“So,” Tyler continued, “why did Jays send you to Hamish McGregor’s ugly penthouse?”
“I think I’m becoming a kind of protégé?”
“You mean upscale errand boy?” Tyler asked.
Lucas made a face.
“Anyway, I ran into this guy I met a while back named Nicholas Spragg. Sofia, maybe you can help me figure him out. He says he manages his family’s art collection, from all the family castles. But the first time we met, his great-grandfather was a Bavarian count. The next time he was a Hungarian duke.”
“That doesn’t seem so crazy,” Sofia said. “Maybe on one side it was a count from Germany and on the other side a duke from Hungary?”
“Sure, except that I Googled him, and it seems his father owns Kingswood Hotels.”
Tyler nodded. “So they’re loaded.”
“Nicholas said he was born in London, but he’s actually from a town called Apex, in Idaho, where Kingswood is headquartered.”
“If I was from Idaho, I might say I was born in London, too,” Sofia said.
“Oh,” Lucas added, “and he’s phenomenally awkward. People only put up with him if they happen to know the size of his bank account. In which case, they’re obsequious as hell. Otherwise, they can’t get away fast enough. But Nicholas doesn’t seem aware of the difference. He’s got this strange…”—Lucas searched for the right word and only one seemed to fit—“innocence.”
At that moment, Lucas’s phone rang. The number was just a string of zeros. “Look at this.” He held the phone up for the others to see.
“Well, go on. Answer it!” Tyler instructed.
Lucas did. “This is Britta Packham, attaché for Mr. Nicholas Spragg,” said a woman with a sharp British accent. Lucas’s eyes widened at the table, causing Tyler’s and Sophia’s to widen even more. “Nicholas requests your company tomorrow evening for dinner and entertainment. Can you attend?”
“Yes?” Lucas said, giving his compatriots a perplexed look.
“The car will pick you up from your apartment at eight P.M. sharp. Please dress for dinner.” Britta Packham, attaché for Mr. Nicholas Spragg, hung up.
“That was Nicholas Spragg’s ‘attache,’” Lucas said. “Is that a thing?”
“Is he a major general?” Tyler asked.
“If he is, I haven’t heard that story yet. But the attaché—well, Nicholas—invited me out to dinner and ‘entertainment’ tomorrow night. What does that mean?”
“This sounds fascinating,” Sofia said, leaning forward, her chin propped on the back of her palm.
“He’s sending a car to pick me up,” Lucas said, almost in protest. “How does he know where I live?”
“Well, whatever happens, I’m sure it’ll make a terrific story,” Tyler said. “And tomorrow’s a Monday. How much trouble can you really get into?”
CHAPTER 10
The “car” turned out to be a limousine, and it sat double-parked outside Lucas’s building. “We’ve got a reservation!” Nicholas called out testily as Lucas rushed out of his building. “Ticktock.”
Lucas climbed in. The limo’s seats were leather and tufted, and the car had a waxy smell, as though recently cleaned. Nicholas was sitting alone holding a tumbler of scotch. Next to him a bottle of champagne relaxed in a bucket of ice. Lucas stared at it, unsure of what it signaled.
“For the ladies,” explained Spragg.
Lucas looked around the empty limo. Were these ladies hiding in the trunk?
“We’re meeting them at dinner,” Nicholas continued. “I offered to pick them up, but they had some prior engagement. They’re socialites. You know how it is.”
Lucas did not know how it is, but he gave a commiserating nod. “How do you know them?” he asked.
Spragg cleared his throat. “Oh, they’re friends of a friend—a guy I knew from my junior year in Paris who recently moved to Hong Kong. He’s been making all kinds of introductions from abroad. Honestly, without him I’d be sunk. Turns out,” Nicholas said, and eyed Lucas, “we can’t all land on our feet with instant invitations to the best parties.”
It was a hard comment to parse. Was Nicholas accusing Lucas of social climbing? Or was he identifying a fellow climber in arms? Either way, Lucas thought it best to distance himself from … well, whatever Nicholas was. “Honestly,” he said, “I only go anywhere special when Jays—er, you know, Jay Jacobson—can’t make it.”
