“Hi, I’m Kate,” said the drink-ordering cute brunette with shoulder-length hair. She pulled her friend-of-honor closer so that Jake and the bachelorette stood face-to-face. “This is Paula. She is getting married next week.”
“I figured as much,” Jake replied, lightly flicking the bachelorette’s ridiculous looking tiara with his finger.
“You wanna help us out with her scavenger list?”
“Sure he does,” the bartender answered for Jake before he had a chance to think about it.
Jake scanned the list on the girl’s shirt. A kiss he could do. A public spanking was within the realm of possibility if he kept drinking.
“What about your boxers?” Kate asked.
Jake looked up and tried to remember what he was wearing under his khaki cargo shorts. He turned away, pulled up his t-shirt, and pulled out the top of his boxers. A reasonably new pair with a conservative dark green checked pattern. He turned back toward the ladies who tugged at his waist to get a look at the goods up for negotiation.
“I’ll tell you what. Let me have another beer or two and I’ll think about giving you my boxers.”
The ladies cheered. Paula the bachelorette grabbed Jake’s beer off the bar and pushed it toward his lips. He drank as fast as he could, beer trickling from the corners of his mouth. He wiped the beer from his face and swiped at the drips on the front of his shirt. He apologized for his lack of manners to the heart-breaking brunette with mesmerizing brown eyes.
“If you give me your phone number, I’ll give your friend my boxers,” Jake said, backed by the confidence of four beers.
“Deal.”
“I’ll be right back,” Jake said hopping off the stool and heading toward the restrooms in the back of the bar, beyond the pool table.
“Where are you going?” Kate asked.
“To take off my boxers.”
“No, no, no. You have to take them off in front of us. Right, ladies?” Kate said. More cheers and one “hell yeah” shot from the group.
Jake moved back to his stool. “I’m not drunk enough for that.”
“No boxers, no number,” Kate taunted.
Jake’s reinforcements rolled through the door halfway through his next beer. Tim and Aaron divided the sea of eight ladies who encircled Jake and were taking turns pulling at the waist of his knee-length shorts.
“What do we have going on here?” Aaron asked, dressed in a suit and fresh from another day of summer employment at a Washington think-tank that analyzed world migration.
“Hey guys,” Jake answered. He turned toward the women and made introductions. “Ladies, meet Tim and Aaron.”
The women surrounded the new recruits and began tugging at the belts of the complete strangers. There was something magical about inebriated girls out on the town for a bachelorette party.
While Aaron entertained the ladies with his well-rehearsed pick-up lines and shovels of bullshit, Tim, wearing old Birkenstocks and a t-shirt, pulled Jake aside. “We bought tickets for Europe this morning. It’s still not too late to go.” Judging by his attire, Tim was already in boarding-pass mode.
“Not going to make it. Cash is a little tight at the moment.”
“I can loan you the money. I’ll hit my parents up for it. I’ll tell them my car needs some work. They live in Colorado. They’ll never know. It’s going to be the trip of a lifetime. Six guys, hitting the highlights of Europe. French, Spanish, and Italian women.”
“Those are the highlights of Europe?”
“Is there anything else?”
“I’d love to go. If something changes, you’ll be the first to know.”
“It’d be good for you. Take your mind off things.”
“I’d love to, but I can’t.”
“Suit yourself. But if you aren’t going to go, at least let me buy you a beer,” Tim said, motioning toward the bartender.
The evening turned into a blur. The guys crashed the bachelorette party and led them on a pub-crawl up Connecticut Avenue past DuPont Circle. They stood back and watched the ladies get nine of the ten items on the bachelorette scavenger list. Then they added another ten X-rated tasks on the back of her t-shirt in permanent marker.
In the middle of the action, with an early nineties disco remake pumping in the background, Jake magically took off his boxers without removing his shorts, a feat no one at the packed bar had ever seen before. The drinking lasted until just after midnight, when a member of the bachelorette’s party didn’t return from a trip to the restroom. A waitress approached the group and asked if they knew a redhead in a black skirt. Tim and Aaron helped drag the semi-conscious, kamikaze-loving girl from the tile floor and put her in a cab.
In the midst of the commotion, Jake and Kate made their exit. No one noticed their departure until they were in a taxi of their own, making out in the back seat. ***
Lee Chang made his daily call to the bank, and with the afternoon wire transfer settlement, the money poured in. He transferred the money to a bank in Shanghai under a different name and closed the account in Hong Kong. He moved the money to two other accounts, which he also closed behind him with zero balances. By the time his cousin withdrew the funds from a bank in Beijing, the person at the end of the money trail was a gray mist.
Like taking candy from a baby.
Lee Chang took out two more pictures and smiled. Certainly a man who is willing to pay one hundred thousand dollars would be willing to pay five hundred thousand, he thought. Maybe even a cool million.
Chapter 4
Jake woke up before Kate, his bare ass facing the ceiling uncovered. He looked over at the girl he had met the night before and was thankful she looked as good as he had thought with alcohol surging through his veins. He fought the natural male desire to quietly slink out of the apartment, but had no idea where he had left his clothes. The sun was up, but it was still too early for someone with a hangover to try getting vertical. For the last year, he had been trained to wake up at dawn to care for his mother, and he was still re-learning how to sleep in. He put his head under the pillow and fell back into a fitful sleep.
When he opened his eyes again, Kate was sitting on the bed wearing only a t-shirt, her back against the headboard.
“Good morning, Jake,” she said sheepishly, flipping through the latest issue of Cosmopolitan.
“Good morning,” he answered, pulling himself slowly into a seated position next to her.
Both of them wanted to say something mature. Kate took a first stab at it.
“Jake, you know I’ve never slept with someone on the first date before.”
“Technically it wasn’t a date,” Jake replied.
So much for maturity.
“You know what I mean. I’m not the type of girl who goes around having one-night stands,” Kate said.
“Well believe it or not, neither do I,” Jake replied honestly. He leaned over and kissed her on the cheek. It seemed like the right thing to do.
Kate went to the fridge and returned with two glasses of orange juice.
“Do you need some aspirin?” she asked.
“No, I’ll suffer through the pain. It’ll remind me why I don’t drink.”
They sat on the bed and talked, Jake still naked beneath the bed sheet wrapped around his waist.
“So you’re a medical student?”
“Third year at GW.”
“Med school sounds like a lot of studying.”
“The first few years were hard. It gets easier. Or maybe you just get used to it.”