I handed him a twenty, grabbed my briefcase, and started for the spa entrance.
“I get off at three,” he said after me, confidence oozing from his tone.
When I glanced back at him, his expression was as confident as his voice . . . and I got it. I got where that confidence came from. He was good-looking, built, and had a killer smile. Women rarely turned him down. He was confident and obviously unused to rejection. Basically, he was the young, poor, valet version of what I deal with every day. He couldn’t be much younger than I was, but when I looked in his eyes, I felt old.
Old enough to be his great-great grandmother. So I looked away.
“And I get off on something else entirely,” I replied before whisking through the revolving doors.
I didn’t look back; I never did. Even if I had wanted to let that boy bend me over the hood of my car, that went against the rules. My body wasn’t my own to do whatever I wanted with it. It was on lease to the Eves until the day I retired or, lord forbid, the day I was disavowed.
I’d only known of one Eve to have been disavowed. She was found dead in a back alley a week later. I didn’t believe in coincidences, that one, which G assured me was one, included.
I shook off all thoughts of disavowing and back alleys as I meandered inside. The spa didn’t even try to be understated. From the floors, to the lighting, to the large, counter-shaped aquarium of a front desk, everything was ostentatious. I guessed if you would pay five bills for an eyebrow waxing or fifteen for a seaweed and gold dust body wrap, ostentatious was the theme of the whole shebang.
“Namaste,” the woman in a red silk kimono said as I approached the aquarium-slash-counter.
Even the greeting was ostentatious. Or was it more pretentious? It was something ‘tious.
“Howdy-do,” I said, just because I couldn’t resist.
“Did you have an appointment?” From her tone, she sounded as though she’d wound those chopsticks into her bun a bit too tightly.
“I’m meeting Mrs. Silva.” I wished I had a piece of bubble gum I could pop in my mouth just so I could chomp it loudly in her face.
The woman pursed her lips and scrolled through the tablet in her hands. “She should have just finished up her European facial, so she’ll be in the waxing wing.”
I didn’t even hide my smile. The place had a waxing wing.
They took hair removal seriously.
“Is there a room number I should be on the lookout for? Maybe a map and compass you could loan me in case I get lost?” I usually tried to stay professional when I was “on the clock,” but this chick was too much fun.
If lips could get more pursed, I’d never seen it. “Right this way,” she said, whisking out from behind the counter.
I followed that fury of red silk to, indeed, the waxing wing. From the size of the spa, they probably had wings for everything else, too.
When she stopped outside of a door, she knocked once, then opened the door a crack. “Your guest has arrived, Mrs. Silva. Would you like to see her now or would you like me to have her wait in the visitor’s lounge?” I didn’t need two guesses to know where red-silk-kimono wanted to put me.
“Send her in,” a soft voice replied. I’d never spoken with Mrs. Silva, but her voice sounded exactly like the rest of my Clients at their Meet: shaky, hesitant, a shade below scared-shitless. That was good. I’d be worried if I ever met a confident Client.
The woman opened the door farther and gave me a Fine look before stepping aside.
I gave her an overdone smile as I slipped inside. “Namaste.”
That Fine look flew five rungs up to an impressive Fuck you.
Pissing off stick-up-their-ass bitches = perk of the job.
After slipping inside, I closed the door. Mrs. Silva was reclined on a table and mid-wince. I wasn’t sure if that was due to me or the waxer about to rip a strip from her calf.
The woman tore that strip off, and Mrs. Silva flinched. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d flinched over a waxing. I barely blinked when the final strip of my last Brazilian was torn off.
“Hello, Mrs. Silva,” I said formally. “It’s nice to meet you.” I gave the waxer, who was busy preparing another strip, a purposeful look.
Thankfully, Mrs. Silva caught it. “Sara, could you give us a few minutes alone, please?”
With a nod, Sara headed for the door. Once we were alone, Mrs. Silva cleared her throat and adjusted her robe, but she didn’t make eye contact with me. Again, that was nothing new. I’d never known any of the “Mrs. Silvas” before to be able to look me in the eye.
Maybe it was because they were ashamed of our cloak and dagger arrangement, or maybe it was because they knew I would be in bed with their husband soon, or maybe it was because they were just so beaten down by life they couldn’t look anyone in the eyes anymore. I didn’t know, and I’d never asked because, quite frankly, I didn’t care.
I wasn’t a shrink. I provided a service. A means to an end.
“You’re younger than I would have thought,” she said.
“Oh?” I’d heard that one a bunch, too. When Eves went to a Meet, we didn’t dress the part. In fact, we tried to dress the opposite part so, god forbid, if anyone tried to prove a link between the Mr., the Mrs. and the mistress, the woman I looked like with the Mrs. would be the total opposite of the woman I looked like with the Mr. With Mrs. Silva, I wore no makeup, hair in a loose braid, a simple cotton dress, and sandals with no heel. With Mr. Silva . . . well, that would be a different story. “If it’s any consolation, I’ve never come across a man who has an issue with a younger woman.”
I hadn’t meant that as a jab but as a fact to reassure her. I might as well have slapped her from the pain flashing across her face.
She stared absently at the sparkling rock on her left hand. “No, I’m sure you haven’t.”
“Do you have the file?” Enough small talk. Time to get down to the reason I was there.
Mrs. Silva lifted her chin at the chair across the room. “It’s the manila folder inside my bag.”
I dialed the access code into my briefcase as I headed toward her bag. “Everything’s in there?”
“Yes,” she replied, “I think so.”
I made a face only because my back was to her. “You think so? We’re not going to get this done with you just thinking so, Mrs. Silva.” I pulled the thick folder from her bag and lifted it. “Is. Everything. In. Here?”
“It is.” Her voice took on that tell-tale wobble. That twinge of nostalgia for the good days with her soon-to-be ex combined with the overtone of what-the-hell-am-I-doing? The surest way to get rid of the wobble before it turned into anything more was to barge ahead.
Once I’d stuffed the file inside my briefcase, I slid out one of the shiny black phones. “Here’s your phone.” I held it up for her to see before dropping it into her bag. “You only use it to call or text me, and it had better be an emergency if you do call or text me. Okay?”
Mrs. Silva nodded her head. A nod wouldn’t cut it. We weren’t playing a child’s game of truth or dare; the job was an intricate task that needed to be meticulously executed in order for all of the chips to fall just the way we were orchestrating them.
“Okay, Mrs. Silva?” There was an edge to my voice when I repeated the question.
“Okay,” she said, bobbing her head. She couldn’t look away from the ring on her left hand. Too bad she hadn’t gotten cold feet on her wedding day instead.
I continued, so familiar with the speech I felt like a flight attendant giving the pre-flight spiel. “My number’s programmed in there. I will text you four times and four times only. You won’t talk to me or see me after today.” One meeting, that was it. Eve rule number two? Keep contact with the Client to an absolute minimum. Why? Each wife might have contracted us to do the job, but they were women trying to divorce their husbands for cheating, which meant jealousy ran deep and heavy in the blood. The less they saw of the woman about to seduce their husband, the better. “I will send you a G when I’ve made contact with your husband. I will text you an H for when I’ve got him on the hook. I will text you a time and an address where the Errand will be finalized, and I will text you a V when it’s done.”