by Gabi Moore
It was an actual house address. An invitation. At night.
Clara looked at me with big eyes. “Oh God, it IS from what’s-his-name, isn’t it?”
I stuffed the card back in the envelope and buried it into the mound of stems.
“Uh, yeah, it’s from my ex. What a douche.”
I looked at my watch – it had just gone 3pm. Thinking twice, I grabbed the card again and slid it into my pocket.
“Hey, Clara, could you just let Penelope know I went out for a sec?”
“Sure. But she’s at the other office for a few days anyway. She’s been asking about your interview with what’s-his-name though – how’d that go?”
“Uh, yeah, the interview …if you see her just let her know I’ll have it ready for Friday, OK?”
I dashed out, not giving Clara the chance to pry any further. I only had a few hours. I would need time to think.
And I would definitely need a sexier dress. And shoes. Maybe.
Chapter Five
If you had asked 5-year-old me to imagine what the home of one of the country’s wealthiest personalities looked like – she would have accurately described 67 Baltic Terrace.
It looked like it was the scene of a movie. Flush with vaulted marble ceilings, dense green lawns folding into infinity pools, and a swooping grand staircase at the main entrance.
Tom Hood had made his fortune speculating on hot tech start ups, “angel” funding those two bit operations that turned into outrageous money-machines in a span of just a few years. He had a knack for spotting business diamonds so rough that it was almost as if his investment in them alone was the very thing to transform them, to make emperors out of the long sighted nerds in garages, and empires out of their impossible dreams. Tom Hood had made many people’s dreams come true, and he was living his own, clearly.
Coming down the staircase was a lithe, black haired girl in some kind of luxurious-looking kimono. A week ago, I would have laughed if someone had told me that this is what my dream magazine job would be paying me to do on a Wednesday evening, but by this point, I was getting used to the feeling that everything associated with Tom Hood had a sheen of unreality to it, a strange glint of power that he seemed to wear so well.
He was still a dick, though, obviously.
The black haired girl smiled broadly at me, slinking down the last few of the steps and gliding over to me as though she had been expecting me all her life. This, I thought, was some weird Stepford Wife nonsense right here. I made a mental note to take in every detail about her, knowing I’d find a place for her in my article, whatever it turned out to be.
“Are you Miss Katie Mack? Oh, welcome! It’s very nice to meet you,” she said with just a distant waft of an exotic accent, and then extended her slender hand.
I followed her all the way back up the staircase, eerie music seeming to come and go in pockets of air as we passed by rooms and corridors, finally reaching a wide conservatory style room at the end, and the source of the music.
The jaded part of me saw only the ill-gotten gains in the glittery tiles and disgusting privilege dripping in every giant mirror and painting we passed …but another, smaller part of me was quietly amazed.
Tom Hood was barely 30 years old. This was success, and there was no denying it. I was so used to seeing him surrounded by shocking red and yellow tabloid headlines that this neutral, expensive taste unfolding all around me was quite striking. He really was very wealthy.
By the time my black haired escort flung open the conservatory doors, I hadn’t yet decided if I was brimming with judgment or with secret admiration for all this opulence.
The black haired girl kept her kimono-ed arms spread open and floated over on her tiptoes to join Tom, who was seated on a cushion like a Buddha, bent over a carved chess board.
It occurred to me all at once that I should have prepared far more thoroughly for this interview than I had. I had spent too much time on my outfit, too little time on …well, I wasn’t sure yet. But I felt unprepared, already off-kilter.
A pair of small muscles was working in his bare, upper arms as he moved the pieces round before looking up and smiling cordially at me.
Great. He had decided not to wear a shirt.
The black haired girl had turned the music down and was flitting about with something in the periphery of my vision.
“Miss Mack! Welcome to my humble abode,” he said, and the girl giggled in appreciation.
She was busy fixing me a drink. Not Kool-Aid, I thought, although I wouldn’t be surprised if the story took that turn.
