Work and Work Meetings

The rest of my morning was a bit of a mental shitshow. Nothing was going horribly wrong, but I was under pressure, and stressed, in just about every part of my life. Thankfully the lesser stresses, at least for the moment, were what to do with or for my girlfriends. Everyone was on board for the weekend plan - I’d gotten return texts from Leia, Zenya and Terra with good morning emojis (though I was pretty sure the sequence Zenya sent me had a coded message about eggplanting her peach), Cass and Cattie were prepping for their flights, and I’d spoken with Becca and Ami.

Still no word on Wanda though.

I was feeling awkward socially though because of my session with Doctor Samson. Why didn’t I have more guy friends? There wasn’t any problem with having female friends, obviously, but all through high school and college I’d had plenty of guys in my social circle. Swim teams had been a big part of that, but they weren’t my only outlet.

The realistic answer was that it was just harder to make friends as an adult, even through work. Or maybe even especially at work - friendly acquaintances, friendly coworkers, were a different vibe than come over and hang out people. And realistically I also knew that being in a long-term relationship meant it was harder to be friends with other guys as well - I wasn’t looking to head out to the bars to meet women. If I was at a bar, or a concert, or anywhere social I was with Cassidy.

And then, of course, there was work. Usually I was pretty fucking good at being on top of things - Doug had trusted me with taking on the core Ballroom event planning system because I’d proven to him early and often that my dedication to preparation meant that I was also very good at emergency management of situations. And not only that, but empowering the staff I was working with to feel ready to adapt as well because they knew that I had their backs, and had done the work so they could focus on their jobs.

But that wasn’t what Doug was demanding now, and it wasn’t what he was setting me up to succeed at.

No, he wanted me to be a salesman. He wanted me to be a schemer, really. To pad out our books with cheap and fast money at the sacrifice of our quality. And our reputation was good. Walt, for all his goofiness and the recent fireworks issue, was good at his job with the outdoor and seasonal events. I could even see him, with a few more years of maturity under his belt and maybe a girlfriend to curb his more flirty tendencies, being able to handle our indoor events well too. Tracy didn’t really give two shits about out Casino Floor events, which was fine because they really didn’t need all that much razzle dazzle and she was excellent at managing the Gallery. Even Jonas, for all his cockiness and dickish behaviour, was pretty damn good at his job when interacting with Act managers and getting tickets sold.

Tan was, so far, the exception.

But fucking Doug…

The rest of my morning was spent trying to ignore the urge to check the booking schedules. No matter what Jonas said, if he booked something into one of my ballrooms, I was considering them his events. I still hadn’t decided on the politics side of things and whether I actually wanted to do something to give Doug enough rope to hang himself over a cliff, but I didn’t have the mind right now to save him from himself either.

I got a text from Cassidy around 11:30 as I was working with the maintenance crews on converting the Sunset ballroom back over to a high stakes blackjack room - another reason why I thought trying to ‘fill the cracks’ in the schedule didn’t make sense since we always put the smaller ballrooms to use during off time if it made sense. She sent me a black heart, a car and a plane emoji.

She was driving Cattie to the airport.

That made my heart hurt just a little, aching to give my sweet girlfriend another hug. To hold her again, and fall asleep with her.

Sooner than later, hopefully.

I headed down to meet Dayana for our usual lunch meeting, the Sunset ballroom already sporting a couple of dealers, a bartender and a trio of blackjack players while the Sunrise ballroom was hosting a corporate luncheon event. The main ballroom was already in the works for the Bar Mitzvah that afternoon, with Tracy working with the Fischers for final touches.

“Hey,” Dayana said, sounding tired already as I walked in.

“Oof,” I said. “What happened?”

She rolled her eyes. “The regular shit, mostly,” she said. “But then the VIP’s assistant asked Ash to make reservations at all the restaurants. For every meal.”

I sighed as I sat down across from her, eyeing the tray she’d brought me. It looked like some sort of Thai fusion, which wasn’t on any of our menus. “That sounds like a waste of tables,” I said. Some of our restaurants were booked out several weeks in advance - we weren’t hosting any Michelin-star eateries, but a couple of them were starting to get pretty damn popular. I knew Dayana made sure all the maitre d’s kept a table or two open to make the lives of the concierge team easier when dealing with whale clients, but adding an extra table to that list would start dinging bottom lines over time.

“Mhmm,” Dayana hummed, then closed out whatever she was looking at on her computer and turned to pay more particular attention to me. “Oh,” she said, seeing my glance at the food. “That’s from the new place over in the Cromwell. I did a favour for the chef, and he sent someone over with a thank-you. The line cook who drove it over said it was Pad Kee Mao.”

“Never heard of it,” I frowned, taking a long sniff of it and recoiling a little. “OK, this has a kick to it.”

Dayana took a hard sniff and shrugged. “Smells good to me.”

I narrowed my eyes as she smirked a little at me. Her childhood in Venezuela had given her a bigger tolerance for spice than I had - I wasn’t a slouch, but we’d already been through the ‘I can handle anything you can and better’ discussion about spicy foods long ago.

She laughed and opened a lower drawer on her desk, pulling out a pair of tall coke bottles. “I snagged these, they should be able to cut the kick.”

