The Amateurs (2 page)

He shifted from the edge of one foot to the edge of the other. The bus was warm, humid with body odor, and he was afraid some of it came from him. Nothing to do about it, just a day’s worth of sun beating down on his jacket and tie, but he wished he could have showered.

After all, tonight was the night. He’d made up his mind that he was going to take the plunge with Jenn. If the right moment came up at least, when the guys weren’t there. And probably best to get in a couple of drinks in to unwind from the day. Be loose. Loose was good. Like, “There’s this new sake lounge we could check out, you know, laugh at the yuppies.” Or was that too casual? He didn’t want her to say it sounded great, why didn’t they invite the others. Maybe more like, “It’d be really nice to get a chance to talk, just us.” Though he didn’t want to put her on the spot.

He ran lines until his stop, but couldn’t find the right one. Maybe he’d wing it.

Rossi’s was one of those identity-crisis places, a bar-slash-restaurant that drew families for dinner but an after-work crowd for drinks. Perched on a stretch of Lincoln that fell between more fashionable areas, the place had become their haunt in the last few years mostly because with Alex there, they could drink cheap. Funny, really; in a city filled with terrific bars, they chose to meet every week at a half-assed restaurant that they’d otherwise never have noticed.

After the heat of the bus, walking into the air-conditioning felt wonderful. Mitch nodded at the hostess, moved past the dining room, with its rich smell of bolognese and carbonara, and into the bar. The postwork crowd was thinning but not gone, men in business casual, women laughing, glasses filled with pink and green and pale yellow, specialty martinis made with syrups and liqueurs. He moved through them, looking toward their customary seats.

Dammit. Other than Alex pulling drinks, he was the first one there. He should have showered.

 

 

“THAT PRICK,” Alex was saying as she walked up. “He should be, I don’t know. Drawn and quartered.”

“Who should?” Jenn smiled at him, careful not to hold it too long, then hugged Ian, the blades of his shoulders sharp through his shirt, then Mitch, still in his uniform, the jacket with the hotel logo slung over the back of his chair.

“Tasty,” Alex said, “right on time, as usual.” He smiled back at her, his eyes warm. Normally she wouldn’t have liked the nickname, Tasty-sort-of-rhymes-with-Lacie, but he had a way of saying it that sounded warm instead of dirty. “Hot date?”

“Kickboxing class. Who should be drawn and quartered?”

“That Cayne guy.”

“Who?”

“James Cayne. He was the CEO of Bear Stearns,” Ian said. “It’s a securities firm, the one the Fed just bailed out. They’ve had a lot of trouble lately. The whole subprime mortgage collapse? Started with their hedge funds.”

“Apparently,” Alex said, “while the company was tanking, he was playing in a bridge tournament. Guy’s company is responsible for half of America losing their houses, he’s playing cards.”

“It’s a little more complicated than that.” Ian gave that sharp-edged grin. “There were market forces in play.”

“Hi, Jenn,” Mitch said.

“He should be killed,” Alex said again, pouring a martini from a stainless steel shaker and setting it in front of her. He stabbed three olives with a toothpick shaped like a sword and balanced it across the top. “Line him and that Enron guy, Ken Lay, and the rest of them up against a wall and shoot them.”

“Ken Lay is already dead. Heart attack.”

“OK, well, everybody else from Enron.”

Jenn said, “Bad day?” then laughed when all three of them nodded. “OK. Next round is on me.”

Her mother found it strange, the way her closest friends were guys. She was always asking unsubtle questions about which one Jenn was dating. Hoping it would be Ian, whom she’d never met but had come to believe must be a nice boy, a judgment that had a lot to do with the fact that he worked as a trader.

Jenn had always gotten along fine with women. But her friends, especially as she’d gotten older, they tended to be guys. It wasn’t that she was a tomboy or the perennial little sister or one of those women who talked sex all the time to keep the boys nearby. Somehow, though, as her twenties had slipped into her early thirties, it had gotten harder to have real girlfriends. The married ones retreated into couplehood. The single ones looked over her shoulder every time the door opened, checking the men at the bar, scoping shoes and ring fingers. Wondering if the guy walking in was the one for them, the one who would let them jettison this tedious phase, the single apartment and Christmas with the parents and the fear that they would end up owning cats. Ever hopeful that a cute stranger would spill coffee on them and have just the right line to follow it up. Romantic Comedy Syndrome.

