This is the general breakdown:
Doug: Insightful, slightly pessimistic, a thought train with a slight touch of ADD.
Nina: Positive, free spirit, drama queen.
Toby: Typical dude with ambition, simple.
Not sure if I've really achieved my goal yet, but let me know.
II
Nina
“Shhhh!” I warn Doug, before he can scream too loud. Living in a duplex has its downfalls. “It’s me!”
He’s quiet for a moment as this registers, utters a brief profanity, and stalks off towards the kitchen. “Jesus, Nina. Didn’t you think to possibly call me before breaking into my house?”
He bangs cupboards furiously, and I perch myself on a tall wooden stool at his granite countertop. I trace my finger along a swirling crystalline pattern. “I did call. Many times.”
He pauses long enough between the slams to check his phone. “Oh. Ten missed calls? Nina, what on earth was so important?”
I jut my lower lip in a defiant pout, “Isn’t it possible I only wanted to see my baby brother?”
He snorts and rifles through his fridge, hostility forgotten. It’s practically bare, almost to the point of being useful as an armoire. “Uh-oh. You aren’t looking for a calzone by chance, are you?”
Hostility back. “NINA!”
I’m good with acting. I muster up the most pathetic face I have archived, wide-eyed and innocent. His own face softens a few degrees at the change in mine. I had wanted to be an actress after high school, but I got tired of college quickly, and halfway through my sophomore year I dropped out. No one wants to hire an acting school dropout. It shows a lack of commitment, which I suppose is pretty much the definition of my being.
“I’ll take you out, Dougy. Let’s go to that pub down on the corner that you like! My treat!”
I have to soften him up before I drop the bomb on him. I feel like he notices the momentary flash of uneasiness across my face. He always picks up on those kinds of subtle things. Doug thinks too much. It’s unhealthy.
He mumbles out something that sounds like agreement, and I grab the shoulder bag slung across the back of his buttery leather couch on our way out.
I link my arm through his down the steep concrete steps, and his tabby passes through the tall grasses to the right. What’s her name again? I rack my brain to remember. “Hey… Lisa.”
“Liza.” Doug corrects me.
That was it. Damn.
The two of us make our way down the hill and past a vacant brick building at the bottom. “Are they still going to turn that into a dialysis clinic?”
Doug snickers, “Yeah. The rest of the neighbors can save their breath, it’s going to happen, and it needs to be done somewhere.”
I disagree, but I keep it to myself. After all, I do have quite a favor to ask of him, and the more in tune he feels with me, the better.
III
Toby
I stand back to admire the sign, the cherry on top of the cake I’d been cooking up for the past two years. “Wing Girls”: chunky black letters emblazoned on the front window fulfill the last step of my conquest. This is it. The building is bought, the office is furnished, some girls have been hired, and a sign to mark the whole thing with finality.
I came up with the concept a long time ago. Young and on the prowl in the dating scene, I had the prerequisite for all serial daters. A wing man. It didn’t go well, and I wasn’t sure why. I told my coworker, Shea. I felt the eye roll in her voice through the cloth walls of the cubicle. “Look, Toby,” she began in her most condescending tone, “girls get a little put off by a guy totally checking them out from across the room. Throw in another bone head who doesn’t know what he’s doing, and they’re sure to be more likely to hand over their numbers to a private detective than you.”
Shea had a point. Guys don’t know what they’re doing when it comes to women. We don’t know how they think the vast majority of the time, so why are we putting two of us “bone heads” together? Sometimes two heads aren’t better than one. But girls, somehow they understand each other like they’ve taken some foreign language class in high school that somehow all of the male gender had skipped out on. They know what to say, and how to say it.
I brought Shea along to a bar one night. She spotted some girls across the room, walked over to join them, told them good made-up stuff about me, and then excused herself. I got four numbers that night. It was more than I’d made on all my other trips with a wing man… combined.
Fast forward two years to now, and you have Wing Girls. A company where it’s as easy to order a Wing Girl as it is a pizza. Pick up the phone, dial, and the girl will be there to offer pointers and guidance at the location of your choosing.
My mom called it a modern form of prostitution, but I simply nom it genius.
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