Page 22 of The Devil Wears Nada

I log off shaking.

The next morning, Birdie calls before I've finished my first coffee.

She's chirping about the ranch she didn’t end up owning, and I let her run, because Birdie babbling on about her own life is predictable, and predictable is comforting right now. Then she arrives at the actual reason she called, which with Birdie is always somewhere ten minutes into her monologue.

"So. Sal told me you threw another chunk at the loan." A pause that isn't like her at all. "That's, like… a lot, Ag."

"I picked up extra work." The lie is smooth now. I've told it enough. "Bookkeeping. Spreadsheets. Boring stuff you'd hate."

"Uh-huh." Another pause. My sister is a great many things, most of them exhausting, but it turns out, she is not actually stupid. "That's a lot of spreadsheets."

"It's a lot of small businesses."

"Mmm." I can hear her deciding whether to push. She doesn't. Not yet. "Okay. Well. My abundance meditation is obviously working, so you're welcome." And she's off again, back to the ranch that never came to be, and I let myself breathe.

But I file it away in the part of my brain that keeps track of shit that’s about to hit the fan. Birdie noticed.

So the morning after the best and worst night of my brief camgirl career, here’s where I stand. Three men whose calls I route know my body better than anyone alive, and one of them may know a great deal more than that. My sister is starting to do the math. And in a few hours, Elias Thorne is going to walk past my desk and hand me a contract without looking up, and I'm going to have to say good morning, Mr. Thorne like he didn't tell me last night I kept the best part of my orgasm to myself.

My trick is that I'm safe because nobody looks. Invisible girls don't get caught. Invisible girls don't get hurt.

But last night, someone looked, and the part that scares me isn't that he might know my name. It's that I have never, in my entire life, wanted to be seen this badly.

Every instinct I own says disappear. Change my name, kill the room, be nobody again. Nobody is safe.

Instead, I'm picking out a new lipstick.

7

AGGIE

The message comes the day after our private session.

HouseMoney: Next time, you're not in charge.

Huh?

I read it four times at the front desk, in my oatmeal cardigan, with a client on hold and the beautiful Sloane two feet away.

HouseMoney: You had your turn. Best money I've ever spent, and I've bought companies. But turnabout's fair play, Your Highness. Tonight you do what we say.

Then, a second later, a numbered list pops up, because that's how Beck Cross rolls.

HouseMoney: 1. Wear the red. 2. Nothing else. 3. Buy this.

And a link.

I click it before my brain can catch my finger, and damn, I was not expecting this. It’s a somewhat tasteful replica of a human penis, vein-y and circumcised, matte black, in discreet packaging, available at an adult store two blocks away that I've never noticed but apparently Beck has. I go a shade of red that brings beads of sweat that run down the back of my neck, and just as I find a stray tissue to dab myself with, Sloane saunters over. The little crease between her eyebrows is perfect, symmetrical, and appropriately worried.

"Agnes, you okay? You look flushed."

I look up at her and confirm, for the hundredth time, that the woman has no pores.

"Oh yeah, I'm great. Thank you for asking. Just a little warm in here," I croak, and minimize my message window.

I tell myself it's business. Keep the whales happy, the customer's always right, more money off the loan. I tell myself I'm still the one in charge, because I could say no, no way, and go fuck yourself. I tell myself a great many things while I Google the exact address for a shop with a sex toy my boss ordered me to go pick up like it's his damn dry cleaning. None of this explains, or maybe it does, why my hands are shaking, or why what's roaring loudest in me isn't fear or greed, but a sly little voice chanting, Yeah, let someone else take the wheel. Put their money where their mouth is.

On my lunch hour, I speed-walk to a storefront with purple neon in the window and a beaded curtain. Inside, it smells like vanilla and latex and an air freshener working overtime. A cheerful clerk with a lip ring and the warmest customer-service voice I've ever heard, takes one look at the picture on my phone and goes, "Oh, solid pick, that one's a bestseller," like I'm buying a Vitamix. “I got two of those myself.”