Jimmy
ONE OF THE GIRLS answers the door.
Jimmy can’t help himself. When they’re as young as this one clearly is, he thinks of them as girls. If that makes him feel older than he really is, screw it.
“Rob told me you might show up,” she says after Jimmy introduces himself. “I’m Kellye. With anothereat the end.”
“Can’t ever have enough,” Jimmy says.
She steps aside and Jimmy enters the ornate foyer, with its marble floor and what he’s sure are expensive paintings on the walls. He’s been here before, and is always more impressed with the marble he’s standing on than the art. He finds himself imagining all over again what the walls of this place, even the ones down here, could say if they could talk, about all the messed-up shit they’ve seen here, all the way back to the days when Rob Jacobson’s old man was the master of the house and head pervert.
Like father, like son.
“How old are you, Kellye with ane?” Jimmy asks.
She grins. “Rob told me you were his chief investigator, not from the Census Bureau,” she says.
Smart, Jimmy thinks.
It makes him want to like her.
But if she’s got any kind of relationship with Jacobson going, he’ll be able to fight the urge with absolutely no problem.
“How come he’s letting you live here?” Jimmy asks now.
“Other than me being as fun as I am?”
“Define fun.”
“Are you asking if we’re fucking?” Kellye says. “Because we’re not.”
“So then what benefits does he get out of letting you live in his house?”
She shrugs. “Like, he doesn’t have to pay a housekeeper?”
“But there’s somebody else living here, too, am I right?” Jimmy says.
“Paula.”
“Is Paula hooking up with him, either when he sneaks into the city or out there?”
“Every chance they get,” Kellye says.
“Is Paula here right now?”
“If you drove in, you probably passed her on the LIE,” she says. “Today is a booty call day out on eastern Long Island, pretty sure.”
“What does Paula do?”
She grins again. “For Rob, or in general?”
“In general.”
“I think she’s majoring in being famous at NYU,” Kellye says. “Hence doing it with Rob.”
“What about you?”
“I’m an actress.”
