Work Shit, and a Promoter

“You sure?” I asked Ash.

“I’m sure,” he nodded. “Jacob is- He’s practically a nudist in his spare time. I had to ask him not to follow his coworkers with his personal instagram account because he posts from ‘naturalist retreats’ on his days off. Zero body shame, and he’s been talking about wanting to go to a ‘special beach’ somewhere in Croatia or something, so I’m sure he’ll jump at a chance to bump up his vacation fund.”

“OK,” I nodded, giving our head concierge a pat on the arm. “What have you been thinking about the other project?” I kept the question even more cryptic than I had asking about the dealer I needed - I’d decided that if I was looping in Ash on the big Festival project, I could trust him for the stupid poker party one too and I’d struck out with my feelers on other Dealers who might have been interested. Ash didn’t have direct supervision over any of the casino floor, but he was a front and centre figure for the hotel, and was a social guy, so he had plenty of connections throughout the staffing.

“I’ll start running the numbers tomorrow and put together some thoughts,” he said, getting a little smirk on her face as his eyes roamed the main entry concourse, watching his front desk staff handling checkouts, his bellhops striding along with people’s luggage, and even the valet service guys through the big glass doors and windows fronting the building. “How heavy-handed a discount do you want to try and give for the rooms?”

“Treat the weekend as a loss-leader,” I said. “Not a full comp for the whole thing, but consider every VIP as a major gambling whale and the projected staff as no-profit. We’ll get the pitch through with raw numbers, but we’ll make the money back with return visits for the experience.”

“If that’s how you want to plan it,” he nodded. “I’ll send you some prelim numbers by tomorrow night. What do you have going now?”

“I’m meeting with a Promoter,” I sighed. “And if he falls through I might be a little fucked.”

“Oh, you’re the person who was looking for one last night,” Ash said, connecting the dots. “I saw something about it going around but I mean, I don’t know anyone who is still active. I used to back when I was at the MGM, but you know that business - hustlers always looking for the next big jump. All my old contacts would be dead.”

“I figured, or I would have come straight to you first,” I agreed. I still felt a little blessed that the Vasoseh didn’t have a nightclub for us to need to deal with. “Alright, I’m going to go wait over there and check some emails if he comes in and asks for me.”

“Sounds good,” he nodded, already starting to drift towards the front desk across the open concourse. A guest seemed to be getting a little frustrated, likely with their bill.

I let him go and headed over to where I’d nodded, one of the more quiet nooks between a couple of pillars where there was a semicircular bench. It was technically an advertising space for the gallery and Tracy kept up prints and other advertising for her latest showings, but it had become the natural ‘Staff waiting for a non-guest’ waiting area.

Easing myself down onto the stone bench, I let out a sigh and scrubbed my face once with my hand before pulling out my phone and checking my messages and emails. I was 75% sure that this Jay-Shawn guy would show up since he’d come with a recommendation, but he was still a Promoter. They weren’t exactly known for their professionalism, and the ones that did have it often moved on quickly to more stable jobs and careers.

My emails were pretty standard fare - one new potential client wanting to price out the Vaso ballrooms for a wedding that I offered a few meeting times over the next couple of weeks, one confirmation from maintenance that they’d be ready with the lift on Monday morning for the main ballroom so that we could take care of some of the decor that the MADD fundraiser luncheon (how they still had enough people around Vegas to fill the entire ballroom, I couldn’t figure out), and three emails that I was CC’d on but didn’t need to deal with personally.

My messages were a different matter. Now that I wasn’t officially on ‘Me Dude Bro’ time, the girls were back to communicating with me like before. It was a relief, in some ways, but also a bit much. Cass and Terra were both sending me occasional picture updates of their packing process, and Cass let me know they were going out for dinner with some of Terra’s local friends for a Farewell Dinner. Becca kept things short, letting me know Wanda was doing OK that morning and she took the hurting woman out for brunch before they were due to meet with Brodi just after lunch. Leia had been up late with her roommates after we played games and was just waking up now, and she’d sent me a cheeky mirror picture of herself about to get into the shower, her hair up in a shower cap and seemingly only wearing a barely-long-enough towel. The second picture proved it wasn’t quite long enough after all as the plump bottoms of her ass cheeks poked out the bottom as she stuck her tongue out teasingly.

Zenya was less cheeky and more direct, sending me a topless picture of herself all sweaty after her morning workout, a vibrator teasing one nipple as she gave the camera a stunningly thirsty look.

