numbers
It was six months before he figured it out. You could find a seven if you got up for sunrise, an eight at pilates. Mondays were slow and Fridays were overloaded. But mid-week, when the boardwalk was humming, there was the perfect amount on the beachfront. Limby figures in alo crop tops. Glossy lipstick and little poochies. And he could peer through the dark lenses of his wayfarers, counting nines and tens as they walked past him, oblivious.
“Two hundred and twenty seven,” he said as he sat down in the booth.
“What?” Willem looked up from the menu.
“HBs walking from 5th and Santa Monica to Venice. Can you believe that?”
Willem shook his head.
“At least fifteen tens on the way here, I caught one coming out of the rest room just now.”
Willem glanced at the waitress but she was already looking across. She smiled at him awkwardly and fiddled with her t-shirt.
“What can I get you?” she said, smiling.
“I’ll take a matcha with oat milk and a slice of the avocado toast on the side,” Willem said politely. “Jay?”
“Give me a sec,” he said, scanning the menu. He looked up at the waitress, she was thin, attractive in a girl-next-door available kind of way. Narrow with a kind face, only a light touch of blusher, a seven point two, sub seven without makeup.
“What do you recommend?” he asked.
“Well, the salmon rolls are on offer,” the waitress began, “and today’s special is the crab bisque with watercress which I hear is good.”
“No,” he said, shaking his head, “I want to you know what you like,”
She paused. “I’m vegetarian. I’ve only had the salad and the avocado toast,” she said, “like your friend.”
Jay stared at her. “If I wanted to eat like a rabbit,” he said, “I’d go to Petco.”
She looked at him and then at Willem awkwardly. Willem gave her a half-apologetic smile.
“What would I like?” he said out loud, returning to the menu. They sat for half a minute whilst he read out the options - lobster bisque, cheese burger, chicken fettuccine, noodles, carbonara with extra cream - asking for her opinion on each and to which she replied “I don’t know.”
“Ok,” Jay said eventually, “it's steak day, today.” She jotted it down on the pad.
“Anything else?”
“No fries,” he instructed and looked down at his forearm peeking out from under his t-shirt.
She smiled thinly and then repeated their order but Jay, unsatisfied, pulled out the menu and was about to instruct another change until Willem cut him off.
“Every time,” he stared at Jay. There was a moment of silence as the waitress watched them staring at each other.
“What?” Jay replied, his eyes narrowed, but Willem only looked at him with a weary expression that reminded him of his father. His face grew hot and reddened as Willem stared, letting the silence grow between them until it was angry.
“We’re good, thanks.” Willem said politely. The waitress smiled - two tiny dimples forming in her cheeks - and returned to the bar.
“Mr Serious,” Jay said jovially. “Waitresses, eh?”
“What’s so important it can’t wait for the weekend?” Willem ignored him.
Jay looked at him, disappointed, then then craned his neck to peer over the booth opposite, and behind. “I met this guy,” he began when we he was sure no one could hear them.
“It’s about time –” Willem said sarcastically.
“Yeah right,” Jay blurted out, “you wish I was gay.”
Willem frowned.
“I met this guy that’s blowing up right now doing looksmaxxxing.”
“What?” Willem asked.
“Maxxing bro,” Jay clapped the table, “how you ascend to mog the betas.”
“Ascend?”
“Get better looking dude –” He stopped abruptly.
“Here’s your drinks,” the waitress appeared with their order. “One water” she placed the glass in front of Jay, “and your matcha latte,” she glanced at Willem. “Anything else?” she smiled at him again brushing the hair away from her face.
“We’re great, thanks,” Willem smiled back. The skin around her cheeks appeared to redden and she tilted her head girlishly, then excused herself and left.
“Like that man,” Jay said, pointing at her as she walked to the bar.
“Like what?”
“See the way she looked at you? She didn’t look at me.” Jay said matter of factly.
“You probably creeped her out with the whole ordering thing.”
“Nah chicks love that,” Jay said, “besides she was foaming over you before I came in.”
Willem frowned. “How would you know?”
“I was watching her from the street.”
“Jesus.” Willem glanced out the window.
“Look man. The only way chicks like that pick between guys like you and me is looks, money, and status. From here, she can’t tell anything about us apart from your STW and your clavicular.”
