haughty.
“So what you’re saying is that I have to come down there.”
“You don’t have to do anything, sir. I’m just following proper hospital protocol by calling the patient’s emergency contact number.” The woman’s tone now conveyed that he’d be a total asshole if he didn’t drop everything and come down there immediately.
And it was true. Still. He was in the middle of an important meeting and he hardly knew this girl. He’d just met her a few hours ago, for fuck’s sake.
“She didn’t have anyone else’s number on her?” he tried.
“No, sir.”
“And you can’t just tell me if she’s okay or not? Without getting into specifics?”
“No.” Now the woman sounded really annoyed, like she couldn’t believe she was still having this conversation, that any sane person would have been on their way to the hospital by now.
“You know I don’t know this girl,” he said. “I just met her this morning.”
Silence.
“Okay,” he said, sighing. “I’ll be right there.”
Chapter Three
It took Reid’s cab fifty minutes to get to the hospital, then another ten minutes of actually wandering around before he found Alexis.