Again, there was something startling in how different he seemed in real life. How three-dimensional. He had that kind of vestigial dusty blonde-brown hair that some men seem to carry over from childhood, even though every other part of them had grown and matured. I guess I had always just written off male bodies of this exact kind: the predictable Calvin Klein physique in expensive lounge wear, the kind of deliberate all-American healthy tan, the boringly tight abs.
I had always shirked away from this kind of thing the same way I did from infomercials and ads – and for the same reason, too. I had had my beginnings in the advertising industry, and in my current job, I stared all day at men just like this. I was numb to this kind of beauty. I was just being pandered to, right? Just being sold something. Nothing sexy about it. Rampant objectification may work on men, sure, but I liked to think I personally was made of stronger stuff.
And yet… here was this body, this real-life flesh, and there was something immediately and obviously different in it. This body wasn’t an image, it wasn’t fake and forced and cheesy. The ease with which he held himself, his upright posture, the bridled strength that seemed to pulse in even his smallest movements …here was a man who was utterly and completely in control of his physical form.
And what a physical form it was.
He was more Robinson Crusoe than hedge fund kid. Not a Calvin Klein model but the inspiration for one.
This was very unexpected. I all at once felt small and became aware of myself slouching, of how cheap my haircut must have looked to him.
“Drink?” said the girl, and snapped me out of my daydreaming.
I thanked her, took the glass she was offering me and had a sip, noting how beautifully comfortable she looked, and feeling the lack of my own comfort even more strongly.
“It’s a pity we missed each other yesterday, I do apologize,” he continued, crinkling the corners of his eyes into a warm smile.
I cleared my throat.
“Well, it’s me that should apologize – I was made aware that you weren’t happy with my piece. I do apologize. Cache magazine is primarily committed to content that is fair, so we’re absolutely more than happy to issue another article with a more balancing perspective, and you’ll have the chance to weigh in throughout, and we’ll run each quote by you befo--“
“Woah woah woah,” he said, raising two broad hands and shaking his head.
I stopped.
The black haired girl looked adoringly at him, as though everything that fell from his lips was gospel from God himself.
Was she his girlfriend? Some random groupie? I would have to explore that angle for sure.
“I don’t care about any of that,” he said. “Cache magazine is, if you’ll excuse me, a piece of shit. They’ve written about me before, and they’ve been wrong before. But you …you were right.”
“What?” I stammered.
He had shifted his weight in the heavily upholstered chair and the black haired girl now perched herself prettily on one of his thighs, snaking a bare brown arm over his shoulders.
I was right? Then why had he called me all the out here to apologize? Why had I bought this ridiculous faux-reporter-please-take-me-seriously color-blocked monstrosity of a dress?
“I was told you were unhappy with my reference to you and your recent …data security issues, and so I…”
He interrupted me immediately.
“
Oh my God, you are way too highly strung,” he said.
I tried to respond but he cut me short again, pinning me with his gaze.
“I just said that to get you here, obviously. But you’re actually onto something. I absolutely did leak those pictures on purpose.”
I felt like I was rapidly drifting out of my depth. I hadn’t prepared for any of this. And I was developing a complete and decided hate for my new dress.
I felt stupid.
I realized with fresh petulance that what I really wanted was exotic, flowing robes like this dark haired girl draped over him, and golden dangly bracelets, and I wanted to be loose and easy, and have long Pantene hair and easy confidence.
“Ok, well, sure, there’s not a journalist in this country that believes you were actually hacked, right?” I said, in a tone that instantly seemed too hard and snarky, even to me.
He looked hurt.
“Man, that was mean,” he said and turned to the girl. “Kai, I think it’s your fault for not making that drink strong enough, honestly. Miss Mack seems pretty stressed out.”
He turned back to me.
This wasn’t the way it was supposed to go. He was the rich, asshole one-percenter, and I was the honest, truth-loving journalist who was going to expose him to the world. It was like he didn’t even know how this story was supposed to go.
