Chapter 1 #2
I wouldn’t have trusted this man to housesit for an empty lot.
Everything about him oozed sleazy, and I got a sour feeling in my gut just looking at him.
He was a white guy who might have been thirty years old, probably five nine, with a tacky gold tracksuit, a durag and ratty little braids, and he had a big lion tattoo on one arm with the word KINGMAKER woven through the design, and on the other arm, a traditional Japanese watercolor tattoo of a dragon.
It was so absurd a juxtaposition I almost laughed, the way he’d talked himself up and then this spot, with cracked vinyl booth seating, a slice of generic cheese pizza on a paper plate, and a Coke in a Pizza-Hut-style plastic cup. Kingmaker of the middle school, maybe.
Who was I to judge someone for being a pathetic loser, though? Maybe it took one to knew one.
He gave me a once-over when I came up to the table, and he nodded like he knew all there was to know from one look. “Julie?” he said, and I nodded, hovering next to the other seat. I felt like cockroaches would crawl into my pants if I sat down.
“You must be, uh, Kingmaker.”
He gestured to the other seat. Ugh. I didn’t see any cockroaches. I’d just have to pray. I wiped the seat a few times before I sat down, the plush vinyl more comfortable than it looked. Kingmaker pushed the second slice of pizza towards me, plain cheese.
“Enjoy the pizza. This is how real deals happen in this city—over a slice of proper pizza.” He paused. “Only three bucks.”
“What—you’re charging me?” I bristled. “I thought this was a hospitality thing!”
He shook his head, grinning. “Naw, you see? This is the first problem. You’re about to be a rich woman, Julie. You gotta get into the rich mindset. A king don’t worry about a three-dollar slice of pizza.”
Well, talk about a fucking relief. If he was trying to trick me into a human trafficking scheme, he wouldn’t cheap out on a fucking slice of pizza. Whatever. Three bucks was good for a slice, and I hadn’t had dinner. “Rah—fine, whatever. Also, I’m still pretty sure I’d be a queen, not a king.”
“Nah. The king and the queen are two different mindsets.” He gestured with his hands while he talked in a weird way that, it took me a second to place, was him trying and almost succeeding at mimicking classic boom-bap rappers.
“The queen mindset, that’s grace. The queen holds court.
The king mindset, that’s power. The king takes what’s his.
Asserts his place. Anyone can be a king or a queen.
But we’re here to make a king out of you. ”
Was this manosphere bullshit made gender-neutral? I wasn’t following. “Uh, okay, Kingmaker.”
“So, you wanna be a king, don’t you, Julie? You wanna make something of yourself. That’s why you called me.”
“Look, this is fucked up,” I said. “I called you because I’m at rock bottom and I’m leaving New York in a couple months.
I came here like any idiot who thinks they can walk into the city and make it work, reading a bunch of stupid self-help books, bought into the stupid hustle culture bullshit for a while.
Did the whole wake and grind thing, and here I am, with fucking nothing.
Two years and nothing to show for it. This fucking city.
Everyone’s just looking to cheat someone else out of a couple bucks, every get rich quick shortcut is someone else’s rug-pull, and if you don’t already have money and status and influence, then you’re just someone else’s mark.
I did all I could, but there’s no use. And this life coach thing is bullshit, too.
You’re just another huckster selling fake promises and trying to con a couple bucks out of someone’s desperation, and I called you because what else am I going to do while I’m here?
I don’t have a job, I live in an illegal sublet in a closet, my girlfriend dumped me, and this city fucking hates me.
And I fucking hate it too,” I said, my voice thick now, and I took a greedy, angry bite of the pizza.
Shit. It was good pizza. I’d forgotten the cardinal rule: the more the guy at the counter looks like he hates you, the better the pizza’s going to be. It was a tasty slice. Also, I was crying like a fucking loser. I wiped my eyes.
“Sorry, Kingmaker,” I said, laughing at the absurdity of it all. “I just wanted to get that off my chest for a while now.”
