A Date You Can't Refuse (2 page)

I returned his look. “Mr. Mil—Yuri. What is it you want from me?”

“I want your talents. Your very specific qualifications.”

“Which ones?”

“I have a business.”

“I know. I was in the courtroom too. I know more about you than you do about me.”

“I doubt it.” He looked at me appraisingly but I didn't rise to the bait.

“I have no talents,” I said, “that could be used by your company, unless you want me to redesign the MediasRex logo or paint you a sign. Or I could do a mural. Maybe all the celebrities you've represented, holding hands. Standing on a globe. But what I really do is greeting cards. Do you need greeting cards?”

“What I need is you. Do you always undervalue yourself like this?”

“I don't know what you mean.”

“You starred in a show called
SoapDirt
, yes? Also
Biological Clock.”

“I wouldn't say ‘starred in,’ but yes, I did a few episodes of a cheesy reality show and an equally cheesy talk show, which—”

“SoapDirt
is a large hit in Belarus.”

“You're kidding.”

“I'm not. Belarus, Moldova, and Slovakia. And Ukraine.” He smiled
at what must have been a look of horror on my face. “Your soap operas are quite popular in that part of the world. To my friends, you are a celebrity. More interesting to me is your facility for dating.”

“I have no facility for dating. What I've had is a series of odd jobs that involved dating, none of which I was particularly good at. What I am good at, apparently, is being single and needing the extra money that these odd jobs—”

“If money is what inspires you, let us begin with salary.”

“Money does not inspire me. But landlords require it, as do grocery stores, so—”

“Yes, your living situation is not ideal. I am prepared to take care of that too.”

I didn't ask how he knew about my living situation. Addresses weren't hard to come by and mine said it all. The Oakwood Garden Apartments was a complex that rented furnished or unfurnished units by the month, handy for people in transition, like actors during pilot season and men in the throes of divorce. This made for interesting, intense neighbors.

“Yuri, my living situation's fine, I'm not desperate for money, I'm not the person you're looking for, so …” I waited for him to cut me off and argue the point, but he was just looking calmly at me. “So,” I continued, “nice meeting you.”

“Do I scare you?” he asked.

“Why would you scare me?”

“Simple curiosity would dictate hearing my offer. Unless curiosity is overridden by fear.”

Who likes to be called chicken? “Okay,” I said. “Shoot.”

He took two chairs, one in each hand, and set them facing one another. Closer than I'd have set them. He gestured to one. I sat.

“So,” he said, sitting too. “Tell me your impression of my organization.”

“MediasRex. Media training. You take people who are suddenly famous and unprepared for it and you teach them how not to make a fool out of themselves on
Oprah.”

He smiled. “I would describe it a little differently.”

“How would you describe it?”

He turned his chair so he was straddling it, then leaned in. His shirt was black and purple, striped, with a blue tie. It was a color combination that should not have worked, but did. “I change the world,” he said, “six or seven people at a time. Most from Europe. In three months they are comfortable with American culture and its media machine. They come as a baseball phenomenon from Madrid or a diplomat's daughter from Macedonia, and they leave as players, with an impact beyond their profession or the borders of their country. My business is transformation. You spoke flippantly, but consider: what would it take to get a shy person on
Oprah
?”

For me, it would take a miracle. “Okay. But I'm not in the transformation business.”

He smiled. “I can change that.”

“So you'd teach me to transform people? Or you'd transform me?”

“Both. You cannot teach what you don't know. And is your life so perfect? Nothing you wouldn't alter?”

“No,” I said. “I mean, I'd like thicker hair. And it would be nice if a few personal relationships were less … complicated, but I don't ever want to be on TV again, and—”

“You won't be. I want you on my staff. We are not the celebrities. We are the power behind the celebrities.”

I looked at my watch. “I've heard your offer. But I'm not what you're looking for. I mean, I don't know what you're looking for, exactly, but I'm not it. Thanks, Yuri. If you could show me how to widen the market for my greeting cards, that's something I'd go for.”

“Too easy. With fifty thousand dollars you can figure that out for yourself.”

“Fifty thousand dollars?” I asked.