Which was fine, and she wished them luck. They just made for lousy friends, whereas the boys kept things easy. Which was how she ended up here every week, all four of them at the end of the bar. She, Alex, Ian, and Mitch, the Thursday Night Drinking Club. “Which game tonight?”

“Tonight,” Ian said, “is clearly a Ready-Go night.”

“Why?”

“I’m feeling hypothetical.”

“I feel that way all the time,” she said. “OK. In the spirit of the evening: If you had half a million dollars. Ready, go.”

“Only half?” Ian cocked his eyebrow.

“I’d buy a house,” Alex said. “Nothing fancy, just something with a spare bedroom for Cassie. I think she’d stay with me more often if she had a room of her own. In Lincoln Park so she could walk to the shops, the lake.”

“Somebody hasn’t looked at real-estate prices in a while,” Ian said.

“What?”

“A house in Lincoln Park for a half million?”

“No?” Alex looked genuinely wounded, as though the neighborhood pricing was all that was holding him back. “Huh. All right, a condo. Whatever. How about you?”

“I’d quit the firm. Work from home. Day trade. I could turn that into ten million in no time.”

Alex snorted. “You’d be broke in a week.”

Ian smiled that thin smile again. “Jenn?”

She sipped at her martini, pulled off an olive, chewed it slowly. “Travel.”

“Where would you go?” Mitch leaned forward.

“Everywhere. All the places I book trips for other people. Paris. St. Petersburg. The islands. I’d like to spend a while in the islands. A little cabin on the beach, someplace with screens for walls, where you could hear the ocean day and night. Drink coconut drinks. Live in a bathing suit.” It was strange hearing the words come out of her mouth, like this was a long-held fantasy. Truth was, she hadn’t known what she was going to say until she’d started.

“Sounds nice,” Mitch said.

“Sounds boring,” Ian said. “I’d be out of my head in a week.”

“Then you’re not invited. Alex, Mitch, you guys want to come to the islands with me?”

“And leave all this?” Alex laughed and picked up a cloth, started buffing the bar. His sleeves were rolled to his elbows, and the muscles of his forearms were knotted ropes. “At this rate, in just twenty short years, I’ll be full manager. At which point if one of you wanted to shoot me, I’d thank you for the favor.”

“Why don’t you quit?” Mitch said.

“Why don’t you?”

“I—well, I mean, it’s a job, right?”

Alex nodded slowly. “Yes. It’s a job, all right.” He glanced down the line, where a plump, tanned guy stood with finger crooked, a gaudy ring flashing on one finger. “Speaking of.” He dropped the cloth and started away.

For a moment, silence fell. Then Ian raised his glass said, “Fuck work.”

Laughing, they clinked glasses. Jenn leaned into the bar, feeling good, a little bit of that old energy swirling around, the kind she missed, the sense that the evening could go anywhere, that there were adventures yet to be had. Ian asked the next Ready-Go question: What was something they would never,
ever
, do? Ready, go—and she settled in, let the night flow.

 

 

MITCH WASN’T DRUNK. Tipsy, OK, but not drunk. He’d had a couple of shots with Alex before the others arrived, and three or four beers since, a fair bit for two hours, but it had been a long day.

No, he wasn’t drunk, so that wasn’t why he was pissed off. Or it was only part of it. The real reason was that he’d finally caught his moment, and then the asshole had come over.

It was the guy Alex had gone to see. Mitch didn’t recognize him but guessed he was some sort of a bigwig, because Alex had nodded a lot and then disappeared into the back room and hadn’t returned. Which was perfect, because a few minutes later, Ian excused himself. The guy was famous for long bathroom breaks—they had a running joke that he must be restocking the toilet rolls—and so it had been just him and Jenn.

They had made small talk for a couple of minutes, Mitch still polishing lines in his head. When the conversation dropped off, he’d finished his beer and leaned forward. Now or never.

“So, I was thinking.” He wanted to meet her eyes but couldn’t, stared at his empty beer glass instead. Spun it on the edge. “You know, it might be fun sometime—”

“Hello, beautiful.” The voice that smooth tone of someone used to getting what he wanted. “How come I’ve never seen you in here before?”

