by Jayne Blue
Natalie whistled low between her teeth. “How's he handling it?”
I felt a small stab of pain deep in my gut. Not for Brad. I knew it was over, and I suppose I’d started to detach from him emotionally some time ago. Natalie and I had seen so much of the worst in men – in people – all of our lives. I always liked the idea that Brad could be an example of a strong, stable guy. It killed me that he broke both of our trusts.
“Do you mean how am I handling it?”
Natalie smiled wide. “Oh, I know how you’re handling it. You’re the one with the steel in your back. You probably allotted your cry time to the distance it took to drive yourself here. Brad is probably a blubbering, Cheeto-eating wreck.”
“Ouch.”
Natalie turned and put her hand on my wrist. “No. I’m not trying to be mean. You’re a badass superhero, Nina. I just wish people would stop making you have to be. Mom, Carl, me, now Brad.”
My turn to smile. “I don't feel so badass, Nat. I feel broke-ass.”
Natalie clinked her glass to mine.
“Really,” I said. “I didn't want to be in this situation again. I thought I’d finally pushed that fucking rock up the hill and heaved it over the other side.”
Natalie polished off her mojito with one last chug. “And it rolled back and flattened you again. Like I said, welcome to the club. We’re the Sharpe sisters, and we’re both way too smart to be this poor.”
My heart lightened when I heard the crash of the front door open and then slam shut. Drew was home. My nephew tumbled into the kitchen under a mop of unruly blond curls, one shoe untied, heaving a backpack onto the kitchen table. By the sound it made, I guessed he was carrying an anvil in that thing.
“Hi sweetie peetie!” Natalie called out. Drew shrugged his shoulders in response.
“Hi Drew,” I smiled. I had to resist the urge to reach out and pull him into a hug. You had to let Drew come to you. If you tried to force affection on him, he’d stiffen and retreat to pulling the hair from the front of his head in great clumps. He’d made progress over the years. He used to kick and scream.
“Hey Aunt Nina,” he said, shoving his hands into his pockets. He stared at the floor, refusing eye contact. “Mom, did you get my fruit snacks?” Ever since he was three, Drew had been hooked on a particular brand of shark-shaped fruit snacks. Even I knew the drill. They were a generic brand that Nat had bought once. Not all stores carried them, so when she found them, she bought in bulk.
“In the pantry,” she answered. “Let Aunt Nina see your face first. Then you can have one pack.”
With his eyes still on his shoes, Drew answered. “If I hug, can I get two packs?”
“Deal!” I blurted before Natalie could answer. She wrinkled her brow at me but I was on the verge of an unsolicited Drew hug. This was not to be missed.
Drew stepped forward, his eyes still on his shoes, he leaned into me and brought his arms up around my waist. I gently put my arms around his shoulders and squeezed. I planted a solid kiss on the top of his tousled hair. “I love you, buddy. I missed you bunches.”
He nodded under my chin. “I know.”
Drew pulled away and made for the pantry. To me, that was worth a whole box of sugary sharks and more.
“Natalie! He’s doing so much better! I can’t remember the last time he offered me a hug, never mind the bargain.”
And he was. Last year at this time, Drew was barely verbal. He didn’t do well with big changes to his routine. Leaving Chicago and his last school behind had undone him for a time. The household turmoil with Natalie's ex was not lost on him either. Drew had retreated far inside himself but, ever so slowly, this move to Arlington was finally starting to benefit him. Natalie had gone back into dental hygiene with the help of a reference from a client of mine. She had decent health insurance for the first time in her life. The first thing she did was to find a child psychologist to work with Drew weekly. What the insurance didn’t cover, I did.
“I know,” Natalie sighed. “Believe me, I know. Yesterday, I made him laugh.”
God, I hope this time she really and truly could see how important this fresh start was for all of us. I said a silent prayer that Natalie would finally listen to me. No more drama. No more bad relationships, dragging the kids into the middle. I loved my sister to death. Until the kids had come along, it had been Nat and me against the world. I would and had done everything and anything to help her out.