“Yes, Jay!” Nicholas exclaimed. “I think we might see him later on. I texted him about our after-dinner plans. He’s a stand-up guy.”
“Oh!” Lucas said. “If you’re texting with Jay, then I’d say you’ve got the keys to the kingdom.”
“Yes, I suppose that’s true,” Nicholas said, his voice tinged with sadness. “Have you texted with Jay today?”
Today, he said—as if texting with Jays were a daily multivitamin. No, Lucas admitted: He didn’t even have Jays’ number.
This news seemed to brighten Nicholas’s spirits considerably. He sat silently for a moment, bathing in some untold joy. And then the limo began to slow, stopping outside an unassuming restaurant in Tribeca. This, Spragg explained, was Luca, New York’s newest adventure in molecular gastronomy. Lucas had read about the culinary trend in Empire, albeit a few years back. The food was part science experiment, part modern art, and Lucas had wondered why anyone would spend a fortune eating a hybrid between a Kandinsky and a Petri dish.
Lucas and Nicholas found the socialites at the bar, sipping cocktails from what looked like test tubes. The women looked like publicists but with more expensive haircuts. The blond one waved when Nicholas walked in. “Just as Henri described you,” she said—pronouncing the name “On-ree”—and gave him a kiss on each cheek. Her name was Corinne and she wore a very tight, very short black dress with long sleeves and boots molded so tightly to her calves, they looked painted on. She was beautiful in an anorexic, crystalline kind of way—not unlike the drink in her hand. The brunette was equally attractive but more like a red wineglass: buxom with cascading brown hair and a wide, welcoming smile. “I’m Katherine, but call me Katie,” she said, which seemed unnecessary: Didn’t Katies just call themselves Katie? Even as she shook Nicholas’s hand, she was looking at Lucas, intimately, almost conspiratorially, as though the two of them already shared a host of tantalizing secrets.
The maître d’ led them to a corner table. “Cheers!” Nicholas announced, and they were seated. “Here’s to a capital evening.”
The women kept the conversation running smoothly, peppering the men with questions. Predictably, Nicholas steered the conversation toward his ever-growing roster of questionable relatives. Lucas was far more interested in the women themselves, but he felt unsure of the etiquette. Were socialites like hipsters, who refused to call themselves what they obviously were? Was it rude to ask what they did for a living, given that the whole point of being a socialite was that you didn’t actually do anything? And if that question was off-limits, then what could you ask?
In the end, the questions were moot, because once the food began to arrive they were all too nonplussed to concentrate on anything else. Mushroom-scented foam floated like sea scum upon a tan-colored broth, and an accompanying plate of diminutive petals and leaves seemed to have been arranged with tweezers. This was followed by a single oyster bathed in a bright yellow liquid, dotted with black caviar and surrounded by three tea-green crackers dolloped with a pungent-smelling black cream. And then the challenges began: a round of sweetbreads, then foie gras, and then the marrow of some animal’s neck. Nicholas and the socialites dug eagerly into each, but these were not foods Lucas wanted in his mouth, let alone his stomach. As each course was swept away by the white-gloved waitstaff, Lucas hovered in horrified anticipation of the forthcoming plate of hearts or livers or other heinous body parts. Finally, what arrived was a cloud of kale-flavored cotton candy atop a slice of rare tuna. Relief.
A number of glasses of wine into the meal—there was a new one for nearly every
course—Lucas found himself speaking exclusively with Katie. He wasn’t quite sure when or how this split had happened, but he felt grateful to be paired with her instead of Corinne, whom he’d come to think of as the crystal queen. Katie was full of questions, almost reporter-like in her directness. They discussed their favorite books and magazines. She loved the New Yorker and made a point of reading every issue in full—a feat, Lucas suddenly realized, that only socialites would have the time to accomplish. She wanted to know from start to finish how an article was fact-checked and appeared to see his position as not simply important but heroic. “The truth,” she said, pointing to a spate of recent media scandals and embarrassments, “lies in your hands.”
Out of anyone else’s mouth, Lucas would have found this statement overblown. But Katie looked at him earnestly when she said it, leaning in flirtatiously, her long hair brushing his shoulder. She was either genuinely impressed with him or very good at flattering men. He decided he didn’t care which was the truth. He was also sliding quickly from tipsy toward drunk.
