CON MAN Page 2

  “Is it that obvious?” she lamented, organizing the silverware at her place setting.

  I shrugged in an attempt to ease her mind. “So, you’re shy. Big deal. The only ‘obvious’ thing to me is that you’re finally doing something about it.”

  Ainsley shook her head and sighed. “Gosh, I must be even more of a dud than I thought. I grew up so sheltered, and now here I am, twenty-five years old, and I have no life!”

  “I’ll help you change that.”

  “I’m really insecure.”

  “But what do you have to be insecure about? You’re hot.”

  I wasn’t big on blowing smoke up people’s asses, but part of my program was to offer constant assurance. I always discovered at least one positive attribute that I could reinforce repeatedly, getting them used to the idea of believing it about themselves. It normally took me a little while to come up with an honest compliment, however, because I wasn’t in the habit of lying to my clients. But I hadn’t put any forethought into that “hot” comment; it just sort of slipped out.

  And it was one hell of an understatement.

  But Ainsley avoided the commentary about her looks, and instead, a smile eked through as she tried to answer casually, “Luke, it’s okay. I know I’m not… you know… fun.”

  What does fun have to do with being hot?

  I eased back into my chair, absently tapping a fingertip against the linen tablecloth as I took in her words. I knew all too well what it felt like to be socially inhibited. “Well, I can definitely help you there. But Ainsley,” I added cautiously, “I feel it’s only right to be honest with you. My course encompasses a lot more than learning how to be the life of the party. We’ve got some hard work ahead of us, but I’m already thinking you’re gonna be tough enough to handle it.” As skittish as she seemed, I had already picked up an underlying resolve. Determination went a long way, and hers would serve her well.

  She extended a genuine smile at me, and I felt my heart lurch. She had a gorgeous smile; lovely, full lips and delicate, straight teeth that would not be needing a bleaching. I mentally crossed the customary Laser-White visit off my Week Four checklist, and attempted to get this meeting back on track.

  This was the part where I’d normally launch into my schpiel, but I didn’t want to overwhelm her more than I already had. Sure, all my clients were lacking confidence, but this one was downright petrified. I felt that one wrong move would send her scurrying for the hills.

  “So,” I said, attempting to ease into some talking points. “Maybe we should start with a Q and A? That’s always an easy way to break the ice.”

  Ainsley rearranged the napkin across her lap and directed her next words toward it. “Well, good, because I’m not really sure how this works. I know you change women’s lives, but I guess I’m still unclear as to how.”

  “Well,” I started in. “It’s more like I help women change their own lives.” When she seemed receptive to hearing more, I gave her the standard rundown, explained the role I’d be playing through it. Told her about the schedule we’d be keeping, the exercises I had planned, the homework she’d be expected to do. Mind you, I barely scratched the surface, but I was trying to keep from overwhelming her while still answering her question.

  It was hard not to notice the charming way she listened intently while simultaneously avoiding any sort of prolonged eye contact. It was kind of adorable.

  I was pretty distracted by Ainsley’s fidgeting—and, you know, by her hotness—but I managed to get through my presentation without embarrassing myself.

  Shocker.

  I wrapped up the diatribe with my standard footnote. “I’ll be asking a lot of you over these next weeks. Some things will seem entirely effortless, while others will be well out of your comfort range. I only ask that you trust me. In return, I will grant you complete and utter honesty. If there’s ever any question about what we’re doing or why, I’d like you to ask me straight out. I’ll always tell you the truth. This program works best when that honesty is a two-way street, however, so I’m hoping I can expect the same from you.”

  Ainsley nodded her head in acceptance just as the waiter delivered our drinks. The interruption was a good enough excuse to cease my monologue and propose a toast. “To new beginnings,” I offered, holding my stem glass out to Ainsley. “And happily ever afters.”

  She seemed to like the idea of that, smiling as she clinked her glass to mine. “You make it sound like life is a fairytale.”

  I shot her my most effective smirk, looking right into those incredible blue eyes of hers as I answered, “It’s high time you started living like it was.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  Rain. Dark. Faint music in the background.

  Where am I?

  Wait. WHO am I?

  The panic floods in and consumes every fiber of my being. My eyes crack open but my body is unable to move. My face is against the blacktop, my cheek scraping against wet gravel. The moisture from the road below joins forces with the deluge from above and soaks me to the bone.

  Cold.

  I open my eyes a bit more. Smoke? Fog?

  Someone’s running toward me. Just a silhouette at first. His face comes into focus, worried but kind. It calms me. He kneels down beside me, places a hand on my back. I flinch.

  Pain.

  “The ambulance will be here any minute. You just hang tight, son. You’re going to be alright.”

  His voice is distressed, horrified. But it soothes me anyway.

  Shards of metal near my hand. Glass. Something sticky on my head.

  Bright lights. Loud voices.

  Everything goes black.

  I woke up in a cold sweat yet again, my heart racing. The same nightmare had plagued my sleep before, but it had been a few months since the last time. The details sometimes changed, but the outcome was always the same: A twelve-year-old me, lying on that wet street, bloody and bruised, my father in a panic at my side.

