I nudged him. “You’re not going to offer me a million dollars for one night like Robert Redford did, are you?”
“Boy, Robert Redford is getting cheap. I would’ve offered at least double that amount.”
I playfully slapped him. “I was talking about the movie, Indecent Proposal.”
He winked. “I know. I was trying to lighten the mood up.”
I smiled. “I get that. But after I’ve kicked you and Maced you, shouldn’t you be running for the hills, getting as far away from me as you possibly can?”
“I would normally, but...you’re the only one who can possibly pull this off.”
“Me? Really? So what am I supposed to pull off?”
He studied me appraisingly for a moment, then seemed to decide it was safe enough to continue. “You remember Mr. Takahari? The old Asian man from the party?”
“The one who said you usually have three girlfriends?”
He faltered for a second but quickly recovered himself. “Yeah, well, that’s kind of exactly what I came here to talk about. I have a bit of an image problem. And I desperately need to impress him.”
I pictured the confrontation outside the coffee shop and couldn’t help but grin. “An image problem? No, you don’t say.”
“Rebecca, hush,” he commanded. He then returned to his story with an exasperated sigh. “Well, it’s never been a real issue before; I keep my work and private life separate. But lately, it’s starting to trouble some of our bigger investors.”
With that, he launched into a dismally boring explanation with facts and figures, dates and times, statistics and stock portfolios. I tried to stay focused, but after only a minute my mind wandered back to the immediate problem of feeding myself. I was sure there was something left in my car.
I twisted around and pulled open the door, glancing back frequently with the occasional polite nod to show I was still listening. Still being the operative word. How the hell did I end up sitting on the pavement listening to this guy talk about Wall Street conundrums while I slowly withered away? Was there still some minute degree of bad karma I’d yet to be subjected to? Eviction, vomit, car troubles, starvation, now this? Hadn’t I suffered enough? Wasn’t there some worse offender that could take up some of the—oh, Cheetos!
With another “tuned in” nod, to which I added a concerned frown to be thorough, I grabbed the bag out of the car and started munching. Not bad. A bit stale. Definitely a few days old. But cheesy and delicious. In my present state—I’d take it.
He eyed the bag with distaste but kept talking as I snacked happily away. “So in short, if I don’t get this public image thing turned around, I’m going to be losing an unseemly amount of money.”
I rummaged around in the bag and resisted the urge to roll my eyes. First step in fixing your image problem: limit your use of the word “unseemly.”
I crunched a Cheeto. “Well, that sounds like quite the unseemly problem.” Crunched again. “So why are you here?”
His face lit up as much as it could with the burns. “You’re my solution.”
The crunching came to a pause.
“If you want me to kill someone, you’ve really taken this ‘violent life’ metaphor to a whole other level that I’m not really comfortable with. I swear to God, I’m really not that violent.”
“No, you don’t understand. I—” He paused for a moment before he snatched the bag of Cheetos out of my hands and threw it into the grass behind us.
My mouth fell open in shock. “Hey!”
“It was offensive,” he said simply. “Now, for my solution.” He twisted slightly to face me as if he want
ed to present himself in the best possible light. “I want you to be my girlfriend.”
I blinked.
“Act,” he clarified quickly, “I want you to act like my girlfriend.”
My lips parted in surprise, but I could honestly think of nothing to say. Bill Gates had come to East Hollywood to ask me out on a fake date? Finally, when I decided that this wasn’t a joke and he was really asking, I leaned back against the curb.
“Why in the world do you think I would want to do that?”
He cocked his head to the side with a sharp grin. “You didn’t have any problem doing it before.”