NORTH VILLAGE
"No offense, Cat, but you don't seem be very lucky when it comes to gambling."
Mia Mannix was lying flat on her back, staring up at the ceiling. Dressed in a pair of tight-fitting jeans, a pink bra, and nothing else, she was on the floor of the living room, sipping her margarita.
"Screw you," Cat shot back. "I usually turn out okay. It's just that the funniest stories to tell are the ones where I've lost. Those are the ones that I've made an ass out of myself."
She paused, thinking about that statement for a second. "Or, you know, flaunt my ass."
Cat McIntyre was usually pretty lucky. Last month, she'd won nearly two hundred dollars in the office basketball pool. And then, last week, she had gotten into a fight with Spencer Wesley-Brandt about who originally wrote Jimi Hendrix's "Spanish Castle Magic," and bet him his office. Spencer was ultimately proved wrong, which meant that Cat now had an amazing view from her office, right over 28th Street and into Sentinel Park. Spencer was stuck looking at the side of an old movie theatre.
But, given the two examples of Cat's gambling-gone-wrong that she'd just recounted for Mia, she could understand how Mia had gotten the impression she was unlucky.
"Whatever," Mia just brushed Cat's defensive position aside. "I still can't believe you got naked at work. Was everything okay afterwards?"
Cat thought back to the week following her nudist stint at Wonderstorm Entertainment. Things had definitely been awkward at first, but no more so than they'd been the week before, when she'd actually been naked. At first, everyone sort of avoided talking about the whole thing, which had been terribly uncomfortable. Eventually, though, Cat just began joking about it, and soon everything returned to normal.
Cat was attractive, which meant that no one in the office had been terribly put off by her nudity. Sure, the women probably would have preferred to look at a naked man, but Cat certainly wasn't painful on the eyes, no matter the gender or the sexual preference of her audience. She was tall and thin, with shoulder-length brown hair that she'd been trying to grow out for a few months now. She had large (but not enormous) breasts, which spent most of their time hidden by the C-cups of her bra...with an exception now and then.
Mia couldn't believe that Cat had gotten naked at work? CAT couldn't believe that Cat had gotten naked at work. In the weeks that followed the incident, she wrestled with her feelings of both embarrassment and excitement. It had been right for her to be embarrassed, but it had been wrong for her to become turned on. Cat eventually just wrote off the latter emotion - it had been a crazy week, and she had been stressed because of the nudity thing. Honestly, it was probably natural to get a little turned on, but Cat wasn't eager to repeat her show; she had been dressing much more conservatively around the office since her naked week - she didn't want everyone in the office thinking that she was some sort of exhibitionist slut.
"Yeah, it turned out okay," Cat replied. The whole week she'd been stripping naked at work, she hadn't said a single word about it to her roommate. Cat and Mia had definitely gotten closer since they'd moved to Babylon together last year, but Cat had been too embarrassed about her lost bets to bring them up even with Mia.
Mia and Cat had known each other at Green College, but it would have been a stretch to say that they had been friends. They had a lot of mutual friends, and they had hung out together from time to time, but that had been about it. Cat spent a good portion of her time with the track runners and other athletes, while Mia spent hers with mostly Drama students. After graduation, though, Cat had been hired by Wonderstorm Entertainment, and Mia had been signed on as a cast member in a Babylon-based production of "Rent." They had both been looking for a roommate, and had lucked out with each other.
"Did I tell you they're sending me to French Polynesia?" Cat asked.
Mia rolled her eyes. Cat had been asking the same question over and over and over again, all evening. She was ecstatic about being asked to go on any business trip, but a chance to go to Bora Bora was just unbelievable. So excited about the trip, she'd been repeating it out loud since she'd gotten home from work.
"Damn it girl," Mia began chiding her roommate, "I'm happy for you. Just stop rubbing it in my face."
Leo Kelly himself had selected Cat for the trip. Wonderstorm Entertainment was interested in acquiring a game called "Woocurai," a game currently available only in Japan. "Woocurai" meant "War Cry" in Japanese, and the higher-ups in Wonderstorm were salivating over the game. Kelly had been working with a representative from Tekkei Electronics for months now, trying to woo them with offers so that Wonderstorm could release the game in America. After five different offers, Tekkei had finally accepted, much to Kelly's absolute joy.
"The deal's pretty much done," Kelly had explained to a small cadre of people in his office that morning. "All that's really left to do is ink the papers, and worked out some of the smaller details. So, for that, I'll be sending Elsa Lindsay from Financial, Cat McIntyre from Advertising, and my son, to meet with Okura Koremasu and his people in Bora Bora."
Everyone had balked. Wonderstorm was really going to send people to French Polynesia just to finish this deal?
"We're doing our best to prove that we're a big name player," Kelly had explained after seeing their face. "Yes, it's going to cost the company some money to pay for the flights and stays of both our people and Koremasu's people. But ultimately, I think 'Woocurai' is going to be a big thing for Wonderstorm, so it's worth every expense."
Cat leaned back on the couch. She herself was wearing nothing but jeans and white bra. She and Mia were both fairly comfortable around each other. They'd spent the evening watching television, drinking, and talking. It wasn't odd for Mia to strip down to her bra around the apartment, as she was a dancer and was used to skimpy clothing, and it was becoming less and less odd for Cat to join her.
