Serving the Billionaire

by Bec Linder

© 2013 Bec Linder, all rights reserved

This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to any person or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

This story is intended for adult audiences (18+). It contains content unsuitable for young people. All characters in this story are 18+ years of age.

Disclaimer

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

$7
3.81.

That was the number staring back at me from the screen. Less than seventy-five bucks to my name, no job, and rent was due next week.

Shit. I decided to log out of my bank account and log back in, just to make sure there wasn’t some hiccup in the system.

No dice. $73.81.

I
had
a job, up until two weeks earlier. A pretty good one. Then my boss copped a feel in the break room, I told him off, and he fired me on the spot. I spent the next two weeks applying to every job opening I could find, but nobody called me back. Not even
one
interview. Even the coffee shop around the corner wouldn’t hire me; I was “overqualified.”

New York is glamorous and exciting until you’re unemployed, broke, and desperate. Then it seems like the worst city in the world.

This wasn’t how I imagined my life turning out.

I closed my laptop and considered my options. My credit cards were maxed out, and all of my friends were just as broke as I was. I hadn’t spoken to my mother in six years, since I graduated from high school and left the West Coast for good. I hadn’t spoken to my father in longer than that. There were no eccentric great-aunts who would die and leave me an unexpected fortune. I was basically at the end of the line.

Either you’re born lucky or you aren’t. I wasn’t, and my life had been a long series of sad mistakes and unfortunate coincidences, culminating in that moment at my laptop, when I realized I was a week away from losing everything I’d worked so hard to earn.

Well. Desperate times call for desperate measures. I needed some greasy bodega food. So what if I couldn’t afford it? I couldn’t afford
anything
, and I still had to eat. One could only survive on ramen for so long.

I put on my coat and walked to the bodega on the corner. November had arrived crisp and cold, and my ears felt numb by the time I arrived. The bell to the door jingled as I went inside.

The guy at the sandwich counter spotted me and waved. “Miss Regan! The usual?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Thanks.” Maybe I should have been embarrassed that the bodega guy knew my order by heart, but I wasn’t. There can be no shame when it comes to sandwiches.

While he made my sandwich, I looked at the fliers posted along the side of the counter. One of them caught my eye: “Cocktail Waitress Wanted, Experience Necessary.” There was no address, just a phone number. I ripped off one of the hanging tabs. I didn’t know anything about either cocktails or waitressing, but I would lie if I had to. Honesty was a lot less important to me than being able to pay my rent.

I paid for my sandwich and went back to my apartment. It was a crummy one-room sixth-floor walk-up in a terrible part of Brooklyn, but it was
mine
. I didn’t have to share it with anyone. If I had to move, or get a roommate, that would mean admitting defeat. I hadn’t let life defeat me yet, and I refused to roll over belly-up without a good fight.

It was 3:00—not too late to call about the waitressing job. I dialed the number.

Someone picked up on the first ring. “Silver Cross Men’s Club,” said a pleasant female voice.

Men’s club? Wasn’t that a euphemism for a strip club? Not that I was really in a position to be picky. “I’m calling about the cocktail waitress job opening,” I said.

“We’re holding auditions on Tuesday morning,” the woman said. “Come at 11. I’ll give you the address.”

I wrote it down. It sounded like the place was in the Meatpacking District, which seemed a little strange for a strip club. “Do I need to bring anything? A resume, or—”

“No, just come dressed appropriately,” she said. “Silver Cross is an upscale establishment. I’m sure I don’t need to explain.”

“No,” I agreed, even though I didn’t have a clue what she meant. What was appropriate attire for a cocktail waitress? I had some vague idea that it involved black miniskirts and high heels.

“Excellent,” she said. “We’ll see you in two days.” She hung up the phone.

I went to my computer and looked up the address she’d given me. It definitely
was
in the Meatpacking District, close to the waterfront. Then I ran a search for “cocktail waitress outfit.”

There were pages and pages of images of girls all dolled up and looking like a million bucks, wearing short skirts, low-cut blouses, and sky-high platform heels. I didn’t have
any
of that stuff. I barely even knew how to apply eyeliner.

Panic gripped me. I
needed
this job. I texted my best friend, Sadie:
can u loan me cocktail waitress clothes?

She texted back a few minutes later.
girl u need help, b over in 30 min

Thank God. I scrambled to clean up a little: toss my vibrator in the nightstand, wash a few dishes, scrape the moldy Chinese food into the garbage. Not that Sadie would judge me, but I didn’t want her to see the squalor I’d been living in recently. She would worry.

By the time the door buzzed, I had managed to get things more or less in order. My building wasn’t classy enough to have an actual intercom, so I ran down the six flights of stairs to let Sadie in.

She was standing in the vestibule, holding a huge duffel bag full of who knew what. I opened the door and she came inside along with a blast of cold air. “God, it’s freezing out there,” she said.

“It’s the worst,” I said. “Thanks for coming. I’m freaking out.”

I told her about the job interview as we climbed the stairs to my apartment. “So I guess I have to dress up, but I don’t really know what to wear,” I said. “But I
have
to get this job, Sadie.”

“I know, baby girl,” she said, pushing open the door to my apartment. She dropped her bag on the bed and turned to look at me, hands on her hips. “Cocktail waitressing, huh? Let’s do some research. If this place is in the Meatpacking District, I’m not sure the hoochie look is going to fly.”

I sat on the sofa and gratefully let Sadie take over. She always knew exactly what to do in any situation, whereas I usually felt helpless and confused. It was probably why we were such good friends: she was the leader, and I happily followed along behind.

