Tuesday Mooney Wore Black. Kate Racculia

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      At the Four Seasons Hotel, in a ballroom full of smiling men in suits, Dex Howard waited to be hit on.

      That was it, right there: that was why he’d decided to come. As pathetic as it might be, he wanted a pity pickup. A distraction from having broken up with Patrick, even though everyone – seriously, everyone, including his own subconscious – had seen it coming. They had chemistry, they had fun, but they didn’t have much else. Patrick was a wet-behind-the-ears erstwhile ballet dancer turned barista. Dex was a Vice President. Richmont, which had no more than fifty employees, had fifteen Vice Presidents. All employees who had, at other firms, started as Coordinators, transformed into Analysts, then Senior Analysts, and then, having no further room in the chrysalis, burst into fully mature Vice Presidents. He was a Vice President who Managed Marketing, whatever the hell that meant, and his hairline was receding at the same rate as his childhood dreams.

      He hated to think it – it was mean, it was shallow – but Dex was pretty sure Patrick had seen him as a meal ticket, a sugar daddy, a sponsor. Dex bought dinner. Dex bought tickets. Dex bought gifts. Patrick gave: support, compliments, sex. (Not for money, Dex told himself; not like that.) He liked buying things for Patrick, and Patrick liked receiving them. That Patrick liked his money didn’t mean he didn’t also like Dex as a person. Dex took a slug of open-bar whiskey – God, he hated this thing that his brain did, the way it looked at a man who professed to want him and asked, But why? Then answered, without waiting for a response, Because I can buy you things.

      At least in a crowd of senior vice presidents and higher, Dex’s ability to buy things was relative, and puny. Though it wasn’t all that different from the crowd in The Bank. It had a higher tax bracket, was older and less visibly douchey, but there was still that slightly desperate undertow of desire threading through like a hot wire. Desire to make some sort of impression, to outperform, to draw attention, or at least to numb yourself to the day you’d just had with free booze – not to mention the next day, and the next.

      Tuesday, as was her wont, was suddenly, silently there.

      “Are you going to spend the night drinking morosely in the corner?” she asked.

      Dex tried to hide the start she’d given him.

      “But I excel,” he said, “at morose corner drinking.”

      “I’m sorry,” she said. “About Patrick.”

      Dex shrugged.

      “You should try the shrimp,” Tuesday said. “Did you see them? They’re grotesque. They’re the biggest shrimp I’ve ever seen.”

      “That’s an oxymoron.” Dex drained his glass.

      “Though I overheard people complaining that they didn’t have much flavor.” Tuesday walked with him out of the ballroom and back toward the bar and the food. “They’re too big.”

      “Metaphor alert.” Dex nabbed a small plate from the end of the buffet. “Those are the biggest shrimps I’ve ever seen. They’re obscene.”

      “The chicken satay thingies are always good,” she said. “And the dessert course here is usually phenomenal. Save room for the cake pops.”

       “Cake Pops and Bourbon.”

      “Title of your autobiography?”

      “My darkly confessional, poorly received sophomore album.”

      That got a twitch of a grin. Dex loved it. He knew that people looked at Tuesday and saw, in order, her height, her shoulders, her pale darkness. They heard her clumping around corners, occasionally tripping over her own feet; they saw her all-black wardrobe, her shelf of bangs, and her un-made-up face, and in their heads they thought, Grown-ass Wednesday Addams, one day of the week earlier. Dex actually knew this; their former coworkers, before Dex fully defected to Team Tuesday, once asked him what the deal was with that bizarro know-it-all tall girl. The guys thought she was hiding a great body – I mean, no wonder she was so clumsy; she was topheavy – under black sackcloth. The girls thought her face only needed a little, like, lipstick, or eyeliner, or something. If they even bothered, they imagined that she spent all her free time watching horror movies (true), listening to The Cure (occasionally true), and writing goth fan fiction (not true, but not outside the realm of possibility).

      The truth was this: Dex genuinely believed Tuesday didn’t give СКАЧАТЬ