Beating Ruby (3 page)

I remember that Alex kept saying I was beautiful, kept calling me
baby
.

I registered the whisper of clothing falling to the floor. My dress. His fingers left a trail of goose bumps on my ribs, my sides, traced the edge of my bra.

It was happening. It was really happening.

THREE

The Polly Pocket Shoe

“Traci stared at his massive organ, which was glowing in the dark. Her instincts had been right—Oxo wasn’t from this world.”

—Maxie Skye,
The Dur’yâ
n Chronicles

“Oh my God! Yes! Yes
!
”

I jerked awake in my bed at the sound of something slamming against the bathroom wall and Joy soaring toward felicity.

6:07 a.m.

You know what’s worse than being a virgin? Being a virgin
and
getting woken up before dawn on a Tuesday morning by people having loud sex in a tub you know you’ll
have
to step into afterward. I was reaching for my phone on the nightstand when I heard the bathroom door closing, along with a series of giggles past my bedroom door. Vince-the-cutest-photographer-in-the-world had performed his morning duties, and Joy would be in a good mood for the rest of the day.

As for me . . . I was in the mood of a girl who had freaked out and fled her boyfriend’s hotel room because she couldn’t take off her bra for him.

I’ll spare you the embarrassing details of how I went to hide in his bathroom under the pretext of an overwhelming need to pee. There, the bluish foil of a condom peeking out of his toiletries bag made me panic completely. I’d said I was sorry about a million times. He’d tried to hug me, kiss me, stroke my hair . . . told me it was okay—even though I could almost taste the frustration on his lips. I’d said I just needed time, promised to call, to text. And less than ten minutes later, I was three blocks away, running breathlessly up Broadway past homeless guys hauling bags full of cans.

As you can imagine, I hadn’t slept much, replaying my evening with Alex over and over again to figure out
why
I had collapsed in front of the obstacle. Well, technically I knew why: my bra had come loose, I had pictured him touching my breasts, touching everything else . . . and my body had pulled the brakes on that shady arousal business, screaming that I wasn’t ready. What I truly feared was the deeper reason behind this failure. Unspeakable things happened in my
Star Wars
PJs at night, when I closed my eyes and remembered the feel of March’s naked body against mine during that last night in Tokyo, his scent, a combination of the mints he ate like a junkie and something that was just
him
, all that silky chest hair . . . But there appeared to be a considerable gap between dreams and reality. Alex, the hotel room, the condoms—this had been reality, and I hadn’t been able to handle it.

I stared at the ceiling, vaguely aware of further sighing and giggling in the hallway. I didn’t want to consider the possibility that March had invaded and broken for good some tiny part of my psyche, and that I’d never be able to give myself to someone else . . .

Dismissing this depressing thought, I grabbed my smartphone on the nightstand and started scrolling through my e-mails, wrapped in my flowery comforter like a Swiss roll. There was a chat notification from Alex, sent around one, telling me he was sorry things had moved too fast, and offering to take me somewhere for lunch before he returned to Washington. Overcoming the butterflies partying hard in my stomach—they had kind of been pushing the limits of their lease agreement lately—I agreed to meet him in Zucotti Park at twelve thirty.

My fingers froze when I reached the most recent e-mails: a series of automated alerts from Ruby’s test servers, pointing to a massive crash around three a.m. I swore under my breath. Ruby would recover from the crash itself, that was no problem, but it meant that, six days away from our big reveal, it still wasn’t stable. I could already guess I’d arrive at EMT to find Thom hunched over his keyboard, wearing yesterday’s shirt and scratching his head compulsively. I rubbed my eyes and sent him a reassuring e-mail that I’d show up even earlier than usual to investigate the incident and help him set Ruby back on track.

I crawled out of bed and dragged myself to the living room, where I
was greeted by the rich aroma of coffee. On our old green couch, Joy and the new love of her life were snuggling and dipping Oreos in their double
espressos—a repulsive habit only they understood, and which contributed
to bringing them closer. Joy pushed a heap of blonde curls from her left
shoulder and appraised me with bashful cornflower eyes. She was wearing
Vince’s shirt—something I understood to be mandatory when you’ve slept with a man—meaning he, of course, was only wearing silk boxer shorts,
as usual. I didn’t care. Vince was cute enough, but he was also a pompous jerk in need of a haircut, and who shaved what little chest hair he had.

With my leg razors.

Yeah, I know. In North Korea, people get executed for that kind of stuff.

“Sorry about the—” Joy waved a dismissive hand and had the good grace to blush.

Vince didn’t. Slanted black eyes scanned the stormtroopers on my PJs as a grin lit his angular face, revealing teeth that seemed even whiter against his bronze skin and coal stubble. “Oh, so you were listening?”

Like I had a choice.
I fought a scalding blush and, from the corner of my eye, noticed that Joy’s foot was kicking her boy toy’s calf in a bid to prevent any further descent into assholism.

“No . . . It’s . . . Never mind.” I averted my eyes, went to fix myself a bowl of Apple Jacks, and sat on a wooden chair by the window. I loved nothing more than that peaceful moment when I’d eat my breakfast watching the darkened street.

Behind me, squeals suggested that Vince was about to ravish Joy on the couch. My window-daydreaming time now ruined, I got up and glanced at the two of them just long enough to see his hand retreat from under the wrinkled gray shirt.

Joy’s voice stopped me halfway to the kitchen as she let go of Vince to join me and carry both their cups toward the sink—where they’d make a nice addition to our rapidly growing pile of dishes. “How did it go last night with Jesus?”

I cringed. “Please don’t call Alex that.”

