The Sale

He walked up the driveway carefully, wheeling The Kit with him and hoping she didn’t look out of the window long enough to notice the condition of his car. He scuffed his shoe on the first step and almost cursed aloud, then rang the doorbell, and checked his secondhand suit jacket for lunch marks while waiting for her to come.

                The inner door swung open shortly, and he could see her through the screen, hunched towards him, her head reaching not higher than his ribcage.

                “Hello?” she said with a cracked voice, and he wondered if she’d already forgotten.

                “I’m… we had an… appointment?”  It sounded like a question and they’d told him never to ask questions when you ought to be making statements. “I’m Andrew… Dillinger?”

                She only nodded, and said “come in,” and disappeared into the darkness beyond the door.  By the time he and his rolling portfolio reached the living room, she seemed to have grown accustomed to his being there.

                “Well, Mr. Dillinger, where do you want us?”

                “The kitchen table is fine, if that’s okay.”

                “Can we sit here?” she gestured a shaking brown hand at the living room couch.

                “Sure—of course,” he said genially, although he wished she had not suggested it. It was so hard for him to maneuver, without the kitchen table between himself and the client. “This” he grunted as he settled himself carefully on the couch, “looks great.”

                She had enthroned in a large red armchair opposite the couch, and had taken up a remote control, which she was using to turn the television down. Her hair was nearly white altogether, and it formed a sharp contrast to the shadows of her dark face; her skin had ashy white patches on it, mostly her elbows and a few spots on her bare feet. Her dressing gown was the quilted, blue, marshmallowey type that all of the women in her age group seemed to go out for.

                The TV was tuned to the home shopping network and he wondered why; usually black women her age had nothing to spare. He glanced around the room again and realized she must have some legitimate source of income—the walls were clean and fairly stylish, the furniture had been replaced within the last five years and the trinkets were tasteful. This evidence heartened him and gave him a fresh wind; the appointment might go well.

                “Well, Mrs. Smithers—“ he said with a wide smile. “How long have you lived here?”

                “I been in this house for twenty-six years,” she said with a little sigh. He almost burst out and said ‘that’s how long I’ve been alive!’ but old folks didn’t always like to be reminded of their age, and he didn’t really want to let her know his. He felt his illegitimacy again, to be giving her advice. But he pushed on, through the list of Small Talk Questions.

                “Oh!” he said. “Goodness; it’s a beautiful house. And how long have you lived in Memphis?”

                “All my life,” she said. Again, short but pleasant.

                “Me too,” he said, smiling at her like they shared a secret. “And do you have children in the area?”

                “I have two girls; one of ‘em live down in Biloxi, and the other one here in this neighborhood. I have seven grandchirren.”

                “Seven!”

                “Yes, the youngest ‘bout to start his first year college; he’s a real smart boy. The oldest is married; she have two girls.”

                “Two great-grandchildren!”

                “—My husband was a retired policeman; he passed away two years back…”

                “I’m sorry to hear that. And did you work?”

                “I worked down in the high school, in the office.”

                “Oh, goodness; you were that lady in the office with ten arms—every school office needs one of those…”

                “Don’t I know it,” she laughed with him. A small dog came up then, and he was able to pet the dog and talk to him, and he was glad for that, because the ladies always love for you to coo over their dog.

                As he pushed dog hair around in his hands and asked her grasping questions about the mutt, went through the list in his mind again. He seemed to have gotten through everything important. He knew the basic things he needed to know about her, and she was smiling and filling answers in without his asking, which meant that some level of Rapport had been established. He pictured Boss Bill Manning, standing in front of his sales school: It’s different with every person; he would say. Stay in Rapport as long as it takes. You’ll know, when it’s done; when they’re ready…

                “Well, Mrs. Smithers—“ he used the voice you use to tell them that it’s time for business and you must be more than just friends now. “Is it all right if I tell you a little bit about myself and the company I work for?”

                The line was straight out of the book, and she nodded politely, as everyone must nod when asked such a question.

                “I grew up in Memphis as well—actually, just a few blocks from here; you know Brunswick?”

                “Yes, I know Brunswick; my grandson had a little business over there—”

                “Oh, cool. Well, I grew up and went to college for finance, you know, I wanted to take over Wall Street” he laughed here, a scheduled, self-deprecating laugh. She responded correctly; a smile. “—but when I started working in the finance world, I started to realize early on just what a shallow and unpredictable world that is.” He never mentioned that his work in finance had been accountancy, and that he had never left Memphis, per se.

                “The reason I do what I do now is because of people like my grandmother. My grandmother was 67 years old when she was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. My parents were working and there was no one who could stay at home with her and take care of her. She had never bought Long Term Care insurance, because she thought that Medicare would cover it. In the end, she was right—Medicaid did take care of it—but it was only after they had taken her home and her savings, down to one thousand dollars.

