by Foster, Zoe
‘You may. Just have him tested for STIs first. Remember, you’re paid to be delightful, beautiful and professional. Not flirty, not ice queen, and not lazy. Okay, go have some fun. Yvonne is your go-to when I leave.’
Last-minute checks were done in MAC compacts, mints were passed around and hair was fluffed. You’d think they were about to take on a runway, but all the girls faced was a huge, dark function room with hundreds of already-drinking, mostly male execs and a few TV stars who attended under contractual obligation. Abby was not complaining. She relied on their vanity, urged it, demanded it.
As she’d had zero no-shows, something she never took for granted, and Natasha seemed her usual effervescent self, there was nothing else for Abby to do but head home and collapse in a glamorous heap. Red wine would be poured, some strain of Kardashian show would be watched, a million personal texts she hadn’t had time to reply to would be sent. She used to crave a boyfriend on her Big Friday Night In, but hadn’t for a long time. She was too tired and too selfish to worry about someone else’s needs at the end of a savage week. As long as she got some action every now and then, she was fine. The thought of Marcus, naked in the dawn light, skittered through her brain. Perfect case in point. She could dine on that memory for months.
8
‘I like the look of these guys …’ Abby clicked through the slide-show on the site’s homepage, a site listed in Webra’s portfolio, and which, unlike so many trendy sites she’d seen in other portfolios, didn’t exist for the sole purpose of giving you epileptic fits and forcing you to upgrade your Flash player.
It was a cinch to navigate but felt and looked extremely advanced. That’s what she wanted. The Allure website had to be as beautiful as the girls, very modern and almost embarrassingly easy to use. As around three-quarters of her clients were men over fifty who still asked for comp cards, she had to keep them top of mind.
‘Rob? Do you like this one?’
Rob Jackson was Allure’s accountant. He came in once a week to go over the books, show off his snappy wardrobe and make all the Allure staff fall a little bit more in love with him. He was a gorgeous-looking man, faintly olive skin, his silver hair almost short enough to be called shaved, and his brown eyes twinkling behind thick black frames. And a big gap between his two front teeth, which was at first arresting, then intriguing and eventually attractive. He looked like he’d fallen from the fashion pages of Esquire.
He leaned down to look at Abby’s laptop over her shoulder.
‘Nice. Very swish. Much better than that ice-cream website.’
‘But we’re not looking at each individual site, Rob. We’re looking at the design and user experience for this whole group of sites. Remember? We’re trying to choose a design company, not a water bottle or an ice-cream.’
‘Well, these guys seem fine. I don’t really know what I’m looking for, to be honest, but I will say that it needs to be useful, because it needs to run your business for you, ultimately. Why don’t you just email a few of them and get a quote? That way I can start to feel useful again, because numbers start to be involved.’
Abby sighed. He was right. She’d wasted too much time on this site re-design already; she needed to get onto other work.
‘What am I allowed to spend on this?’ she asked, already hating the answer. Her current website, whipped up by a friend’s brother, Tony, cost her $25k and it was terrible. He was the kind of guy who still wore novelty comic book t-shirts, had acne and drank chocolate milk. When he wasn’t playing WoW and honing his (admittedly very impressive) version of the stereotypical web dork, he worked from his mother’s attic (still honing), where Abby was sure he spent most of his web-building hours ‘utilising’ the photos of all her girls. She shuddered at the thought.
‘As little as possible,’ said Rob, packing up his papers and laptop, and sliding them both neatly into a dark brown satchel. ‘Think about what I told you this morning – your overheads are too high, you need to downsize your staff. You stand to make a lot more money if you skim off the cream, trim the fat, strip the—’
‘I get it, Rob, I understand.’
‘It’s fortuitous that you want to rebuild your site at this time, because I think your new site is the perfect avenue for exactly what I’m talking about. If you can make bookings via the website only, not phone, then you can cut at least two staff. Taxi companies do it, hotels, airlines … It’s smart, and it saves a tonne of cash.’
