“But not too much vodka,” I said. “It’s about the flavor.”
“What do you say?” Loren asked. “Should we go?”
“Absolutely.” I kicked her out of my room so I could get dressed.
Chapter 3
Jake
When I was a kid, our teachers showed us these antiquated propaganda videos about body image. Some of them featured testimonials about anorexia and bulimia and how society’s views on looks were unfair to women. In an ideal world, looks wouldn’t matter. People would be judged on the content of their minds and not their appearance, but that wasn’t the way the world worked.
If I didn’t care about my appearance, people wouldn’t pay any attention to me. People have been attaching warm, fuzzy feelings to good-looking faces long before we could call ourselves human. It is an instinct so powerful that it acted not only on a conscious level, but on an unconscious one, as well.
I’d read plenty of studies showing that good-looking people tended to get better tips, better jobs, and when people were asked to free write about good-looking people, they tended to give them more positive character attributes than they gave to ugly people.
Who was I to deny a natural law like that? I owed my success to pragmatism and a firm understanding of the way the world worked. Idealism was nothing more than gilded ignorance. That’s why I never left the house unless I found some way of emphasizing my assets.
Work was no different. I made a point to wear tight jackets, even tighter shirts, and slacks that hung in all the right places. If I wanted to maintain my position as the CEO of a billion-dollar company, I had to look the part.
Corbin Enterprises owned more than a dozen restaurant and bar chains in both the Eastern and Western Hemisphere. Restaurants are about flair and presentation. Bars are the same way, so I had a little fun. I showed up to work in a differe
nt car every day. I wore colors like bright blue and lavender button-ups that would stand out. Little things like that made all the difference.
I headed home from work that evening driving a sleek, white Lamborghini when I hit a block of traffic downtown. A sign at the end of the street said, “Oxygen Grand Opening,” in bright blue letters.
Of course, I sighed. I had to sit in traffic for more than an hour because some idiot decided to renovate a hole in the wall and call it a nightclub. I knew exactly what building they rented. It was a small, rectangular room, not much bigger than a studio with black, spray-painted walls and a wooden bar that was barely big enough for the bartender to serve drinks.
Like with any club, the allure was in the gimmick and the image. Blue backlights lit the chrome sign above the door. Matching blue lights hung above the front windows, and a strobe light flashed on the sidewalk. It was just a way to get people to pay $15 for a watered-down drink. The customers would spend five or six minutes there and forget the place existed when they left.
Places like that only lasted a few months. The majority of their money came from their grand opening. It was obvious why. The line to get in stretched for two blocks. Most of the people in line were two-bit thugs and nickel and dime dealers. I saw a lot of stained jerseys and baggy pants, but clusters of women stood in line, too, wearing tight, slinky dresses and mini-skirts.
A pair of blondes stared at me from the back of the line. One waved at me. The other grabbed her by the arm to pull her away, but her friend wasn’t having it. She wanted a piece, and she wasn’t the only one. Most of the girls that passed by took more than a passing glance. Plenty of them were openly interested.
I kept my eyes on the road. I could have whoever I wanted, whenever I wanted. Half the girls at the office fought to get my attention, and I hadn’t even given them a reason to think I liked them. People constantly threw themselves at me. The men wanted to be my friends, and the women were ready to lift their skirts the second they saw me.
The problem with looking good was that everybody thought that they were entitled to a piece of me. I was the one, the knight in shining armor—the subject of their wet dreams. They thought fate would pull us together, and that somehow, their fairy godmother would give them a dress beautiful enough to get me to marry them.
It had always been this way, but it started to get out of control when I made my first million. Women could smell it. They saw the labels on my clothes, the expensive cars, and the house, and knew right away that I was the one. It got so bad that I had to worry about my safety. I moved out of my million-dollar, two-story home into a gated fortress. I had cameras and motion sensors installed, and I even took armored cars to big events.
This paranoia and disillusionment kept me from making meaningful contact with others, and it was terrible, but I couldn’t have it any other way. How could I respect people when I saw what happened when they found out I was rich? I certainly couldn’t respect women. They shamelessly hunted me down. They blew my phone up, and when they finally realized that I wasn’t ready to marry them, they turned bitter, even violent. More than one girl had lost her mind over me.
The sex made it even worse. I’d tasted every flavor, from dark chocolate to creamy yellow, women that most men could barely dream of, but not one them was enough to satisfy me. Looks mattered, but substance mattered even more.
Substance was dangerous. It meant the possibility of attachment, and ultimately heartbreak, but I was an addict, and I was building up a tolerance. I needed something more potent.
Traffic moved slowly until I passed the club and moved into the office district. I hit a red light two blocks up and leaned my head back.
I was tired. Work was tedious, and the last thing I wanted to do was sit around waiting. A hipster bar on the corner caught my eye. It had a seating area that’d been closed off with a rusted fence, and a blonde woman leaned against the fence, staring at her phone.
She wasn’t perfect. Her nose was too big, and her hair was dull, but she had a nice body, and she wasn’t gawking at my car like it was the most amazing thing she’d ever seen. She didn’t even look up from her phone. I couldn’t help but think that she had a lot of the qualities I wanted.
I didn’t need a pair of $15,000 breasts or skin dyed a ridiculous shade of orange. I needed somebody real who didn’t have to spend six hours in front of the mirror every morning. Someone who didn’t obsess over whether their nose was the perfect width. This girl was casual—natural. I needed somebody like that.
I decided to call my guy Tony.
“What up?” Just the sound of his voice made me shiver. I imagined him sitting in his back office surrounded by mounds of cocaine and a pair of girls on either arm. The truth was probably toned down a bit, but I wasn’t too far off.
“Hey, Tony.” I was always neutral with him. Just like with any thug, you didn’t want to sound too eager. They’d try to take advantage of you. But I didn’t want to sound aggressive, either. It would make him feel threatened.