                “She stayed in the nursing home for five years, until my mother was able to retire and bring her home. My mother never got to leave the house for three years, until Granny passed away.” Pause, eye contact. “I have dedicated my career to counseling with seniors, so they don’t have to go through what my family went through. That is where my company comes in—”

                And then he went seamlessly into explaining the insurance brokerage he worked for; their history, the fact that they worked with ALL the insurance companies, and were able to compare the best companies and policies against each other, so in the end, they worked for the client, not the company.

                 The Story was true. What no one ever knew was that it was fit into a basic structure: Interesting facts about me that make me real and approachable (nothing religious or political), basic work history (details that support credibility), and then the Motivation, wherein a senior family member is either ruined or saved by their insurance decisions, with a clear moral of the story. The Motivation always begins with “The reason I do what I do today is because of people like—“ and ends with “That’s why I have dedicated my career”… and it must be a true story.

                There are two purposes to the Story. Obviously, it is meant to remind the client of the dangers of poor retirement planning. But even more importantly, it is meant to create intimacy by virtue of Trust Offered. You make yourself vulnerable to them by offering them personal history, and you have microwaved the relationship to the next level; they are now supposed to be willing to trust you.

                Mrs. Smithers was nodding her head sympathetically. Every woman responds this way when you talk about death; even if they do not care at all they are struck into sympathy like deer in headlights, their eyes widen and they must stop everything to listen, must nod, and must cluck. Women take the job of worrying seriously.

                He pushed on to the next phase, after giving her all the shining details of his company and working for the client. “Now we don’t do everything, Mrs. Smithers—we don’t do car or homeowners insurance, but here’s what we do specialize in. He turned around the thick paper folder he was about to start filling with her personal information. Four items were printed on the cover. “We help people save money with Medicare Supplements and Drug Plans, and general Medicare consultation; We help people plan for their children with Life Insurance; protect their assets with Long Term Care; and maximize and protect their savings with Annuities and other safe investments. Now—which of these did you want to hear a little more information on today?”

                This was where he was supposed to wait. Don’t look at the customer at this point, Bill had said. It steals from them; it steals concentration to have eyes on their face. They need to be able to think.

                He waited in total silence, his eyes on the paper where she was concentrated. “I think,” she said hesitantly, “that one.” She pointed at the word Medicare, printed in white on the blue background. Blue made people feel comfortable.

                “How come?” he said, with exactly the right intonation. Listen to them when they answer you, from Bill. This is where they tell you why you are in their house.

                “Well,” she said, slowly. “Because I want to know why my drug plan has done got so expensive.”

                “Okay,” he said. “I understand. Absolutely.” And he opened the folder, then shut it again, and she was made curious about what might be inside. “There’s one thing you do need to know. Insurance is highly regulated by the state of Tennessee. Now that’s not a bad thing; it’s actually a very good thing. It’s meant to protect you. They call it compatibility—meaning that whatever we talk about today needs to fit your situation, so I don’t show you anything you don’t need. What it really means is that I have to ask you a whole bunch of questions right on the front end, which may not even seem to be relevant, but I’ll try to go through them as quickly as I can, okay?”

                This is to illicit a yes response from her, Bill had said. You tell her about the questions, but then you put a positive with the negative immediately—“I’ll go through them as quick as possible”—and give the opportunity to agree. Then she gets them together, as a package. Negative and positive. 

                She was already nodding yes, and he went straight into the easy questions. Name, address, number, age. “Doin pretty well for seventy-one,” she said, and he immediately said “Yes, ma’am! Now, who is your doctor?” And on through, he found out her medicare number, her current plan, and then asked her assumptively who she carried her life insurance with, her cancer insurance, her hospital indemnity insurance, and she had to answer “I don’t have that” to each one. He looked up in surprise at all the right times. “No life insurance? Well, we’ll need to look at that” and then on to the next question, keeping her comfortable, because he wasn’t jumping to sell her anything.

                He found out that she owned her home, that she drew $2500 from social security for herself and her husband. She was doing better than most. She had no savings, as she said, no other assets.

                “All right,” he said brightly. Thanks for that. These were all a part of compatibility requirements. Is it okay if I look over this for just a second?

                “Sure,” she said, of course. He looked over the two pages carefully, as if he did not know already what he would say to her; he’d decided the moment he knew that she had a little income and no life insurance.

                “Well,” he said, after the pause, “you know what I see here?”

                “What?” she asked.

                “You’ve done a great job with spending within your income, and paying for your house, and it’s really good that you already have a will set up; that’s very good (compliments first). The drug plan you’re on is actually pretty good for you, although the Xanax is not covered, but we need to look at some other formularies to see if there’s another that might suit you better. The only thing about that is—we can’t change you over until later in the year, anyway; legally that only happens once a year—“

                “Oh yes; they told me about that—“

                “Yes, I can only come back in October to help you with that. But right now, I do see a little hole in your situation. You have no life insurance. I know that you don’t plan to leave a whole lot of money to your children—they have done well, and they don’t need it—but you will have a funeral to plan for, and it is good at your age to at least set up a burial plan. Do you know how much funerals cost?”

