“No,” she admitted. “But I would.”
“For one hundred twenty thousand dollars?”
“No,” Aggie realized the truth as she spoke it. “For the curiosity. I’d try it once just to try it.”
“It could be twelve times,” the lawyer warned. Aggie swallowed and nodded. “What else would you do?”
“Discipline?”
“Have you tried that?”
“No,” Aggie admitted again. “I’m not too sure that I want to.”
“I’m glad you’re being honest at last.” The man didn’t smile.
“What else?”
Aggie felt her face flush. She hated to admit to this urge and she squirmed on her chair.
“Sodomy.” The word came out as a whisper.
“Is that a curious interest or an I’ll-do-it-if-I-have-too interest?”
Again Aggie paused. She looked down at her lap.
“Curious.”
The man leaned toward her. “What was that?”
“I said ‘curious’,” Aggie repeated more loudly.
“Any other sexual ‘curiosity’?” The man’s tone was faintly mocking. Aggie debated snapping back at him, but swallowed her spleen for Angela’s sake.
“Not that I can think of.”
“What about oral sex?”
“Sure,” Aggie answered. “I thought that was a given. I like all the normal stuff.”
The lawyer smiled.
“I think you do,” he commented. “One last question. What do you want the money for?”
Aggie panicked. She and Angela hadn’t thought of the one most obvious question. She couldn’t tell him the truth, to get her sister who was going to masquerade as her out of prostitution. What else would have compelled her to respond to an ad like that? She couldn’t think of a single reason.
“Thank you, Miss Trout.” The lawyer stood up from behind the desk.
“Don’t you want to hear…” Aggie began. Still she drew a blank.
“You’re a lovely young woman, Miss Trout,” the lawyer began his kiss-off. “You even seem to have the right attitudes about sex, at least as far as we talked. But the fact is that you’re a fraud.”
Aggie sat mute as a statue. She couldn’t deny the charge.
“I’m not sure what your game is,” the lawyer continued. “But I’m afraid you aren’t acceptable for the position. Any position.”
Aggie remembered her earlier joke about the missionary position. No humor now could penetrate her sense of failure. She had let her sister down. A simple interview, and she had frozen on the first unrehearsed question. Suddenly the answer was clear to her, and she blurted it out.
“It wasn’t the money, Mr. Urbano,” she explained. “It was the fact that he offered the money. The man behind the offer intrigues me.”
“A good answer, Miss Trout.” The man smiled and extended his hand. “Too bad you remembered it a few minutes too late.”
It’s the truth, Aggie wanted to shout. But the interview was over. She followed the lawyer to the door and turned to shake his hand as she stepped out.
“It was a pleasure meeting you, Mr. Urbano.” Her dignity was as firm as her grip. “I’m sorry things didn’t work out better.”
Aggie glanced again at her watch as she walked straight-backed down the hall. It was 12:45. The interview had taken twelve minutes.
When she arrived back at the lobby, Danny was standing silently by the reception desk.
“Aggie,” he greeted her. Just the one flat word. “Come with me.”
“It didn’t work, Danny.”
“Come with me,” he repeated.
“Mr. Urbano told me ‘no’,” Aggie tried to explain as they walked to the elevator. “I’ll just go back to my…”
She had almost said ‘sister’, Aggie realized.
“Hotel,” she completed the sentence.
“I’ll buy you lunch.”
“That’s all right.” Aggie wanted to get as far from Danny and TransGlobe and Mr. Buko and Mr. Urbano as she could. There was no chance she would get to meet the elusive placer-of-the-ad anyway. He was the only one that had interested her from the beginning and he remained as firmly hidden as ever behind his league of minions. Aggie laughed inwardly at her flowery choice of internal words. Time to get back to the library.
“I’d rather go to the hotel,” she tried to insist.
“Come with me.”
Danny again ignored her protest. Did he ever listen? Was he a robot?
“Why do you want me to come to lunch?” Direct questions had worked before. Maybe she would get an answer to this one.
“I want you to meet my brother.”
That was an answer. Aggie wanted very much to meet this brother. She followed Danny meekly into the elevator.
Chapter 11
Jimmy drummed his fingers impatiently on the table. He glanced at his watch. Danny was almost five minutes late. A mild anxiety overshadowed the anger he would have felt had the latecomer been anyone else. Danny was punctual to the second. And he wasn’t particularly good at navigating the streets. Two more minutes and Jimmy would begin to retrace the route from the restaurant back to the office.
With ten seconds to spare, Jimmy spotted Danny just outside the entrance to the restaurant. He had a woman with him. A tall auburn-haired beauty. As they stepped through the doors, Jimmy got a better look at his brother’s companion. It was the woman he had envisioned that morning. A face like a Botticelli and a body like a Giacometti. The young woman took off her coat and handed it to a server. No, he revised. Giacometti’s figures were too thin. Hers was perfect. Jimmy felt an unfamiliar envy of his brother. As they approached the table, Jimmy stood.
“This is Aggie,” his brother introduced simply.
“Hi,” she offered with her hand.
Her grip was perfect, the muscles strong and the skin soft.
“I’m Jimmy Buko.”
He signaled for the waiter to bring another chair, then guided the young woman into the seat himself. He and Danny sat flanking her on either side.
“Do you have a last name, Aggie?”
“It’s Trout. Aggie Trout.”
“I’m hooked,” Jimmy laughed then winced. “You must have heard that a million times.”
“Maybe a few,” Aggie smiled.
“So, you’re Danny’s friend,” Jimmy tried again. Stupid, he thought. That’s obvious.
“Actually,” Aggie began.
For the first and perhaps only time in his life, Danny interrupted.
“Yes,” he stated. “Aggie is my friend.”
“I’m glad,” Jimmy smiled. He shut the tap on his flowing hormones. He couldn’t think these thoughts about a woman with Danny.
“What do you do, Aggie?” Surely that was an innocuous question.
“I’m a librarian.”
Jimmy waited in vain for her to elaborate. Maybe she had Danny’s habit of terse speech. The young woman shook herself and her hair fluttered around her head. Jimmy resisted the instant but trite image of a halo. Then she seemed to come alive.
“What do you do?” she asked. Her eyes shot sparks of mischief. He bet she knew exactly who he was.
“I work for TransGlobe. I’m an accountant.”
Jimmy waited for Danny to call his bluff. His brother smiled and remained silent. Jimmy watched the young woman’s face closely. Was that disappointment? If so, she recovered quickly.
“I’m not from Canada, so I don’t know much about TransGlobe. What do you make?”
Jimmy would rather talk about her.
“Transactions.” He borrowed a sentence from Danny’s abbreviated grammar. “Where are you from?”
“I’m originally from Alabama,” she began.
“You don’t have an accent,” he interrupted.
“Not any more. I moved to Cincinnati to go to university. Then I stayed there to work after I graduated.”
“What brought you to Vancouver?”