Young and Scambitious (A short story) (3 page)

GABRIEL

He wasn't sure what he would see, which version of her at least, when he arrived at the club. The Asylum Rose was in a part of town that used to be the place to be seen. That might have only been a year ago; now, it was the only establishment on the block that seemed to have any significant activity. He looked up the address before he dropped by and saw past news stories of brawls, shootings, and other modes of disorderly conduct. Of the rich and trying-to-be kind.

It didn
't seem like the place where he'd see Jane del Mundo again.

Or Lydia Santiago.

One of the things he had learned to do in his line of work was not look back, literally and figuratively, but Gabriel risked it when he went back to Jane del Mundo's hotel. After already doing the somewhat-smart thing and not actually having sex with her. Only to discover that she had checked out.

No, wait. That there had been no Jane del Mundo registered as a guest.

Didn't she say she was on a month-long vacation? Was the month over? Did she say anything about leaving the next day? Was she actually staying
with
someone?

Briefly he wondered if he had gone into a stress-related episode again and had imagined the entire incident, from when he noticed her at the souvenir shop, and again at Non-fiction, and then at Fiction - Thrillers. When she showed up at the same place where he chose to have coffee he wondered if he had finally developed the power to control minds. Or maybe
she
had been following
him.

He wasn
't going to complain.

It couldn
't have been a dream. He still remembered the feel of her skin, how she tasted, how her short moans tickled his ear. Every little thing about her was slightly unexpected, and he considered that proof that he hadn't made her up.

After a day of telling himself this, he crossed a line and found out who exactly had been staying at the hotel room that he had gone up to. The registered name was Lydia Santiago.

From there it was a simple matter of a Google search, a literary hunch, a lucky click, a surprising turn, that may not have been so surprising given her library itinerary. It led him to "Elizabeth Madrid," socialite, and this very club.

Gabriel saw her pop out from between two vehicles, but didn
't approach her right away. She looked annoyed.

She also looked, well, like an
"Elizabeth Madrid." Her dress draped against her body loosely, but was far from dowdy. The bare shoulder, the slight tapering at the waist, the legs that slid out from under a skirt that was very short. Criminally short. Painfully short.

"
Gabriel?"

She saw, and acknowledged him, before he had a chance to surprise her. It looked like she was happy to see him.

"Jane," he said. "I didn't know you'd be in Manila."

"
Oh well." She waved a hand, swallowing the last of something. "I'm still on holiday. And I have family here."

"
I thought you'd be in Singapore longer."

One of her feet, clad in a shoe with an out
rageously tall heel, lazily traced semicircles on the grimy street. He could almost see her hips twist behind the outline of her dress. Almost. Maybe he was having an episode again.

"
Are you following me, Gabriel?" she said, almost playfully. Ninety percent playfully. He detected suspicion in the remaining ten.

"
I have family here too," he said.

"
Small world."

"
Do you want to get a coffee?"

She nodded. But first, she reached into her bag and checked her phone.
"Let's go now," she said.

--O--

He should have said something.

At first he was just checking how far she would go. But she was really great at it, transitioning quickly into artsy, wide-eyed Jane, Jane dressed somewhat inappropriately, but
that
Jane nonetheless. He would ask about her family in Manila, and she would start on a story about her favorite Jollibee burger and he would be engrossed in it, forgetting where he started. So he launched into his own tales, not for the purpose of covering up who he really was, but because he sincerely wanted to entertain her, the way she was keen on entertaining him.

They talked about hiking, and deep dives, and backstage passes to rock concerts, long marches in small revolutions.

"You're just a superhero, aren't you?" she said, sweetly, the only time her tone let on that she didn't believe most of what he said. "Scholar, world traveler. Do you fight crime too?"

He kissed her, and he made sure that he did it first, and right when she was mid-sentence (
"I should go") in case she had been humoring him all night just to tell him that it wouldn't work, would never work.

But of course, because he expected it, she didn
't say that either. Her touch was soft and strong, light against the skin on the back of his neck, but insistent in pulling him as close to her as possible.

