Reputation(2)

I leap up and yank the blinds closed. I need out of this hotel room. I want company, noise, and maybe another drink. The closest place is the hotel’s rooftop bar.



“You should try a naughty mule,” says a voice beside me after I slide onto a barstool.

A man sits catty-corner to me on one of the gray couches, half-hidden behind a large marble post. I’m irked that he’s been eavesdropping. I’ve been debating with the bartender—a discerning, fiftyish man with half-mast eyes who is pretentiously overdressed in a three-piece suit—between a Moscow mule and a gimlet. After that strange, anonymous, cryptic text I’d received in my room, the last thing I want are random eyes on me.

But my eavesdropper smiles jovially enough. I twist around to get a better look at him. By the way his legs stretch from the couch, I can tell that he’s quite tall. His face is square and friendly, and his dark hair curls over his oxford collar. The corners of his eyes turn down in a way that seems trustworthy, and he has a big, wide, straight smile, with good, square teeth. He looks like a preppy, naughty schoolboy, as if he might be hiding a slingshot behind his back. I notice he’s wearing Vans sneakers instead of loafers with his suit. Still dressed for my meeting, I am wearing Yves Saint Laurent pumps that paralyze my toes.

“It’s vodka mixed with jalape?o and cayenne pepper,” Schoolboy explains, holding up a copper mug. “If you like spicy, you won’t find anything better.”

My eyelashes lower, then lift. “What makes you think I like spicy?”

One eyebrow rises. His eyes drift down to my exposed legs, my high heels. “Do you?” he asks, in a voice that, unless I’m crazy, oozes with flirtation.

“Wouldn’t you like to know,” I shoot back. Then I chastise myself. Kit Manning-Strasser is not a woman who flirts with random men in hotel bars. I catch the bartender’s eye. “Just a Tanqueray and tonic, please.”

The bartender turns to mix it up, with a smirk on his face. He sets down my cocktail silently, and I swear I hear him snicker. My cheeks are on fire; even a sip of the drink can’t extinguish the heat.

As the bartender turns away, there’s a voice behind me: “Don’t mind Bertram. He’s a judgmental prick.”

Schoolboy again. I can feel his gaze on my back as though it’s a heat lamp. “You know him?” I ask nonchalantly.

“Nope. Just met him today. But I can tell. I’m good at reading people.”

I pretend to be interested in the flickering votive candle on the bar. I’m still trying to process why this man thought I like spicy things. Or perhaps this is his line to every woman he meets.

Schoolboy interprets some tiny movement I’ve made as a cue to slip off the couch and take the stool next to mine. “I’m Patrick,” he says, those crinkly, downturned eyes slow, careful magnets drawing me toward him.

“Kit,” I answer.

He does not offer his hand to shake, so I don’t offer mine, either. “So are you here on business?” I coolly ask.

He holds up a palm to say, Halt. “Come now. We’re going to have that conversation?”

I blink. “Pardon?”

“We’re at a hotel. We don’t know each other. We can make boring chitchat, or we could actually have an interesting talk.” He leans back and crosses his arms over his chest. He has nice forearms, I notice. Muscular. He’s also not wearing a wedding band.

“And what, in your estimation, is an interesting talk?” I ask. “You want to talk about politics? Global warming? Health care?”

“I want to talk about who we really want to be.” His eyes gleam. “It’s a game I play when I travel. It’s not often that we get the opportunity to be someone other than ourselves, you know? I’m not going to tell you where I’m actually from, but where I want to be from. You won’t tell me what you actually do for a living, but what you want to do, in your wildest dreams.”

A Tiffany lamp, perhaps authentic, sends glittering trapezoids across the marble bar. Out a long set of floor-to-ceiling windows, a rooftop deck beckons, though it is too cold to venture outside. I think of that line from “Eleanor Rigby,” one of my mother’s favorite songs. The title character puts on the face she keeps in a jar by the door whenever there are visitors. Who is Eleanor when she doesn’t have to be Eleanor? Who am I when I don’t have to be Kit Manning-Strasser?

“Interesting.” I turn away slightly. “Except I’m not feeling very creative tonight, I’m afraid.”

“It’s not a matter of creativity. It’s about looking into yourself. Knowing yourself. So you’re saying you don’t know yourself?”

In the background, the soft, unobtrusive electronica song ends, and another begins. Kit Manning-Strasser, I want to tell him, is not a woman who has these conversations. But it does beg a question: Do I know myself? Do I know what I want?

I think of all I have. But I also think of all the wrong paths I’ve taken. I think of how hard I pretend. Everything I haven’t said. Everything I’ve wanted. Everything I’ve gained and lost.

“Fine,” I say slowly, without quite realizing it. I settle back in my seat, and I ask him the very same question. “Where you are traveling from, Patrick?”

His eyes sparkle. “A little town in the South of France. It’s known for its lemons. You?”