Exposed by Jessica Love Read Free Book Online Page A

office.”
    “Yes, you can. We’re going to lunch.”
    We left when Tony was ready, even though I wasn’t. He was usually easy- going, but he seemed tense, if not grim. We wandered down to Pike Place Market, where Tony always ate. Sometimes at Place Pigale, sometimes at Pike Place Chinese Cuisine, sometimes at the Soup & Salad MFG. Company. Sometimes from a vendor on the corner. But always Pike Place Market.
    “Tony, why do you always come here to eat? You basically live in a six-block area of Seattle,” I asked.
    “It’s comfortable,” he said, preoccupied.
    “Is it because you like watching all these people?” I asked, as a man without a shirt walked a pit bull past us, accompanied by a woman twice his size with bright purple hair, pushing a baby carriage.
    Tony stopped, forcing me to stop as well.
    “See that truck?” he asked. There was a produce truck parked in the middle of the street near a giant bronze pig. The back end was open and the driver was muscling a hand truck piled with boxes onto the lift gate, which he lowered to the ground, then pirouetted it around to push it into the maw of the market.
    “Yes. So?”
    “That was my job for seven years. Through college. While I went to law school. Every day, or night, depending on my class schedule. Hauling what needed to be hauled to this market. Loading, unloading, trying not to run over people who had fallen down drunk at 3 a.m. Getting up to go to class. Doing it over again.
    “So I don’t come down here to watch all these people, as you say. I come down here because these people are my people,” Tony said.
    As if to make the point, a man walked by in rags and said, “Hiya Tony!”
    “Hey, Leo. How’s it going?”
    “Eh…” Leo mumbled, as if that said it all.
    “Yeah, I know,” Tony said, as if there had been an actual exchange.
    Tony led us into the concrete caverns of the market to Pike Place Chinese Cuisine. We got a table right away, even though the place was crowded, and the waitress brought a beer to the table along with our silverware and water glasses.
    “Thank you, Sami,” Tony said.
    “You bet. Usual?” she asked.
    “Yeah.”
    She turned to me. “How about you, hon?”
    “I haven’t looked yet,” I said, motioning to a menu in Sami’s hand.
    “She’ll have the same,” Tony said.
    Sami must have known that, because she still hadn’t even put the menus down on the table. “To drink?”
    “Green tea?” I asked, which received a grunt and a nod.
    “What am I having?” I asked Tony.
    “Sheep brains in a light broth,” Tony said.
    “Uh Tony…”
    “Relax. Fish. Something good, something fresh. Catch of the day. I don’t know how it will be prepared, but it’ll be good.”
    Sami brought my tea in what seemed to be an instant. Tony sipped his beer and looked out over the water.
    “You’re going to get a larger percentage of the fees you are generating,” he said.
    “What do you mean?”
    “I’m making you a partner, of sorts. You will get a higher percentage of what’s left over after the bills are paid.”
    “Why are you doing this, Tony?” I asked.
    “Because I’m a good guy, and you deserve it,” he said.
    “Tony, I don’t trust anyone who doesn’t act out of self-interest.”
    Tony laughed out loud, and long.
    “Good for you, Jess,” he said at last. “And my self-interest is this: If I don’t up the ante, someone is going to take you away from me. Then I’ll have nothing.”
    He never called me Jess if we were around anyone else. The first time he did it, I thought he was being condescending, because I never referred to myself as Jess. The only ones who ever had before Tony were Mark and Grandmama, at least since college.
    But at some point, I realized that when Tony did it, it was not a subtle put down as much as a “tell.” When he thought of me as Jess, he was not on his perpetual defensive.
    He was right, too. I’d received a couple of feelers from other firms. But I didn’t know he