‘People are so disposable to you, aren’t they?’ said Abby. He was right, of course. But it broke her heart a bit to even imagine telling a staff member, let alone several of them, they were being replaced by a website.
‘No way. I need them and their incapacity to add numbers.’ He smiled and slipped his jacket on, straightening it and smoothing it over his waistcoat as he went.
He walked out of her office, throwing charming remarks to the girls as he strode through, making them giggle and blush, and wonder about what it would be like to kiss him.
Abby turned back to her laptop. Fuck it. She would just send out a few emails, like Rob said. She would ask for a ‘business’ site, one that could function as a booker, and make it very clear she needed it done soon. These web and design people always seemed to be inconceivably busy, she thought. Perhaps it was their filter, so they could pick and choose the jobs (and clients) they actually wanted to work with. She couldn’t blame them. She did the same.
Abby woke up with a start and pressed snooze. It was 6.25 a.m. Why did she set her alarm so early? She always did that, assuming that in the morning she would obviously be inspired to run, or do her yoga video, or if she was feeling particularly ambitious, meditate, but she only ever wanted to sleep more. As usual, her work brain kicked in once she’d been awake for four seconds, and she automatically checked her email inbox, one eye still closed, pirate-style, so as to avoid waking up completely.
The usual emails greeted her, daily newsletters from blogs and websites she never opened, a couple Angie had forwarded on from girls wanting to be part of the agency, and two replies from web companies. The first, from Johan of Intelligent IT, was one sentence long, and as the tail of that sentence featured the number $110,000, was quickly deleted. Johan, you are off your tree, Abby thought as she opened the second email, from Marcus at Webra. Nice name, she thought, smiling to herself, her mind again springing back to the events of last Saturday night. In this very bed.
Hi Abby.
Please find attached a rough quote for the renovation of allureagency.com.
Despite the fact we are very busy doing lots of impressive work for brands you recognise and aspire to, we guarantee a 30-day turnaround if 50% deposit is paid up-front. We also guarantee we will produce a site superior – technically and visually – than anyone else will deliver, because we only employ the best. And we don’t feed them until they produce magic.
I look forward to hearing back from you.
Cheers,
Marcus.
PS How was your fiancé’s business trip?
When Abby’s eyes read over the last line of Marcus’s email, she bolted upright, her eyes enormous and nanometres from her screen. Fuck! It was Marcus! Amazing sex Marcus! Of all the fucking Marcuses in all the web design companies in all the world, and she chose to email him. Unbelievable.
Her breath quickened and a wash of heat crept from her back up her neck. She felt the same way she did when she and Mads were busted shoplifting back at school. Guilty, stupid and busted.
She quickly re-read her initial email to make sure she sounded friendly, but professional. Yes, all good. The only thing she could be accused of was being a little cold, but she didn’t know it would be HIM reading it, did she? She could also maybe, a little bit, be accused of having lied about being engaged, she admitted sheepishly.
Did he know she was lying? she wondered, furiously nibbling on her thumbnail as she ruminated the possibility that he’d caught her out and was deliberately letting her know he had … Or, was he
genuinely asking about her fictional fiancé and his make-believe business trip? Just as a way to let her know he was that Marcus? Well, she supposed, how else was he going to alert her that it was him: ‘Hi Abby, It’s me, Marcus! That guy you took back to your place last Saturday night for several rounds of energetic and vocal sex? So, anyway, about that quote …’
For all he knew there could be two Abbys who worked at Allure. Or it could be the wrong Allure and Abby altogether. He’d played it well, she conceded. Very ballsy. As soon as she concluded that thought bubble, her mind immediately swung back to the thought of him knowing she didn’t really have a fiancé. She recognised that this puzzle, and her impatient curiosity, would continue to sauté nicely throughout the day. And it was only 6.32 a.m. Wonderful.