Mitch had looked up to find the guy standing between him and Jenn, right between them, giving Mitch his back like he wasn’t even there. A shiny silk shirt and sharp cologne.

Jenn said, “Maybe because you haven’t been here before?” She turned slightly on her chair, legs crossed at the knee and then recrossed at the ankle, a tangle of dark jeans and soft leather boots.

“No, couldn’t be that. Must be I’ve been in the office most of the time,” the guy said. “I own the joint.”

“Yeah?” She said it with a slight challenge, but Mitch couldn’t help but notice that her arms weren’t folded.

“That’s right. This one, a couple others. Keeps me busy. But if I’d known you were out here, I wouldn’t have worked so hard.” The guy held out a hand. “John Loverin. People call me Johnny Love.”

She laughed. “You kidding me?”

“I know,” he said and laughed too, the smug bastard. “What do they call you?”

“Jenn,” she said. “And this is my friend Mitch.”

“Oh, yeah?” The guy turned at the waist, gave a quick nod, then turned his back again. “Nice to meet you, Jenn.”

Mitch cleared his throat, said, “Listen—”

“Let me get you a drink. On the house.”

“Well—”

“Hey.” The guy nodded to the bartender who was covering Alex. “Get the lady a—what is that, a martini? Get her a Grey Goose martini, would you? And a Glenlivet for me. Double.”

Unbelievable. Mitch leaned back on his stool, tried to catch Jenn’s eye. Ian would be back before long, and then Alex, and then it would be too late. He’d have to wait for next week. But damned if Jenn wasn’t smiling. He thought it was her amused smile, like she was enjoying the show, but he couldn’t be sure.

“Hope I’m not being too forward. I’m a little jet-lagged still.”

“Yeah?”

“Just got back from Cancun,” Johnny said. “Why I’m so tan. I like to go down there every couple of months, relax. You ever been?”

She shook her head, took an olive off the toothpick, a move Mitch always found hypnotic, the way she slid the toothpick into her mouth, lips tightening as she gripped the olive and drew it off. The way her cheekbones flared as she chewed, carefully, like she wanted to squeeze out every drop of flavor.

“I gotta tell you, it’s beautiful. Paradise.”

“Isn’t Cancun pretty much due south of here?”

“About.”

“So how are you jet-lagged?”

He laughed at that. “You got me.” Took a sip of his drink. “Flying can wear you out, though. And the airports, shoes off, belt off, arms out, stand, spin, hula dance. But I got this place down there, right on the beach, private, makes it worth the trouble.”

“You own a house there?”

“Sure do. You should come down sometime. Check it out.”

“Right. How about tomorrow? We could get married in the surf.”

“Hey,” he said, “no need to bust my balls. I’ve got two bedrooms. You could just relax, see if you like it.”

All right. Enough. Mitch leaned forward and put his hand on the guy’s shoulder. He didn’t push, not exactly, but the booze made it maybe harder than he’d meant.

Johnny Love turned, set his drink down. He stared at Mitch. “Something you want?”

“Yeah.” He felt the blood in his forehead, anger plus a little liquid courage, and decided to go with it. “I’d like you to leave us alone.”

“Hey—,” Jenn started.

“It’s OK,” Johnny said over his shoulder, like he was protecting her. He straightened, ran his tongue against the inside of his lip. “You got a problem?”

“I just told you.”

Johnny stared, his eyes flicking up and down. Very slowly, he smiled, then gestured to Mitch’s blazer, the pocket emblazoned with the hotel logo. “Nice outfit.”

“You too.”
Asshole.

The man’s eyes narrowed. He stared for a moment, then held up his left hand, flicked his thumb against his pinkie ring. Dice, a five and a two. “You see this? Platinum, ninety-five percent pure. Two and a half in flawless stones.”

“So?”

“These shoes are handmade in London. This shirt cost four hundred dollars.”

“So?”

“So fuck you.” Johnny laughed. “Tell you what. I own a Laundromat over on Halsted. Why don’t you come work for me? Least you wouldn’t have to dress like a monkey.”

“Listen—”

“No, you listen. The lady and I are having a conversation. Why don’t you mind your own business?”

Mitch glared. His hands were shaking with adrenaline, and he could hear his pulse. He slid off the stool, stood as tall as he could.