“Taking inventory?” Shay asked, his voice full of doubt. “As a CEO, you were taking inventory?”
I nodded. “What can I say? I’m a man of the people, my friends.”
Kane lowered his eyes to my loafer resting on my other knee and raised a dark eyebrow. “Do ‘the people’ wear Burberry?”
“They’re Prada.”
He rolled his eyes and I stuck out my tongue at him.
“Taking inventory of what?” Shay interjected, waving his hand between Kane and me.
I shrugged. “You know, office supplies and such.”
Kane repeated this, clearly amused, “Office supplies and such?”
I held back a grin and shrugged, saying again, “Office supplies and such.”
I slurped noisily at my drink as Shay tapped his thick, calloused fingers against the lip of his glass. “So, what, like pens?”
I hid my smile behind my Manhattan. “A pen.”
“Huh?”
I snorted into my drink and bubbles popped against my nose. “It was just one pen we were inventorying,” I told them.
Shay sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “You said you were in the boardroom, Ronan.”
I let my head fall lazily over my shoulder and waved my empty glass at the waitress. I dragged my head back up and pointed my pinkie at Shay.
“No, I said I was near the boardroom,” I corrected, grinning devilishly. “The supply closet is right next to the boardroom.”
Shay groaned.
“I guess you can’t teach class,” Kane grumbled.
I laughed. “Au contraire, mon ami, I teach myself class each and every day.”
Shay leaned back against the dark suede of his chair and crossed his big forearms across his wide chest.
“How’s that?” he asked. “Because from where I’m sitting, friend, you don’t exactly look like a member of the royal family.”
I took my next round straight from the waitress’s tray and sipped it while shaking my head.
“See, there’s your problem,” I explained, the sweet burn of whiskey hot on my lips. “You new-money guys see class as acting prissy, all pinkies pointed and noses upturned. You see it as wearing long tuxedo tails and talking in hushed tones while sitting on ugly floral fainting couches.”
I took another drink and smacked my lips loudly.
“But I’ll let you in on a little secret,” I said, eyeing Kane and then Shay. “Class doesn’t have anything to do with that bullshite. The key to class is figuring out the role high society wants you to play, and not just playing it, but playing it beautifully. For example, people want me to play the part of a lazy, bored asshole who everybody hates because he didn’t earn his billions, and I’m more than happy to comply.”
I downed my drink, took my feet off the table, and leaned forward to jab my finger against the cocktail napkin in the centre. “Anybody can learn class.”
Shay laughed. “Yeah, anybody who’s rich.”
“Anybody,” I repeated. “Rich, poor, it doesn’t matter.”
Kane shook his head. “Maybe anybody who already has some degree of social status, social standing.”
“Anybody anybody, anybody,” I insisted. “Any single nobody.”
Kane just shook his head again.
Shay stared at me. “Anybody?” he asked incredulously. “You’re crazy.”
I was dead serious as I said again, “Anybody.”
Kane’s eyes flashed darkly as he glanced past me to the main floor below. His icy gaze slid to me and the smile he gave me was terrifying. “Anyone in this room, for instance?”
I laughed even before turning around to see who was there. Someone who could get into The White Room wasn’t going to make much of a challenge: the place was full of the richest women, the click-baitiest socialites, the highest-end escorts. There were the wives of politicians, the girlfriends of sports superstars, and the fiancées of banking billionaires. If the boys wanted to play a little game, they certainly weren’t making it a fun one.
“Yes,” I said, turning back around. “Anyone in this room.”
“Anyone?” Kane asked again.
“Pick anyone,” I told them with a dismissive wave.
As Shay and Kane surveyed the dining room below us, I sipped their drinks and slouched with a bored sigh in my chair. Then they began to smile. I frowned as they grinned wider and wider.
“What?” I said, worry entering my voice.
They looked at each other and then at me. Shay laughed into his drink as Kane nodded over my shoulder.
“Even her?”
Delaney
The dude didn’t even bother with a glance in my direction as I slipped the sleek black booklet from the edge of the polished walnut table. That wasn’t a good sign. I weaved through the other diners, who talked in hushed tones over steaks that could have paid that month’s rent and bottles of wine that could have paid for the previous three months of rent I hadn’t paid. The cocaine-thin society wives would leave enough food on their plate to feed me for the week and the half-drunk bottles of Moët left carelessly behind could get me tipsy enough to forget that I couldn’t afford food to feed me for the week.
Discreetly as possible I sneaked a quick peek inside the leather booklet to see my tip.
“Goddamn mother fucker,” I hissed at the sight of a crumpled, limp, measly ten-euro bill.
An elderly woman who must have heard me dropped her oyster with a clatter and clutched at her chest in shock at my language. I held back a snort of laughter. If she thought that was bad, she didn’t know anything. I’d send her into cardiac arrest if I really got started.
“Hi there. Enjoying your meal?” I asked her, tapping my fingers along the edge of the table.
“You, you…” the lady stammered.
I smiled sweetly and tilted my head to the side. “Yes, I know, I hear it all the time,” I told her, fanning myself with my hand. “I’m quite charming.”
I left her with her mouth opening and closing like a fish as I ducked under a passing waitress with a tray of sparkling champagne glasses on her shoulder to enter the back kitchen. I saw Bridget leaning against the cinderblock wall shovelling in the few pieces of lettuce they gave us each night as “dinner”.
“Can you believe this?” I asked her, shoving the booklet against her chest and plucking a cherry tomato from her bowl.
“Hey,” she protested as I plopped it between my lips, “that was the only one.”
“I need it more than you,” I told her as I chewed. “Take a look at that.”
I nodded at the booklet she fumbled with as she tried not to drop her salad. She managed to pry it open and I watched her fold over the ten to see what was behind it, which was a whole lot of nothing. Goddamn, fucking nothing!
“The bill was three hundred and eighty-two euros and nineteen fucking cents,” I complained, jabbing my finger at the receipt. “Am I supposed to give this to my landlord?”
I pulled out the ten and waved it in the air. “‘Please, sir, I know you’ve threatened to kick me out for like two months now but look at this. This solves everything, right? We’re square now, right?’”