The Next Big Thing

by Sadie Hayes

  She didn’t even turn around.

  He looked around for something to kick or throw and, finding nothing, slammed his fist into the wall. He felt the sting in his knuckles and it made him even more frustrated. He shook his hand in the air and caught his reflection in the mirror, which reassured him. He was hot and successful and didn’t need to waste any energy on some girl who didn’t recognize it. But he also didn’t need to waste it on the less-attractive wingman friend of the girl Robert wanted to sleep with.

  T.J. turned back to the bar and scanned the room for the most attractive woman he could find. In the middle of the bar, perched on a stool with a pink-drink-filled martini glass in hand was a perfectly proportioned blonde in a short, tight black dress that showcased massive cleavage, flirtatiously giggling with two fat and balding men his father’s age. She was definitely older, which was exciting, and he was definitely better than either of her other options.

  Done, T.J. thought, beelining for the bar. He intentionally accidentally brushed her arm as he walked past, then propped his elbow next to hers, just close enough that he could feel the warmth of her arm on his own.

  “Macallan twenty-five, neat,” T.J. told the bartender, loud enough for her to overhear. Which she did, and presently excused herself from her previous conversation, shifting her shoulders square to him.

  “Aren’t you a little young to be drinking Scotch?”

  “What I lack in years I make up for in experience,” he said, and grinned slyly. Her skin was Botoxed to flawless perfection, her makeup applied with such skill it was hard to tell whether she was wearing it or if her eyelids were naturally purple-shaded.

  She gave him a practiced laugh. She wore a necklace with a drop diamond that sank between her breasts, which were clearly fake in their round perch, but were so delectable and desirable as to silence any thought that the world shouldn’t unhesitatingly encourage plastic surgery for all women everywhere.

  “So who is my competition?” T.J. leaned in and said quietly, as though he cared whether the other men heard.

  “Well,” she said, nodding her head, “they work on Wall Street. In New York.”

  T.J. scoffed, “Please. You look like the kind of woman who can handle more adventurous men.”

  “What’s unadventurous about Wall Street?” The woman pursed her deep pink lips.

  “No risk-taking. Rich, maybe, but you have to take risks if you want to have adventure.”

  “Like you?”

  “Yes.” T.J. smiled and took a sip of his cocktail. “Like me.”

  She studied his face for a moment before taking a long sip of her own, letting her eyes look up to the ceiling as if she was thinking about something. T.J. waited patiently, thinking about what kind of underwear she was wearing. Black lace thong, he thought. Maybe red.

  “Should we have an adventure?” she said, finally turning back to him.

  “Can you handle it?” T.J. had been waiting to deliver this line and it came off just like he wanted.

  She laughed her bosom-moving laugh again. “Oh, honey, I think so”—she downed her drink—“but don’t let that keep you from trying to surprise me.” She turned to the bartender and indicated he ought to put the two drinks on the investment bankers’ tab and led T.J. out of the bar.

  The pair got into a black town car that T.J. ordered via an app called Uber. He directed the driver to his parents’ address in Atherton—they were out of town, and he couldn’t take her back to his apartment, which, though awesome, was littered with Bud Light cans and young-single-dude-living-alone filth.

  Once in the car, T.J. pushed himself over to the woman, who softened her neck and closed her eyes. He slowly brought his mouth to hers as his right hand gently cradled her head, her hair sifting between his fingers.

  Her lips were strong and intentional, not slobbery and subservient like so many of the girls he made out with. He felt his excitement escalate as his fingers fell to her lap, making tiny circles against the bare skin of her thighs before slowly toying with the hem of her skirt.

  The car pulled up to the house and T.J. quickly handed the driver two twenties as he followed the woman out of the car, where she was confidently walking to the front door, her hips swaying precisely in the tight black dress.

  He approached her from behind and grabbed her hips, turning her around and slamming her back against the door as he pressed his lips against hers once more. She put a finger to his lips, though, to stop him, and whispered, “Ssshh … not here. You don’t want the neighbors to hear.”