“You and Corinne don’t seem at all alike,” he whispered to her.
“You two don’t seem so much alike either,” Katie said, nodding toward Nicholas.
“I can’t really afford dinners like this,” he admitted. “I’m just here—well, I’m here because he invited me.”
Katie smiled. “Well, I’m here because Corinne invited me, so I guess that makes us a pair.” She reached down and squeezed his hand. The touch point of her fingers sent a shiver up Lucas’s arm.
* * *
Dinner concluded after 11:00 P.M. Back in the limo, now fulfilling their destiny, the women opened the champagne. Nicholas poured a glass of scotch and handed it to Lucas. “I’m all right,” he said, waving the glass away. “I’ve got to be up at six thirty if I want to get a run in before work.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Nicholas said. “The night is young.”
Of course, Lucas thought, he was the only one of them who actually had work in the morning. “If I come in hungover, Jay will have my head.”
“Jay will live,” Nicholas said, forcing the drink into Lucas’s hand. “And so will we!” He knocked twice on the partition and the limo took off, speeding up the West Side Highway. Nicholas cozied up to Corinne and, in seconds, the two of them were kissing. It was a strange and shocking moment—not only the proximity of these two people unabashedly making out but also the sight of this model-esque woman pressing her red lips against Nicholas’s homely mouth, his acne scars, his moles. Lucas looked at Katie, who smiled at him. She leaned over and kissed his neck, then his cheek, then his mouth. Lucas shut his eyes, actively trying to block out the adjacent lip smacking. This proved easy enough when Katie slid onto his lap and pushed him back against the seat.
The car stopped at Eleventh Avenue and 53rd outside a high-rise apartment building. They filed past a formidable-looking bouncer into the lobby. The walls were inset with bubbling fish tanks, full of brightly colored schools. The floor was glass, and an entire ocean seemed to flow beneath their feet. When a massive stingray slid by, Lucas flinched. The women smiled serenely. Maybe that’s what made you a successful socialite: the ability to treat the most ostentatious things as ordinary.
Presently, a kimono-clad woman appeared and bowed deeply before them. “Welcome, Mr. Spragg,” she said, and extended her hand toward an open elevator. “Have a pleasant evening.”
“This is Manhattan’s first love hotel,” Nicholas explained as the elevator flew them toward the sky. “A place where couples are afforded a few hours of privacy and where businessmen can take a midafternoon nap. Don’t look so scandalized, Lucas!” Nicholas slapped him on the back. “They’re common in Japan. I’m surprised that Empire hasn’t already written about this place, but maybe you should keep it to yourself. We wouldn’t want it getting too popular.”
The “we” in this sentence seemed to refer to Corinne and Katie, with whom Nicholas exchanged a sly smile. For just a moment, Lucas felt that something about all of this—the dinner, the women, the very mutual understanding among the group—was eluding him. But the feeling quickly passed. Katie was stroking the back of his hand with her thumb. He looked at her and she tilted her head toward his shoulder, so he put his arm around her and drew her in close.
Stepping out of the elevator, they entered a passageway lined by paper screens and smelling strongly of tatami mats; the love hotel was taking its Japanese theme seriously. Another kimonoed woman instructed them to remove their shoes and then led them to a small dimly lit room where the air pulsated with entrancing Asian-infused electronica. Two hookahs smoldered beside a low table and plush cushions.
“I didn’t think those were Japanese,” Lucas mumbled, mostly to himself. He was feeling sleepy, lulled by the music and dim lighting.
“I asked for them specially,” Nicholas replied. He looked a little hurt. “You don’t like them?”
“Oh yes, they’re very nice,” Lucas said. But he was distracted by Katie’s nails trailing up and down his back.
For the next hour, they cuddled in their respective pairs, chatting and drinking and blowing smoke rings. When Lucas glanced at his watch, he saw that it was after 1:00 A.M. But he didn’t want to go home anymore. He wanted to stay here, in this strange, smoky place, with this beautiful woman who was massaging his neck and who genuinely seemed to like him—unlike a certain sex columnist. And why not enjoy Nicholas’s generosity? This was an experience the likes of which he never could have imagined back in Charlotte, let alone yesterday. It was just as Sofia had said: Doors were meant to be opened. Now that he was here in New York City, Lucas intended to walk through as many as possible. He need only let the experience lead him.