“For three months' work. Not a fortune, but we'll take care of living expenses.”

“You want to pay me fifty grand?”

He nodded.

I gulped. He was right—fifty thousand wasn't a fortune, not in L.A., but to me it was close enough. Still, I shook my head. “This isn't
what I do or aspire to do, so … thanks, but I think I'll just get on with my life.”

Yuri continued to study me. “Anything you truly aspire to, I can help you achieve.”

Marriage? Motherhood? Doubtful. I stood. “I can't imagine how I'd explain to my boyfriend that I'm …”

“That you're … ?” He stayed seated, gazing up at me.

“Okay what is it you're asking me to do?”

“Join my team. You will be what we call a social coach. A dating surrogate.”

“An escort.”

He laughed. He had an appealing laugh, one that made you feel special for having evoked it. “An escort is something else, I think. No. Neither are you any kind of sex therapist. You are a native Angeleno, born in Burbank, and so you will show them L.A., be Virgil to their Dante, as you teach them the American way of dating.”

“Only the men?”

“For the women we have your counterpart, the male social coach.”

“But I wouldn't be expected to sleep with these men?”

He smiled. “Emphatically not. That should reassure your boyfriend.”

I doubted this. My boyfriend was a guy who would find nothing reassuring about Yuri Milos. Like Yuri, Simon Alexander was an alpha male.

Simon was also an FBI agent. At the moment, he was working a case that precluded our seeing each other openly. I wasn't able to know exactly why we couldn't see each other openly, only that it had to do with a mink-wearing woman that he was dating. Forced to date, I liked to think of it. I wondered if Simon had ever asked anyone at the FBI a question like I'd just asked, whether he'd be expected to sleep with this woman. I tried to imagine his supervisor saying, “Emphatically not.” I failed.

“Yuri, this is all most intriguing—if weird—but I'm still saying no.”

He stood abruptly. “And I'm giving you my card. Go home. Look at your life. See what is missing. Whatever it is, I can provide it or help you attain it or show you how to live well without it. This is my promise to
you. You come and work for me, you become my family and that is something I take seriously.”

“I kind of like my life,” I said, and he cocked an eyebrow.
Wrong answer
, it said. I should have cried, “My life is magnificent! Overflowing with miracles!” but oh, well. He opened the door for me and I squeezed by, aware of the magnetic field around him.

I nearly collided with a woman coming out of the ladies' room. Miss Lemon. I maneuvered myself so that I could hold the door for her, out of the way of her crutches. She thanked me, then recognized me. “You! You're one of the ones that didn't vote for me.”

“You're right, I didn't. I'm sorry, I—”

“And you!” She'd caught sight of Yuri behind me. “You … creep. We're gonna appeal. We're gonna get a better jury. You can't do that in America, run over people. Why don't you all go back to Czechoslovakia, you and all those clients?”

“Slovakia, Miss Lemon,” he said. “Or the Czech Republic. There is no Czechoslovakia, not since 1992. In any case, I come from Belarus.”

I eased my way around Miss Lemon and left them to their geopolitical discussion. In the third-floor jury room I turned in my juror ID, donated my fifteen bucks a day to some charity that needed the money even more than I did, then returned to the first floor and phoned my brother again. This time, he answered.

“P.B., what'd you do last night?” I asked. “Mrs. Winterbottom said—”

“I went to the beach,” he said. “I slept in the sand.”

“Why?”

“I'm doing research,” he said.

“What kind of research?”

“String theory.”

I was now walking past the metal detector, stepping outside to the kind of fabulous spring day that Santa Monica has pretty much year-round. “P.B., that's fine, but you have to adapt your research methods to the house rules. Factor in curfew. Mrs. Winterbottom will kick you out if you don't. I'm serious. Then what will we do?”

“Nothing. It won't happen,” he said. “This is my home. I have to nap now.”

He hung up and I dropped my phone into my purse, feeling sick. P.B. was two stops away from homelessness. If he got kicked out of Haven Lane, he wouldn't bother taking his medication, which would bring on delusional behavior and then he'd be sleeping on the sand out of necessity. This was my most-recurring nightmare.

“Wollie. Wollie Shelley.”

