Midtown Masters

by Cara McKenna

  As the waitress set a plate bearing a thick wedge of chocolate torte before Meyer, he wiggled his fingers with anticipation. “Christ, sobriety’s going to make me so fat.”

  “Doubtful,” Suzy said, centering her own dessert, a slice of key lime pie. She spoke to John. “The only thing Meyer consumes before six p.m. is espresso and cigarettes—”

  “E-cigarettes, now,” Meyer interjected. “Those don’t count.”

  “Yes, they do. Plus he runs two marathons a year.”

  “Do you?” John asked, setting down a forkful of carrot cake. “I run long distance, too. Only two marathons, ever, but I try to get in about thirty miles a week.”

  “Ah, disciplined,” Meyer said, nodding. “I’m more of a fuck-you marathoner. I pick a city—in addition to Pittsburgh—and procrastinate until I’m six weeks out then train like a maniac.”

  “Like a literal maniac,” Suzy put in. “It makes him completely psychotic.”

  Meyer nodded. “It does. And I hate every mile of it. But I’m stubborn. Everything worth doing in my life originally began so that I might rub it in somebody’s smug face.”

  “As good a reason as any, I suppose,” John said.

  “My parents tried to leverage paying for college into a way to force me to stay in the closet, so I went from a C student to graduating with honors just to spite them. Did my undergrad at NYU for practically nothing.”

  John lifted a forkful of cake in salute. “And so who did you spite when you started running?”

  “Ex-girlfriend. She said all I ever did was get drunk and fight with people online about the Morea revolt. Which was completely wrong—it was the Revolt of Ghent.”

  “Though she had the drinking part right,” Suzy chimed in.

  Meyer circled his fork. “Details. Anyway, she basically told me I was a lazy waste of higher education and that I never finished anything I started. And I drunkenly told her I could run a marathon if I felt like it, and she said she’d bet her cat that I couldn’t.”

  “And two months later,” Suzy said, clearly knowing this story backwards and forwards, “after not having run since high school, Meyer finished the Pittsburgh Marathon.”

  “And did you get the cat?”

  Meyer shook his head. “No, that would’ve been cruel. But I did get my own much better cat after we broke up.”

  “The marathon didn’t change her mind about you, then?”

  “No. In fact the marathon incident turned me into such an insufferable, gloating prick—”

  “On top of also being a raging drunk,” Suzy supplied.

  “—that she dumped me because of it. And because of the drinking. But as my drunken, dumped, bitter, blistered self would have told you, I showed her.” He smirked, the expression managing to imply he found his former self both delightful and mortifying.

  “And so when you quit drinking . . .” John raised his brows.

  “That was to spite a good friend,” Meyer said. “Who, ironically, I discovered I couldn’t stand without the aid of alcohol.”

  John laughed.

  “And that’s me in a nutshell. But you,” Meyer said, poking his fork in John’s direction, squinting, “are the real mystery at this table.”

  “Am I?”

  “Who are you, really?”

  “Just a man,” he said, at a loss for much else. “A writer. I’m close with my family, live in the same city I was born in. I spend my days typing and running and reading and gardening. My grandmother lives a more thrilling life than I do, and she uses a walker.”

  “Modest,” Suzy said.

  “Undoubtedly,” Meyer agreed. “Because by night, you’re also a secret pervert, trolling for a bit of strange on the interwebs.”

  John blushed. “Guilty.”

  “Very intriguing,” Meyer concluded, and turned his attention to the last of his cake.

  “I would have thought that made me more lonely than mysterious,” John said.

  “Discerning,” Meyer corrected. “And yes, very intriguing, if you really did solicit us as a research aid and not a masturbatory one.”

  John glanced about, making sure no one was eavesdropping on their increasingly personal conversation. “I really did.”

  “You get to write that off?” Meyer teased.

  “If I were bold enough to try, possibly. But believe me, I’m not.”

  “I believe you, John.”

