Confidence

Helena knows hotel rooms. In the dozen or so years she's spent in transit, plying her trade across towns and cities, village greens and suburban sprawls, she's encountered virtually every style, every configuration of frame and furniture - boutique to budget, ornate Art Deco to sparse Scandinavian functionalist. She's suffered scalds and bedbugs in expressway motels; battled mosquitoes in Argentinian guesthouses; woken up to a view of the Burj Khalifa and the call of the Jumeirah Mosque muezzin. The high-end and the low, the decadent and the derelict - she's seen it all.

She has never, before today, set foot inside a log cabin.

"This was really the five star option?" she says, palms spread outward to the winding wooden staircase, the improbable open fire.

"You asked for a hot tub," says Myka, collapsing into a wingback chair next to the fireplace.

"In my bathroom. Not under the stars."

"It's the best place in town. And you wanted visible, didn't you? I think half of Billings saw us drive up here."

Helena drops her bag onto the sofa; walks across to the kitchen.

"It's well-stocked, at least," she says, pulling a bottle of champagne from the ice bucket, two glasses from the shelf below.

"See?" says Myka. "You'll manage just fine."

She slips out of her shoes; draws her feet up and underneath her.

"Do you have an aversion to footwear?" says Helena.

"Because I took my shoes off?"

"Because it seems to be a ritual of yours, upon entering new lodgings."

"I like to be comfortable. Indoors, like this. Don't you?"

"I'm rarely uncomfortable. Outdoors or in."

"You wouldn't be, I guess."

Helena ignores her; tears the foil from the bottle.

"Drink?" she says.

"Now?"

"Why not?"

"We're working."

"And yet, you're happy to go barefoot."

"It's not the same. I can get back in my shoes in two seconds. You can't sober up that fast."

"I have an enviable tolerance for alcohol."

She grasps the neck of the bottle in her left hand, preparing to twist it open - then stops, listens. Hears tyres rolling over woodchip; brakes tugging wheels to a standstill just outside the cabin.

"It's Leavenworth," says Myka, with a glance to the window. "He must have followed us back."

"He's more eager than I thought," says Helena. "I should put your shoes on, if I were you."

----

She makes him wait.

He knocks once, loudly, on the front door. When she doesn't answer, he knocks again, more loudly. Finally he walks around to the side of the cabin; peers inside through the window; raps impatiently on the sliding panels leading out onto the patio.

She opens the back door; steps outside

"You," she says, seeing him. "From before."

"Marcus Leavenworth," he says, extending a hand.

She leaves it hanging.

"Why are you on my property?" she says.

"I wanted to introduce myself," he says.

He's wearing, she notices, the same running clothes as before: same shorts, same vest. Myka was right, she thinks: he really did follow them straight back from the garage.

"Why?" she says.

"Why did I want to introduce myself? So you know me. Know who I am."

"I really don't care who you are."

She turns around; steps back inside the cabin.

"I run a label," he says, following her. "Mastiff Records."

She stops in the doorway, blocking the entrance.

"Why should that interest me?" she says.

"You're an agent, right? Isn't it your job to be interested in people like me?"

She sighs, ostentatiously.

"Wonderful," she says. "Remind me to fire my driver when I get back to L.A. Now, if you don't mind..."

She pulls the door closed.

"I know about the girl," he shouts through the glass. "The one you were watching in the car yesterday."

She opens the door again, just a fraction.

"You have no idea what you're talking about," she says.

"Then why are you still talking to me?"

"There's no girl. You've been misinformed."

"I know she's why you're in Montana. I know you want her to sign with you."

"What I may or may not be doing here is not your concern."

"Not even if I want to buy her from you?"

"Buy her? It doesn’t work like that. Which you'd know yourself, if you were actually in the industry."

"Lease her, then. Get her on contract. Whatever."

"For your... what did you call it? Terrier Records?"

