Within thirty minutes of talking to Jaymie, I knew more about her than she knew about herself. I had met many women like her over the years, most often in a bar just like this one—ground floor of a mid-level hotel, the kind where men wore button-up shirts and chinos but no one wore a suit. Jaymie described herself and her life in terms of absence: what she hadn’t had, hadn’t experienced, hadn’t done. She had never been outside this city, never had a passport, never held a job other than secretary at her father’s car dealership, never married.
I had slept with many women like that, and it was comforting to know I could give them an exciting night—something they could keep, revisit, turn over in their minds for years. For me, it was routine: meet someone attractive in a city I was visiting for work. For them, it was once in a lifetime.
Her wide, curious eyes moved over my face, then dropped to my drink.
“What is that?” she asked.
“A martini. Haven’t you had one?”
She shook her head, smiling. “No.”
Of course not. When would she have? While stapling sales reports for her father? Drinking with the same friends she’d had since high school, all of them circling the same few zip codes? I doubted she’d ever seen a palm tree in person. Probably never been on a plane. I wondered if she could even drive—certainly not a stick shift. She wouldn’t know what to do with my Porsche back home, parked beside my wife’s practical SUV, the one used to shuttle kids from soccer to ballet to school and back again.
There was something irresistible about that kind of woman—sheltered, impressed by the smallest details, eager to be shown things. She didn’t have to be beautiful. What mattered was she wouldn’t question me. I could tell her anything. I could say martinis originated in Rome, subsidized by the Vatican in the seventeenth century, and she would believe it. She might repeat it someday, recounting the most exciting night of her life: meeting a man in a hotel bar and ending up in his penthouse suite. She would carry the lie without ever suspecting it was one.
“Do you know how martinis were invented?” I asked.
Her face lit up. “No. How?”
_____________________________________________________
Jessica waited until the man beside her fell asleep. What had he said his name was? Jason? Jeremy? It didn’t matter. It probably wasn’t real. Jaymie wasn’t her name, after all.
Once he started snoring, she slipped out of bed and gathered her clothes. She glanced around the room and smiled. He was so full of shit—from calling this deluxe room a penthouse to fabricating the history of martinis. He truly seemed to believe she’d never had one before. They were in Milwaukee, not some isolated farming commune.
She had certainly preferred other cities, but this year’s International Research Psychology Conference was held here. At least it wasn’t snowing.
She’d attended just enough sessions to be seen, to shake hands, to ensure her colleagues knew she’d shown up—without getting trapped in Dr. Molorov’s presentation on adolescent vaping typologies or the panel on alcohol and intimate partner violence. The abstracts alone were exhausting. Years of funding, decades of expertise, all circling truths anyone with eyes already knew.
Conferences looked good on her CV, but they had little to do with the bulk of her work: teaching six sections of Psych 101. Freshmen who didn’t want to be there and business majors who thought one psychology class would turn them into master manipulators. No, Jeremy—it just meant you might vaguely remember that someone once trained pigeons to play ping pong. Oh. That was his name. Jeremy.
As the elevator descended, she felt a flicker of satisfaction. The sex hadn’t been good, but that wasn’t the point. What she enjoyed was the ease of it—how readily he accepted the version of her he wanted. The act always revealed the same thing: how many men assumed women were sheltered, waiting to be instructed. With a little more time, she probably could have convinced him she couldn’t drive, boil an egg, or open a PDF. He wanted to believe her lies.
Back in her own room, she showered and dressed. She took the wedding ring from her purse and slid it back onto her finger. She should text her husband.
Long day at the conference, babe. Lots of networking. Think I found a potential collaborator for my next project. Love you. Headed to bed.
He replied immediately: a thumbs-up, a heart.
She lay down, already dreading the flight home, but ready to be back home in Miami. Before sleeping, she answered a few emails—most earned a copied response directing students to the syllabus. In the morning, she would present her own research, which, if she were honest, mattered no more than most of what surrounded it. Years of studies, grants, students cycled through the lab, all to move understanding forward by the smallest degree.
She turned off the light.
Tomorrow, she would stand, unsure, at a podium, but speak with authority.
Tonight, she had played dumb—and it had worked exactly as expected.
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