  His name in Meyer’s voice felt strange and intimate and thrilling, like a curled finger stroking his cheek.

  “You seem like the pathologically honest type,” Meyer went on. “Misleading screen names aside.”

  “I try to be. It’s easy when you don’t normally do anything interesting enough to keep a secret.”

  Suzy made a tutting noise. “You’re plenty interesting. You’re the most famous person either of us has ever had dinner with, for starters.”

  “Famous for doing something incredibly dull, sitting in front of a computer for much of the day.”

  “And touring creepy old abandoned mills.”

  “And that.”

  The waitress appeared with the check, seeking any final requests. John looked around the table, finding that they’d all finished their desserts.

  “I think we’re all set,” Suzy said, accepting the little leather dossier.

  “Give me that,” Meyer said, plucking it from her fingers. “He who invites himself to dinner ought to pay for dinner.”

  “I’d like to pay,” John said. “You two have been very generous with your time—”

  “Like fun we have,” Meyer said, already riffling through his wallet. “This was all in our self-interest. The sating of deep curiosity.” He tucked a credit card in the slot and set it at the edge of the table. “Plus all of my income currently comes from the camming, so in a way, you’ve subsidized this dinner already.”

  “If you insist.”

  “I do,” Meyer said, his eyes darting to the returning waitress and gifting her with a warm and cunning smile—the sort of easy, throwaway gesture the man probably didn’t even register offering, while any recipient would likely spend the next hour flushed and flustered.

  Suzy excused herself to use the bathroom, and by the time she returned the receipt had been signed and John and Meyer were getting to their feet.

  “That was delicious. Thank you for the recommendation,” John said to Suzy, and to Meyer, “and thank you for treating.”

  “Our pleasure,” Suzy said, tugging on her sweater and flipping her hair out from under its collar. “Shall we?”

  She led the way to the exit, and the bright day they’d left behind when they’d entered had fled. Rain streaked the front windows, reflecting the lights of the passing traffic.

  “Good thing we parked close,” she said, tucking her purse tightly under her arm.

  “I came prepared.” Meyer claimed a black umbrella from the coiled iron cylinder beside the door, the dapper sort John favored himself, with a curved wooden handle and a long chrome point on the end. “Would you like?” he asked Suzy.

  “Nah, keep it. Your hair took more work than mine.”

  “Suzy told me something,” Meyer said to John, expanding his umbrella as they stepped out onto the sidewalk. “Something you may or may not have meant to tell her in confidence.”

  “Meyer.” This reprimand from Suzy.

  “It’s okay,” John said, turning up his collar as they headed toward the next block. “I told her she could talk to you. What did she tell you?”

  Meyer eyed a couple nearing and waited until they passed by. “That you wanted to watch us, sometime. Watch Suzy and Meyer, that is, not Mr. and Mrs. Parks.”

  The world flipped upside down, endless clouds stretching out like a field beneath John, his feet glued to a concrete sky. “I said I was curious what that mig
ht look like,” he said carefully. Jesus, was this an invitation? If so, what on earth was John’s answer? “Perhaps it was naive of me, but I did half believe you two were actually married. Finding out you’re not made me curious, I’ll admit.”

  “Curious is good,” Meyer said, seeming to scan the distance or horizon as they reached Suzy’s car. “I like curious. Now, where to?” He looked to each of them. “We’ve clearly hit it off, so where does this soirée go from here?”

  Where, indeed?

  The car unlocked with a bloop-bloop, and as they climbed inside, Suzy offered a suggestion that barely scraped the surface of Meyer’s question. “John’s suite at the Mansions is nice. If he doesn’t need to decompress or work, that is.”

  John’s head shook, independent of his brain. “Nothing that can’t wait until I’m back home.”

  “Lead the way, then,” Meyer said.

  “Yes, lead the way,” John said to Suzy. “Seeing as how I’m the only one here who doesn’t actually know how to get there.”