He was looking down at the chessboard.
You wouldn’t think someone with such triumphantly toned pec muscles could look disappointed, but he did. And I felt bad.
“You misunderstand me,” he said. “I know what the press makes me out to be, obviously. But the way you wrote about me was …different. You get it. What did she say…?” he looked over to Kai, who immediately parroted off a line from my article.
“She said, ‘Hood is not the first to troll the media with fake ‘leaks’, but why should he stop there? When you’re as wealthy as he is, you can afford an extra identity or two.’”
He chuckled.
“Man, I love that line,” he said, clapping his hands together. He stared meditatively at the chessboard again, Kai looking pleased at having performed well.
Was it some weird sort of S&M thing? Was there a dungeon somewhere in this stupidly huge house? That would make for a good story.
“I love it because it’s so true. I want you to write more like that. You’re good at creating characters, so make another one for me. I don’t like the image they have of me right now”
“The image?” I asked, thinking that he must be deluded if he thought the media had got him all wrong and that the model sipping champagne in his lap right now was somehow not what it looked like.
“Yeah. The image. Go on – what do think of me? Tell me. Three words.”
“Three words? What do you--”
“Yeah, quickly. Tom Hood. First three words that pop into your head. Go.”
“Ok bu--”
“No, just do it.”
I squirmed in my chair. I was mesmerized by how tight and vibrant his skin seemed. Warrior-like, I thought, making a note to say so in my revised piece. But I was also aware of another image trying to push into my mind. My gaze fell on the toned V shape disappearing into his pants, and I thought with horror about how well I knew how that shape continued down over the rest of him.
“Ok. Stupid,” I said. This seemed to upset Kai more than it did him.
“And …privileged,” I said after a pause. “Or maybe, entitled.” This elicited a tiny twitch around his mouth but he only sat silently, waiting for the third word.
My eyes flicked over his bare stomach again.
“And. Well. Sexy.” I said this like it had been tortured out of me.
When I looked up I fell immediately into the beam of his gaze again.
“But I don’t see what that has to do with anything. Can we just start with the interview?” I said, a little embarrassed.
What had made him make that sound on the phone yesterday? What made this man happy? What did he do, secretly, for pleasure? What did he do with this beautiful woman in all these rooms? What special words and gestures and actions would get him to make that sound again?
“Start? We started ten minutes ago. This is the interview. You’re going to write a story, a different story, and you’re going to make sure I don’t seem stupid or entitled or privileged. You’re going to--”
“Mr. Hood,” I snapped, “I’m not your hired PR person. You don’t get to tell me what to write,” I said, lashing out at even the slightest suggestion that I would slot into his vast harem somehow.
A slow, strange smile spread over his lips.
Reading some invisible change in the tides, Kai jumped up, stood behind him and began to gracefully massage his shoulders with long, womanly fingers. He spoke again, this time the velvety quality giving way to something rougher and more abrasive.
“Penelope Welsh has a net worth of around $1.2 million. I could buy your magazine before breakfast tomorrow and easily tell you what to do.”
He was stroking the curved neck of the wooden Queen piece, turning her over again and again in his fingers.
“But I won’t, because I have better things to do with my time, and besides, you want to write what I tell you. That’s why you’re here.”
I nearly laughed out loud. I didn’t know what surprised me more, his audacity, or the fact that I had trouble summoning up a rebuttal to it.
“Go on, leave if you’re not interested,” he said, gesturing to the door, while I fumbled for a response.
I was shocked at the sudden nasty turn things seemed to have taken. I began to wonder if I had been too rude, and played out a future where Penelope would tear me a new one for not only failing to apologize, but losing what could be a very lucrative story for Cache.
“I’m …I’m sorry. That was rude of me,” I said simply. Kai’s eyes met mine for a brief moment, over the strong curve of his shoulder. For a moment, there was nothing in the room but her nimble fingers working on the tanned tendons around his neck.