“What?” Willem said, taking a sip of the latte.
Jay made a short, half-irritated noise, bothered that he again had to explain this to Willem who seemed never to get it. “Girls want guys with angular faces and the widest shoulder to waist ratio. Chisel jaw and triangle body, you know?”
“That’s not true.” Willem replied.
“Dude, I hate it when you pretend to be stupid about this stuff. You could have a lobotomy and chicks would still want to fuck you. Look –” he pointed at the bar and Willem glanced up. The waitress who just a second before had been staring at him lost and without pretension suddenly bolted upright, alarmed, and began tidying a half-empty glass from the bar.
Willem smiled at her awkwardly. He turned to Jay and shrugged.
“It’s always been like this,” Jay continued, “ever since I’ve known you, you’ve pretended like girls aren’t interested in you. And we get it, you’re being a nice guy, not making the rest of us feel like chumps, blah blah. Remember college? Brianna Mayworth?”
Willem broke into a half-smile and then quickly tried to hide it.
“‘Is there any girl alive who doesn’t want to sleep with Willem Lancaster?’ That’s what she said at prom.” Jay looked at Willem.
“She was drunk.”
“Yeah, but not blind.”
Willem shook his head.
“How can anyone change the way they look? Tell me you’re not getting surgery.” Willem said.
“Surgery is for chumps. If you do the workouts he recommends - drop your body fat percentage below 12% - your cheek bones naturally appear in your face. Then you chew on a towel to max your jaw. Turns out the exercises orthopedic surgeons give to jaw patients are the same ones that turn into fucking Henry Cavill.”
“That’s absurd." Willem looked at him.
“Is it?,” Jay pulled open his phone. He leant across the table to show Willem side profiles of men from a forum with before and afters from other guys who’d been chewing gym towels, resin gums and what looked like a stick to harden them out.
“This is so dumb.”
“Check this guy,” Jay leafed to a picture this time of a man in his early thirties, a before and after. In the first there was a fuller, healthier if puppy-looking quality to his face, but in the after a kind of gaunt, over-exposed shadow had appeared under his cheek bones, luke the contours of an old wreck emerging from the sea. His eyes had taken on glassy, vacant quality that gave him an unusual, morbid appearance.
“Who is that?”
“That is 8% body fat,” Jay said enthusiastically, “look at this guy!”
“He doesn’t look well.”
“Chicks love it –” the next picture showed the same man on a private jet, lying supine across an executive leather arm chair - a group of beautiful women with boutique handbags were flopped over him like a family portrait.
Willem sighed and looked up. “Jay, why are you showing me this?”
“He’s looking for sign-ups.”
“To chew towels? I’ll pass thanks.”
“Not you. He wants hot guys to compete with his students. On the promenade.”
“Compete? What for?”
Jay nodded. “For girls of course. He wants to prove in sixty days he can get any guy picking up the hottest babes.”
“But why are you asking me?”
“Are you brain dead?” Jay pointed again at the waitress who was emptying glasses in between snatching short, secretive glances at Willem, “he needs good-looking dudes.”
“We’re in LA.” Willem shrugged. “There’s loads of hot guys.”
“Well,” Jay replied, pausing for a moment and lowering his voice, “He needs broke hot guys.”
Willem pulled back, his eyebrows raised. For a moment he lost sense of place, his eyes searching around the bar. “What?”
“Willem,” Jay said, lowering his voice again. He softened his eyes into the best sympathetic look he could muster, the same one he used on girls when they weren’t sure about his sincerity. “I know money’s tight right now. Your play got cancelled and auditions are slow. This is a good opportunity to make an easy buck. You don’t have to do anything.”
Willem leant back against the booth uncomfortably. “I’m fine, thanks.” He glanced at Jay but then downwards at the table.
“Dude, you’re thirty.” Jay said. “You can’t not pay your rent. What are you going to do? Go back to living in your car again?”
Willem looked away, staring out the window. The memory of Malcolm finding a final notice on his door mat flashed into his mind and he even though he knew he shouldn’t, he suddenly felt a sting of betrayal.
“Now’s not the time to be proud,” Jay said, tapping the table with his fingertips. He checked his watch, a Swiss boutique piece he’d seen in a men’s fashion magazine and bought immediately after discovering it was the same as his favourite influencer.