"Mastiff," he says, offended. "And we're a big deal. You shouldn't dismiss us."

"I've never heard of you."

"We're new.”

"Then come back and see me when you're a little more established. Or better still, don't."

"We have money. A lot of money."

"Good for you. I'm sure you'll be flooding the market with bluegrass in no time."

She closes the door in his face.

----

"You pissed him off, then?" says Myka later, after dinner.

"Thoroughly," says Helena. "If he didn't want her before, he certainly does now. If only to teach me a lesson."

"Tomorrow should be fun."

“I would hope so. What’s the point, if it isn’t?”

“That’s why you do this? Fun?”

Helena takes a sip of her wine.

“Not all of us have a higher purpose,” she says.

“I don’t know,” says Myka. “You’re here with me now, aren’t you? Maybe philanthropy suits you better than you thought.”

“Or perhaps I have other incentives.”

She smiles, directly at Myka, and Myka flushes, more aware than before of the heat of the fire, the remoteness of the cabin, the proximity of their bodies across the table.

“Please stop that,” she says.

“Stop what?”

“Whatever you were doing just then.”

“Am I making you uncomfortable?”

“A little. I don’t know what to do with it.”

She looks down at her hands; at the table.

“I know it’s what you do,” she says. “How you operate. But I told you before: you don’t have to do it, not with me. We’re working together. You should be able to just… talk to me. Like a person.”

“And not a mark?”

Myka nods.

“Alright,” says Helena. “What would you like to talk about? Person to person?”

“Tell me about yourself.”

“You may need to be more specific. Or else I may steer the conversation towards further topics that engender discomfort.”

“Okay. Where did you grow up?”

“Is this really of interest?”

“It’s the kind of thing that people tell each other. Colleagues.”

“If you insist. And South West London. Barnes.”

“I’ve never been there. What’s it like?”

“Neat. Well-to-do. Painfully respectable.”

“How did you get from there to here?”

“That’s a far bigger question. Perhaps you should narrow the scope.”

“I’ll rephrase it, then: how did you get into the con?”

Helena sits back in her chair; swirls the wine around her glass.

“There was a woman,” she says, “when I was around Claudia’s age. She taught me. Or rather: she let me learn, while she worked.”

“A lover?”

She laughs, and Myka sees genuine amusement in the lines of her eyes, the upturned muscles of her cheeks.

“No,” she says, still smiling. “Not a lover.”

“A mentor?”

“I suppose. Although now she’s more of a friend than anything else.”

“You still see her?”

“We keep in touch. She works mainly in Washington.”

“DC? That must throw up some challenges.”

“She relishes them. She’s far more interested in power than in profit these days.”

“Did you meet her in London?”

“Amsterdam.”

“Were you working there?”

“No.”

“Studying?”

“No, not at the time. Surely we’ve exhausted your reservoir of small-talk queries?”

“Not even close. But thank you.”

“For what?”

“Turning it off, that fake-seduction thing. Actually talking to me.”

Helena finishes her wine.

“I should go to bed,” she says. “We’re up early tomorrow.”

Something that might be disappointment curls tight for a second in Myka’s chest, then releases, as quickly as it came.

“Sure,” she says. “Me too.”

----

When she’s sure that Helena’s asleep upstairs, Myka phones Pete.

“Claudia made calzones,” he says, his mouth still full. “They’re unbelievable. Like, life-altering.”

“Is she set for tomorrow?”

“I’m driving her out to the house first thing. She’ll be there.”

“And you’ve got eyes on Leavenworth?”

“We’ve got GPS trackers in all three of his cars. When he moves, you’ll know about it.”

“Great. Perfect.”

“Something wrong, Mykes? You don’t usually call for an update.”

“Why would something be wrong?”

“I don’t know. Because something happened, maybe? With H.G.?”

“Nothing happened. Really, nothing.”

“But you wish it had, huh?”

She hesitates.

“What would you say, if I did?”

