No One Knows Us Here(7)

Wendy had been calling every night, asking for an update. I’m trying, I kept telling her. She didn’t get how hard it was out here. My four-year plan to leave home and go to college had been just that: a four-year plan. When I graduated in June, I was in for a rude awakening. Surprise, surprise—a bachelor’s degree in philosophy, even from a pretty good college, isn’t exactly sought after in the job market. That had been a few months ago. It was no easier now than it was back then. I had dropped résumés off all over town. I wasn’t being picky, either. I could work more than one shift. People did it all the time—worked several jobs to support a family. Our own mother had done it, until she met Jason. I applied to Trader Joe’s. I applied to the Plaid Pantry. I wasn’t even getting any interviews, let alone a job.

Listen, maybe we should wait, I had said on the phone just last night. Lawyers make good money. If Wendy could hang tight for three years—

Three years? Wendy had said. You promised.

I know, I know. It was just an idea. It wasn’t as though I wanted out of my promise to my sister. It was more that I still had a hard time believing, back then, that I could make any difference. That I could make her life any better.

I’ll find a way, Wendy had said the last time we talked. I hadn’t taken it too seriously at the time. “She’s a kid,” I told Mira. “Whatever she’s going through, she’ll grow out of it.”

“Didn’t her parents die?”

I had made the mistake of confiding in Mira. She would come home late in her fancy dresses, kick off her heels. I’d make us tea, and we would sit and talk. Or rather, I would talk and she would listen. She was a good listener.

“I lost my parents, too.” I could hear how pathetic I sounded.

“You don’t want to help her?”

“What do you think I’ve been doing these last few weeks? I’ve sent my résumé all over town. I’ve asked Rich for more hours. Even a studio apartment is out of reach with what I’m making now.”

“You’re probably wondering how I afford all this stuff.” Mira raised her arms up, as if she were supporting an invisible tray over her head. As if “all this stuff” included everything we saw around us—the martinis and the heat lamps and the glass railing and the city lights twinkling up into the hills, out beyond the river. “I’m trying to explain it to you.”

“Okay,” I said. “Explain it.”

She leaned in closer to me. “You know what’s in that phone? All my contacts. Very lucrative contacts. You know how many years it took me to build up that list? I’ll tell you. Five years. My last year of college and four years of dental school. I’ve whittled it down for you. Sifted through the riffraff. The losers. The cheapskates. The disgusting douchebags—excuse me.” She straightened up and cleared her throat. She waved her hand over the phone. “This is my gift to you. This is how you get out of Steele’s closet. This is how you stop working retail”—she said “retail” with the same vehemence as she’d said “douchebags”—“and start figuring out what you want, how you really want to live.”

I took a sip of the frothy, pale-yellow drink that had appeared on the table before me sometime during Mira’s speech. It had arrived just in time. I needed something to do while I let all this information sink in. All the puzzle pieces were sliding into place—the dresses, the weekend trips. Mira seemed to be waiting for me to react, to say something. I couldn’t come up with anything. I sucked at the sugared rim on the side of my glass and then took a big, icy gulp.

“You’re a . . .” I let the sentence hang, hoping Mira would fill in the right words. Sugar baby? Escort? Working girl? Prostitute? Or maybe she was one of those people who wanted to reclaim a derogatory title. High-class whore?

“Yes.” She looked relieved that I’d finally put two and two together. She sat back against her chair cushions and smiled at me. Audibly exhaled. “I am.”

“I could never do that.” My heart pounded in my ears. I was shocked. I was shocked but didn’t want to be shocked. I wanted to be cool with it. I wanted to be the type of person who took this kind of information in stride. So I smiled at Mira. “I’m just not a people person.”

She laughed. “You date, right?”

“That’s not really the same thing.”

“It’s not so different, either. Weren’t you hooking up with guys from Tinder and Bumble and Lookinglass after you and Steele split up?”

“I was on Tinder for maybe five minutes.”

“Right,” said Mira.

“It was just for fun. I’m not really looking for anything serious, anyway.”

“You told me about some of these guys. They don’t sound all that great, to be honest. Half the time they don’t even buy you dinner first.”

“I’m really not looking for—”

“I’m just saying, you don’t have to settle for guys like that.”

I tapped the phone that was lying between us in its nest of wrapping paper. “So these guys in here, they’re all just amazing, drop-dead gorgeous guys? Is that what you’re telling me?”

“I’m saying you couldn’t do much worse than the guys you’re dating now. You could actually do a lot better. These are professional guys, guys with money. They’ll take you places, buy you things. They’ll pay you more in one night than you make in two weeks working retail.”