Donna knocked at the door and waited. She'd already checked herself in a hallway mirror just outside the elevator so she knew she looked good and everything was in place. It was the right hotel, the right room number, and she'd last checked the watch she carried in her silver clutch-bag in the lobby and counted the seconds since, so she knew she was precisely on time.
The door opened.
"You are Donna?" the man asked.
"That's me, Mr....?"
He smiled. "Smith, for now," he said, and held the door open wide for her.
He was in his fifties, slim, well dressed in expensive casual clothes. Just what she expected from the address. The Parker wasn't the type of hotel for the average traveler. That was why she'd worn her finest black dress with the plunging neckline and some subtle gold jewelry. Even so, her finest felt terribly insufficient as she walked into his suite.
The carpet was thick as sod. The walls were festooned with paintings and tapestries. The furniture was old and heavy with hand-carved filigree. Domed ceilings towered overhead, and from the centers of each room hung crystal chandeliers sparkling with almost hurtful brilliance.
Mr. Smith shut the door.
"I'm delighted you could come," he said. "And I admire your punctuality."
Donna said nothing. She'd learned long ago to let the client do most of the talking. She wasn't there for conversation, he hadn't hired her to listen to her speak. And in the meanwhile her self-imposed silence gave her time to absorb the grandeur of the place.
"Impressive, isn't it?" he asked, noticing her fascination with the décor. "I always stay here when in the city. Champagne?"
He stood near a draped cart on which sat a silver tray, an ice bucket from which protruded a green glass bottle at an odd angle, and two crystal flutes. Fruit decorated the rest of the cart surface; plump grapes, ripe pears and such.
"It's not the house bilge," he said when she neither accepted nor declined. "It's from my own vineyards. I always travel with my own. That way I know I'll have the best."
Donna joined him at the cart. He worked the cork free with a subdued pop and poured. Resetting the bottle in the ice he handed her a glass and tinged his own against it.
"To tonight," he said.
She nodded, smiled, and sipped.
Donna was no aficionado of fine wines. In fact, she usually preferred either a beer or something hard like vodka. But the champagne slid into her like liquid silk and left the most amazing tingle on her tongue and palette.
"You approve," he said, watching her face. "Good."
He walked towards the wall of windows surrounded by burgundy drapes.
"I trust your employer gave you all the particulars of this engagement?" he asked, watching the city sprawl out below him.
"He's not my employer," she corrected.
Without turning around he said, "Your agent, then. Whatever the relationship. Did he tell you precisely what was expected here?"
She wasn't sure what he meant. "He told me where and when," she said. Usually if clients have specific requirements -- costumes and props for role-playing favorites -- Cassius tells her. He'd said nothing about tonight.
"I suspected he wouldn't," Smith said. "He's not an honest man, you know. You deserve better."
Maybe she did, but that wasn't any of Smith's or anybody else's business.
"Well, then," Smith said, turning about and coming back to the cart for a refill. "I will give you the opportunity to refuse and leave, no questions asked, with whatever your normal fee is."
Donna sipped her wine. "What did you have in mind?"
Smith smiled. "Your liberation," he said, and drank. "The proposal is this. If I like what you do, then I will pay you enough so that you will never have to do this sort of thing again."
Donna smiled and had all she could do to keep from laughing. She'd had clients offer to support her before, set her up in exclusive apartments, to sit on a shelf, so to speak, until they required her pleasures again. As tempting as some of them had been, she'd always refused.
"I have one million dollars in cash," Smith said, "somewhere in these rooms. It's yours if everything goes well."
Donna stopped breathing for a second, because he said it so well she almost believed him.
"A million," she said, making sure she heard him right.
"In cash," Smith said. "And I wouldn't let that weasel you work for have a penny of it. I never mentioned an exact amount to him so he doesn't know. I just said a large reward. Tell him what you will. But the million is yours, if I like what you do."
She couldn't decide if he was legit or not. He looked sane, a bit gray, but otherwise in fine shape. His eyes were soft and kind, not at all like the eyes of man who plays games a lot.
"And, if you don't like?" she asked coyly.
Smith drained his glass. "Ah, there's the part he didn't want to tell you, I'm afraid." He offered her more champagne. She declined, for the moment.
"Then I get nothing," she offered. "Not even my normal fee."
Smith smiled. "It's not as simple as that," he said. "If I don't like what you do," and he said this next part as flatly as if he were accustomed to such talk, "I get to kill you."
She dropped her glass. It was empty, so nothing spilled, and the carpet was so plush it didn't break. Smith came to her, squatted down to retrieve the long, skinny flute, and handed it to her. When he brandished the bottle again she allowed him to fill it.
"You're serious," she said.