                “Yes, oh yes; when my husband died, honey—his funeral was twelve thousand dollars. Can you believe that? He tol me before he died, I oughta just dig a hole in the back yard and drop in him.”

                He laughed quietly with her. “Oh, yes; so you’re familiar with how outrageously expensive they can be. I want to look around at a few of these companies and see what kind of burial policy we can get you. There is one company—“ he knew which one it would be before he’d ever come, “that has the best whole life rate I’ve seen, and very few health qualifiers. Let me see do a little calculation and see what we could do—“

                And with that, he found himself drawing her through the health questions, filling out the form, and she didn’t seem to have noticed the moment that The Sale had occurred. He was pleased. She was getting a good policy; her burial would be covered now. Her kids would have one less thing to worry about, when the time came. In October, he would help her with her drugs.

                He remembered another Bill speech, as she signed the form and took out her checkbook: Here’s the thing, guys. We are helping them. We do have expertise to offer; we do have great companies. Being in this business can be very good, when the money starts coming in… but this business can also be very fulfilling. You can leave people in a much better situation than where you found them. You must be willing to pass up a sale, too—this is where you will gain loyalty, and for life. They will send their friends to you, if they see you pass up the opportunity to sell them something because you know they don’t need it.

                He sneered to himself, lightly. He would do that. He would do it because it was good for business. But he couldn’t truly care; that was the difference between Bill and himself. Bill cared, truly cared. Andrew understood that his own caring had a very decided limit; at the crossection of inconvenience, he would turn back from doing the right thing. He knew this.

                “Mr. Dillinger, do you go to church?” she said, her eyes on the check she was signing. He was surprised by the question.

                “Not… sometimes I do. I try to go. Yes.” He should have said yes, just a clean yes, without all the qualifiers, the stumbling. He became suddenly worried that she was going to be weird about it, that she would feel that her purchase had earned her an audience to evangelize him. She was seamless, though, and when she finished and handed the check to him, her eyes were bright and eager and unaffected.

                “So… you know the Lord Jesus?” she said it without embarrassment. “You have the Holy Spurit, livin in you?” She put her sagging hand up between her breasts. He marveled that she could say it so earnestly, as if the question was utterly vital, but without leading into it or preparing him at all. It was strange to watch her, so urgent and so pristinely unpretentious, together.

                “I…  I really enjoy…” he paused again, rallied. “Sure do,” he said then, smiling the same wide smile he’d worn when he came in, the same created aura of confidence and shared secrets.

                She looked at him then for a brief second, and he waited for her to get either pushy or vaguely spiritual, to show some betrayal of self-consciousness about the sale she was attempting. She paused long enough to look at him, and then smiled and began to speak glowingly, as a person speaks of their favorite park or their favorite person, as a child speaks to another child about her father or mother.

                “He sho is wonderful, idn’t he?” she finished, shaking her little head and grinning. She stopped shaking her head then, still looking at him, and frowned a little. She was silent another moment. “You oughta know ‘im, honey; you oughta obey ‘im.”

                He almost lost himself, almost became short with her. It was too provoking, too too provoking, to have her turning around on him this way. She should have known to leave well enough alone, and in a business meeting, too. It wasn’t that she was talking about it, either—hadn’t he nodded his way through a hundred appointments? But she wasn’t just talking; she was selling him.

                At the very least, she could have led in with something that made sense—she could have talked about religion, she could have asked leading questions, she could have made it smooth and polite. He would have been given a comfortable path, and would have been happy to follow her mentally, at least for a while.

                The problem, he thought wryly, was that she had never learned to sell anything. She just looked foolish; he hated to see an old woman looking foolish that way.

                He was silent for a moment, then smiled at her once, intentionally, intending to convey his security of position, and to imply a undefined agreement with her words. Then he executed a series of nods and smiles and chirpy “we’ll be seeing you very soon”s and then he was out the door onto the sidewalk.

                He drove silently to his favorite spot uptown; it was clean and had good lighting. He walked in with a sigh, and sat heavily down at the bar, glancing to his right where a perched brunette girl was re-crossing her legs (towards him—unconscious, but a good sign). He ordered a Heineken and began the evening sale.

Bumblebee

Elsie Blackman was sitting in the back corner of the church office when she stumbled onto the site, and it began as a sort of joke on herself. How funny this is, she thought. Here I am, a normal and regular kind of girl, and I can poke around on the personals section as if I’m one of them. That was how it began.