“I'm really proud of you, Natalie,” I told her. “I wish to hell that crap with your last ex had never happened, but you’ve come out so much stronger because of it. Let's just....”
Natalie put up her hand in protest. “I know, Nina. I know. I’m really trying. I am. But I’m not going to say I’m not really lonely sometimes.”
“Well,” I said, putting an arm around her shoulder, “I'm here now for a while. I want to help too. In the meantime, what about this Roy, the movie bootlegger?"
Natalie shrugged and moved out of my reach. "Gah. Just a friend, I swear. A very nice, cute, single friend. But you’re in luck. He’s got ex-wife issues and isn’t looking for a relationship.”
Great, I thought. I’m pretty sure that meant she’d hook up with him by the end of the month.
Before I had a chance to dig any further, the front door crashed open again and in bounded the whirling dervish that was my seven-year-old niece, Gracie Lou. She tripped over her own backpack and kicked her little saddle shoes off, flying in two directions before she even made it into the kitchen. Though I knew they had different fathers, I often wondered whether Drew and Gracie actually sprang from the same womb. They could not be more different.
In one breath she said, “Mama guess what Mrs. Connor said our class is gonna get baby chicks and we get to watch them hatch and then we get to vote on what to name them but she said we shouldn’t get attached cuz not all of them will hatch cuz sometimes they are duds which means they are inside the egg all dead and gross but if they do hatch and some of them are gonna hatch I just know it cuz there are fourteen of them in the inculator thingie cuz they need to stay all warm and toasty but anyways if they do hatch we’re gonna have a class vote and get to name them and I’m gonna name one Fluffy or maybe Nacho if one is orange. Do we have any nachos?”
Then Gracie saw me and made a squeaking sound. I flung my arms out and she ran at me full speed so I could catch her in a giant bear hug. She smelled like crayons, Play-Doh, and number-two pencils.
For the first time since I’d packed my car to leave Brad and my marriage behind, I had the feeling that things really were going to work out just fine.
Of course, that should have been my first clue as to exactly why they wouldn’t.
Chapter Three
For the next few weeks, it was easy to stay focused on the one thing I needed most. Money. I needed money to pay the divorce lawyer and my share of Natalie’s mortgage. On that score, today was a very big day. The partners at Lindbergh had unleashed me on one of their biggest clients, Petra Vallin.
Petra Vallin was a woman surrounded by rumors. Everyone had an opinion about how she’d made her fortune. She paid cash for every property she bought but was cagey when asked about it. She owned the controlling interest in Vallin Consulting, which I knew had something to do with public relations. The rest, as I said, was all rumor. I heard she’d once been married to mafia money. Somebody said she owned casinos and other resorts. The more notorious rumors concerned a business in Amsterdam's red-light district back in the day – that she'd even been a prostitute. The geography was right. Petra’s Dutch accent was thick though her English was flawless. I also heard she’d operated an exclusive call girl service. Regardless of the source, Petra Vallin was shrewd, smart, and ruthless. In other words, I wanted to make her my personal Jesus.
Today, however, Petra was closing on a house I’d shown her last month. It was a beautiful wooded estate not far from Mount Vernon. We joked about calling it “Mount Vallin” and the name kind of stuck. I ne
arly swallowed my heart when the partners told me I was handling this closing solo and that Petra herself would make an appearance. Because she planned to live in this particular estate, she wanted to oversee every detail of the transaction. Translation: nobody better fuck this up.
The closing took place at Petra Vallin’s office in Georgetown. The sellers complained about the inconvenience for them, but since Petra was handing over a check for eight million, they shut up. The sellers were the about-to-be-divorced Stuart and Tiffany Schilling. When both Schillings showed up, I felt sick. It was never a good thing when both sides of a divorcing couple came to a closing. I could actually see the anger radiating from Tiffany. Something was most definitely up.
I took my place on the buyer's side of the table and waited for Petra to arrive. Stuart Schillings’ lawyer, Murray Sabin, sat between them. His hands were shaking as he started sifting through documents, and this did not improve my sense of impending doom. Tiffany came without her own lawyer and this made things even more odd. I could not afford to have this deal fall through – not just for what it would mean to our most important client, but what it meant to my drained bank account. I needed to bring in this commission.
