Look Closer

Younger, mid-thirties, two different photos of him on the site with a nice suit but no tie, just an open collar of a crisply starched white shirt. Wide shoulders, thick neck. Maybe that’s why he doesn’t wear the tie, to give his neck room to show off. Athletic, back in his day, I’d venture, but probably nothing too violent; he wouldn’t want to mess up that pretty face of his, the strong, rough-shaven jaw, large blue eyes, the sweep of hair with the bangs falling forward—the carefully practiced messy look. He knows he’s handsome, which is annoying.

But he looks like a winner, I’ll give him that.

I probe further. The bio stuff is impressive: Harvard undergrad and MBA, made a killing in the market before he was out of school.

There’s an article on his website from Fortune magazine from thirteen years ago—March of 2009—about how young Christian Newsome, at the ripe age of twenty-one, was one of the first to invest in “credit default swaps” before the mortgage crisis hit in 2008, correctly predicting what others did not—that the market for “mortgage-backed securities” would crash.

Another article featured on his website, from Newsweek, from three years ago, was about how Christian Newsome’s new venture features a small group of investors in a fund worth more than five hundred million dollars. “Newsome, notoriously tight-lipped about his next moves in the market and the investors he represents, would only say his next idea ‘will make credit default swaps look like penny stocks.’”

I sip my coffee. Reread the articles. Look at his photo for a while.

Then I pick up my cell phone and start making appointments.

14

Tuesday, August 16, 2022

I met you at your condo on Michigan Avenue this afternoon. Having that condo makes everything so much easier. I can pop over from the law school, you can use whatever excuse you need to be downtown.

I’m doing this. We. We are doing this! Everything I said about Vicky, I know, but we’re doing this and I can’t stop myself.

And I couldn’t wait to show you the phones! I hadn’t told you about it. I wanted to surprise you.

First things first, when I got inside your condo—we stripped and did it against the window overlooking Michigan Avenue, fourteen stories up, you planted against the windowpane. It’s a lot harder than it looks in the movies, and I thought my back might give out, so we finished up on your bed.

Then we drank some wine, and I was bursting to show you. So I did. The hot-pink phone for you, the green phone for me.

You didn’t speak at first. My heart started doing calisthenics, not the good kind, the burn kind.

“Am I your mistress now?” you said, looking up at me.

“I just . . . I thought it would be good if we could communicate—”

“You want to be able to call me whenever you want to fuck me.”

“No, it’s . . . not like that,” I said.

“I’m your call girl, is that it?” you said. “Like your wife was before you met her. You want me to be like your wife? You want another Vicky?”

“No, listen, it’s not like that at all.” I said something like that, I think. I’m not really sure what stammering protest was coming out of my mouth.