“You came home pretty late . . . but you came home,” she replied with a wink.

“We just had a drink at his hotel’s bar.”

How foolish of me to think that Joy wouldn’t pick up on that particular detail. As her eyes lit up, I could practically see the report writing itself in her mind.

The defendant loaded herself with strawberry gin cocktails and agreed to follow Mr. Morgan to his hotel room at 10:49. To have
wild, rampant sex
all over the furniture.

I took a wary step back. “It wasn’t like that.”

“Aw, come on! You and Alex aren’t kids!” Joy groaned.

On the couch, Vince finally expressed interest in our conversation. “Does he have, like, a problem with his dick? I knew this guy who had stuck a Polly Pocket shoe in there in first grade, and after that, he couldn’t—”

“No! I don’t think . . . I mean, I’m sure it’s working fine!” I pictured myself hurling my dirty bowl at Vince’s face.

Joy seemed to consider rinsing the cups for a second, before abandoning them to their fate and walking out of the kitchen. “I need to get ready for court, but tonight we’ll have to further investigate the issue.”

Family lawyer, sexologist, urologist—was there anything Joy couldn’t do? Yeah, the dishes. I shrugged and rinsed my bowl, because March had made me a new and better person. Meanwhile, she flung herself back on the couch and into Vince’s waiting arms with a catlike grin. I frowned down at the war zone in our sink and the lime building up on our faucet.

“Joy?”

She disentangled herself from Vince with a squeak of delight. “What?”

“You still don’t want to try those free cleaning hours?”

“The ones from Maid-shit-whatever?”

“Yeah. Maid Magic.”

“I dunno, I don’t like the idea of someone coming into my place when I’m not home,” she said, her nose wrinkling in disapproval.

I left the kitchen and padded across our living room to the long black sideboard on which Joy and I had made a habit of throwing anything that came either from our handbags or the mailbox. I went through the pile of receipts, ads, and unopened mail sitting on it. Indeed, between my cell phone bill and a flyer advertising a Hello Kitty–themed after party at some bar, I found a coupon book for free housecleaning hours we had received a few days ago.

“Are you sure you’re not interested? I mean, we got”—I counted the coupons—“ten of these. And their letter says we won a free trial for the VIP service with laundry, ironing, and antibacterial cleaning included.”

“But I don’t want these weirdoes snooping around my house. It looks like some kind of scam. I didn’t even register for any contest,” Joy groaned.

Vince nodded absently while massaging her shoulders.

“Maybe you don’t remember,” I countered. “Or maybe it’s one of these websites where you click ‘Yes’ to read an article on the hairiest baby in the world, and they tell you that you just entered to win a golf cart.”

She sat up. “I
want
a golf cart. I don’t want a cleaning lady.”

I gazed at the coupons longingly, remembering how immaculate our apartment had been the morning after March had broken into it. He had cleaned our entire place while I slept off a migraine—admittedly sparked by his repeated threats to torture me until I gave him the Ghost Cullinan—nothing huge, just the biggest natural diamond in the world, stolen a decade ago . . . by my late mother. For some tentacular criminal organization, a bunch of malevolent assholes who called themselves “the Board.” Because she had never been a French diplomat, but rather some sort of glamorous international spy and superthief.

Hey, I warned you that my life was weird.

Anyway, there was something to be said about the way the man had turned his cleaning disorder into a gift for housekeeping, and he had branded me irremediably; I would start cleaning my apartment. Soon. Not today, but real soon.

Behind me, Joy had resumed making out with Vince on the couch, and she struggled to speak in between noisy, slurpy kisses. “I vote no . . . to Maid Magic!”

“We’ll see about that. I need to get ready,” I said, heading toward the bathroom. Sweet Jesus, I prayed these two had rinsed the tub well. Wouldn’t hurt to rinse it again.

There were two undeniable perks to leaving for work at the crack of dawn: I was on a first-name basis with EM Tech’s morning security team, and once in a while, I actually caught glimpses of Hadrian
fricking
Ellingham, super billionaire, legendary stick-in-the-mud, and CEO of EM Group, our parent company. He and his brother, Maximilian, had inherited an industrial empire, of which EM Tech constituted a small but nonetheless highly profitable part.

EMT ∈ EMG. You get the idea—pretty logical.

I had in fact gotten so used to those brief encounters that when I reached Greenwich Street that morning and saw what I now recognized as his limo driving past me, I barely spared it a glance. I buried my hands in my jeans pockets and looked down at the mice on my ballet flats, imagining them gossiping about Ellingham’s love life.

I didn’t realize something was off until I was standing twenty yards or so from the entrance. In the brownish windows of EMT’s building—an architectural faux pas warranting its nickname as “the Kit Kat”—bright red and blue lights were reflected. Police car lights. My walk slowed down. Whatever was going on had to be pretty serious, as no less than four NYPD cars were stationed in the street, not far from the entrance, along with a black SUV that looked straight out of a government conspiracy. Indeed, I soon watched with increasing worry as a steady stream of policemen in uniforms and suited guys came in and out of the building, performing what could best be described as cop stuff: talking into phones and walkie-talkies, eating bagels, drinking coffee, and occasionally flashing their badges at the Kit Kat’s security officers.

In the distance, I noticed two guys I knew from HFT entering the building, so I bunched my fists and took a few cautious steps toward the revolving doors as well. Just so you know, HFT stands for “High Frequency Trading,” aka the Ninth Circle—in charge of developing those trading robots that break Wall Street entirely with a bazillion simultaneous transactions once in a while. I heard they test applicants with holy water there, to make sure they have no soul.