Lay the Favorite by Beth Raymer Page A

than the president of a successful business.
    Tension peaked just after Webmaster’s fortieth birthday, when he purchased a yellow Mercedes Kompressor convertible. Webmaster preferred driving it sans shirt, as if to match his topless ride. The thick, black hair covering his shoulders, chest, and belly rolls gleamed in the sunlight. At red lights, he spritzed himself withice water and suggested to whoever was in the passenger seat that she too take her shirt off. In no time at all, we ran out of excuses as to why we couldn’t accompany him on his afternoon rides. Straws were drawn to decide who would steal his hard drive. We told him one last lie, got what we wanted, and faded from his life.
    I was never able to find another Webmaster. Enthusiasm waned. One girl died of a drug overdose. I met a cute film student and over dinner one night he asked me to move out west with him. He was one of the few people to whom I showed my Web site, and he praised me. Not for how good my twin and I looked in sexy French maid outfits, but for the short stories I posted each week about what the girls were up to in their personal lives. He suggested we work at his parents’ Thai restaurant for a few months, save some money, and then move to L.A. We would write scripts together, he said, and turn them into movies. We arrived in Vegas, broke up, and when I needed the money, I took the solitaire diamond necklace that had been a present from Webmaster and, severing my last tie to that world, pawned it for ninety-five dollars.
    There were two people in my life who knew that about me.
    Now three.
    I relaxed my shoulders and waited for Dink’s reaction.
    “You’re a
gonif!”
Dink said. His voice boomed like a tribal chieftain announcing the name he had created specifically for its bearer. “You’re gonna do great in this business!”
    Gonif
is Yiddish for a small-time, lovable thief, though at the time I didn’t know what it meant. Still, I sensed its complimentary connotation.
    His response energized the room. Feeling relieved, I flipped on the lights and grabbed two Cokes from the fridge.
    “But you don’t think it’s something I should be ashamed of?” I asked.
    “No. You’re a kid. You’re gonna do kid things. It was dangerous, I don’t particularly like that …”
    “If my parents ever found out, they would feel like they have no idea who I really am.”
    “I freebased a few times,” Dink said. “I didn’t tell my mom.”
    “If we went to confession, we would be forgiven.”
    “You were making money without hurting anybody,” Dink consoled. “By doing the opposite of hurting anybody! It’s not like you were dealing drugs.”
    “Is that worse?”
    “What you did was legal. It’s important not to go to jail. Always remember that.”
    I asked Dink to make me a promise: if, for some reason, the guys in the office came across pictures of me and my twin, he would tell them that I was once a triplet but that my sisters—the incestuous ones in the photo—died. In a car crash.
    “Odds are you’ll be fine,” he said.
    “Stranger things have happened.”
    We sat there, smiling, over Cokes and
Daily Racing Form
s.
    “You know what Amy said when she told me about you? She said, ‘Hire her, she’s one of us.’”

CHAPTER FIVE
The Winner’s Circle
    I was alone in the office, researching wind direction and humidity levels, when she walked through the door. “You’re here early,” she said, fiddling through her Neiman Marcus shopping bag. Her black Lycra exercise outfit accentuated her petite, toned physique. The enormous diamond on her ring finger was sunglow yellow and shaped like a cushion. Tulip Dershowitz had returned from yachting on the Rhine.
    I set down my can of Coke, stood, and introduced myself. The jeans skirt I’d been wearing to work nearly every day for the last month now seemed excessively short. I tugged at its bottom.
    Tulip gave the office the once-over. While she was gone, Dink had given me a