  It was a short drive, barely long enough for ten thousand worries and hopes and fears and what-ifs to flash through John’s mind. He couldn’t help picturing his bed, trying to imagine if it was to become a stage, and the chaise lounge his front-row seat to a performance to remember.

  Chapter Fifteen

  “Very nice.” This from Meyer as the three of them entered John’s room. “Not as stodgy as I’d have guessed from passing by.”

  John glanced around the space himself as he toed off his shoes. When he’d woken up it looked far different from when he’d first strode in with his suitcase in hand. Suzy had changed these walls, this room, that bed, and irreversibly. Now, with Meyer strolling across the floor as though he owned the place . . . He couldn’t guess how he’d feel about this room when he woke in the morning. He wasn’t even sure if he was ready to find out.

  But he also knew he wasn’t going to let this invitation pass, no matter how nervous it made him.

  “I could order a bottle of wine again,” he said to Suzy, catching the error too late. He felt his own face going pale and quickly turned to Meyer. John and Suzy had drunk in front of him at the restaurant, but that had been with dinner. Drinking on its own seemed rude. “Sorry—I didn’t think.”

  Meyer made a sputtering noise with his lips and flicked the apology aside with a sweep of his hand. “I’m not that delicate, or that corruptible. You two have your fun. In fact,” he added, plucking the room service menu from the desk. He flipped through it and picked up the phone, punching a button. “Yes, hello. This is room twelve-oh-five. Could you please send up a glass of pinot grigio and a double Lagavulin on the rocks . . . ? Perfect. Thank you.” He set the phone back in its cradle and smiled at John, sighing with satisfaction. “I get a certain pleasure from ordering drinks.”

  “From ordering drinks, a year and a half into your sobriety,” Suzy said, sitting on the end of the bed, “and cock-teasing men off Grindr, months into your experiment with monogamy.”

  “What can I say—there’s something exciting about flirting with your own relapse. Provided you’re a masochist.” He continued to explore the room while they waited for the drinks to arrive, edging the curtains aside to check the view, peering into the bathroom, the closet, rooting through the bedside table drawers. He removed the Bible and eyed its edges. “You know you’re in a classy hotel when the good book’s got gilt pages.” He replaced it and took a seat on the chaise lounge, crossing his legs and looking between Suzy and John, grinning. “I can’t believe you two fucked around.”

  John flushed, but Suzy rolled her eyes. “Yes, you can. You wouldn’t have forgiven me if we hadn’t.”

  “True. I trust she was gentle with you,” Meyer said, seeming eager to draw John into the conversation.

  “She was,” he managed, at once shy and awkward. Already he could feel his tongue growing clumsy, stutter imminent. Any confidence he’d stumbled upon at the restaurant had abandoned him.

  “May I be nosy?” Meyer asked.

  “I suppose.”

  “I know you’re inexperienced.”

  “Very.”

  “Not a virgin, though.”

  John shook his head. “There was an incident, when I was twenty-two. A one-night stand, I guess you’d say.”

  “More like an assault,” Suzy cut in dryly. “She sounded like a nightmare.”

  “I was as consenting as I was frightened,” John said. “I wanted to get it over with, even if the end result was rushed and mutually unsatisfactory.”

  “I like the way you talk,” Meyer said, eyes narrowing. “You use far more syllables than you need to, yet they all sound perfectly essential.”

  “Thank you, I think.” That wouldn’t make a terrible Amazon review.

  “So, tell me more. This girl initiated, I take it?”

  John gave Meyer the same gist he’d given Suzy.

  Meyer shook his head, tsking. “I’m all for graspy, frantic fumbling, but that does sound rather traumatic. Is that what kept you out of the dating and sex games for all this time?”

  “I can’t blame it on that, no. It didn’t help, but it’s down to my shyness, far and away. It’s difficult to get very far with a woman—or a man,” he added, flushing anew but feeling a teeny, tiny bit bold, “when you’re too much of a coward to ever approach one.”