Petra Vallin entered the room alone. In her mid-seventies, she was still Sophia Loren-sexy and routinely showed up on the society pages with Man Candy half her age. She wore her platinum hair in a loose, wavy bob with a shock of copper framing her face. She was thin but athletic, still with killer gams that she showed off in a powder-blue silk pencil skirt cut above the knee. With a turquoise statement necklace set just above her cleavage, the woman turned heads as she took her place beside me. Her lawyer, Owen Flynn, sat on her other side. Petra had a way of looking right through you with her flint gray eyes. The planes and angles of her face were sharp. This was a woman used to getting what she wanted, and she did not hand out or put up with bullshit.
This should have been a smooth deal since it was a cash sale. The title agent came in and started handing out more documents – then hell broke loose. Tiffany Schilling began breathing hard, and I swear I saw steam shoot from her ears as her husband and lawyer shoved documents at her while talking numbers, commissions, and settlement agreements.
“I'm not signing!” Tiffany actually shouted. Whatever her beef, it had clearly been simmering for a while. “I don't know how, but you’re trying to screw me over,” she said. “You didn’t say anything about any of these figures before. I haven’t seen these papers until today!”
Murray Sabin, Stuart’s lawyer, tried to talk her down. Petra tucked a lock of hair behind her ear and fixed her eyes on her own lawyer, Owen Flynn. Until now, he’d stayed remarkably silent. Seeing Petra staring at him, he puffed up his chest and started spouting extremely unhelpful phrases like “preliminary injunction” and “breach of contract.”
I kept my eyes on Tiffany. With every legal threat lobbed across the table, she started backing her chair further away. The woman was about to bolt. I could not believe it – the lawyers were blowing it. If Tiffany got angry enough and refused to sign the deed, Petra would not get her house today. It would not matter one bit that, legally, Tiffany couldn’t refuse to sign. If she walked, Petra wouldn’t get what she wanted today, and we’d end up in court. That was bad for everyone but the lawyers. In the meantime, too many men were yelling in Tiffany’s face. I figured this was my moment to diffuse this bomb.
“Everybody just stop talking!” I shouted. And for a second, they did. I said, “Mrs. Vallin is sitting here with an eight-million-dollar check. How you people plan to divvy it up doesn’t matter to us. Handle your business, Mr. Sabin. Cut Mrs. Schilling another five percent – I don’t care. But you have a bigger problem if this lady (I pointed to Petra) walks out without her house and you have to explain to Mrs. Schilling how you can advise both her and her husband without screwing them both! I didn't go to law school, but I think they call that a ‘conflict of interest,’ don't they, Mr. Flynn? Mr. Schilling, do you want to pay your lawyer more money, or do you want to go to the bank with your share of the sale after this?”
Dead silence. Owen Flynn looked like he wanted to strangle me. Murray Sabin turned white, and Tiffany Schilling dragged her chair back to the table. Stuart Schilling was rubbing his hands over his face. The soft chuckling to my left came from Petra.
“I think Ms. Sharpe is living up to her name and commission, gentlemen,” Petra said in her Dutch accent, with precise consonants and drawn-out syllables. She slid her check toward the title agent.
A few minutes later, the deed was signed. The Schillings left the room with Murray Sabin. Ms. Vallin had her house, and I had my commission check. I found myself alone in the room with Petra Vallin.
“That was a good piece of negotiating Ms. Sharpe,” she said. She leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms under her breasts.
“It wasn’t so much negotiating as trying to get Mrs. Schilling to grow a pair,” I replied. “I just can’t stand watching another woman let a roomful of men try to put one over on her.”
Petra nodded. “I like you, Nina. You remind me a little of me, and I wonder if maybe you’re not being fully utilized in your current position.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
She didn't answer my question. “Everyone likes to speculate about what my business really is…how did I make my money? I admit that it’s fun for me to keep them guessing. Everyone needs to surround themselves with a little mystery. Remember that. It’s also one of the best ways to make sure the people who work with and for you find you a little bit scary.”
