“Well, if we’re going to be in bed together,” I said after we started to eat, “can I know some more about you?”
“What do you want to know?”
“Is your name really Milo?”
“It is. My last name isn’t Grant. But I’m going to ask a favor that you don’t ask me my real last name. At least until this job is done.”
“My real last name isn’t London,” I said with a shrug. “Are you from the area?”
“I’m from Jersey. Just a little further north.”
“How long have you been here?”
“I got here yesterday,” he admitted.
“Wow. Got right to work.”
“I’m not in the area for pleasure.”
“Have you been here a lot before?”
“Last time I was here, I got wasted and woke up on the sand. Haven’t been back since. Where did you grow up?”
“Wherever my mom’s husbands lived. Florida for the longest, I guess. Then mostly in New York for modeling.”
“Buncha stepfathers, huh?”
This was not information he needed for me to accomplish this job. And some part of me thought it might be best if he didn’t know a hell of a lot about me personally.
But, well, I was kind of enjoying talking to him.
Besides, what could he do with the information about my childhood? Nothing.
“Stepfather would imply any of them saw me as a daughter. I was an inconvenience to the first one. A meal ticket to the third one. And nothing but a Christmas postcard to the most recent one.”
“I feel like there is a weighty reason you left out the second one.”
“The second one was a creep. I was a tween. He was someone in and around the beauty pageant circuit. Which should have been a big, glaring red flag to my mom. But she… she really craved attention. And Gene was all too happy to give it to her.”
“To get closer to you.”
“Yeah. He used to come in my room or the bathroom when I was changing or showering. Made comments that I didn’t understand at the time but now I’m disgusted by.”
“I’m sorry. It’s sick how many men target single moms just to get closer to the kids.”
“Yeah. I told my grandmother, and she had me come and live with her in Vegas. The marriage dissolved pretty quickly after that.”
“Vegas. Is that why you were drawn here?”
“It’s probably part of it. My grandmother was a showgirl in the golden age. Gorgeous. So talented. She claims she gota diamond necklace from Frank Sinatra because he was so infatuated with her.”
“Somehow, I don’t doubt that,” Milo said, something heated in his gaze that had me shifting in my seat.
“I mean, obviously, by the time I went to live with her, she was long retired. But I spent that summer becoming obsessed with her stories and the old casino culture. Part of it stuck. I don’t think I realized until I got here that Atlantic City’s heyday has been over for a long time.”
“Cities have a way of bouncing back,” Milo said. “People crave vintage experiences. It’ll come around. Maybe you’ll be telling your granddaughter about your days as an AC lounge singer.”
“That would be really neat.”