I turned to see a conservatively dressed man at the end of the sidewalk. There was something mildly familiar about him. “Hello—do I know you?”

“Bennett,” he said, and shook my hand. “Graham. We met once before. I'm with the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”

M
y first thought was that Simon was in some kind of trouble, but then I realized that if he were, the FBI would hardly come and tell me about it.

And then I recognized the guy.

It had been six months since I'd met him, for a few minutes one autumn night. He was aggressively normal looking, middle-aged, average height, medium brown hair. The only memorable thing about him was his authoritative air; he was a man accustomed to command. He outranked Simon. I remembered that too, because he and Simon had argued that autumn night, and Simon had lost. That didn't happen often.

“Let me walk you to your car,” he said. He set the pace, neither slow nor fast, but without hesitation, as if he knew exactly where I was parked. In fact, I hadn't planned on going to my car. I was headed on foot to meet two friends for lunch at the Santa Monica farmers' market, but I didn't feel a need to mention this to—

“I'm sorry.” I said. “What did you say your name was?”

“Graham,” he said. “Bennett.”

Did that mean Graham Bennett or Graham, comma, Bennett? I was about to ask, but he spoke first. “You reached a verdict in your case.”

“Yes, we found in favor of the defendant.”

He nodded, as if this didn't come as news. “We've been waiting ten days. We didn't want to contact you until the case was over.”

“The FBI has an interest in
Lemon v. Milos?”
I said.

“Not in Lemon. Milos. Wait.” He stopped. I did too. I looked around, wondering what the problem was, then saw, far ahead of us, a black Porsche pulling away from the exit gate to make a right on Civic Center Way. When it disappeared from view, he motioned for me to continue walking. “Yuri Milos is going to offer you a job.”

This was old news, I could've told him. “How do you know?”

“That's not relevant to this conversation.”

“What are you doing, tapping his phones?”

Silence. Yes, I decided, they're tapping his phones. A motorcycle approached and Graham/Bennett put up a hand, claiming the right-of-way for us. “We've been watching Milos in recent weeks, but he's cautious. His people are either well-trained or in the dark about his activities.”

“Which are what?” I asked.

“Nothing that need concern you at the moment.”

“Why should any of it concern me?”

He looked at me. “I need you.”

He was not speaking romantically. I couldn't imagine Graham/Bennett speaking romantically even in the dark, stark naked, after a bottle of wine. “For … ?”

“I need you to work for Yuri Milos.”

This time I stopped, alongside an SUV covered in Lakers bumper stickers. “I can't.”

“Yes, you can. The job description isn't particularly onerous.”

“I don't mean work for Yuri Milos, I mean work for you. That's what you're asking, isn't it?”

He nodded toward the east end of the parking lot, getting us moving again. “We haven't been able to get a break in this case. But over time, people get careless, or we get lucky. This time it was luck. Recently, we heard Milos mention you. His son recognized you in the courtroom. One of my people remembered that you'd done us a favor last year. I believe we called you Kermit.”

“Not to my face,” I said. “Look, that was a sort of misunderstanding. I wasn't actually working for the FBI, I just thought I was and then it turned out—”

“It turned out well. I was there.”

“It was the worst night of my life,” I said. “Or at least in the top five.”

It was clear from his look that Graham Bennett or Bennett Graham had limited interest in what constituted a bad night for Wollie Shelley. “I've been trying to place one of my people on Milos's staff,” he said. “Unsuccessfully. He's a micromanager; even the domestics are known to him personally, down to the crew putting in a new pool. This is the first opening and he thinks you're a perfect fit. Would I prefer you to be an agent? Yes. But I'm not likely to get this kind of opportunity again.”

“Yes, I appreciate that this is a great opportunity for you, Mr.—”

“And for you too. There are advantages to working with us.”

This stopped me. “What advantages?”

“Is that a yes?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

I stopped again by another parked car, this one a Ford pickup covered with American flag bumper stickers. “I would naturally love to serve my country, but I'm more of a jury duty type. Or Get Out the Vote type. Working the phone banks at telethons, knitting socks for soldiers. I'm not an action-adventure sort of person—”

“That's not my understanding.”