I'm tempted to leave, but Dante and Allison clearly want to stay. Lincoln looks only a little bit uncomfortable. I stay behind to grab the glasses and Lincoln approaches me.
"Did she say anything about last night?"
"No. I mean, yes, she told me that you two met at The Redemption," I say under my breath.
"Please, please, please don't tell Marguerite."
I freeze, holding the glasses and the ice cold Icelandic water under my arm, chilling myself to the bone. "Okay. Yeah, I guess I won't."
"She wouldn't be able to handle that kind of news right now, and I'm already having some problems with my work schedule. I just... I didn't mean to hurt her."
"Listen," I say, taking a step toward him, "I can tell you that I won't tell her anything, but don't act like this is her fault at all or has anything to do with anything but you and your shit."
Walking away from him, I know that I could have handled that a little bit better, but I've always hated cheaters. They rub me the wrong way. The lies and the deception, what's the fucking point? You want to be with someone, you don't want to be with someone, tell the truth.
Out on the patio, the five of us sit down at his luxurious dining room table and look out at the empty beach right up front. The patio is strategically placed slightly behind a wall of glass, giving it a little bit of shelter from the harsh Atlantic winds. The glass is spotless and it's almost as if it's not there at all.
“So, what is it that you do for a living, Richard?" Dante asks. "This is quite a home you have here."
"It is my pride and joy. It's where I go to relax, forget about the world. Not like my place in Manhattan."
He smiles at Allison who beams in his direction.
"I'm a musician. Composer," he says with a slight nod and a shrug, casual and very unassuming.
"Wait, are you Richard Reeves?" I ask, suddenly remembering seeing something about him online.
"The one and only."
I raise my eyebrows and my mouth falls slightly ajar. "You write music for movies, right?" I ask.
He nods. “I score films, yes. I also write a lot of songs, pop songs. The former gets a little bit less fanfare, but the money's good," he says in an understatement of a lifetime.
"What kind of songs? For who?" Allison asks.
"Madonna, Lady Gaga, Kelly Clarkson. Wrote a bunch for Whitney Houston. Dolly Parton and I collaborate a lot."
"Wow.” I smile.
Allison leans back into the plush pillows of the wicker chair and holds her cosmopolitan up to her lips, giving him a sultry look. He looks at her almost the same way, and I sense a connection I haven't seen, well, in a long time.
Something about Allison's hard, no-nonsense demeanor melts away and another person that I know well emerges: the one that wears sweats around the apartment, eats ice cream late at night, and drinks a little bit too much Grey Goose while watching The Voice.
I ask Richard more about his music and I notice the way that his eyes light up when he talks about it. He invites us all back inside so he can play us a little bit on the piano, taking a seat on his cliffside teak sectional.
When Richard places his hands on the keys, he becomes someone else. He closes his eyes and begins to play. His fingers are effervescent, moving with the music. He even sways a little.
The song begins slowly and builds and builds until it reaches a climax. He pounds at the keys but ever so slightly like a baby bird breaking through the egg shell, quick-focused and persistent.
When he's done, we all clap.
He smiles and nods and invites us to a party that he's having for a few friends.
"Dinner party, nothing too extravagant," Richard says with a smile. "I'd love for you all to come."
"I don't think I'll be able to make it," Lincoln says quickly.
"You're welcome to bring your wife," he adds. "No pressure, of course."
I give Allison a quick hug. "Are you coming with us?" I ask her, even though I highly doubt it.
“No.” She shakes her head, and I smile knowing exactly what she means.
33
Dante
It's late in the afternoon when Jacqueline and I sit out on the back patio, around the pool with my laptop in front of me and her resume pulled up.
She had agreed to help me catch Vasko in the act, but first she needs to get the job. I scroll through her experience, which isn't conveyed very well.
"When you first apply for a job," I say, "you have to make sure that your resume and cover letter match up with the keywords that the job position mentions specifically."
"What do you mean?"
"Well, they don't have people looking at them. It's almost always just a computer doing the initial scan. That's why you never hear back from so many of them.”
“Really?” she asks, surprised.
“After that, it goes to the human resources department and maybe, if you're lucky, you have a few seconds that a real person will glance at both documents to decide whether you're a good fit for the company at all.”
“I had no idea.”
"You see here, all this language about the administrative assistant," I point to the position that Vasko's company has listed with the recruiter, "you want all of that to appear in your paperwork and you want all of that to appear and be very natural. Of course, you can put a whole bunch of keywords at the bottom of the page, but once the person looks at it, they're going to see that and that's gaming the system."
"What about what you're doing now?" Jacqueline asks, leaning back, wearing nothing but a thin sundress.
There's a little bit of sweat on her forehead, her hair is limp and damp from the afternoon swim, and she has gotten at least two shades darker since her arrival here.
"What do you mean?" I ask.
"Aren't you trying to game the system as well?"
I smile. "I'm just trying to make it more of an even playing field."
She laughs and takes a sip of her lemonade.
I finish mine and pour myself another glass from the pitcher. This one's spiked with vodka, hers isn't.
I've noticed that she's not much of a drinker. She'll nurse the same drink for a few hours, pretending to sip on it but when it comes to actually consuming a lot of alcohol, that's not really her style.
I go through her resume and reword a lot of her experience to match the job announcement. It's simple things like perform clerical duties and experience working for a dynamic growing company in her cover letter.
I add that she has taken charge of a number of different office support administrative duties, including mail merging, pivot tables, and presentation design.
In her resume, I add that she has experience responding to phone inquiries, receiving and attending to visitors, ordering word processors, files, and faxes, as well as supporting diverse projects for other employees.
"You're just copying everything from the job announcement," she points out.
"Have you not had experience doing any of this?" I ask her point blank.
She stares at me. "Of course I have, but it's just a whole bunch of fancy language for being an administrative assistant. Answering calls, dealing with people's bullshit, all that stuff."