                The personal ads on craigslist are so unreasonably and wretchedly hopeful that no one could look over them for five minutes without getting a little sad. They fall into just a couple of main categories: You’ll find the romantics posting things like “You work behind the counter at the Kick and Giggle on 21^st avenue, and your red hair and cat-eye glasses nearly took my breath away. I said ‘nice day’ and you said ‘probably’.  I didn’t get to ask you for anything except a chai latte, but I would have asked for your number if I’d known how.”

                You’ll find the personal apologies (“This is Tom. Rachel, if you get this, remember that she was a mistake and for me there is only you”) and the vengeful ex posts (“Ths iz just to say thet Mxwell is the meanest piece uf jnk and a shthed”) and then you have a whole slew of the really scary stuff mixed throughout, the stuff that made Elsie look over her shoulder and wonder if maybe she ought to get back to work. Shocking ads for sexual favors, with terms that she’d never heard before in a shorthand that she didn’t understand.  

                These were also a strangely reassuring to her, though; they reminded her of her own normalcy, and the relative safety of her own position. A good girl, a Christian girl. She got good grades, she kept an afterschool job, and she was probably going to go to college.

                She liked the feeling of sitting with her legs crossed in the back corner of the church office, even wasting time like this; she felt that she looked purposeful and feminine.

                Half an hour of idle surfing and she came across the ad:

                “Two attractive med school students in town for the weekend, looking for two fun, easygoing girls to go get a drink with on Halloween. Send a picture to let us know your real.”

                She winced slightly at the misspelled ‘your’, but immediately scrolled to the picture they’d included. They were good looking.  Clean cut, laughing together with blazers on. These men were glowing with health and money and impending power—the assurance of their future profession had obviously made them cocksure and almost bored. They seemed to embody a life that she would never know or understand; they had ease that she could not comprehend.

                Her father was an installer for Comcast; he was a mildly philosophical man who had never applied himself singlemindedly to any one thing long enough to break through the imaginary ceiling that her mother called ‘Successful’. Elsie was never going to be anything herself, either; she had long resolved that she ought to do something creative, or something with children. What she really meant by this is that she could think of no career at all that she really wanted, and that she would most likely marry and care for children, like her mother had done.

                But it gave her a certain listlessness, already, at the age of eighteen. She could not try very hard at her school work because she deemed it wasted effort—it never occurred to her that to succeed academically would be worth the return of effort, even if it never came to a doctorate or brought her to the position of valedictorian.

                She loathed the idea of being lost in the middle of anything—she wanted to be the very best of anything she did, and if she could not be that, she would prefer to be the very worst, or to at least reassure herself with the knowledge that she had never tried. She had a cultivated hatred of boredom, but she was just smart enough that boredom hounded her all the time. Her little friends at school, chosen for their assimilating insecurities, were never quite ambitious enough for her, never quite funny enough, never quite what she wanted to be seen with. They were comfortable; that was why she clung to them so.

                But it made her increasingly restless, especially on the weekends. She had so many dimly defined ideas about the persona she wanted, socially—some strange unfocussed feeling that there were constantly things she was Missing Out on.

                There were people she was missing out on. There were college girls she’d seen who wore perfectly fitting chino skirts and polo shirts, who bought boots made of real leather and volunteered for causes with their free time. There were girls at her high school, even, who had time for cheerleading and yearbook and parties, too. They went to the mall in little shifting flocks, and never seemed to get lost in each other’s shadows, and made just the right amount of time for homework.

                As Elsie sat there in the church office and stared at the pictures of these two medical students who were foolish or bored enough to post an ad on Craigslist, she had a flashed image of herself sitting in one of those low-lit bars on the posh part of Redland Hills. The place had stainless steel light fixtures and exposed ceilings, and the two guys, charming in a bland, preppy way, were watching her impishly as she joked and sipped and touched them flirtatiously on the knee when she leaned in to say something.       

                She knew that she wanted to be that girl with the long legs, who could drop by for drinks with a stranger and then say “well, I’ve got to rejoin my friends—“ and walk out laughing, shaking hands with handsome men and saying “well, this was… interesting” and then clicking out onto the Nashville sidewalk.

                She answered the ad, without thinking. She included a picture of herself and a friend at a concert, making sure that it was a less attractive friend and making sure to specify that she was the one on the left. She wrote as lightly as she could—noncommittal, breezy, slightly teasing, with hints of ‘I really never do this, but what-the-heck.’ She mentioned another party she’d be coming from—“but I could come after nine?”

                She included a phone number for texting, and then left the office, stuffing her chemistry book into her backpack with a little tremor in her hands. She went directly to a thrift store, to look for a costume. Even if she decided to blow this whole crazy thing off, there was a party that night; she hadn’t lied. It was her usual set of people. She knew that the night would nearly kill her with boredom.

                The stranger texted her not long after, while she stood at a rack of grandmothers’ dresses.  

                “Hi—it’s John, from Craigslist. J So… 9? Do you have another friend?”