He looked at me pointedly.
“Why are you limiting yourself with that job, anyway? Writing trash for Penelope Welsh, for peanuts? You’re too good to be that kind of journalist, you know. You’re an artist. Like me,” he said, and this time I did laugh out loud.
An artist? This guy had a massive chip on his shoulder.
This time, the twitch on the corner of his mouth was more pronounced. Kai stopped massaging him and looked a little alarmed.
Shit. I had gone too far again.
He placed a hand on hers and spoke again.
“I’m going to ignore your insult. You know, I’ve read every piece of yours. You’re talented. You’ve worked hard to get were you are. I admire that. But your voice is wasted where you are now, and you know that, so I won’t tell you again. You think I’m an idiot and you don’t even bother hiding your contempt for me. But I complimented you and you responded with venom. I suppose you’re getting the proper journalistic training there after all.”
This little speech was delivered so eloquently, so quickly and with such precision that I felt cut. The beginnings of tears were stinging my eyes. It was true. I had made a career of my shitty attitude, calling it “insightful comment” and “wit”, but he was right. I wanted more than anything to be taken seriously, as an artist, and this bonehead had figured me out in ten minutes. My face prickled but my ego stung more.
‘I’m …I’m sorry you feel that way, Cache magazine is--” I started but he interrupted me again.
“Yeah, don’t bother. You know what keeps rags like Cache afloat? Stories about people like me. That’s it. That’s all. You have the nerve to look down on me and yet every time I do something, you reporters swoop in like vultures, ready to make money off it. ‘Fair’? If you say so. Judge my life all you want, but it pays your salary.”
I didn’t know what to do with myself. All the pieces the magazine had done on him over the years where crowding my mind, and I desperately searched
for something to argue back with.
He had inherited a huge chunk of money from his father, had invested it in dodgy fracking technology in Canada, had called the president a “tit” to his face. For god’s sake, this was the man who had just last month been in the papers for hosting pirate themed yacht orgies in the Mediterranean – and he was lecturing me about my integrity? It was too much.
I opened my mouth to say something, anything, but I was floundering.
“Hey, shh, don’t worry about it, I’m not angry. But you know what I’ve noticed about journalists?” His voice was calmer now, and Kai began stroking his shoulders again.
“They’re cowardly. They don’t do much of anything themselves, they just sit on the sidelines, watching everyone else. Now that I think of it, it’s all pretty voyeuristic.”
His hand had reached up to Kai’s again and was absentmindedly stroking hers in return.
“I’ll write your story. I didn’t mean to offend you. I want to show the public who you really are.”
He didn’t seem all that interested in my new confession, although I had startled myself with how easily I had given it. He was staring vacantly at a spot in front of him, thinking. Kai began to trace her hand down the front of his chest and he accepted it, not breaking his gaze or train of thought. She leant forward, letting the full lusciousness of her breasts and hair fall over him. She nuzzled herself into his neck and he gripped her forearms, trapping her there. He snapped his eyes up and straight to meet mine again, catching me staring. The effect was electrifying.
“Do you? Do you really want to show them …or do you just want to watch?”
He began to gently kiss the length of Kai’s thin arms, his eyes never breaking their gaze with mine.
My entire body flushed with the intensity of the moment.
“You’re curious about me, aren’t you? I think you’re like everyone else, you have a morbid fascination with me …you wish you could …wish you had the guts to do what I do...” he mumbled this in between kisses he was planting on her soft, white skin.
He had a way of saying things that you simply couldn’t argue with. He was an arrogant asshole. But he was also right. I didn’t dwell on whether I was enjoying this new flagrant display, or whether he was spot on and that I did want to see him kiss this beautiful woman’s arms, and maybe even do other things to her, and know exactly what he did on the phone yesterday, and what turned him on, and what he really thought of me, and what his life was really like, every bizarre, sordid, sexy inch of it…