And now the experience was leading him toward the joint that Nicholas had lifted from an ebony box sitting in the center of the table. And it was leading him toward those lines of white powder, which Nicholas had tapped out and cut along the tabletop. Lucas had never done cocaine before. It seemed dangerous. But after the other three snorted through a rolled hundred, Lucas knew that he would do it, too, because why not try everything at least once? Because he wanted keys to the next room and the next. The night drifted on. There was dancing, and kissing, and drinking, and smoking, and more kissing. At one point, Lucas found himself between both women, his ass pressed against Corinne’s dress, his groin thrust toward Katie. The women were kissing him, swaying with him. Hands were untucking his shirt, though he couldn’t tell whose hands. He felt like he was melting to the floor, dripping through the women’s hands and lips like water. And then Nicholas appeared, looking angry and hissing something into Corinne’s ear. He took her hand, and they left the room. Lucas started to ask Katie what that was about, but Katie only smiled as she guided Lucas to the floor and began to trail her lips down his shirt toward his pants. At that point, all questions flew out of his head.
* * *
Lucas woke, naked, on a mattress spread on the floor. He was massively hungover, his skull throbbing rhythmically, as though to the tick of a second hand. He was in one of the rice paper rooms—a different one from before—and alone. His clothes were folded neatly on the floor beside the mattress. There was no sign of Katie. No condom wrapper, no errant earring. Not even a lingering whiff of perfume. How had he ended up in here? Had he spent the night alone? It seemed doubtful seeing as he was butt naked. He’d never once woken up in the morning with so many blank hours behind him. The last thing he remembered: the uncomfortable sensation of sucking more drugs up his nose.
Lucas managed to get dressed, but then he couldn’t find the door. He pushed at one rice-paper panel, then another, but the screens didn’t budge. “Hello?” he called out. “I want to leave. Hello?” How deep within the love hotel could he be? He considered leaving by force: Surely he could punch his way through these paper walls? But then one of the panels slid back and a kimonoed woman appeared. She looked a little frightened at the sight of Lucas, so frantic and disheveled. He stormed pa
st her and ran to the elevator. In the lobby, the security guard did not look up as Lucas hurried over the stingrays and out onto the street. When he reached the office, Franklin was just settling in. “It’s ten-oh-one,” he said, and wagged his finger. “You’re late.”
CHAPTER 11
Six days later, Lucas skulked through the West Village, his eyes darting to and fro like the caricature of a Cold War spy. He was going to meet Carmen for their first professional rendezvous. In the surrounding apartments, people washed down their takeout pad thai with cheap beer. They were staving off the despondency of a Sunday evening, while Lucas was meeting a beautiful woman for a risqué magazine column. He couldn’t have asked for more. Well, he could have asked Carmen to be less of a jerk. She’d taken days to confirm their first official meeting. Was she playing hard to get? Or was she just a sore loser? Lucas—aka Nice Guy—had tapped into a well of popular sympathy and she just couldn’t handle it. No matter. Lucas was going to be magnanimous. He’d be the bigger man. And before he knew it, he’d be enveloped in her beautiful cloud bed.
“Hi,” Carmen said, upon opening the door. She didn’t bother to invite him in but retreated immediately to the couch. Lucas stepped into the apartment and closed the door behind him. He’d showered, shaved, and dabbed on cologne, whereas Carmen looked like she’d just woken up from a nap. She still managed to look sexy in a loose-fitting T-shirt and messy ponytail. But the message was clear: She didn’t give a crap.
They sat across from each other in the living room. Lucas tried to keep his eyes off Carmen’s shoulder, exposed Flashdance-style by her scooped shirt. He considered apologizing, but as several hundred readers had pointed out in their comments, he had nothing to be sorry for. And yet he wanted to start this … project? experiment? liaison? Whatever it was, he wanted to start it on the right foot. “So, listen,” he began. But Carmen spoke over him.
“Here’s the thing,” she said.
Mr. Nice Guy Page 7