                “Hi, John J” she said, wishing she could be more blithe than that, more witty. The context was cramping her charm. “I’m asking around, not sure if any of the girls will be open. It’s rather unorthodox, see.” This was better; smarter.

                He told her he’d call later to set things up—“and that’s fine, all you can do is askJ”. She resolved to mention it guardedly to a few of the more adventurous girls tonight—what could it hurt? She’d make it clear that she’d not been in craigslist with any real intention, that the guys were very aboveboard contacts, almost friends of hers, that she still wasn’t sure if she wanted to go. Perhaps she could even pass it off as a joke if they responded very badly to it.

                She picked out a gold nightie, in the end, and black tights; she was going to be a bumble bee. She imagined laughing and saying “at least I float like a butterfly” in a coy sort of way. It was the most daring things she’d ever considered wearing—like all the girls she’d always seen, in their minis, their little spaghetti straps, their bikinis in the summer. She’d stood apart from these girls until now—but, oh, to go out and to be truly sexy, to be the girl who was followed by all the eyes at a party! She felt that her very self could change, her very nature, the gold of this nightie would travel inward and make her the glowing enigma that she’d always secreted away behind mediocrity.

____________________________________________________________________

                It wasn’t until she arrived at the party that she understood, how short the dress was. Her parents hadn’t been home when she left the house; she’d told her mother some vague thing about the party she was headed to. Maybe she’d said it was a sleepover, but hadn’t been too clear—if she decided to come straight home after the party, it needed to make sense.

                She walked into Katie’s house and realized in a rush that her skirt was too short. Her tights had a run in them up near the thigh, which she'd thought was stylish, but she knew now that it was simply cheap. It only added to the shockingly skimpy look that she had created.

                “Elsie,” Brook smiled at her in a funny, shocked way. “Look at you.”

                Elsie laughed with her nervously, and said “I know; I feel a little silly, but this is what all the bumblebees are wearing.” She tugged at the bottom of the skirt, was ashamed, and then rallied. She thought how much she disliked Brook anyway. What a normal sort of name, Brook. The name was a perfect illustration of Brook and Brook’s people, of all of them—not even enough imagination to be named something interesting. They were just a bunch of Ashleys and Katies and Saras, that was all they were; they were pushing along inside of this system, working at grades and high school rules and eventually becoming accountants or teachers—she would never be like them, didn’t want to be like them. She was special. She’d never met another person named Elsie.

                She forgot, in this rush of defensive feeling, that her friend had not intended insult at all, and that one of the things that usually bothered her about them was that they weren’t normal enough. They were eccentric by almost any standard, smart kids with weird senses of humor.               
            She sat around at the party for maybe an hour. There were some people there she didn’t know, and she wondered uneasily if they thought she always wore skirts this short. All of her friends were either joking with her, raising their eyebrows and saying things like “hot stuff,” or they were forgetting to notice at all, tugging at their own cardboard boxes and leotards and bulky brown fleeces.  The conversation lagged. She tried at one point to bring up John Craigslist to one of the girls she didn’t know as well, who she thought was a little wild.

                “So…” she said, laughing at herself to let the girl know that she knew it was ridiculous, “I was just messing around on craigslist today, and I sort of stumbled across this ad, from these two med students who are from out of town. They just want to go out with a few locals and see the area, and they wanted a few girls to go out with. I know it was probably stupid of me to respond, but they seem to be totally normal…”

                The girl only seemed embarrassed, though, and brushed it off with a "Oh, no. No, I don't think so; I think we'll probably stay here." Elsie was surprised. She felt censured, disapproved of, and it made her a little angry to get this from even the Wild Girl. She would have expected it from Brook and them, and she knew the way the whole thing sounded. But from this girl, this foolish girl, who would have done exactly the same thing…

                When John Craigslist called, a few minutes later, she was beyond ready to leave. She psyched herself up and took the call outside the front door, glancing around to see the gaze of the Wild Girl on her as she backed out. She wished she’d never said anything to her at all.

                “Hi,” said a startled voice on the other line. “This is… John.” She was surprised that he sounded so pleasant, so normal and so uncertain. “This is Elsie,” she said, and laughed merrily. Then she realized that they were headed into a pause, so she buffed up a brisk, professional tone. “So, what’s the plan? You know the city, or do you need suggestions?”

                “Well,” he said, carefully, “my friend and I are staying at The Radisson; I was thinking we could meet there, and just head down to Broadway.”

                Oh. A hotel; they were staying at a hotel, and they wanted her to meet them there. Some dark fear hit her stomach for a moment, and then she remembered that The Radisson downtown was actually a very nice hotel. She could stay in the lobby. That was the key with these things; you just had to stay in public, stay around other people. Nothing could happen in the lobby of a hotel.

                “Sure,” she said, pertly. “That sounds just fine. Now, I wasn’t able to sell any of the girls on this, I’m sorry to say. Have you had any other responses?”