It suddenly occurred to her that she would be required to write back. Was she going to play along with the fiancé thing? But what if he knew she didn’t have one? Then she would look even more ridiculous. Maybe she could humbly admit she didn’t really have one. Suck it up and move forward.
Oh God, it was too much. It was too far-fetched to even be believed. Serves me right for lying, she grumbled as she swung her legs over the side of the bed, stood up and walked to her ‘exercise clothes’ drawer.
9
‘What’s all the fuss, Gus? I got, like, eighty missed calls from you.’ Chelsea had been having a facial, and even though it killed her to be away from her BlackBerry, she realised having it in her hand on the massage table was a bit offensive. She walked to her car wearing her hair under a baseball cap and the kind of colossal sunglasses that used to be reserved for superstars and WAGs, but now everyone wore. Even though she had exceptional skin, she hated being seen without makeup, and with greasy, post-facial hair. You never knew who you might run into. Ryan Gosling, for example.
‘I’m pregnant!’ Abby shrieked the words in a way she hoped sounded authentic.
‘What are you even talking about?’
Abby had momentarily forgotten that Chelsea was too cool to fall for pranks.
‘Forget it, I was calling becau—’
‘Well maybe don’t use that one on Mads, huh? Might be considered a little tasteless.’
‘Oh, relax. Since when did you get all earnest? It doesn’t suit you. Now. Can I tell you an amazing story? You will like it. Promise.’
Chelsea opened the door to her convertible and got in. ‘Yes. Go.’
‘So, Marcus. From the other week?’
‘The infant?’
‘Yes. I accidentally emailed him, not knowing it was him. Well, actually I emailed the place he works, a web design place, just to the general contact email, and he wrote back.’
‘Oh come on, Abs. I know how to stalk better than anyone. You were stalking. Be honest.’
‘No! Honestly, no. I emailed a bunch of places asking for a quote because the Allure site is so 1999 and I need a new one. So he has somehow seen my email come in, and maybe that’s his job there, maybe he’s the receptionist guy, I don’t know, but he’s replied, all businesslike, and then, at the end under his name, has written, ‘How was your fiancé’s business trip?’
‘Shut UP. He did NOT.’ Chelsea’s first words of shock and amazement always came in the form of aggressive disagreement.
‘He did! He really did. And I can’t figure out if he knows I don’t have a fiancé, or if that was just his cheeky way of letting me know that it was him …’
‘Yeah, good call … And he said nothing else, just that? I mean, apart from the work stuff?’
‘Mm-hmm. I have to write back, obviously, that’s why I was being a keeno and calling you non-stop. I need advice.’ Chelsea was phenomenal at games with men.
‘This is karma, you realise. You’ve been stitched so that you learn that it’s inappropriate to fake having a fiancé. You’re just lucky it was a gentle retribution.’
‘Says the girl who flirts by car accident. What do I write back?’
Chelsea stroked the smooth, cold leather of her steering wheel as she thought.
‘Do you want to see him again?’
Abby scrunched up her mouth and thought about the question: Did she want to see him again? Sure, the sex was great, but there was plenty of good sex to be had out there; she had the experience to prove it. The idea of dealing with a twenty-two year old, even one as switched-on as Marcus, just seemed like a bad idea. Eventually he would either get bored of her and go back to the world of the youthful, lithe and cellulite-free, or fall in love with her, not because he was actually in love with her, of course, but because like all the others, he was in love with how much she didn’t need him. It was the world’s most intoxicating aphrodisiac, it really was: if you want a man to go gooey over you, tell him you’re not looking for anything serious right now. It baffled her that more women didn’t understand this most rudimentary of rules.
‘No, probably not, actually. Which means I don’t have to admit to no fiancé, right?’
‘Unless he knows you’re lying. Or you end up working with him on the website.’
‘Fuck! This thing is going in circles. It’s ridiculous. I’ve wasted too much time on this little shit and his cryptic email. What if I write back and say, you know, rahrahrah, professional stuff about the quote, and then, um, like, “My fiancé’s trip was most productive, thank you for asking.” So it cuts it off.’