Cattie and Ami kept things more grounded at least, both of them individually wanting to check in with me and where I was at emotionally after what I’d told them all last night about Angeloff and what had happened up in the suite. It was sweet, and I assured them both that I was OK. Ami asked me to call her if I felt like it might be getting to me, and Cattie sent me a GIF of some anime character whipping out a butcher cleaver and dramatically chopping off another character’s hand, followed by ‘Me, if she tried that shit in front of me.’

I’d just received another picture text - a dirty one, and I wasn’t sure from who yet - and glanced up to make sure no one was around or looking in my direction when I found someone was headed my way. She was petite, a couple of inches over five feet at best, and slender with long, dark hair up in a swaying ponytail. She was young, maybe twenty at best, and had the warm tanned skin of a latina, but her pretty face had a more exotic mix of features that made me second guess that snap placement. She was wearing white sneakers, white cut off denim shorts with a high waist and frayed leg holes high enough on her thighs it could have been a swimsuit, a white crop top with some sort of black, pink and blue 3d print of a cat wearing sunglasses, and a white ball cap for the Las Vegas Lights, the local soccer team with her ponytail threaded through the back.

My mind immediately tried to categorise her as a guest, except the Lights hat made her much more likely to be a local. The next assumption was that she was here for a job interview and someone at the front desk had pointed her over this way to wait, but her clothing definitely didn’t say ‘Please hire me for a job!’

Plus, she was looking right at me and broke into a half-smile as we made eye contact and she closed more distance.

“Robbie?” she asked.

“That’s me,” I said, standing and managing to keep a frown off my face as I looked her over again quickly. She was definitely short, maybe even shorter than Terra, and petite but still carrying a bit more curves than my- Whatever Terra was right now.

“Hi, I’m Jay,” she said, sticking out her hand.

I shook it, and she had a firm grip that I matched. “Nice to meet you,” I said, realising ‘Jay-Shawn’ wasn’t the singular black guy that I’d been expecting from the name. Jokes on me for making the assumption. “Let’s head upstairs.”

“Sure,” she said with a bit of a smirk. “We gonna be seeing some fancy penthouse office?”

“No,” I chuckled. “Mid-level floor of offices, storage rooms and maintenance.”

“Ah, a girl can dream,” she chuckled.

I led her over the elevators and pressed the call button, then gestured her in as it opened immediately. Swiping my access card, I thumbed the proper floor and then turned to give her a smile as the doors closed. This close I could see that she had some tattoos - an ouroboros snake was circling her navel on her tight stomach, and it looked like there were some black butterflies fluttering up her side out from under her waistband up to under her tight crop top.

Definitely not some big black guy.

“I’m Japalombian,” she said.

“Sorry, pardon?” I asked, blinking in surprise at the odd word.

“I’m Japalombian,” she repeated herself. “Half Japanese, half Colombian. It’s fine, everyone asks after giving me a look like that.”

“Actually, I was just trying to reconcile you with the tall, handsome and likely arrogant black man named Jay-Shawn that I’d been expecting,” I said.

“Oh,” she said, then barked a laugh. “Funny. I can see how that would happen. Whoever gave you my number just shared a contact card with you, didn’t they?”

“They did,” I smirked a little.

“Shawn is my business partner,” she said. “Our company is ‘Jay-Shawn Entertainment Services’ because we couldn’t agree on something more flashy.”

“How’d you get your name first?” I asked. “Alphabetical?”

She snorted and shook her head. “Shawn-Jay has no flow,” she said. The elevators opened and I gestured her out, then started leading her further down the corridor past some of the manager offices, then through the glass doors into our Events wing of offices. “So what kind of party are we talking about here? Your text was kinda cryptic but the offer seemed almost too sweet to be real.”

“Let’s talk in my office,” I said, opening the door and holding it for her. Once she was inside I closed it and gestured for her to take a seat in my little cozy ‘client meeting’ chairs and went to my desk to grab the paperwork I needed and a pen. “So, I promise you that the pay on offer is real, but the nature of the party one of our VIP guests wants to throw needs to be handled with some decorum and privacy. If we’re going to discuss any details, I’ll need you to sign this NDA. It’s not you signing on to work the event, it’s just to protect the Vasoseh and the guest from their privacy being breached.”

“Riiiight,” she said slowly, taking the paperwork from me and looking it over. It was boilerplate for us but was pretty air tight in terms of what a contractor could and couldn’t say about what they worked on or witnessed in the hotel. “Is this an orgy?”

“No,” I said quickly, but she must have caught the hesitation in the back part of the word as she raised her eyebrows at me. “It’s not intended to be an orgy as far as I am aware,” I clarified my answer, which was probably just muddying the waters even more.

