Inside, I go on autopilot. Shoulders straight, chin up, smile confident and inviting—but not too inviting. The walk of ownership, of importance. Straight to the bar. A few flashes catch the corners of my eyes, but I don’t follow up on them.
I also ignore the weight of hungry eyes that claw at me from all sides. Ferry Lights is thoroughly stocked with the sorts of women that marry men like Reginald—and the sorts of women that men who want to be like Reginald often rent.
I never had to pay for it, and neither has my father—yet—but I’ve taken advantage of the “all-you-can-fuck” buffet more than a few times. Times when I didn’t just see my father screwing a girl who looks exactly like every one of these girls. The sight of that makes the thought of taking any of these women on my arm nauseating. At least while I’m sober.
Thus, the bar.
The new bartender—so new that I don’t know the girl’s name—eyes me up and down with a smile that quickly vanishes when she recognizes me. Someone’s probably filled her in on the reputations shared by both the Ferry men. At least she serves me first.
New though she is, I don’t need to tell her my drink order. That’s more or less orientation information for new bartenders in the open lounge. If I know Reginald, everyone on staff is required to memorize a small dossier on himself and me. God forbid one of them prove to be of some small inconvenience—like mixing a drink wrong—to the great and powerful Reginald Ferry by accident.
The glittering, bronze-powdered vampires that haunt the glamorous crowd at least have the good sense to wait until I’m two drinks in to descend on me with their hungry eyes. One by one they make those passive aggressive advances that I hate—leaning on the bar to show off some cleavage, or squeezing in between me and some other patron, pressing breasts or ass against me when they do with quiet, sultry apologies they don’t mean.
One by one I ignore them, until one of them won’t take a hint.
She’s petite, redheaded, with elaborate braids piled on her head. She’s stacked so far out with nipples so perpetually hard, that she’s probably legally considered an artificial person.
“Don’t I know you?” she asks, flashing white teeth and green eyes like the professional she very likely is.
I sigh and finish my fourth tumbler of thirty-year-old whiskey from the Ferry private collection. “No,” I tell the redhead, with what I hope is the appropriate degree of finality.
“You’re Jake Ferry,” she says, triumphant, like she just gave the right answer to a pop quiz.
“That’s my name,” I reply.
“Told you I knew you.” She beams, and giggles, her hand brushing my shoulder.
I glance at the bartender, who promptly goes about pouring me another whiskey.
“You know my name,” I say, not looking at the redhead. “Congratulations. So does everyone else.” Then, I look her dead in the eye. “That’s not the same as knowing me, sugar.”
She pouts her bottom lip out, unperturbed. “Well… we can fix that, I bet.”
“I’m not in the mood,” I say. It doesn’t get more direct than that.
“I bet we can fix that, too,” she breathes, and leans toward me.
I catch her wrist as she moves her hand toward my thigh, and she freezes. “I’ll give you a thousand dollars to leave me alone,” I say, loud enough that anyone within a few yards would hear.
That’s apparently what it takes. The redhead pulls back, and I let her wrist go when she does. Flirtatiousness turns on a dime into vitriol, and she looks like she might slap me. I kind of hope she does.
Instead, she huffs, rolls her eyes, and stalks away muttering, “You’re not all that, anyway, jerk.”
Just as the next tumbler is set down in front of me, another stranger maneuvers into the space on my other side. This one isn’t a pretty girl, but a dude. I don’t remember his name—some B-list celebrity my father paid to make an appearance, but I barely keep track of the A-list.
“You’d think they’d teach social graces in high-end boarding schools,” the man says. He’s the sort of handsome that gets you into lots of panties, but not into the lead role of a Michael Bay film; the kind you have to milk for all it’s worth until it disappears.
“They don’t,” I scoff. “They teach investment banking, economics, and whore-spotting. All valuable skills, I assure you. I think they have a learning annex for the general public. I could hook you up.”
“Fuck you, prick,” the man mutters, and gets ready to leave.
Maybe it‘s the whiskey. Maybe it’s the leftover disgust from seeing my father balls-deep in South America. Maybe it’s the magic of those last lingering traces of adrenaline still in my system from desecrating the speed limit on the way to the lounge. Whatever the case is, I take exception at that very moment to any loser who’s so desperate to hang on to a last shred of career that he’d whore himself out for Reginald’s PR circus talking down to him.
I turn, and deliver a left cross right into almost-pretty-boy’s plastic fucking jaw.
Every member of security knows who I am; that’s a given. It doesn’t stop them from intervening with impressive speed, and it doesn’t stop the police from very publicly handcuffing me and marching me to a squad car while half the population of the lounge, as well as the paparazzi vultures who live in the bushes near the place, whip out cell phones and cameras to record the event for posterity.
Just like they always do. After all, it’s so much more satisfying to watch the mighty fall than to bother having a life of your own, right?