  “Are you loud?” T.J. grinned.

  “I can be,” she said, smiling back.

  T.J.’s head was focused on the singular purpose of getting this woman naked as quickly as possible, but he managed to find the key and unlock the front door as she toyed with his belt buckle, softly teasing him. T.J. practically carried her through to the pool house. His room was clearly off limits, and the thought of having sex in his parents’ bed was creepy.

  When they pushed through French doors that faced the infinity pool she stopped him. “Wait,” she said, looking around.

  “What is it?” T.J. panicked, then got sly again. “You want to do it in the pool?” He smiled as he pressed his hips against hers and started to unzip her dress.

  “No—I mean—just give me a second.” She was staring around, studying the pool house. “What did you say your name was?”

  “I don’t think I did—I’m T.J.”

  “What’s your last name?” She squinted, putting something together.

  “Who cares?” He wanted her to stop talking, and he put a finger on her lips.

  “I’ve been here before,” she said.

  “Not possible,” T.J. said, looking at her breasts now and dropping his head to kiss them. “My family has lived here since I was born.”

  She pulled his chin up with a firm finger and looked him straight in the eyes. “I know you,” she said, laughing. “You’re Ted Bristol’s son.”

  T.J.’s head was suddenly cleared of all the lust and imagery and anticipation he had as he heard his father’s name. “How do you know my father?” he snapped, not wanting to piece together what she already had.

  She laughed. “He picked me up in a bar and brought me back once, too.” She rolled her eyes. “Jesus, I was young then—am I so old?” She was laughing at all this and T.J. felt his mouth go dry. “I guess it’s true what they say: Like father, like son, eh?”

  T.J. pushed her shoulders with unintentional force, and she stumbled back on her heels.

  “What the hell?” she snapped.

  “Don’t say that,” T.J. growled, turning and putting a hand to his brow. “Are you saying you slept with my father?”

  “Yeah.” She nodded, pissed off now. “Over there”—she pointed to a lounge chair by the pool—“and in there”—she pointed into the house—“and once in the hot tub.” She was saying it matter-of-factly to rub it in, and it was working.

  “And he was spectacular,” she added, pulling her dress down and turning back toward the main house.

  T.J.’s head was spinning. “You couldn’t have—he loves my mother.”

  “Love?” She laughed. “Love has nothing to do with anything, T.J. Grow up.”

  T.J. fell, stunned, into a pool chair and watched her leave, unable to move or to speak, his pride empty and his brain spinning with all the ramifications of realizing his father had had sex with another woman in the same pool house T.J. himself played in as a child.

  And underneath all that turmoil and fallout was an even more serious thought: The woman was right, and Riley was right—he was on the same exact path as the father he despised.

  34

  Adam Dory: Drunk, Racist Asshole

  Adam opened his eyes onto a concrete wall and slowly rolled onto his back, to see a yellow fluorescent light buzzing from a damp ceiling. He lifted his hand to his temple, then reached behind his head to feel a concrete slab serving as a pillow. The sensation of the cold s
tone made him jolt upright, which brought the bars back into view, along with the slow recollection of what had happened last night. He remembered the bars slamming on him, he remembered yelling some more at the cop, he remembered an angry conversation with another drunk about a girl, and another guy in the cell pacing around bitching about some new cloud technology Hewlett-Packard was trying to steal from him.

  But now he was alone in the cell: just him, the concrete wall, and the looming fate before him.

  “Morning, soldier,” a voice called from outside the cell.

  Adam turned his head to see the cop from last night flipping through paperwork at his desk. He didn’t look up as he addressed his ward.

  Adam shook his head and let out a low groan. Finally he said in a croaky voice, “I’m in big trouble, huh?”

  Now the cop looked up and shrugged sarcastically. “What for? Running a stop sign? Driving drunk? Resisting arrest? Making racial slurs to a cop? Or being a spoiled, stuck-up idiot?”

  Adam swallowed. His head hurt, as much from sleeping on the concrete bench as from the apparently too many Jack and Cokes.

