I almost looked at him crazy.Sir, you are in a strip club. Of course everybody around you wants something.Instead, I softened my face and gave him the kind of patient expression that said I was listening. “Sometimes.”
He nodded slowly like I had just confirmed something important. “My wife wants the lifestyle. My partners want the company, and my son wants access to my money without having to earn any of it. My daughter barely speaks to me unless she needs something.”
Here we go,I thought. I brought the glass to my lips so he wouldn’t see the reaction trying on my face. The way men came into this club and unloaded their whole life story on women wearing seven inches of shoe needed to be studied. They wouldn’t sit in therapy, they wouldn’t talk to their friends, they wouldn’t communicate with their wives but put a woman in a rhinestone costume in front of them, and suddenly they were ready to dig up wounds.
I kept my voice soft. “That has to be hard.”
“It is.” He looked at me as if I was the first person who had ever understood him. “You build something from nothing, and all anybody sees is what they can take from it.”
I nodded slowly. Meanwhile, all I could see was that two hours had already been taken from my life, and I needed my twenty-five hundred before he decided to turn this into a three-part documentary. He went on about his business next. Something about a merger, board members, and a man named Howard who had betrayed him after twenty years. I had no clue what Howard did, but apparently it was serious because the man’s jaw flexed every time he said his name.
“Howard sat across from me every Monday for two decades,” he said, swirling the ice in his glass. “Then he went behind my back.”
“Mmm. That has to be tough, shame on Howard.”
“He smiled in my face while negotiating with my competition.”
I frowned and shook my head looking sympathetic. “That’s terrible.”
It probably was. Still, I didn’t care about Howard. Howard could have set the whole building on fire for all I cared, as long as it didn’t affect my money. The man kept talking, with his voice growing more irritated as he moved from Howard to his wife, then from his wife to his children. He told me his marriage had been dead for years, but neither one of them wanted to be the first to leave. He said his son resented him, and that daughter of his felt like he missed too many birthdays and important moments, while his wife slept in another wing of the house.
Another fucking wing,I thought to myself.This man didn’t say another room, he said another damn wing.I had to lower my eyes to hide the brief flicker of disbelief that crossed my face. Rich people really lived different. My husband had barely let me breathe in another room, and this man’s wife had a whole section of the house where she didn’t have to see him. That sounded less like marital trouble and more like luxury to me.
“I don’t think she even knows me anymore,” he said.
I rested my hand lightly against his shoulder. “Maybe you both changed.”
He stared at me for a long second, like I had just said something profound, but I hadn’t. It was common sense, but if he wanted to think I was wise, I was not about to stop him.
“You’re different,” he said.
I smiled because that was clearly what he needed. “How?”
“Because you listen and that’s something most women don’t do.”
Baby, I was listening for that money. I didn’t say that, though. I only tilted my head and let him keep talking. By the time he got to the part about his daughter no longer answering his calls, some of the humor left my thoughts. Pain was pain, no matter how much money somebody had, and the look on his face told me that part was real. His eyes lowered, and for the first time that night, he didn’t look like a powerful man with an expensive taste. He looked like a father who had no idea how to fix what he had broken.
“She says I chose work over her,” he said quietly.
“Did you?” I asked.
His eyes met mine. I didn’t mean to ask it that directly, but it was too late to take it back. He let out a humorless laugh. “Probably.”
“Then maybe start there.”
“Start where?”
“With telling her she was right.” I told him.
He looked stunned. I shrugged. “You want her to answer your calls, but maybe she wants you to admit what happened before she can hear anything else.”
The room got quiet except for the muffled music shaking the walls. For a moment, I thought I might have said too much.
Then he nodded slowly. “That’s the first honest thing anybody has said to me in a long time.”
Before I could answer, he glanced at the time on his watch and sighed. “I’ve taken up your whole night.”
Yes, you have. I thought.“It’s okay,” I said, because customer service was still part of the job.
