I didn’t see the harm in telling him. He was already here. “Just me and my roommate, Amanda. And Deevus, of course.”
“Who’s Deevus?”
“Our three-legged cat.”
He absorbed this as best as one could. “Why did you name him Deevus?”
I frowned as I tried to remember. I honestly couldn’t tell you, was what I should have said. “Long story,” is what ended up coming out. “So what’s the second thing?”
“The what?”
“The second thing,” I said. I didn’t know what the hell this guy was doing here, but I had a casting call to get to, and more pressingly, my blood sugar was dipping dangerously low. If he didn’t start talking soon, I might have to resort to cannibalism. “You said that firstly, you wanted to apologize… What’s secondly?”
“Secondly,” he eyed me carefully, “I wanted to talk to you about that proposition I was trying to bring up before. Except I don’t want to get kicked. Or stabbed. Or pepper sprayed. Or drowned. Or—”
I held up my hands. “You’ve made your point. And as long as there is no prostitution involved, you should be okay. Scout’s honor.”
A little smile crept up on his lips.
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.