  The cop sighed as he paused in his paperwork and finally turned to Adam. “I gotta say, you did not do or say anything to be proud of last night.”

  Adam nodded silently, feeling genuine remorse.

  “You Stanford kids,” the cop said, shaking his head, “you get in this mind-set that the rules don’t apply to you. Like breaking the rules is always okay because that’s what Steve Jobs did or Mark Zuckerberg did or whatever. But get it together, man: You could have killed somebody last night driving as drunk as you were. Could have killed yourself. Some rules—some rules ain’t meant to be broken.”

  Adam nodded more rapidly, twisting his hands in his lap and calculating just how much his life was now over with a DUI on his record. What would happen when his investors found out? It seemed inevitable that this would make headlines and spur the fame for which he’d so desperately longed, but that it would be all wrong. Instead of “ADAM DORY: MASTER ENTREPRENEUR,” the headlines would read, “ADAM DORY DESTROYS DOREYE, INC. AND IS A DRUNK, RACIST ASSHOLE ON TOP OF IT ALL.”

  The cop stood up and put his key in the cell’s lock, pulling the door open. He handed Adam his keys. “Your car’s still on Galvez. There’s a bus stop three blocks down from here, or you can walk.”

  Adam continued to nod and look at the floor, too ashamed to look the cop in the eye. “What”—he stumbled—“what happens next?”

  “You’ll get a ticket in the mail.”

  “Then what?”

  “Then you’ll pay it, presumably.”

  Adam lifted his head. “What about court?”

  The cop shook his head.

  Adam studied him, and he shrugged. “You’re letting me off?”

  He lifted his eyebrows. “Appears that way, don’t it?”

  “But I—” Adam protested helplessly. “But I was drunk. And then I insulted you. Horribly. I was racist and pretentious. And the irony of it all is that I’m a totally poor homeless kid who hates that crap. And here I was telling you that—”

  “No need to repeat it,” the cop calmly interrupted.

  “How can you just let me off?”

  “I took this job because I wanted to make this world safer and better. Last night, I wanted to punch the living daylights out of you, believe you me,” the cop said, shaking his head, “but that wouldn’t have made things any better. And neither will putting a permanent mark on your record that forever brands you as a drunk, racist loser.”

  “Loser?”

  “Drinking alone on a Monday night? What the hell is a good-looking kid like you doing drinking alone on a Monday night?” The cop smiled under his mustache.

  “But how do you know I won’t do it again?”

  “Eh,” the cop said, and turned back to his desk, “I seen your type before. Good kids that just got off track. People think that bad things only happen in the ghetto. But it’s just as common at your fancy Ivy League schools. You won’t do it again.”

  Adam felt his heart tense and release and then tense up again, half expecting the cop to start laughing and lock him in jail forever. “So I can go?”

  “You better go, man. I got paperwork to do and I been up all night listening to your drunk ass snore.”

  “And that’s it? Nothing else?”

  “You got a four-hundred-dollar ticket coming in the mail.”

  “Yeah, yeah, that’s fine.” Adam was so relieved to pay four hundred dollars, he wanted to write the check right now.

  He turned and walked toward the door, then came back and reached out his hand. “Thank you, Officer—” He paused, realizing he didn’t know his benefactor’s name.

  “Rodrigues. Anthony Rodrigues,” the cop said, and accepted his hand.

  “Thank you.” Adam shook it gratefully and turned to go.

  As he pushed out the door into the open sunlight, he heard Anthony’s voice giving him some parting advice. “Hey, Adam? You get one more chance. Don’t screw it up.”

  Adam swallowed and nodded, knowing—now—that he wouldn’t.

  35

  Paying for It

  “Oh, I just love this—try it on?” Mrs. Hawkins pulled a short navy sweaterdress off the rack and held it up for Patty to see.

  Patty tilted her head and squinted in consideration. It was a cable-knit cashmere blend that would look darling with the new brown suede Stuart Weitzman boots she’d just bought, a seven-hundred-dollar splurge from this month’s record Focus Girls profits. “Sure,” she answered.