“I’d say: be careful. And hold off on telling Artie until you’re sure it’s worth the fallout.”

“Maybe I’m tired of being careful.”

“She isn’t Leena.”

“I know that.”

“And she’s not like us. She’s out for herself.”

“I know that, too.”

“Claudia really cares about her, though. So she can’t be all bad.”

“The feeling’s mutual, I think. They seem to look out for each other.”

“But she could be gone tomorrow, you know?”

“So could anyone.”

“Fair point.”

“Besides, this is all completely hypothetical. I have no idea how she feels.”

“Really? No idea at all?”

“What does that mean?”

“You haven’t heard the way she talks to you? Seen the way she looks at you?”

“She looks at everyone like that.”

“Not me. Not Claudia. Definitely not Artie.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“Then what do you think I should do?”

“Oh, no. I am not giving advice on this one.”

“Aren’t you the one who told me to get some skin in the game?”

“Yeah, skin. Not feelings. Feelings are more complicated.”

“Supportive. Thanks.”

“What I’m here for.”

----

They're back on the road before 8am.

"He's parked behind the front gates?" says Helena, as Myka glides the Maybach slowly away from the cabin.

"So Pete says."

"Astonishing. I really expected to have to wait a little for him to find us.”

"Looks like we can go straight there, if Claudia's ready."

"She's ready. I think she's rather looking forward to it - she so rarely gets to work the inside."

The car passes through the gates; pulls out onto the highway.

"I don't see him," says Myka.

"Behind the tree," says Helena. "Dark blue Maserati."

"Got it. He's moving."

"Good. You have my permission to go as slowly as you'd like on this portion of the journey."

Myka presses down on the accelerator, hard.

It takes less than twenty minutes for them to reach the house - a rundown single-storey partitioned off from its neighbours by a chain-link fence.

"This is it," says Myka, guiding the Maybach into the driveway.

"It's certainly charmless," says Helena.

They leave the car – Myka holding the door open for Helena as she exits – and walk to the front of the house. They knock, and Claudia answers, pulling back the mesh screen and ushering them in through the hallway.

"And I see it's just as delightful inside," says Helena, surveying the stained sofa, the torn wallpaper, the cigarette burns on the carpet.

"It needed a little work to get it into shape," says Claudia. "The landlord wanted to decorate before I moved in, can you believe that?"

"The audacity," says Helena.

"Do you have your stuff?" says Myka.

"Right here," says Claudia.

She reaches behind the sofa; retrieves an old, battered acoustic guitar.

"Now what?" says Myka.

"Now you take a seat," pointing down at the sofa, "and make yourselves at home. You're gonna be a while."

----

Half an hour later, Helena and Myka follow Claudia out of the house, onto the front lawn. The Maserati, Helena sees, is idling on the pavement just across from where they stand, its tinted windows rolled down low - incongruous against the pickup trucks and foreclosure signs that line the street.

"I'm sorry," says Claudia, a fraction more loudly than usual. "I can't."

"I disagree," says Helena, slipping back into character. "You can. We can."

"He's not gonna let me go."

"Then I'll talk to him. Have him see things from our perspective."

"He won't like it. I know he won't like it."

Helena steps in closer.

"This kind of opportunity doesn't come along every day," she says, tone pitched somewhere between threat and seduction. "You might want to think about that, before you walk away from what I'm offering."

"I can't," says Claudia.

Helena hands her a thick, high-gloss cardboard rectangle that might, from a distance, be a business card.

"I'm here in town until the end of the week," she says. "Call me if you decide you want to come sit at the grownup table."

She walks away, Myka just behind her.

----

“Too much?” says Helena from the backseat of the Maybach.

“Maybe a little,” says Myka, smiling at her through the mirror. “I felt like I’d stepped into the boardroom with Alexis Carrington.”

On the dashboard, her phone buzzes: once, twice.

"But then," she says, glancing down at the message, "it worked. He's going in."