                “Well… no,” he sounded a little uncomfortable. “But that’s fine. We’ll have a good ol’ time.”

                “All right” she said. “I’ll call you when I get there.”

                “Kay.”

                And that was that. It was set. She had another glimpse of herself as the cosmopolitan girl perched across from two men in casual jackets—then she walked inside and whispered goodnight to her friend, the hostess. She was out the door before she could make eye contact with Wild Girl.

                She drove through the darkness into the increasing lights of downtown, with glamour flashing in her eyes. She found parking in a garage under the hotel—no problem—and strode her heels up an escalator and through the rotating doors of the third most expensive hotel in Nashville. She texted John a simple “I’m in the lobby” and he sent back: “Richard is coming down.”

                Richard must be the other one. She forced herself to walk over to the side and stand casually, gazing around at the polished wood, the curving twin staircases, and the glass elevators as they lunged up and down a sheer wall of stacked balconies.

                She knew it was him as soon as she saw him. He strolled awkwardly over to her, placing one foot in front of the other with deliberate slowness. His face was almost pug-like; nothing like the picture. She looked hard at him while shaking his hand, trying to place him in the photo she’d seen. Barely. They could have been brothers, maybe—if it was one of those families with a very attractive and very ugly sibling, who share only some faint whisper of a bone structure or hair texture as a cruel hint that they are related

                Somehow, though, this was supposed to be the same man. Blazer-boy, the med student. She smiled brightly at him and watched him as he tried to appear casual. She watched his squished nose as he greeted her with maybe a “hello” or a “nice to meet you” or an “I’m Richard, Richard Counts.” He was obviously nervous, too nervous to speak much; he turned around to go to the elevator and she realized that she was supposed to follow. Once the doors closed on them, he made another attempt at conversation: “so you found it okay?”

                “Yes,” she said. She was overcome with a feeling of freedom as the glass carried them upward, and she felt suddenly as if this older man was putty for her to put at ease in her hands. She smiled at him again.

                “So, where are you from?”

                “Oh, I’m from here,” he said. “I am an engineer.”

                “Oh? I thought you were from out of town…?”

                “No—that’s John. He’s a med resident, in St. Louis. He’s in town for a conference… thing. He was online doing some last minute work; that’s why he couldn’t come down himself.”

                And she caught the relationship, then; this man was subservient to the other, somehow. She caught it in his eyes—he was asking her not to overlook him for the other man. He didn’t know he was asking it, but he was.

                “Where did you go to school?” she asked him without thinking.

                “Belmont.”

                “Oh!” She said. “Well, I want to—I went to Vanderbilt.”

                “Really?” He seemed uncomfortable again, and she felt it too: they had made each other real. This could no longer be an anonymous outing, for they had given themselves real lives. He’d gone to Belmont. It was twenty minutes from her house. He was an engineer at some company with a logo’d sign that she’d probably seen.

                Now the reality of this shallow and strange meeting was highlighted and underlined. They’d found each other on Craigslist. She glanced over at his squished face and incredible awkwardness and realized why there were no Belmont girls for him to take out tonight.

                They were strolling along the open corridor now, on the tenth floor. The corridor was one long balcony with rooms on one side and the open air of the lobby on the other. They stopped at one point and leaned over the balcony, and she felt him make one more push at a charming first impression.

                “So, you get on craigslist often?”

                “No.”

                She smiled, but her desire to change the subject made them both fall into silence.

                “Well,” he said. “I think he’s probably ready now.”

                Like some kind of royalty, like the CEO, he was being waited on by his friend the ugly engineer. She had a vague hope, as they walked towards the room, that he was truly charming and handsome. She also had a vague hope that her dress looked like a dress and not an invitation. She thought, as the key swiped and the door swung open, that she really oughtn’t to go into that room and let the door shut behind her.

                Inside, the young blonde doctor stood up and walked over to shake her hand. “Sorry about that,” he said. “Had to send in a report.”

                He wasn’t handsome, either. His face was long and horselike where his friend’s was doggish and squished, but he wasn’t truly difficult to look at. His mouth was a little long, and twisted into awkward shapes when he spoke, and his overall movement had a knobby, stiff quality to it—but she could see that if he was perfectly still and smiling, and the light was very good, he might look something like his photo. He was not her cosmopolitan dream man, but he would do. He was certainly very tall, and seemed a bit more at ease than his companion.

                Also, he did something on the front end that gave her immense relief: he walked to the door, before she could get fully inside, pulled a potted plant from inside the room, and propped the door wide open with it.

                He didn’t say why, but she nodded a little when he looked back over at her—it was a gesture of safety.

                “Well, we were just going to hang around here a little longer, while things heat up down there… we were doing a little surfing—do you like fantasy football?”