I cracked my bottle open before starting to eat. The Pad Kee Mao was good, but did have me sweating after half the plate as I nursed my bottle of coke. Dayana kept me distracted by prompting me to tell her what I was comfortable sharing about my therapy the night before. Considering she already knew all the juiciest details - well, not the juiciest since I wasn’t about to talk actual sex acts with her - I gave her the short version of my session with Doctor Samson.

“You got beer in your therapy session,” Dayana deadpanned after I told her about the start of things. “That’s- Why doesn’t every therapist serve ****!? I feel like that would help people open up so much!”

“I know,” I chuckled. “It definitely helped me. I don’t think it’s a regular thing though. I mean, he went drink for drink with me pretty much. Unless he somehow got water canned in local IPA cans, I doubt he could do a full day of work chugging down one or more beers every hour.”

Dayana snorted and shook her head with a grin. “I wish I could do that every so often,” she said.

I gave her the main thrust of Doctor Samsons advice, too. That I needed to spend some time me-focused, and the ‘Dude Bro Me Time,’ and the plan for the weekend.

“So Cattie leaves…?”

“Soon,” I said, then checked my phone. “She’s probably already at the airport, either in security or waiting for her flight.”

“And Cassidy leaves later this afternoon?”

“Right,” I nodded.

“So what are you going to do with all this time on your hands?” she asked me.

“Good question,” I frowned. “I’m still working on that. There’s a few things I want to get done at our place, for one thing. And I’ve got a video game session planned for later tonight. And probably more gym time. I still need to talk to Thomas and Teddy, see when they’re free for something this weekend.”

“Well, count me in if you guys want to go out somewhere this weekend,” Dayana said. “After managing tomorrow night’s circus, I’m not answering a single email or call all weekend.”

“If we go out, I’ll let you know,” I promised, then smirked. “Though Cass said that you don’t count as ‘Dude Bro’ time.”

Dayana laughed and rolled her eyes. Opening the conversation of ‘tomorrow’s circus’ got us circling off of my therapy session though and towards our usual work topics. By the time we’d covered all the new stuff that had come up for the Ballroom events (at least the ones on my schedule) it was almost 1:30 PM.

“Shit,” I sighed. “I need to go. I’ve got a meeting with The Assistant.”

“Angeloff’s assistant?” Dayana asked.

I nodded. “Something about a party or something, I think.”

“Not the wedding?”

“I’m guessing she’s less concerned about the wedding than she is whatever thing she’s got in her head right now,” I shrugged. “Which is apparently a party. Or something. I’ll have to try and open discussions about the wedding with the assistant and see where we go from there.”

“Which assistant?” Dayana asked. “The one that was calling down the bookings was the blonde, I think.”

I shrugged again. “I don’t know, Doug handed me this one.”

“Well, try not to fuck the gorgeous blonde Russian,” Dayana smirked at me as I was standing a grabbing our trays to take with me.

“Ha-ha, so funny,” I rolled my eyes.

“You fake laugh, but you’re the one in a polyamorous open relationship where your fiancee wants you to have sex with beautiful women, and is OK with you falling in love with them too,” Dayana said, giving me a look and pointing at me with her pen.

“...OK,” I said. “You have a point. But I’m not going to have sex with the Blonde Russian.”

“It’s good to meet you, Mr Blane,” the blonde assistant said. In a distinctly posh British accent.

“Please, call me Robbie,” I said as I internally groaned while shaking her hand.

“We’ll be working together a bit, so feel free to call me Ada,” she said as I gestured for her to take a seat in our conference room, and I sat down across the corner of the table from her.

Up close, Ada was just as stunning as when she’d walked into the hotel atrium. Graceful and confident, she’d been led to our floor by one of the concierges while I’d still been getting myself set up for the meeting. She was early. A client was early.

That never happened.

Ada’s blonde hair was pulled back into a tidy bun with a black clip, and she was still wearing the same flowy black vest and trousers combo that she’d arrived in. This close, I was struck a little more heavily by how much of her cleavage those soft, flowy folds showed - she wasn’t carrying around tits like the three other women she arrived with, but she certainly wasn’t flat chested either. And her eyes were sweet and playful, but with a shrewdness that told me she was absorbing everything I did or said. Even the marks of her age felt elegant and… womanly.

“Well, Ada,” I said. “It’s good to meet you. How long have you been with Miss Angeloff?”

“A few years now,” Ada said. “But I’m sure we can get to know each other over the next little while, Robbie. Right now I’m afraid to say that Vera is keen on hosting a small party soon.”

“What sort of party are we talking about?” I asked, pulling my pad of paper over from the side of the table so that I could take notes.

“She wants to host a game,” Ada said. “A private game. Exclusive.”

“I see,” I said. “Obviously my mind immediately goes to poker or blackjack, since those are the most popular private games, but the Vaso can facilitate all sorts of private games in our licensed areas - that includes the ballrooms, and the smaller VIP high stakes rooms.”

“Mm, that won’t necessarily be necessary,” Ada said, and I saw just a touch of colour enter her cheeks. “The game won’t be played for money.”

“Alright,” I said. “What sort of game are we talking about?”

“Vera would like to host a game of Strip Poker,” Ada said. “Catered, with a bartender she can pick from your staff, as well as a dealer. They’ll need to be alright with nudity, both seeing and participating. And she’d like your help inviting… interesting, attractive and classy guests, as she doesn’t know anyone in the city.”

I liked to think I had a pretty good poker face, but even I couldn’t hold everything in on that one.

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