I smiled. “You succeed at that! I can tell you for a fact that it’s true for most of the Lindbergh partners. You always scare the hell out of them.”
She waved my comment away. “Men like them are easy to scare. I think it’s a mother complex. What about you? Are you afraid of me?”
I had to really think. “Intimidated, yes. I’ve always felt like you’ve been analyzing me. Like you’re trying to make up your mind about something when it comes to me. I don’t know what that is, but so far, I don’t think I've disappointed you.”
“You haven't,” Petra said. “Let me ask you some things. Do you want to keep selling houses? Is that where you really think your talents lie?”
“Well,” I answered, “It’s what I’m trained to do. And I’m good at it.”
“It's not really the houses though is it?” she asked. “Good selling is about figuring out what a person thinks they need, then convincing them you can give it to them. That what you have to show them is going to bring them happiness and fulfill some wish or dream they have for themselves.”
"Of course. That's what any kind of selling is all about.”
“Yes. It is. What if I told you that my real niche in this world...my truest gift... is fulfilling needs people have – their deepest, darkest desires?”
Alarm bells rang hard in my head. She could be talking about anything. She could be a drug dealer, for all I knew. Except I knew that she wasn’t. Petra Vallin was about to confirm one of the more shocking rumors I’d heard about her.
“Sex, you mean? You sell sex? So that particular rumor is true?"
She narrowed her eyes and made a little gasp. “Do you think I'm a pimp?
“More of a madam,” I answered.
She laughed at that. “I prefer ‘human resources manager.’ The term ‘madam’ conjures up bordellos and saloon girls. Now, if I have a client with a particular fantasy in that regard, I have the….”
“Human resources?” I offered.
She smiled. “Exactly.”
“Are you telling me that you’d like me to be one of your resources?”
“I am,” she said. “But let me be clear. I’m not talking about running a whorehouse.”
“Call girl, then? Is that the PC term? Escort service?” My words came out a little harder than I wanted. It was tough to know whether I should be offended or flattered. If I were having this conversation with anyone else, I proba
bly would have bolted from the room by now.
Petra rubbed the flesh on the bridge of her nose with her thumb and forefinger. “What are you thinking, Nina? Are you offended by what I'm suggesting? Because before you make a judgment, why don’t you let me explain what I’m talking about?”
“Please do.”
“I'm not like – oh, what was her name – Hoodie Flynn? Heidi Flan? I don’t have a list of celebrities who call me when they want some twenty-year-old plastic hooker in their hotel room. I have celebrity clients, yes. But my clients are usually interested in something more sophisticated. Elaborate scenarios versus a one-night stand. And my employees have needs and desires too. I match my employees to clients with similar fantasies. Everyone, for a moment at least, is happy.”
I was fascinated. I hadn’t quite wrapped my head around the fact that she thought I was employee material, but I had a thousand questions. “So, let’s say you have a rich client who has a Marilyn Monroe fantasy. You set that up for him?”
“Yes,” Petra answered. “Actually, I have about a dozen clients for that one. That particular employee enjoys a seven-figure yearly income because of it. You do actually look a lot like her. Marilyn, I mean. I actually met her once, a lifetime ago.”
Whoa. Wait – what? Seven figures? She knew Marilyn Monroe? Seven figures? My head spun. Hell, for that kind of money, I might dress up as Marilyn Monroe, Marilyn Manson, even Charles Manson for that matter.
“Yes,” Petra answered the question I hadn’t yet been able to articulate. “That kind of money is possible. You have to understand that the clients I keep are of a particular financial or public standing. They aren’t just paying for sex. In fact, there are a few who don’t expect anything more than companionship or kindness. But they want the utmost discretion, class, and quality in the people I employ. They are paying for the trust I provide. I’m not looking for anyone damaged or unstable. And I’m not looking to employ anyone because they are desperate and without other options. You understand? If we decide – and we both have to decide – that you are interested in coming to work with me, there are ground rules.”