                “Oh, goodness—you’ll have to shoot me first,” she said with a nice little laugh, and they both seemed pleased. She saw them both, at separate times, briefly appraise what she had on. She hoped that it was as cute as they had hoped, that she could be a bit of excitement for these two bored guys, that she was not a disappointment to them.

                “We also got… this,” said the John, pulling out a bottle with an anxious grin. “You like Long Island iced tea?”

                It was something that looked like a pre-mixed cocktail; he poured it into a small tumbler of ice and handed her one. She realized only a few sips later that this was not a spiked tea, but a straight tea-flavored vodka. This was only her second time to have alcohol, and the taste was awful to her, but she would never let on.

                “Mmm—love me a Long Island” she said easily, and before long they were all sipping, browsing the net for SNL videos and making attempts at small talk. Elsie understood almost immediately why she was there: she was supposed to entertain them, that is what they had wanted. They wanted to have a good time, and that is what women are for. She didn’t mind; rather, she wanted very much to rise to the occasion. So she concentrated on the charming talk. Laughing easily, taking her shoes off and casting them under a chair carelessly, teasing them each by turn about anything she could latch onto.

                She knew that she could ruin the evening for either of them, if she too obviously favored one or the other. The favored would feel bored and easy, and the other would feel frustrated and disrespected. She had to keep up the play, even between the two, passing the conversation around like a platter of hors d’oeuvres. They weren’t really interested in her, either; she knew that. It didn’t matter. She was in high school.

                As the vodka began to go down smoother for all of them, the room began to grow warmer. Her balanced, circular flirtations grew easier to throw down, and harder to censor; she found that she had to struggle not to ask them outright whether they thought it was strange, picking up girls online. Once she almost broached the subject, but in a tease: “…Well, that’s what you get when you shop for dates on craigslist. Low quality.”

                “You’re not low quality,” John returned gallantly, and pug-nose Richard started to get a little pout.

                By the time they decided they ought to hit the street, Elsie was wavering a little. Her eyes were glazing, and when she stood up to reapply her heels, the room shifted gently to meet her. She looked over at the misty eyes of her companions and realized that they were only in a slightly better condition.
_________________________________________________________

                They all giggled their way over to the elevators and meandered their way through the lobby. She couldn’t remember how it was that they reached Broadway from 7^th, or where they were supposed to be headed, but she was aware suddenly of dozens of people all around them, always, pressing in from every side of the street in shrieking, laughing droves. They were dressed in varying degrees of Halloween commitment; the guys were mostly in street clothes and the girls were mostly in skimpy little nothings with animal ears attached as an afterthought.

                She wondered if she blended well. It seemed to her that she did.

                The night streets were exhilarating to her, as she followed John knowingly through the crowd, smiling at the men she passed and remembering to shoot Richard a look behind her now and then. The weaving was making her heart race, but it was nothing to the excitement she felt when they turned in at the door of one of the pumping clubs they’d passed.

                They stopped at the door and somehow she was passed through without an ID request—she found herself stepping through a large, loud, smoky room before she knew what had happened to her. Her mood was impossible to pin down. She was exhilarated, and felt powerful; at the same time, she made bold eye contact with everyone she passed with a feeling of intense pity. They were so sad, to come to a place like this, and empty themselves so completely of any thought or real feeling. What a world it was, what a wasteland; and all of us only survivors on the face of a strange planet, meeting in the night.

                There was a stage in the club, with a balcony above it, and strobe lights careening across it; she watched the people dance while John bought her a beer. The couples danced like they were trying to undress each other without pulling any clothes off; sometimes girls danced alone, but they seemed to believe that they were strippers, as well.

                She understood this kind of movement. She’d been fascinated with the movement of her own hips since they’d come in—it was the only part of her body that she thought was truly coordinated. Her feet would get tied in knots in minutes; her arms were like flailing, stunted branches. Her hips, though—her hips understood music. And when the music came out of the land of the black man—the soggy blues or the blantantly sexual reggaeton or the pulsing hip-hop of the day—they responded without question.

                She was born for this club, she realized, as she sipped her beer. The two men stood by the bar, sipping and leaning in to hear each other talk, and she realized that their movements and words would have been embarrassing and awkward in any other place. Here, in the darkness, with the noise crashing around them and the alcohol impairing scales of judgment, all of that was covered and atoned for.

                Richard spent about five minutes feeding himself courage before he asked her to dance. “Yes!” she yelled, and then they moved onto the edge of the floor. John took their drinks and settled himself at a table nearby. Elsie realized before long that he was watching, he was watching her along with the others, and she knew that she must perform.

                She was unwilling and unable to touch Richard while they danced, which made for a terrible time for him, as he had nothing to do with his hands. She looked around at the other girls, grinding on their dates, and she tried to will herself to do it, but could not. Instead she ground the air.