‘Or just go along with it?’
‘Chels, this isn’t a rom-com movie, I’m not going to put photos of me and my Fake Fiancé on my desk and live a hilarious double life whenever Marcus comes into the office.’
Chelsea sighed. ‘Why don’t you want to see him again? I know you don’t have anything against inappropriate fuck buddies, because that mess of a DJ and that creepy professor guy were both about as inappropriate as they come. So, why? Why not keep him around for some good times?’
‘Chels, not once have I ever suggested the men I sleep with are viable relationship material, which, if you think about it, is probably the precise reason I sleep with them, because I don’t want a relationsh—’
‘Ummm, sounds an awful lot like you’re proving MY point?’
‘I just couldn’t be bothered going down that path. Remember what happened with Victoria? My waxer? That young guy she was totally in love with, he was like twenty-five and she was, well, she’s our age, and he SHIT himself two weeks out from the wedding and just fucked off for a week and turned his phone off. Flipped OUT. She called the whole wedding off; couldn’t trust him after that. Anyway, whatever, I don’t have the energy to be with, as you correctly label him, an infant. No good can come from it. I’m too busy, and also, they are definitely the best web designers around, and I like to keep my biz and my boys separate.’
‘Is thaaat why you and Rob have never got it on …’
‘Pffft. Please. That’s a nonversation: you know I’d jump him in a second if he didn’t have Drab Girlfriend.’
Chels laughed. ‘So just keep it business then. And if you have a work meeting, wear something totally hot.’
‘Good one. Thanks, Chels.’
‘Pilates tomorrow? Come on. Do you good.’
‘Do US good, is what you’re meant to say, my skinny, arrogant friend.’
‘Bye! Kisses.’ Chelsea pressed ‘end call’ on her phone, started the engine and turned up her radio.
Dear Marcus,
Thank you for the time taken with your quote. We’re very keen to get this thing turned around fast, and you’ve offered a very competitive rate and timeframe, so please inform me of the next step and we can get this underway.
We’re happy to pay the fifty per cent up-front in order to complete the job within thirty days.
Abby had so many jokes and witty little asides she wanted to slip into the email, it felt so alien writing in such an official manner. But! She had to. It was strictly business.
And yes, my fiancé’s trip was very productive.
I look forward to hearing from you re: moving forward.
&nb
sp; Abby.
She hated the fiancé line. She cut it, then pasted it back in. It felt like she was flirting, playing with him, even though she most definitely wasn’t. She’d acknowledged it was That Abby, but hadn’t given any hint she wanted to further pursue that train of conversation. It would have to do. If he wrote anything further, she would completely ignore it.
Send.
Not five minutes later, a little envelope icon appeared. Abby braced herself.
Hi Abby,
Great! Webra is thrilled to be able to work with Allure on this project, and not just because it means we’ll be working with photos of stunning girls for the next month.
The next step is a meeting with our head designer and our dev genius in order to talk through your vision, and then tell you most of it is impossible.
How are you placed Tuesday at 10am? Webra will come to you, of course.
Thank you for choosing us,
Cheers,
Marcus.
Abby exhaled for what felt like four days. Excellent. He was playing professional. What a good stick he was. He was very playful, as she recalled he was in Real Life, but she could handle that. He’d made no mention of fictitious fiancés or wild sex, and this satisfied Abby enough to believe this thing could work after all, and wouldn’t just be an awkward mess. She was a little concerned he would find out – if he didn’t already know – there was no fiancé, but figured they’d be chummy enough professionally by then that it would be a) cast aside, b) funny and c) utterly inconsequential.
Plus she was spending $40k with his company. That had to account for something.
She read his email again to see if he might be one of the two people mentioned, but it didn’t sound like it. She doubted he’d be the ‘head’ of anything at twenty-two.
Hi Marcus,
That time and day sounds fine. Our address is on my signature.
All best,