"
One time," she said, in a voice he barely recognized.

He could handle that. He didn
't think he'd get another chance. And he was ready, finally. His hotel was just around the corner.  And he had protection in his wallet, made sure he did, since that day. In his wallet, in his pocket, in his gym bag, checked and replaced at the first indication of any fraying or damage to the integrity of the foil packet.

Later, when he finally got to use it, and she was moving astride him, he caught a hint of a small but genuine smile. He kissed it as if it would make it his, and not just slip back under the skin of whatever she was hiding as. This surprised her, and him, the timing of it, and she shuddered with release, against his lips, his body, prolonging that truth for a few moments longer.

FROM THE
SAUCY SOCIALS
BLOG

Anonymous (4 hours ago)

i met elizabeth madrid in a cousin
's wedding.

Saucy_Social1 (4 hours ago)

Pic or you
're a liar.

Anonymous (4 hours ago)

what
's the point we know she's going to be dropped by christmas anyway

Anonymous (3.5 hours ago)

no one else thinks it
's fishy that c-bitch loses her engagement ring and then makes a jewelry heiress her bff?

Anonymous (3.5 hours ago)

oh my god i just came back from a trip and i
'm not updated—c lost her ring? my tita told me someone was selling it to her a few months ago! before or after?

Anonymous (3.5 hours ago)

if i know c, she
's the one selling it. she has expensive habits.

Anonymous (3.5 hours ago)

then that explains new bff jewelry heiress nyahahahahaha

Anonymous (3.5 hours ago)

You people are so mean to C. What did she do to you? It's so sad that her priceless Sandoval ring got stolen. And she can't sell it anyway, wouldn't the Sandovals just want it back?

Saucy_Social1 (3.5 hours ago)

Is that you, Chrysalis? Get out of my blog.

Anonymous (3.5 hours ago)

maybe the sandovals were the ones buying it back. confirm?

Anonymous (3 hours ago)

why would they buy it back? they own it. they have lawyers in the family right? they should just sue her to give it back.

Anonymous (3 hours ago)

It was a gift. Sandoval family is classy, they won't buy back a gift.

Anonymous (3 hours ago)

are you in mars? stephen is family black sheep. family not as classy as before.

Anonymous (3 hours ago)

I can confirm that Chrysalis is trying to sell the ring. It was never stolen. She met Elizabeth "by chance" at a party in Singapore. And now they're best friends and last night at AR she gave C a ring that looks exactly like the Sandoval ring.

Anonymous (3 hours ago)

gad! is c returning a fake to the sandoval family? she
's so cheeeeap!

Anonymous (3 hours ago)

No one said she was returning anything to the Sandovals. C-bitch probably selling 2 of the same ring! Double the drugs!

Saucy_Social1 (3 hours ago)

My sources say that C and E were at AR just a few hours ago. How do you know about the lookalike ring? PM me!

JANE

For a good, long minute, Jane forgot a lot of things.

She forgot where she was. She had drifted off into a nap for a second and woke up wondering if she was still in Queens, on her aunt
's couch. No—Vancouver at her cousin's? No. Manila. Right. This was happening.

And then she took a deep breath and with it more sense memories came back, specifically last night, and this guy, who was obviously not a student of whatever that degree was, couldn
't have accomplished half the things he said he had. But it didn't seem to matter to him, specifics, and she appreciated that. She wasn't going to be particular about things she couldn't provide herself.

Everyone fell in love while on the job, she knew that, but she had never actually lied all the way through. Much less with someone who seemed to enjoy it, or at the very least tolerated it. But what kind of future could they have together though, if they actually had to drop the act? Jane wasn
't all that interesting, and she suspected neither was he.

Then she realized why she shouldn
't be doing this. It was a shame to have someone learn exactly how to make her pant, and tingle, and scream, and in turn discover how to make him insane with a touch, a squeeze, a scratch—and then never have it happen again. What a waste of precious knowledge.

Her clutch was on top of the bedside table and it inched slightly away from her, phone buzzing. There was a message from Margaux.

