“You don’t owe me anything. Go play housewives of the rich and famous or whatever it is you’re doing with that guy. I really don’t care.” She smiled. “No offense.”
“Danielle, please don’t be like this. I want us to stay friends.”
“Just be on time with the rent and find a person to take your place on the lease. I’d prefer it be a woman, and of course I’ll want to have a chance to meet whoever it is first, just to make sure we can get along.”
Nicole sighed. “Of course.”
Danielle finished putting her hair back. “How do I look?” she said, throwing her arms wide. “I wonder if I look beautiful enough to land a rich man who will take care of me.”
“You look great, but you’re acting like a six year old.”
Danielle smirked. “So now you’re an adult. Before Red came along, you were little Miss Innocent. You’d never even had an orgasm, for god’s sake!”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“He’s just a guy, Nicole. He’s a guy who gave you a great orgasm and you’re mistaking that for love. You can’t possibly be in love with a man you only just met, a man you probably know almost nothing about.”
“You have no idea what I know about him, or what we’ve done together,” Nicole said, but Danielle’s words hit uncomfortably close to home. Did she really know Red well enough to make this kind of leap? What if she was wrong about him?
“Maybe in three weeks you learned all there is to know about a thirty-five year old, multi-billionaire who runs a Fortune 500 company and has dated dozens and dozens of beautiful women,” Danielle said. “I’m sure you’ve got Red Jameson all figured out.”
“I never said I had him all figured out. Why can’t you just be happy for me?”
“I’d be happy for you if you were doing something healthy, something ambitious and smart and empowering. But all you’re doing is becoming another cute girl trying to land a wealthy sugar daddy so you can live in a fantasy world.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“In New York, girls like you are a dime a dozen.”
“Thanks for sharing your insightful opinions, Danielle. I think I’ll go to my room now.” Nicole walked to her room. As she closed the door, she heard Danielle shout a last parting insult.
“Don’t come crying to me when he lets you down, Nicole! Because I won’t be here for you!”
***
Later that night, her cell phone rang. She answered it quickly from her bed, where she’d been dozing. For some reason, she’d assumed it was Red and hadn’t bothered checking the number before picking up.
“You never called me back,” the male voice said.
It wasn’t red, but the voice was somehow familiar.
“Do I know you?” Nicole asked.
A slight chuckle from the other end. “Not as well as you might, but in time I think we could become good friends.”
She sat up in bed, feeling nervous. “Are you a stalker or something?”
Again, the laugh, this time even more amused. “Some might call me that, but those are just the ones who complain because it makes them feel good to play the victim. And then when I’m not around anymore, when I’ve lost interest and moved on, they call me and ask me to come see them. They always beg me to see them in the end.”
“Listen, I don’t have time for this. Please don’t call me again, whoever you are—“
“You really don’t care that your fiancé has had two previous engagements?” the man on the other end said, his voice deep and smooth and somehow threatening without being obvious.
“You’re lying. Who is this? Tell me your name.”
“Anderson.”
The man who’d left that creepy voice message earlier.
“Anderson who?”
“Have you ever seen Silence of the Lambs, Nicole?” he asked.
She didn’t answer him. Yes, she’d seen the movie, with Anthony Hopkins and Jodi Foster. Anthony Hopkins was brilliant as the deranged serial killer, Hannibal Lector. And come to think of it, this Anderson creep actually sounded a bit like Lector from the movie. “I’m not in the mood to play games,” she told him.
He spoke as if she hadn’t said anything. “If you recall the film, there is a running dialog between Clarice Starling, a young FBI agent trying to track a murderer, and Hannibal Lector, an imprisoned therapist who has a brilliant mind but is also a serial killer. Clarice finds that in order to elicit information from Dr. Lector, she must first provide information about the thing that interests the mad doctor most. Namely, her.”
“I don’t get your point, and to be honest—“
“Don’t say that,” Anderson chided her. “I’ve found that the ones who say, ‘to be honest,’ are usually lying to my face. It’s such a trite phrase, uttered primarily by compulsive liars.”
“I don’t care whether or not you believe me,” she replied.
“But you’re still on the line,” he reminded her. “So perhaps you do care.”