Willem didn’t say anything for a while and the two of them sat in an awkward silence listening to the restaurants lo-fi soundtrack eeking through the speakers.
“What does money have to do with it?” Willem said after a while.
“Because then it proves it’s about looks and not status.”
“So what are we supposed to do, approach the same girls?”
“Exactly. The beta guy goes first. Then the alpha - that’s you - and there’s a crew after that follows up and ask who she rated more.”
“That doesn't prove anything. I mean - what if she just likes what I say more?”
“That’s the thing - you’re going to have a script. You say the same thing every time - that way it has nothing to do with your personality.”
“That is the least authentic thing ever.”
“Exactly,” Jay smirked.
“What?”
“It proves the point that women don’t care.” Jay took a sip of water and put the glass down. “If you’re good looking enough, you’ll still get her number.”
“How is this going to help anyone?” Willem said, surprised. “These guys would be way better off focusing on their lives than their looks.”
“Well if you think that,” Jay smiled, “then prove it.”
“I —” Willem began but the waitress arrived and he paused to let her set the dishes down. Of course he’d been loosely aware she’d been looking at him from the bar - it wasn’t the first time things like that had happened, he’d always attracted more attention than the others - but now he noticed that her arm was slightly shaking with the dish as she placed the avocado down on the table, spilled it against his cup.
“Oh my god” she said, suddenly alarmed. “I’m so sorry,” she flapped, wiping the table with a serviette. She looked at him, her face reddening and touched the little pearl earring in her lobe, smiling awkwardly.
“It’s fine, thank you,” Willem smiled at her. She half-smiled and left quickly.
Jay made his palms into little “V” and cupped his face in it. “I’m sorry” he made an impression of her. “Please Willem,” he implored, “Please will you take my number?”
“Yeah, yeah.”
“I’m telling you man,” Jay said, placing a piece of steak in his mouth and chewing it, “sixty days, sixty days and I’ll look like fucking Jude Law. And not the old, bald Vladimir Putin playing Jude Law. The hot, young fucking Sienna Milller and the house maid Jude Law.”
Willem laughed. Of all Jay’s personality faults, and there were many, he had the ability to make all of them feel connected back to their college days when the considerations of life seemed much simpler, when bills were paid as if by magic (in reality, their parents), and when their dreams seemed like something that would in all likelihood come true. “Ok let’s say this guy’s right.”
“He is.” Jay said quickly.
“And girls find a guy with a stronger jawline and pecks more attractive. That isn’t going to fix his insecurity.”
“Sure it is. Dating a ten will fix that right away.” Jay looked at Willem and pouted nonchalantly. “Dating multiple tens will eliminate it.”
Willem shook his head. “Women might be attracted to looks, but what makes them stay is confidence, authenticity, and security.”
“That’s what money’s for,” Jay said, his mouth half-full of spinach leaves.
“That’s just compensation.” Willem sighed. “Besides, do you really want a girl that wants you or a Porsche?”
“How about both,” Jay replied.
Willem rolled his eyes.
The waitress suddenly reappeared, looking at Willem. “How’s everything with your order?”
“It’s great thanks,” Willem said. Jay placed another piece of steak in his mouth and ignored her.
“Hey,” Willem called to her as she was turning to leave, “About earlier. I’m sorry about that. My friend gets nervous in front of pretty girls, especially ones he likes.”
Jay alarmed, suddenly looked up.
“What he meant to say was he liked your top.” He pointed at her t-shirt. “He likes The Ramones too.”
“Oh,” she said smiling, looking down at her top and then at Jay, “really?”
Jay, suddenly red in the face was glaring at Willem furiously. He turned to her and managed to nod but didn’t say anything.
“That was all.” Willem said, stretching an arm across the booth.
“Well, thanks,” she said, “you’re cute too” she smiled at Jay and left.
“What did you do that for?” Jay said, suddenly terse. “I haven’t listened to The Ramones since we were eighteen.”
Willem shrugged. “She said you’re cute, didn’t she?”
Jay stared at him. Willem smiled and tapped the table with his fingers. They ate mostly in silence and when the bill came, Jay waved Willem’s wallet away. As the waitress took the check, she lingered for a moment at the table, waiting for a second with the receipt balanced delicately on the tray. She smiled at Jay but he only looked at her shyly, then glanced down at the floor and left.