PRO FORMA

Misha showed up on time. Stuck out like a sore thumb.

As he sulked into the hotel lobby looking like a damn safari tour guide, I hesitated to go up to him. But I did, of course. I knew my role.

I could gather from his appearance alone that he was trying to embody an honest-to-God environmentalist: hippie-adjacent Nalgene-toting mushroom forager. His hair was long and dry. The color of wheat.

He shook my hand curtly before guiding me to the elevator. As the door closed us in, I looked down at his hiking shoes and could picture him scrabbling up a rock face like a spider - almost comedically, like possessed people in horror flicks.

"So, you're a scientist," I posed.

"Says who?"

"Google..." I ad-libbed.

"Safety precaution?"

"Something like that."

We ascended to the eighth floor. I stepped out of the elevator ahead of him. He wasn't the over-the-top gentlemanly type, eager to say "after you" with an ego demanding to be placated.

"Never liked elevators," I mused between strides. "It's not like I have a phobia or anything, just hate that feeling in your stomach, you know, when you start and stop moving."

"Newton's first law of motion."

"Uh-huh," I unlocked the suite door. "Inertia and all that."

"And all that," he echoed.

"After you," I gestured, shoving my shoulder against the cold weight of the door. He brushed past, and the buckle of his canvas bag briefly snagged my dress. Hasty.

"I'm taking this off," I parroted at the threshold, suddenly exhausted: a click of the lock, the susurration of a zipper. My dress fell past my waist to the floor. I stepped out of the spandex circle.

Misha collapsed in the chair beside the window, exasperated. Limbs akimbo.

I padded toward him until I felt his breath on my navel. Held a priestly hand above his waxen hair. A truly amateurish wig.

"This looks ridiculous," I traced his faux scalp as if checking for lice.

"Hard to make me not look handsome," his accent nestled back into his signature sweet talk, Tennessee-twisted.

"Is he downstairs?" I asked.

He nods in assent. Grievously ignorant.

//

"It's snowing in Paris," the man with the monogrammed cufflinks declared. "Ever seen snow?"

I rolled my eyes.

"Of course not. You're a desert girl." He wet his lips, signaled to the bartender.

"My name rhymes with your last name," I pondered aloud. "Lainey and Daley. Lainey Daley."

"Like a nursery rhyme. Humpty Dumpty..." he laughed, red-faced.

"Those little sing-songs. Always oddly morbid," I turned to face him in earnest. "Did he suffer?"

"No, honey."

"Don't kid me."

"I'm not. This is a pro forma conversation. The money cleared this a.m. Check your account. I just wanted to see you."

"I met him at an AA meeting. In Tucson."

"Myles? Or, sorry, Misha," he sallied. "He was an alcoholic?"

"No, he was a really shitty conman preying on demoralized drunks."

"Like your dad?"

"Yeah, like my dad."

I finished my drink.