Page 15

My screen name, NoComment, is the most honest thing about me. I don't type in the chat, not ever. I only watch, pay, keep my mouth shut, and of course, jerk off. The next night the three of us walked, virtually of course, into her room in the same breathless minute. In seconds, I tipped her huge. It was over the top, and I hated every zero, not because I'm stingy, but because each one turned me back into a walking wallet. In her cam room, of all places, I'd finally stopped being that. And there I was, paying to become it again.

She counted us on some area of her page, an area only she can see, and welcomed us Knights to her court like the queen she'd decided to be. She has no idea the three whales she crowned are the three men she pours coffee for every morning, who've looked straight through her for a year, and who barely speak to her.

It should be enough. Watching her, paying her, keeping every other man away from her. Hell, it should be more than enough for a man who wants pretty much nothing from anybody.

It isn't. Because I still have to see her every day.

The worst of it came last week. She was on the phone at her desk, I'm pretty sure with a family member. Her voice was particularly soft but also exasperated, and I'm not proud to say I eavesdropped on the whole thing while I walked through the lobby. It was something about a candle, a small fire, and everybody was fine. I couldn't catch any more than that, but didn't need to because she laughed. Her real laugh. The one I am not normally close enough to hear.

I stopped. Hand on my doorframe, I turned and looked at her, actually looked, in daylight, for the first time I have ever let myself, and for one full second, I let her see what was on my face.

She looked back, puzzled. I could all but watch the thought cross her face. What's going on with him? Then I got the door shut, and my heart was going like I'd run up the stairs. I stood in the middle of my goddamn office in the middle of a workday with my pulse in my throat and my dick stirring in my pants.

One slip. That's all it will take. One slip, and she puts it all together—the money, the game she thinks she's winning, and the thin scrap of regard she still has for me, the cold bastard in the corner office. All of it could be gone in an instant.

I know exactly how to keep from slipping again.

But I have no idea whether I can.

Something's different tonight. I know it before she says a word.

I've watched this woman go live every night for two weeks, and I could set my watch by what I’ll call her warm-up. There’s the nervous half second when she checks to see who’s in room, the same little breath, the same glance just off-camera like she's checking the door's locked. Tonight, there's none of it. Tonight, she comes on like she owns the fucking building.

"Evening, gentlemen." She says it low, and she smiles a smile I have never once seen at the front desk, and something in my chest drops a floor. "Miss me?"

The room fills the way it always does. Beck is already loud, all caps, throwing crowns and telling everyone to make way. Theo surfaces a beat later, careful, asking after her, always the hero. And me, silent, top of the board, where I've been every night since I fucked up my life clicking on a little green tag named Diablo.

But this isn't the room she ran last night. Last night, she performed for forty strangers. Tonight, she is performing for only three.

I tell myself I'm imagining her new confidence. I read rooms for a living, which means I know exactly how easy it is to see patterns. But I've also spent eleven years learning the difference between a person doing something and a person doing something at you. Every instinct I own is crawling up my back right here in the privacy of my apartment, telling me she has picked her marks. Which is fine by me.

She goes slow. Slower than she has ever gone. She lets the room beg and makes Beck pay for the privilege of begging loudest, and she laughs her real laugh over and over, like this is the best night of her life. And then, halfway through, she does the thing that stops my heart.

She looks dead into the camera. "And you," she says. "Quiet one. NoComment." She tilts her head. "You never say a word. You just sit up there at the top and pay and watch. You know what I think? I think you're the one who’s really paying attention."

I don't move. I don't breathe. My hand is nowhere near the keyboard, because the keyboard is the line I don’t cross. I know that if I type a single letter tonight, I’ll reveal myself inside of ten seconds.

Does she know?

I think fast. A woman sharp enough to run this room is sharp enough to notice the silent whale and poke him, because silence is a button, and she pushes buttons for a living. That's all this is. She's found her nerve and she's flexing it. It’s nothing more than that.

That’s what I tell myself.

Most women in this business work the loudest wallet in the room. Beck throws tens and twenties and gets exactly what he pays for. Noise, a good show, the feeling he's running it. She didn't take the bait. Instead she looked past all the grandstanding, straight at the one man who never says a word, and called him out. Me.

That's not a girl fishing for a big tipper. That's a read. And a woman who can read a room that cold isn't the mark this job makes her out to be. She's a player, and a good one. She’s right. I am paying fucking attention.

So let her run over the three richest men she's ever met, one crown at a time. She should know the quiet one's the one who bites.

My hands are on the edge of my laptop. I could type her name. Her real one. Four letters, and everything’s over. Agnes, or I could type I know it's you and find out in one second which of us is actually running this. The desire is like a bomb behind my sternum, and I want so badly to blow the whole thing to fucking pieces.

I don't. Of course I don't. I'm the controlled one. I close my hand into a fist, and I keep my mouth shut, and I let my silence say the only thing I'll allow it to say, which is nothing at all.

She holds the look one more beat, the camera's, I mean, except it doesn't feel like the camera. Then she laughs again, softer, satisfied, like she got the exact answer she wanted out of the man who gave her none, and she turns back to the room and lets Beck win the next round with his all-caps loud mouth.

I sit in the dark a long time after she signs off.

For two weeks, I have believed I was the one hiding. The one holding the secret. The one, God help me, in control. Tonight, a woman in a cheap slip looked into a camera, called me quiet, and now I’m not sure who’s watching whom.