  “Best-selling novelist,” Meyer countered. “Surely someone pursued you, in all that time.”

  “I’m not sure. I can be a bit clueless. I’m never sure if someone’s complimenting my work because they like the books, or because perhaps they like me. I always assume it’s the former.”

  “And so you don’t return the signals.”

  “If there are any to return, that is. No, I’m sure I don’t.”

  A knock sounded at the door. John stood but Meyer was a beat ahead of him, and he put his fingertips to John’s chest, pressing firmly until John sat back down. Meyer smiled. “Also my treat.”

  John swallowed, chest and throat and face burning, thankful Meyer was walking away. Even by the subdued light of the desk lamp he had to be bright pink.

  Meyer slipped his wallet from his back pocket, spoke softly to the server at the threshold. He shut the door with his foot and crossed the room with a drink in each hand, a napkin pinched neatly to each glass’s base with his pinkies.

  “Thank you,” John said, accepting his. “Were you ever a waiter, by any chance?”

  Meyer smiled, delivering Suzy’s wine. “For seven years, in my twenties. I made exceptional tips.”

  “I believe it.”

  “I still make exceptional tips, actually. Sex work pays so much better than Red Lobster.”

  John blanched. “Dear God, was I meant to have been tipping all this time?”

  Suzy cut in quickly. “Not everyone does, at our price point. But occasionally someone will request to, and we’re happy to accept it.”

  “I feel like such a clod.”

  Meyer laughed. “Forget I mentioned it. Anyway, the tippers are typically the real kinkster types. The ones who think they’re asking us to go above and beyond.”

  “Though they rarely are,” Suzy said. “We’re hard to scandalize.”

  Back before he and Suzy had finally chatted, face-to-digital face, John bet he would have felt insecure, being reminded that Mr. and Mrs. Parks was all an act, and that they had any number of other clients besides him. Jealous, even. But that time was past, that illusion shattered, and happily so. The friendship that had resulted from the truth was richer than the fantasy, and also far more educational. He’d been infatuated with the Parkses, but he was fascinated by Suzy and Meyer.

  He caught himself now—he was leaning forward, drink clutched in both hands and resting on his crossed shin. But instead of pulling back, embarrassed, he decided to go ahead and be rude.

  “C
ould I ask about that? About what you two do, for other clients? I mean, I’m sure it’s confidential, but just vaguely speaking . . . ?”

  Suzy nodded as Meyer said, “Please do.”

  John wasn’t normally adept at detecting shifts in the mood of a room, but he felt it now—it was as though someone had dimmed the lights or replaced them with candles. Or perhaps that was just the whisky taking effect.

  “The people who tip,” he began, feeling dopey and tacky, but too curious to stop himself. “What sorts of things do they want to see? The things you said they might think are ‘above and beyond.’”

  “Fetishy things, usually,” Suzy said, looking to Meyer with her eyebrows raised.

  He nodded. “Yeah. Or rough stuff. I feel like if one of us gets our ass fucked or our face slapped, the chances are good. To put it crudely.”

  “And you’re both all right with those things?”

  “Oh, sure,” Suzy said. “The two of us, before we started camming, we did all kinds of stuff. Meyer’s definitely the kinkiest guy I’ve been with, and I’m one of the kinkier people he’s been with.” She glanced to him for confirmation.

  “The kinkiest woman, yes.”

  “So we’d already pushed some boundaries, together, and we both went into it pretty clear on our own limits and the things we just aren’t into. We have no problem telling a client we’re not okay with a particular act—in the most charming and sex-positive way we can, that is. We’ll offer to do X instead, try to make sure they don’t feel like they made us uncomfortable, or worry we’re judging them.”

  “Can I ask . . .” He trailed off, unsure.

  “What some of our off-limits stuff is?” Suzy supplied, reading his mind.

  He nodded. “But don’t say if you don’t want to.”