  The vague pictures disappeared into non-descript images with every second I was distanced from my sleep. But even while dreaming, the details always eluded me. I tried to grasp onto them, but the further I was separated from the nightmare, the quicker it vanished into the ether. It was like trying to grab a handful of cloud.

  I lay in my bed, confused and frustrated yet again as I attempted to put the jumbled puzzle pieces of my dream into some sort of cohesive timeline:

  It’s always raining. I know that much.

  What I can’t remember is how the accident happens. I can see the car in a heap of twisted metal, a semi truck turned on its side, Lenny Kravitz playing on the radio. I can practically feel the gravel under my cheek, the damp blacktop seeping through my clothes, the sticky blood dripping down my face. My father, so worried, running from the wreckage toward me, checking for injuries along my body, afraid to scoop me off the ground. The terror in his voice as he tries to make small talk, keep the conversation light.

  Thing was, the vision wasn’t just a bad dream. It was also a memory.

  The very first memory I have of my life, to be specific.

  Oh, yeah. While I was so busy filling you in on what a swell-looking guy I am, I forgot to mention the most important thing about me: My brain is a mess. I have a condition known as Profound Retrograde Amnesia. Basically, I have no memory of my life before the accident; no memory of the child I once was.

  From all accounts, it would seem better that I forgot.

  I pulled back the covers and hopped in the shower. My domain was the junior suite in the house, seeing as my father occupied the master.

  Yeah, yeah. I still lived in my father’s house, but I don’t think you can blame me. Not only did he like the idea of keeping me close, but the “house” in question was actually a humongous mansion. I had a separate entrance that led to a separate wing, so it was almost like living on my own anyway. The two of us had plenty of room to lead separate lives.

  It’s just that most of the time, we chose not to.


  My father is Frederick Taggart, CEO of Worldwide Consulting.

  Don’t let the high-brow title fool you. The man was no whiz kid in the business world. He simply got lucky when he took a risk on a few tech stocks at the right time, and has been living the high life ever since.

  He moved us to the affluent neighborhood of Greenhaven in Rye, an obscenely opulent suburb of Westchester County on the outskirts of New York City. Even then, we were clearly “new money,” and a status like that didn’t warrant much respect from the bluebloods that lived here. Nuevo riche was one step above hillbilly as far as they were concerned. Prestige and respect were saved for Old Wealth in most moneyed communities, and this New Yorkian utopia was no different.

  Greenhaven was the microcosmic equivalent to a larger Manhattan mentality, only with bigger houses and even bigger egos. The town enabled its residents to show off all that scratch they’d swindled from nine to five while still allowing for a quick commute into the city. Most of our neighbors were CEOs themselves, reigning supreme over the bevy of working stiffs who helped to line their pockets.

  Dad didn’t quite fit the mold.

  His name wasn’t ever tossed about with any of the other movers and shakers in town. Even though he’d changed his lifestyle to reflect his new bank account, he couldn’t change the fact that he’d only recently amassed his fortune. And that he did it without relying on the broken backs of a common-man workforce was practically reprehensible.

  Even before he had the audacity to strike it rich on his own, he was a bit of a wild man. Back in the day, he was a real lost soul, or so I’ve been told. His parents had died within a year of each other while he was still a teenager, and he had no other relatives to speak of. He sold the family home and moved into a one-bedroom, cockroach-infested tenement in the crappy NYC neighborhood known as Alphabet City. To find himself, he said. At that point in his life, he’d been “rudderless. Didn’t have a single ambition outside of where to eat the next meal.” Apparently though, he was quite the ladies’ man, and I will express my gratitude for the good genes here when I say that the guy was one helluva handsome bastard back in the day. He had enough cash socked away to fund his bar tab and skirt-chasing, and spent the better part of his twenties doing little else with his life.

  Then in 1984, he met my mother.

  The framed picture on his nightstand shows her as a feather-haired blonde, but even with the outdated hairstyle and blue eyeliner, you could tell she was a knockout. Dad sure as hell must have thought so. He’s always said that from the first minute he met her, he was “immediately smitten.”

  Almost overnight, the late nights and carousing came to an end. She lived in Jersey, so Dad moved out to Shermer Heights to be closer to her. They dated on and off for three years until she got pregnant with me, but even still, they chose not to get married. They never did, at least not officially, but that never stopped Dad from referring to her as his “wife.”

  According to my father, my birth was “the greatest thing that ever happened” to them. He’s never hidden his love for me, but I think he likes to exaggerate the extent of my mother’s affections. Piecing together the years between their courtship and my adolescence is only slightly less frustrating than trying to figure out my dream, and barely more informative. Dad doesn’t like to talk too much about it, so those years have only been offered to me in snippets. Tiny, anecdotal bits of their life and mine that I’m expected to add into a whole. The edges are fuzzy and the picture never works out quite right, so I can only give you the nutshell version of what I know for sure:

  Mom wanted Dad to be more serious... He bought some stocks... He got lucky a couple years later when they paid off... He built this house...

  She never moved in.