Her body may have been still here, in her crummy two--bedroom apartment in the North Village, but her mind was already in French Polynesia, lying on the beach, in just her swimsuit.
OLD KINDERHOOK
"Okura Koremasu," Elsa said, the syllables rolling off her tongue. "Kor-eh-mah-su."
Elsa, Cat, and Jay Kelly were all sitting around a table in Jay's office, going over background on Tekkei and its representatives. Elsa, currently, was reading up on one of the companies executive vice presidents, Okura Koremasu.
Elsa was only twenty-seven years old, but she'd been at Wonderstorm Entertainment for just over five years, right after she'd finished college at Sussex University in downtown Babylon. She was comfortable at Wonderstorm's financial department, and she was good at her job. Short, chin-length black hair surrounded a thin face, with thin lips and hauntingly beautiful green eyes. She had been married, and then divorced, all before she reached twenty-six.
"Okay, okay," Jay replied as Elsa sounded out Koremasu's name one more time. Jay was a fairly patient guy, but he wasn't sure how many times he could listen to Elsa repeat the rep's name. "Could we stop with the koremasu-ing?"
There were some at the office who thought that Jay's position as Vice President for Corporate Relations just screamed nepotism. His father, after all, was Leonard Kelly, the president of Wonderstorm Entertainment. But, the bottom line was that Leo Kelly had started the company himself, and no matter how much Wonderstorm had grown, it was still his company. He made the decisions, he hired the vice presidents.
To be fair, though, Jay could have easily gotten the job on merit alone. At thirty-three years old, Jacob Kelly had a resume that would have impressed a president or CEO at any company, having worked as a banker for Citation Trust for a while, the head of Financial Services as the law firm Howe Associates, and the head of corporate development for Umbra Biotechnologies. When Jay had left this last job, he'd been the target of corporate headhunters everywhere. Ultimately, though, he wanted to work with his dad, and that had been more important to him than a larger paycheck.
Cat had been a little uncomfortable around Jay since Marcus Hale had told her that Leo Kelly had been eyeing her as a possible girlfriend for his son. Even her selection to the trip to Bora Bora was suspect - was this just a chance for Kelly to put Cat and Jay together? Cat had mulled over this thought ever since Kelly had first brought it up a week ago. In the end though, Cat wondered if it was really such a bad thing. After all, this would be her chance to shine, to show how good she was at her job. And if she had to spend time with Jay Kelly? Not really such a bad thing.
Aside from being relatively powerful within Wonderstorm Entertainment, rich from the significant salaries from his previous jobs, and extremely intelligent, Jay was amazingly good looking. He had a strong, chiseled jaw, and curly black hair, and eyes that seemed to see right into you. Cat's only problem was that he was a little cocky, and always had to be right. Cat herself suffered from this latter problem, as well, which meant that sometimes the two could get into heated arguments about insignificant things. Like the etymology of the word "okay."
"O.K." Elsa replied. "OK! His initials are OK! Is that OK with you, Mr. Kelly?"
Jay looked up from the paperwork he'd been studying, giving Elsa a warning look. For a few minutes, it seemed to work.
"What does OK actually stand for?" the black-haired woman asked the two others.
"Oh, I actually know this," Cat replied. She rested the manila folder she'd been reading through on her lap. "I took an early American history class at Green, and we went over all of the first bunch of presidents. 'OK' started off as a nickname for Martin Van Buren."
"MVB?" Elsa asked, not understanding what Cat meant.
"No, it's for 'Old Kinderhook,'" Cat explained. "It was his hometown. A bunch of Van Buren's supporters started the OK Club, and began using the letters all over the place. It sort of developed into its current meaning because if Van Buren was for it, it had to be good - it was OK."
"Huh," Elsa said. "That's kind of stupid."
"And it's wrong." Jay looked up at the two women.
"Excuse me?" Cat replied. "That's a fact. I remember hearing my prof explain the whole thing."
"Maybe your prof was wrong," Jay ventured. "OK comes from an advertising campaign, for soap or something like that, in the early 1800s. Before Van Buren."
"No way," the brunette defended herself. "No way. You're just going to have to back down on this one, Jay-Jay. I'm right."
Jay looked at the young brunette. There was nearly ten years of difference between the two in age, but she delighted in calling him Jay-Jay, the childish name that Leo Kelly still called him when he thought that no one was around. Jay didn't bother responding with words again. Instead, he put his wallet on the table, and pulled twenty dollars out.
"Twenty bucks?" Cat scoffed. "That's it? You're not very sure about yourself, are you?"
"Well," Jay said, looking at the girl slyly, "I could always put underwear up for the wager."
Cat turned bright right out of embarrassment. She didn't know how Jay had heard about the bet (his father, maybe?), but she was glad that it hadn't traveled around too much, because Elsa didn't know what he was talking about.
"What?" Elsa asked. "What about underwear?"
Cat and Jay shared eye contact for a second. Jay wasn't going to try to embarrass Cat further. But he had made his point.
"Fine," Cat replied. "Twenty bucks."