"Pull over," says Helena.

Myka stops the car by the side of the road, keeping the engine running; opens the door, steps outside, then climbs into the back beside Helena.

The TV screen is on already, this time running what looks like a surveillance feed of Claudia's hastily-assembled living room - the camera angled to capture the couch, the carpet, a section of the hallway.

"Are you with her?" says Claudia off-camera, her voice higher and quicker than Myka is used to. "The lady who just left?"

("The sound quality's incredible," says Myka, edging in towards the monitor, towards Helena.

"Claudia's incredible," says Helena, not moving away. "The equipment behaves exactly as she tells it to").

“No,” says Leavenworth, also off-camera. “No, I’m nothing to do with her.”

There’s a rustling; a scrape of paper and plastic on leather.

“This is my card,” he says.

“Another one?” says Claudia. “I got a lot of these things today.”

“Read it. Look at what it says.”

A pause.

“It’s your label?” says Claudia. “Really?”

“Really is.”

“And you’re here about my music?"

“Yeah. I’ve heard some very good things.”

They move into shot, Claudia guiding him into the center of the living room, directly into the camera's line of sight.

“What exactly is it you heard?” she says.

She picks up the guitar from beside the couch by its neck; plucks nervously at the strings.

“That you really know what to do with that thing, for a start,” he says. “I’d love to hear you play.”

"I'm on tonight," she says. "At Teddy’s, over in Lockwood. You can come along, if you want."

"I was hoping for more of a private performance."

(“He’s got a real way with words, doesn’t he?” says Myka.

They’re touching now, at the knees, the elbow joints. Myka doesn’t look down).

"My boyfriend's gonna be home soon," says Claudia warily, inching away from him towards the safety of the hallway.

He raises his palms, protesting his innocence.

"Woah, hey - not that kind of performance,” he says. “I just wanna hear you, you know? See what all the fuss is about."

“That’s just what that lady said before.”

“And you played for her, right?”

“A little.”

“A little’s all I want, I swear.”  

“Why?”

“Because it could be I could help you. That we could help each other.”

Another pause.

“One song, right?” says Claudia eventually. “Same as I did for her?”

“Deal,” he says.

She pulls the guitar strap over her shoulder.

“I started writing this last month,” she says. “It’s not finished yet.”

She runs her fingers over the fretboard; starts to sing, soft and low.

(“She really wrote this?” says Myka.

“A few days ago,” says Helena.

“It’s beautiful.”

“She’s a woman of many talents.”

Myka stares, captivated, as Claudia plays. She feels – thinks she feels – Helena watching her, as she watches the screen).

The song ends. In the living room, Leavenworth grins, then wolf-whistles; claps his hands together heartily.

“Amazing,” he says.

“You liked it?” says Claudia, unhooking the strap, resting the guitar against the couch.

“It blew me away. No lie.”

“Thanks.”

“And it confirmed what I was pretty sure I knew already: I want you.”

“What?”

“For the label. I want to sign you. Here, today.”

Claudia recoils.

“I can’t,” she says.

“What? You don’t like money?”

“It’s not about that.”

“Then what? I can make you an offer – right here, right now.”

“The lady said that, too. Ms. Chadwick.”

“I’m not like her, okay? She’s an agent – she only wants her cut. Me, I can take you places. Get you wherever you want to go. Away from this place. Away from Taco Wednesdays at Teddy’s.”

“You can’t. You can’t take me anywhere.”

“You think Mastiff isn’t good for it? Believe me, we have a lot of capital. A lot of weight behind us.”

“It isn’t that.”

“Then what? I haven’t even told you what we’re willing to pay. I think you might be a little more receptive when you hear the figure I’ve got in mind.”

“I can’t make a decision like that.”

“Why the hell not?”

“Because I’m not allowed to!” she says, raising her voice. “Like I told the lady before: I signed a contract already. And the guy I signed with… he really doesn’t like competition.”