Jay narrowed her eyes at me for a moment, looking me up and down, and all I could do was give her a sheepish smile. She sighed and shrugged, scribbling out her signature at the flagged point. “Fuck it, lets hear about this ‘not exactly an orgy.’”

“Alright,” I nodded, taking the paperwork back from her and confirming she really had signed and dated it, then set it aside. “I have a crazy, young Russian widow who is associated with one of the owners of the hotel. She has recently moved to the city with a few friends and would like to meet, ah, beautiful and influential people, and she’s decided the way she wants to do this is by throwing a party around a private poker game.” None of that sounded too crazy and I could see Jay’s thoughts taking it all in and registering that, so I dropped the bomb. “A strip poker party.”

Her eyebrows shot right back up and she sputtered as she tried to clamp down on a laugh, clapping a hand over her mouth. Then she snorted hard, blinked harder, and let her hand drop. “Seriously?” she asked. “Like… horny teenager strip poker?”

“Seriously,” I sighed. “I can take care of almost all of the logistics in house, but what I don’t have is a rolodex of interesting, attractive Las Vegas party-goers, or connections with any ‘professional models’ who might be interested in going along with the fun for a fee and free booze and food.”

“Professional models,” Jay smirked, knowing what I meant. “Right.”

“It’ll be a private event, staffed by our people, who will also be going along with the atmosphere of the party,” I continued. “Open bar, catered. Security at the front checking for phones and other electronics. Guests should feel secure that it will be a mini Las Vegas inside Las Vegas - whatever happens at that party only gets out if they talk about it.”

“Fucking wild,” Jay said, shaking her head. “So all you need is a guest list?”

“Our VIP hostess has been clear about the list - attractive and interesting. Call it an age range of 21 to somewhere in their 50s if you have anyone that old, and open to that kind of fun. Additional ‘guests’ will have their modelling rates met within reason for an event where nudity, but nothing more, is expected. But we’re doing this on Tuesday. Is it something you think you can start pulling together?”

She blew out a breath, adjusting her ball cap, and crossed her legs as she stretched out her back in an arch while thinking. I tried my damndest not to glance at the way her shirt was clinging to her bust, and I managed to succeed. “OK, the ‘models’ are probably the easiest part to manage by Tuesday. I mean, this is Vegas but still, not exactly a peak night of the week for strippers and high end- you know. How many legit guests are you thinking?”

“Call it eight players, plus any plus-ones or friends tagging along?” I hedged. “The hostess and one of her friends will likely be playing, and we can manage ten at the table comfortably.”

“A mix of men and women? They aren’t just looking to meet a bunch of dudes, right?”

“A mix,” I nodded.

“Trans OK?” she asked.

That one caught me up for a moment as I hadn’t considered it. “I… expect it should be,” I said. “But if you’re in then I’ll make sure with the host and circle back and let you know for sure.”

Jay nodded, chewing on the inside of her cheek in thought for a long moment. “Do you have someone managing music?”

“It’s a poker game, so it hadn’t come up,” I said. “A playlist was all we were going to run with.”

“I’ll do it, but you have to hire us to manage the whole guest list and DJ services,” Jay said. “Shawn will manage the music and equipment and keep up the atmosphere, you just need to have speakers ready.”

“I assume that ups your rate?” I asked with a wry smirk.

“Fuck yes it does,” she chuckled.

We only haggled a little over her price tag, and then the budget for the ‘paid guests.’ Vera wanted quality and a decent amount of quantity and we’d get her that, but I still had our budgets on the mind.

“All set?” I asked.

“I’ll whip up an invoice and send it over to you as soon as I’m back at our office,” Jay said, standing up and offering me her hand to shake.

“I’m going to pretend you actually have an office and you’re not talking about a laptop in your living room,” I said as I shook her hand. “Based on the amount of money I’m about to pay you.”

She shrugged and grinned. “My tax forms say it’s an office,” she chuckled. I brought her out to the elevators and she was grinning at her ‘get’ of an event the entire way. Once we were in and riding down, she gave me a quick glance of a different shade. “So… if everyone at the party is ‘playing along,’ does that include you?”

“I’ll be managing the event security personally to make sure we don’t have any looky-loos, either other hotel guests or staff,” I said.

Jay smiled broadly as the elevator doors opened. “Too bad,” she said as she stepped out and turned around, walking backwards. “I’m sure it’s going to be quite the show. I know I’ll have a good time.”

The elevator doors closed before I could think of something to say, but she’d already been gone for a solid ten seconds. Was she hitting on me? Flirting? Or just teasing?

“Fucking hell,” I sighed, swiping my access card and thumbing for the elevator to take m back up to the offices. I didn’t have time to think about that.

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