numbers
It took six months to figure it out. Sevens at sunrise, eights at sunset. Mondays were too slow but Fridays were too busy. Mid-week, when the boardwalk was humming with locals, you could stretch your legs almost any time of day and limby girls in alo crop tops would be wandering the path with their little pooches and foam coffees and he could peer through the dark shades of his glasses, counting the nines and tens as they walked past, oblivious.
“Two hundred and twenty seven,” Jay 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 straightened the bottom of her shirt.
“What can I get you guys?” she asked.
“I’ll take a matcha with oat milk and a slice of the avocado toast on the side,” Willem said politely. “Jay?”
“Hold on,” he said, scanning the menu. He looked at the waitress. She was thin, attractive in a girl-next-door available kind of way. Narrow and with a kind face, only a light touch of make-up, a seven point two, sub seven without foundation.
“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 shook his head, “What do you like?”
“I’m vegetarian.” She paused. “I’ve only had the salad and the avocado toast,” she smiled at Willem, “like your friend.”
Jay frowned. “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.
“Ok,” Jay said eventually, “it's steak day.” She jotted it down on the pad.
“Anything else?”
“No fries,” he instructed looking down at the 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 when Willem cut him off.
“Every time,” he stared at Jay.
“What?” Jay replied, his eyes narrowed, but Willem only looked at him with a weary expression that reminded him of his father and he started to feel his face growing red as Willem only stared at him blankly, letting the silence grow between them until it was a roar.
“We’re good, thanks.” Willem said politely. The waitress smiled - two tiny dimples forming in her cheeks - and returned to the bar.
“Alright, Mr Serious,” Jay said jovially. “Waitresses, eh?”
Willem ignored him. “What’s so important it can’t wait for the weekend?”
Jay looked at him, deciding not to pursue the matter further and then craned his neck to peer into the booth opposite, and then the same again behind. When he was sure no one could hear them, he began. “So I met this guy.”
“It’s about time –” Willem said sarcastically.
Jay frowned. “Yeah right,” he blurted, “you wish I was gay.”
Willem smiled.
“He’s blowing up right now in looksmaxxxing.”
“What?” Willem asked.
“Looksmaxxing,” Jay clapped the table, “it’s how you ascend to mog the betas.”
“Mog?”
“Get better looking dude –”
“Here’s your drinks,” the waitress appeared with their order. “Water” she placed the glass in front of Jay, “and your matcha latte,” she glanced at Willem. “Anything else?” she smiled at him, brushing the hair away from her face.
“We’re good, thanks,” Willem smiled at her. The skin around her cheeks redden slightly and she tilted her head girlishly. She 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 even 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, 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 ago had been staring at him lost and without pretension suddenly bolted upright, alarmed at being seen, and began washing an already-clean glass on the bar.
Willem 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. And we get it, you’re being a nice guy, not making the rest of us feel like chumps. 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 graduation prom.” Jay looked at Willem.
“She was drunk.”
“Yeah, 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. Then you chew on a towel to bust out your jaw. Turns out the exercises they give to jaw patients are the same ones that turn you 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 in one to be 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, like 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.
“What is that?”
“That is 8% body fat,” Jay said enthusiastically, “look at this guy!”
“He doesn’t look well.”
“The women disagree –” 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.
“Jay”, Willem sighed and looked up at him. “Why are you showing me this?”
“He’s looking for sign-ups.”
“To eat towels? I’ll pass thanks.”
“Not for the program. He wants hot guys to compete with his students. On the promenade.”
“Compete? For what?”
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 me?”
“Are you brain dead?” Jay pointed again at the waitress who was emptying glasses in between snatching 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 looked at Jay but then glanced down at the table.
“Dude, you’re thirty.” Jay said, watching Willem stare at his coffee. “You can’t not pay your rent. What are you going to do? Go back to living in your car again?”
Willem looked away from Jay and stared out the window. A 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 felt a sting of betrayal.
“Now’s not the time for pride,” 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 one as Tom Holland.
The two of them sat in a silence for a while. The sound of lo-fi pop music rumbling through the restaurants speakers. Willem not wanting to say anything.
“What does money have to do with it?” he asked 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 asks who she rated more.”
“That doesn't prove anything. I mean - what if she just likes what one of us says?”
“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, mortified.
Jay made his hands into little “V” shape 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? And my virginity?”
“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 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 said.
“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. After that they ate largely in silence except for a few clipped comments about how their other friends were doing. When the bill came, Jay waved Willem 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, waiting for him to say something or ask for her number, but he only glanced at her, then looked at the floor.