She hunched over my laptop and clicked around for a few minutes. “Okay,” she said. “This is a classy joint. You really didn’t even look it up? This is, like, where the Wall Street guys go to cut loose. You need to look sophisticated as fuck.”

“How do I do that?” I asked. I usually wore jeans and a t-shirt when I wasn’t at work, and when I
was
at work I could get away with black pants and a cardigan. “Sophisticated” was as far out of my reach as Mars.

“I’ve got you taken care of, doll-face,” Sadie said. She abandoned my computer and went over to the bed, and started pulling clothes out of the duffel. “If this doesn’t get you the job, I’ll eat my phone.”

“I can’t wear your clothes,” I said. Sadie liked to insist that we were the same size and could share clothing, but she was definitely smaller than me.

She rolled her eyes at me. “This stuff will fit you, okay? It
should
be a little tight. You don’t want to look unattainable.” She shoved an indeterminate mass of fabric into my arms. “Try this on. Do you have any heels?”

“Like, one pair,” I said. “I think they’re buried in the back of the closet.”

“I’ll dig them out,” Sadie said, and got down on her knees to rummage around in my apartment’s single, over-stuffed closet.

I stripped down to my underwear and tried on the clothes she’d given me: a fitted black pencil skirt and a silky white blouse. The skirt hit right below my knees, and it was pretty snug, but I was able to zip it up. The blouse fit loosely. I tucked it in to the skirt and wiggled to make it lie flat.

“Found your shoes,” Sadie said behind me. I turned around and took them from her. They were your standard black pumps, nothing exciting—nothing like the dangerous-looking platform stilettos I’d seen on the internet.

Whatever. It wasn’t like I had any other options. “You’re sure this is cocktail-y enough?” I asked.

Sadie pursed her lips. “Well, not yet. But it will be. Let me do you hair and makeup.”

She steered me into the bathroom and had me sit down on the closed lid of the toilet. I waited while she rummaged around in her makeup bag. She pulled out eyeliner, mascara, lipstick, something I vaguely identified as an eyelash curler—all the things that most women learned how to use in middle school, and that I had never quite figured out. Lip gloss was pretty much the limit of what I could handle.

“Are you really going to use all of that on me?” I asked, a little concerned.

“Yeah, probably,” Sadie said. “Pay close attention, you’re going to have to do this on yourself on Friday.”

“Can’t you come over and do it for me?” I whined.

Sadie grinned. “I’ll be at work, baby girl. It’s just going to be you and the internet. Maybe if you spent less time reading those boring books...”

“I’m trying to
educate
myself,” I said, annoyed, and Sadie laughed at me.

The thing about Sadie was that she always made things look so
easy
. She explained what she was doing as she went, but I could only follow about half of what she was saying. Hold down my eyelashes so the liquid liner didn’t make them all clumpy, sure. Contour with taupe shadow along the underside of my cheekbones... what? I decided I would stick with the basics when I had to do it myself. Maybe, over time, I could work my way up to what Sadie was doing.

In took her about ten minutes to finish my makeup. Then she said, “Face the other way so I can do your hair.”

I spun around on the toilet seat and faced the wall, straddling the toilet backwards. Sadie worked her hands into my hair. I closed my eyes, enjoying the sensation. I’d always liked having my hair played with.

“There,” she said, after a few minutes. “Go look at yourself in the mirror.”

I went back out into the main room of the apartment and shoved my feet into the high heels. Then I wobbled unsteadily toward the full-length mirror on the inside of the closet door. I stood in front of it and examined my reflection.

I looked... like a grown-up. Like a sophisticated, confident woman. The waistband of the skirt hit right at my waistline, and the contrast of the fitted skirt and the more voluminous blouse made me look about ten pounds thinner than I actually was. Sadie had wrapped my hair into a sleek chignon, and my makeup was elegant and understated, sexy without being over-the-top.

I looked, frankly, like someone I didn’t even recognize.

“Wow,” I said.

Sadie came up behind me and looked me up and down. “I’d hire you,” she said.

“Are you sure this is right?” I asked. “Shouldn’t I wear something... skimpier? What if they think I’m not sexy enough?”

“You’re just going to have to trust me on this one,” Sadie said. “The internet never lies. This place is very mysterious, very exclusive, and very classy. You need to look like you’re worth about a million dollars.”

I gazed at my reflection. A million dollars seemed pretty far off the mark. Maybe a thousand.

Two days later, I woke up early to give myself plenty of time to get ready. I showered and dressed in the outfit Sadie had loaned me, making sure to wear my sexiest, laciest bra underneath the slightly-sheer blouse. I did my hair and put on the makeup I thought I could handle: kohl eyeliner, red lipstick, mascara. I screwed up the eyeliner a few times and had to start over from scratch, but eventually I got it looking more or less even on both sides. Good enough.

The lipstick was strange and sticky on my mouth. I felt like a little girl playing dress-up. I just had to make sure that nobody could see through my facade.

I took the subway to 8th Avenue and walked from there. Navigating the subway in my high heels wasn’t exactly easy, but I figured I should get as much practice as I could. If the interview went well, I would be spending every night tottering around in heels.

The club was in a building so nondescript that I pulled out the piece of paper I’d written the address on, just to double-check. There was a small bronze plaque beside the door that read, “The Silver Cross Club,” and listed the address. That was it. It was the kind of place I normally would have walked by without a second glance.

I tried the door. It was open, and I went inside, into a dimly lit lobby. It was very small, barely larger than my apartment, and contained nothing but a wood podium with a man standing behind it.