Page 34 of The Newcomer
“Here.” He pulled a bundle of bills from his pocket and peeled off five hundreds. “Tell him it’s a retainer.”
By the time Letty arrived at the building, smoothed things over with Enrique, the substitute doorman, and spirited their guest inside and up to the apartment, it was past nine o’clock. She texted Evan that she was going home, picked up take-out ramen at the corner bodega, and was in bed by eleven.
“The service at that place was super slow,” Tanya said, sitting on the edge of Letty’s bed. She rubbed her fingers back and forth over the comforter’s satin binding. “We were just about to leave, and an old friend of his stopped by the table. When Evan told him I was new in town, and a model, the guy invited us to this new club he’s invested in. Like, insisted. Because he said I’d meet a lot of important people there. Evan says it’s all about networking.”
“And did you? Meet anybody important?”
Tanya giggled. “Who knows? I drank a lot of champagne. Like, a lot! I don’t really remember anybody’s name. But I had the most incredible time. And it’s all because of you, because you invited me to come to New York.” Tanya bent down and brushed her lips across her sister’s cheek. Letty caught the scent of a familiar men’s cologne. “Love you, Letty Spaghetti.”
Lettyfelt funny going back to the Lazy Daizy after she’d quit working there. The other girls refused to meet her eyes. Zoey told Letty they thought she was stuck-up, now that she no longer waited tables. Instead, she’d begun meeting Evan for Friday breakfast at the Tip Top, a diner across the street from Letty’s new apartment.
He was sipping coffee and finishing his toast when she seated herself at their usual booth.
“Am I late, or are you early?” she asked, nodding at the waitress who appeared with her iced tea.
“Neither.” He propped his elbows on the table. “Did Tanya speak to you?”
She cocked her head. “I haven’t seen her. She got in way after midnight and had an early call for some pilot that’s shooting over inJersey. Seems like Ronnie’s been able to get her plenty of work since she hit town.”
“She’s got a certain look that’s in demand, right now, that’s all,” Evan said. “But you’re keeping busy, right? I mean, with those two new units, I don’t know when you’d have any more time to go on auditions anyway.”
Letty sat up straight in the booth. “What’s this about, Evan? What is it Tanya was supposed to speak to me about?”
He shook his head. “Dammit, this is awkward.”
She thought back to the past few weeks. Ever since Tanya had arrived, she’d had a nagging sense that something was amiss. And now, looking at Evan, as he picked at a morsel of bacon on his plate, she knew exactly what was amiss.
“Oh,” she said slowly. “So what? You’ve been sneaking around, sleeping with my little sister? You want my permission or something?”
“No. It’s not like that.”
She toyed with the packet of artificial sweetener the waitress had tucked under her glass. The girl should have known the packet would get soaked and the sweetener would be ruined. It was true what people said. You really couldn’t get good help these days.
“Not like what? You’re not sneaking around? Or you’re not sleeping with her? Or maybe you don’t actually want my permission. Which is it?”
Evan let out a long sigh. “Admit it, Letty. You like me, but there was never any real chemistry between us. Which is probably why you’d never sleep with me, which, looking back now, was a good thing. Ours is a working relationship, and unfortunately, I let things get… personal. But, as I told Tanya, I want to be honest with you. She and I? We just clicked. Like, right away.”
Letty felt her face redden. “Clicked? Is that a polite euphemism for fucked?”
He wadded up his napkin and threw it onto his plate. “See? This is why Tanya didn’t want to tell you herself. She knew you’d overreact.”
“Overreact?” She leaned across the table. “I paid for her plane ticket up here. Loaned her money to get new headshots and set her up with my agent. Right now, she’s wearing my favorite bra and living in my apartment. So you’ll excuse me if I ‘overreact’ to the news that she’s now sleeping with the guy I’ve been dating.”
“I don’t need this headache,” Evan muttered. He tucked a twenty-dollar bill under his plate. “It is what it is, okay? You and I have a business arrangement. If I’m not mistaken, it’s worked out pretty well. For both of us. You don’t want to throw that away, Letty. Think about it, okay? In the meantime, Tanya’s moving in with me. I’ll send somebody over to pick up her stuff.”
He slid out of his side of the booth, brushing toast crumbs from the front of his immaculately pressed white dress shirt, then glanced at his wristwatch.
“Don’t forget, you’ve got a walk-through at the new unit in SoHo at three today. And you need to meet the guys delivering the furniture at noon.”
“I’ll be there,” she said, her tone as detached and businesslike as his. “Please tell my sister I expect her to have the clothes she borrowed dry-cleaned and returned to me by this weekend.”
Lettyfound a tiny, windowless studio apartment in Brooklyn. Ronnie Silver never formally fired her as a client, but the acting jobs dried up as she began to distance herself from Evan and Tanya.
She told herself it was a blessing in disguise and threw herself into her new job, working for a rental agent at a big midtown real estate company.
Tanya showed up at the door of the Tribeca apartment the day Letty was moving out, a bag of dry cleaning in one hand and an expensive bottle of champagne in the other.
“How’d you get up here?” Letty said coldly, not bothering to invite her sister inside.