Balyena wants to meet tonight. I've told C.

Jane almost giggle
d. The code for the buyer was accurate and yet rude, because it was never proper to refer to someone as a whale, in any language. Not that they were doing strictly proper things. In any case, this could all end tonight, if she played shrewdly, and then she could go back to being normal again.

She slipped out of bed, put her clothes back on, and prepared for a stealthy exit, not unlike Gabriel
's from six weeks ago. She pressed a kiss against his earlobe, knowing that the level breathing was a ruse, and let herself out.

--O--

A shower, a cup of coffee, and a donut later, and Jane was feeling more in the zone. There was a problem but she was thinking through it, and the solution was starting to fall into place.

Margaux sought her out because
Jane was talented at one particular thing, and she was going to give the woman her money's worth.

Acting rich
was a crude way of putting it. What Jane was good at was playing into certain stereotypes. Blending into certain groups. And gaining the trust of certain people.

It served her well when she was younger, and in school, or in one of the many schools she went to. It became handy when she got a little older, and wanted to finance a certain lifestyle. It became essential when her mother checked out completely and expected Jane to keep up that lifestyle for the two of them.

The problem, Margaux explained, when they "accidentally" met at that breakfast café in New York City, was that "the bitch got greedy." Chrysalis and the Magnolia family weren't clean, and they knew Margaux from previous shady transactions. Chrysalis needed money, her parents no longer wanted to give her any, and she had (on her own) tried to make a claim for insurance money on her engagement ring from Stephen Sandoval, after reporting it stolen.

There was some fanfare behind it and it must have seemed easy at the time. Two of Chrysalis
' closest socialite friends had gotten "bling ringed" by another friend, someone they had let in the group and started picking up things from their houses. C's ring was never actually stolen, but she on a whim announced that it had been, and tried to get the insurance money for it.

It didn
't work out, Margaux said, because the child was an amateur. There was a police report later, bought and paid for, but the only response it got from the insurance company was a denial and that while the Sandoval family had been preferred clients for generations, Stephen Sandoval himself had not insured this particular gift. And that they would not have approved it, knowing that the precious item was going to be in the care of the notoriously flighty Ms. Magnolia.

Was there even a policy? Margaux asked. No, apparently, Chrysalis had only assumed it was insured because Stephen said so. Still screwing her months after the breakup.

Margaux suggested that she would be able to find a buyer for the ring anyway, even a famously "stolen" one.

Chrysalis warmed up to that idea. A meeting was set up, a buyer (
"Dolphin") was met, but when Chrysalis found out how much someone was willing to pay for it she decided she wanted to keep it. And sell a copy instead.

At no point did Margaux think it was beyond her control though. Margaux was used to greed, and flakes, and people who appeared as one thing but were really another. But her ways didn
't work as well with Chrysalis and her ilk now. She needed a younger face.

Jane cleared her throat. Her
"Elizabeth" voice was drawn for somewhere near the back, a lower register, and she gave it slight lilts, vaguely reminiscent of a childhood in California. Then she took out her phone.

"
C?" she said, when the person answered.

"
Oh god I was going to call you. I haven't slept at all trying to get—"

"
C, my mom wants us to go to Tokyo again. We're leaving at three. I can pick up the cash on the way to the airport."

"
At three?"

"
Well no. I have to be at the airport by one. Twelve-thirty?"

"
Elizabeth, I haven't even showered—"

"
Fine, I'll just take the ring with me to Tokyo."

"
Fuck. How long will you be in Tokyo?"

"
I don't know. It's a shopping trip."

"
Can't you just leave the ring with me? I'll keep it safe, I promise."

"
But it'll go so well with my outfits."

"
Fuck. Can I call you back?"

"
No problem. Am just packing."

Jane set the phone down.

A text came in five minutes later:
All right. Pick up money at 12:30.

She sent messages to Margaux, Wendy, and Alexander, then ordered another donut. The Tokyo thing was a lie, but she was definitely going to start packing. This thing looked like it was very nearly over.