  “Size eight?”

  “Size six.” Patty glared at her mother’s implication. She’d put on a few pounds since she ended things with Alex, but she didn’t need her mother’s passive-aggressive reminders.

  “I’ll have her take both just in case,” Mrs. Hawkins said, handing the dresses to the Neiman Marcus clerk to hang in the dressing room.

  Patty decided to let it roll off—she was in a great mood despite her extra three pounds. Focus Girls business was humming, and clients and girls alike couldn’t stop singing her praises. Every day brought new accolades from happy customers or happier employees, and she felt pride knowing that she’d created something that resonated with people.

  “So have you been out with anyone since Alex?” her mother pried.

  “No,” Patty said nonchalantly, studying a chartreuse silk blouse. “No time.”

  She could feel her mother’s disapproving glare from three feet away.

  “Men my age, Mom, they’re just so dull. I mean, admit it: Alex was way—well, he wasn’t smart enough, don’t you think?” She looked up with an honest expression.

  Mrs. Hawkins moved around the table of sweaters that separated them and put her hand on her daughter’s cheek, then laughed. “No, no—I supposed he really wasn’t.”

  Patty laughed, too.

  “Whatever happened to that ridiculous app company he was starting?”

  “Oh, it folded.” Patty rolled her eyes. “Obviously.” She wrapped a silk scarf around her neck and studied its appearance in a nearby mirror. “Of course, he said it was because he didn’t have the time to commit to it and it couldn’t survive without his leadership, but in reality I think enough investors turned him down that he finally realized it was a stupid idea.”

  “I’m just not used to looking at you as a big-time entrepreneur.” Mrs. Hawkins stood behind her and met her eyes in the mirror. “But I am so, so proud.”

  Patty returned her mother’s smile. One of the best side effects of this whole experience was that it gave her and her mother something other than boys and clothes to talk about, and that made Patty see her mom in a new light, almost like a really supportive peer, not a nagging older woman.

  But this moment was shortly interrupted by a phone call. Patty didn’t recognize the number, and she excused herself from her mother as she picked up. “Focus Girls, this is Patty?”

  “Patty, it’s Marvin Fetzer; w
e spoke last week when I scheduled an appointment with four of your girls?”

  “Yes, of course.” Patty stumbled over her words, trying to recollect which one this was—there were so many now. “How was everything?”

  “It was eighty percent perfect and twenty percent abhorrent.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “One of the girls was terrible. She was an absolute wet mop and left the evening early without even excusing herself.”

  “Which one?”

  “She said her name was Lisa.”

  Patty remembered Marvin now: This was the event at Rosewood for the men researching young women’s fashions. She’d sent Lisa Bristol for her first Focus Girls assignment.

  “You’re joking!” Patty gripped the phone closer to her ear as if it would help to convey her concern. “But Lisa’s one of our very best,” she lied. Although it had been Lisa’s first assignment, it was Lisa Bristol for God’s sake—she had to be good. “Something must have happened.”

  “Are you accusing—” Marvin’s voice started to rise.

  “No, no, no—I’m not accusing you of anything,” Patty said, trying to recover. “I mean, she must have gotten sick or something. This is totally unlike her. I’ll look into it immediately and get back to you with an explanation, but in the meantime we’ll obviously give you a refund.”

  “I fully expect it.”

  “Of course, Marvin, of course. You get a full refund and my guarantee that this will never happen again.”

  “Thank you, Patty. As I said, your girls are usually top-notch. Otherwise I wouldn’t have called. You can count on us continuing to be customers,” he said matter-of-factly, and hung up the phone.

  Patty stared at her iPhone. What could possibly have happened to Lisa?

  * * *

  Lisa sat forward with her elbows on the table, cupping her chin in her hands, her purple-polished fingers stretched alongside her thinly mascaraed eyes.

  “Oh, Patty.” She shook her head in her hands. “I’m so sorry. I totally failed you.”

  “I just want to understand what happened,” Patty said honestly, unable to be angry at a friend who looked so shell-shocked.