The truth is, Tuija's been with me nine years. After I found her in a heap outside my first premises, I gave her a job. Helped her get clean. I like to think of this as sourcing my produce locally. She had at least thirty percent more brain cells than most people who needed something from me, so I made sure she swapped her addictions to coke and prescription painkillers for an addiction to pleasing me. Suffice to say I have dirt on this girl; if her skeletons ever left the closet, it'd be like Dawn of the fucking Dead.
"So. You have your script ready?" She puts the iPad down and folds her arms, regarding me with the kind of anticipation she usually reserves for Fashion Week. "I can't wait to see you give Miss Reeves the full Lore treatment."
"She won't need it. This offer," I jab my pen at Tuija, "is too good to turn down. She's only coming in because her shareholders will shit the bed if she doesn't."
"And so that people can see she's been here."
"Precisely."
Leontine Reeves is coming in so that people will see her come to me. Wall Street gets wind of it and speculates about the buyout; her stock inflates to about three hundred percent of its actual worth; then she has the power to tell me she doesn't just want to sell. She wants to merge. It's the stuff of overpaid attorneys trying to be cleverer than me. My guess is, she doesn't want to sell at all...but that's what you get with sucucbi. I mean, shareholders. Did I slip up there?
"You'll have her eating out of the palm of your hand in no time," Tuija adds. "And other clichés."
"Clichés get the job done." And are easily disposed of when you're finished with them.
"Oops. Almost forgot. You remember that literary agency? They've called three times already."
"Please tell me we issued the gagging order on the unauthorized biography."
She puts up her hands in exasperated defence. "Do I look like your lawyer?"
"No. Fortunately." Carson, my attorney, looks like his mama dropped him on his head as a baby. I've never seen a man with such a large, flat forehead, although admittedly, said head houses a large and effective brain. "I want an update from him ASAP. What do the agents want?"
She tucks a wayward strand of hair behind her ear. Tuija always plays with her hair when she's anxious; if anyone's a cliché, it's her. "They want you to meet with their biographer."
"Which part of unauthorized don't they get?"
"I don't know." She pretends to wring an invisible neck. "It's your own fault for being such a badass, obviously."
"I don't want some worm in hipster glasses poking around in my personal shit."
"I'm sensing that you want me to tell them no."
I take a seat at my glass desk and flick on my computer. "They can suck a bag of dicks. And you can quote me."
If all they wanted was the American Dream slice of my life, I'd let them have it. Bask in the attention. I started at my college campus TV station, moved on to a couple internships, made some select choices with inheritance money and then built a global news empire in little more than ten years. If anyone deserves recognition, it's me.
But that's not what the agents want. They want the shadows, to parade the half-truths of my childhood like misery porn. Which is about as appealing as it sounds. I keep my private life private for a reason.
"Suck a bag of dicks. Noted. Anyway...I need to go find some heels before breakfast." Tuija gestures to her bare feet; I noticed when she walked in, but said nothing, of course.
I'm quite the gentleman.
I turn my attention to my emails, scanning the inbox for something worth my time. "Go with black. Four inches, minimum," I tell her, not looking up.
"You think? With this dress?"
"Four inches. You heard me."
"Well, if you insist." She scoops her iPad up and turns toward the door. "Maybe the new Prada slingbacks?"
"If you think so."
"I'll go try them on. Hmm..."
Tuija's clever enough to realize that looking good will take her places. This is obviously to be commended, and so I paid for her breasts and the fine, sculpted curve of her almost-too-big ass, as well as an on-site wardrobe of appropriate attire. She pays me back by letting everyone think I'm fucking her.
Boys get picked on for owning dolls, but nobody gives a shit if a grown man buys himself a pretty puppet. And this, my friends, is the world we have built for ourselves.
***
Here's what the mannequins of SilentWitn3ss see when I walk into that boardroom that afternoon: a tall, broad guy with dark blond hair and shameless crater dimples, dressed in a well-cut suit. I'm hot—let's not beat around the bush, sports fans—but you have to peel back the layers to see what's going on here. They don't just see a person. Behind all that, there's power and money and suspicion, all of it boiling down to a visceral chemical reaction I must somehow turn into trust. Like Jesus turning water into wine, but more of a religious experience.