  Supposedly, my mother took issue with his flightiness over the years, and finally up and left the both of us the day after my twelfth birthday. Dad hired a team of private detectives to find her, and when they did, she still refused to come home.

  And then... the accident happened.

  It was one hell of a rough year for him to get through. It wasn’t exactly a cakewalk for me either, seeing as I spent most of it in a hospital bed. But the heartbreak of my mother leaving was his and his alone. I didn’t even remember her, so I didn’t have anything to miss. I was almost grateful for the messed-up brain, because unlike him, I never had to deal with the pain of her absence.

  One of the few perks of being an amnesiac.

  Can you imagine being my father during that time? His wife leaves him, and then just one short month later, his son almost dies. It was always easier for me to put my troubles in perspective when compared to that.

  Even though Dad wrote my mother off years ago, he never truly got over her. He still kept a few framed pictures of her around the house but I’m not with her in a single one. Then again, there are hardly any baby pictures of me at all. She took them all with her when she left, so I guess that shows some sort of affection, right? Of course I have no recollection of it which is just as well. I’ve had to rely on my father’s memory to fill me in on the missing twelve years of my life.

  I’m not bitter or regretful about any of this, if you can believe it. My reality is the only one I’ve ever known, and I wouldn’t trade the life I lead now for anything. It is what it is and I’ve learned to adapt.

  My father, however, insists that my brain can be fixed. A few times a year, I’ll humor him and meet with any new neurologist he’s found, embark on whatever cockamamie new treatment plan he’s researched. It’s a small price to pay to keep him optimistic about my situation. The guy has never given up, I’ll give him that.

  I adjusted the lapels of my light gray suit before heading down the hall where I met up with Dad in the kitchen. Before I could even pour myself a cup of coffee, he launched in. “Good morning, Lucas!”

  “Morning, Pop.”

  “Heading into the city?”

  “Yes. Signing a new client.”

  “Wow, that’s great!” He got up to join me at the espresso bar and offer a pat on the back. “You know, when you started this venture, I wasn’t sure how far you’d be able to go with it.”

  “Gee, thanks,” I shot back through a laugh.

  Dad laughed along with me. “I had faith in you, numbskull. I just wasn’t sure if all those pretty-pretty-princesses-in-training would fork over all that scratch. I can’t believe what you charge.”

  My father never quite lost that chip on his shoulder when it came to rich people. Even though he was one of them.

  “It’s a drop in the bucket for most of them,” I said.

  “Oh, don’t I know it.” He checked his watch, and I readied myself for what was coming next. “By the way, did you get a chance to call Dr. Mandelbaum?”

  He’d found yet another doctor for me to see, and I was supposed to get in touch with him yesterday. I guess I got distracted by Ainsley, because I didn’t think about anything else but her for the rest of the night.

  “Sorry, Pop. I completely forgot.” His pursed lips showed his disappointment, so I quickly added, “But I’ll do it today. Promise.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  I parked around the corner from my favorite diner on 44th Street. It was a non-descript dive right in the heart of Times Square that served the best egg-white omelets in the world. I had just enough time before my appointment with Ainsley to grab a quick breakfast, and my mouth was already watering. But before I could get in the door, my phone buzzed. I pulled it from my breast pocket and looked at the screen. Unknown number.

  “Hello?”

  “Mr. Taggart. This is Dr. Mandelbaum. Your father asked me to call.”

  “Oh, yes.” Shit. I guess the old man made the decision that he was going to be the one to put the wheels in motion. “Thank you. Sorry if you’ve been waiting for me to reach out first. To be honest, I don’t know what he thinks you can do for me.”

  “Well, it’s PRA, yes?”

  “Yes.”

  “Duration?�
��

  “Sixteen years.”

  There was a sigh from the doctor’s end, and I readied myself to hear The Speech.

  “Well, as you know, the longer the synapses take to reconnect, the less chance you’ll have that they’ll ever do so.”

  “Yes, Doctor. So I’ve been told.”

  “Any hallucinations? Schizophrenic episodes?”

  “No. Never. Vivid dreams, that’s about it.”

  “Hmm. Maybe you should come in to discuss your options. I’d like to meet with you. There may still be a path we can take.”

  I was only half-listening. Many, many other doctors had had their hopes dashed in the past. I, however, had stopped hoping years ago. I’d accepted that my condition was permanent, and didn’t really feel like wasting any more time chasing down a pipe dream.

  But then I had the vision of how excited my father looked this morning, and reluctantly realized that I didn’t want to let him down. “Sure, Doc. It can’t hurt to hear you out.”

  “No guarantees, you understand.”

  “Of course.”

  “Are you free later this month? Let’s say Monday the twenty-second, around two o’clock?”

  “I believe I am.”

  “Wonderful. I’ll have my receptionist text you the address.”

  “Sure thing, thanks. See you then.”

  I’d been absently pacing the sidewalk as I spoke with Dr. Mandelbaum. By the time I hung up, I was completely distracted. I must have turned a little too abruptly to head into the diner... because I managed to slam into a woman coming out the door.

  The collision almost knocked me off my feet, and sent her coffee cup hurtling to the ground.

  “Puñeta!” she said, staring at the spilled drink.