                After a few moments, Richard sat down too, and she kept dancing; the walls were starting to move around her. She stumbled once, in the middle of some circular migration she had undertaken across her portion of the floor, and hoped that John was not making fun of her to himself. She looked over once, still dancing, and through the wall of alcohol in her mind she thought she saw a look on his face which made her want to weep. He was not drunk at all. She was drunk. She was very drunk; she was the silly, easy girl they had picked up online, and she was sad to behold. She looked around at all the people she had pitied in the club, and reasoned that she was no worse—she was dancing tamely compared to them, and this was only a social experiment for her. She would never be one of them.

                By the time she had spent herself onstage, she walked over to them, grinning thinly, and they said “you ready?” and all of them stood in the music for a short moment, trying to walk. She was still joyful, somehow. “You have a buzz, don’t you, bee?” John said this with a little slur as he took her elbow to lead her out.

                They edged out of the club and onto the street, and time did not seem to pass. The world was presenting itself to her as just a series of images, rising up to meet her and then falling away, and swinging in front of her, then being replaced, one after the other after the other. All the people who swung up in front of her, she looked directly in the eye. She looked at the men boldly and smiled. The women were all fellow victims of the night, she felt, so she made very serious eye contact with them as well as if to say ‘I understand, but this isn’t the way.’

                She found herself next in the lobby and then very suddenly in the hotel room, and by this time, she was directing all her attention to John and ignoring Richard altogether. There was no guile in it. She liked John and not Richard. As she and John laughed across the room together, the three of them opened a laptop and started to skip around the internet aimlessly. Eventually she moved over and sat on one side of John, sort of leaning over him to see the screen. Their flirtations were not totally articulate, but they were certainly open.

                Richard receded further and further into himself and out of the conversation. He could see that he was not wanted; he understood that he evening was over. Elsie didn’t notice until he was  saying goodnight and closing the door, and then she was struck again with a hazy fear, that she was alone in a hotel room with a strange man.

                But he only looked over at her once with his horse face, and kept on browsing the web as if he could not talk to her without it. She understood then why he had gone to the internet for a date.

                It seemed that no time had passed at all when he closed the laptop and said, “Well, you’re welcome to crash here.  I’m going to sleep in the bed; if you want to use the other side, I swear, I wouldn’t do any…” He stopped sheepishly, and so she believed him. But she was so drunk, so very drunk.

                “The couch,” she said. “It’s fine.”

                “All right,” he breathed out, and he sidled into the next room. She lost consciousness as soon as the light was out, but it was a fitful, awful sleep. When she woke two hours later, her phone was ringing. It was her mother.

                “Hello?” she said, and she rushed over to the hotel room door, to prop it open and stand in the hallway so John wouldn't wake up.

                “Hey honey—where are you?” came her mother’s sleepy voice.

                “I told you Katie’s party was a sleepover,” she said, as clearly as she could manage. “I told you it was going to go late.”

                “Oh, okay. Sorry; I just didn’t know. I’ll see you in the morning.”

                “Okay, see you at home” she said, and then she squeezed the phone in her hand for a moment, feeling her misery like a truck. When she came back into the sitting room, John was standing in the bedroom doorway.

                “Everything all right?” he said, rubbing his eyes.

                “Yes, fine” she said. “That was my…” and she saw that he had heard the conversation; he knew she lived at home. She was embarrassed again. What a child she must seem to him. “Maybe I will stay in the bed,” she said.

                “Okay.” They wordlessly went back into the bedroom, and she slid herself under the covers on the right side. Her tights were still on. He went under, too, very carefully staying away from the middle, turning away just as soon as he was in, and she felt a strange maternal pride for him. The ceiling swam a little, and she lay awake for a while because her mother had called and she had lied and she was too drunk to leave this stranger’s hotel room. At one point, he reached his hand over and grasped hers under the covers; she barely registered it.

                Then she realized that she was crying, softly. This was why he had taken her hand. He pitied her, condescended to her. Suddenly she wanted to explain to him, what was so sad to her; it was a philanthropic sadness, a maternal one. She was not a child.

                “Life doesn’t have to be this way, you know.” she said suddenly.

                She knew it sounded like she was trying to preach to him, and her position made the witness ridiculous. But she also knew that he needed it because this was obviously the way he spent all of his weekends; yes, she was here too, but she would never come here again. She was different from tonight, but he was going back on craigslist tomorrow.

                He made no response, but she felt him pat her hand, like a parent who is too sleepy to listen well. She softly wept herself to sleep.

                Elsie woke up at five, and was moved to run. She got up and found her shoes. “Are you sure you’re good for driving?” mumbled, waking. “I’m fine; thanks” she whispered, and shut the door behind her, wanting never to see or talk to him again.

                Her car started as if nothing had ever happened, and the parking attendant took her money as if she was totally sober and awake, because he didn’t know. By the time she slid herself into bed next to her little sister, flinging the yellow nightie to the floor, light was slowly starting to split the bedroom ceiling.