He pointed at me. “See, Julie, you’re not crying over your life right now,” he said. “You’re crying because, deep down, you know you’re about to leave your old life behind. The human mind is afraid of change. You’re overwhelmed at the greatness you’re about to find.”
“Fuck you, Kingmaker,” I laughed through tears, taking another bite of pizza. If it weren’t so good, I’d have slapped it in his face.
“So when you planning to leave?”
“Ugh… end of June. Going back to stay with my mom in Missouri while I figure things out.”
He snorted. “A king don’t turn and run. You don’t really want to go, do you?”
“Who the hell wants to go to Missouri? And my mom is going to be so fucking insufferable. Going to tell me I was stupid for ever going, going to tell me what a disappointment I am, going to keep forgetting that I’m gay like she keeps doing all the time.
I did the best I could. There’s no fucking winning in this fucking city, in this fucking life, in this fucking capitalist hellscape. ”
“Then we got a plan,” he said, and he took a piece of paper from the seat next to him and put it down on the table, a marker in his hand just as suddenly, as he drew scribbles on the paper like a business student trying to bullshit on a whiteboard through a presentation he didn’t prep for.
He drew NEW YORK on one side, MISSOURI on the other, and KING on the top, an arrow pointing from it to New York. “A king don’t run.”
“Great diagram, Kingmaker.”
“You came from Missouri to claim your territory. Now you’ve suffered a defeat, but that don’t mean you back down. What do you think woulda happened if Napoleon gave up after Waterloo?”
I blinked. “Uh, probably pretty much exactly what did happen.”
He ignored me, writing down APRIL, MAY and JUNE on the paper. “We’ve got two months and a couple days for your offensive. But deadlines are good for you. You’re about to tap into your inner king, Julie. Before the end of June, you’re going to transform your life.”
“Uh-huh, right, sure. That’s what every con artist says.”
He grinned. “You read the sign, didn’t you?” He took another paper from the seat next to him—another copy of the sign. I guess he was still trying to plaster them up and get clients. He pointed a marker to the SUCCESS GUARANTEED at the bottom. “I only charge after you’ve succeeded.”
“Uh-huh…” I narrowed my eyes. “That sounds like a good way to get taken for a ride.”
He chuckled, putting it away. “That’s that small mindset again, Julie. You gotta level up past that. Kings think in abundance. Think from my perspective. Would I rather charge a nobody, or would I rather charge a king?” He gestured between us. “This way, you and I both get to win.”
Kingmaker had not, I got the sneaking suspicion, made a single king. “Right.”
“What’s your kingdom?”
I shrugged, taking another bite of pizza and talking with my mouth full. “I preside over the domain of a mouse in the building called Harold.”
“I gotta know your vision. What’s the life you’re trying to conquer for yourself? You had a vision when you came to New York.”
I shrugged more dramatically this time. “I don’t know. Counting my stacks drinking champagne in the back of a limousine with my hot girlfriend.”
Mortifyingly, he started writing them down on the paper, COUNTING STACKS, DRINKING CHAMPAGNE, LIMOUSINE, HOT GIRLFRIEND in a bulleted list. I blushed, swatting at his hand.
“What—don’t write that down!”
“A king ain’t ashamed of his drive to conquer,” he said, capping up the marker. “If you could hit a button and have wads of cash and a hot girlfriend who will drink champagne with you in the back of a limousine, would you hit the button?”
“Well—who wouldn’t?” I shot back hotly.
“That’s not a king’s answer, Julie.”
“Oh my god.” I dropped the pizza crust onto the plate, putting my hands up, and I shouted it loud enough the whole parlor could hear me. “Yes, I’d hit the button to have a million dollars and a hot girlfriend! Call me crazy!”
He nodded, looking satisfied. “You’re gonna be a king, Julie. What do you say? Let’s make it happen.” He held a hand out across the table for me, and I looked at it like he was offering me a dead rat. “Riding a limousine with your supermodel girlfriend drinking the good champagne.”
This was really fucking stupid. Like, really fucking stupid. I wasn’t one to fall for get-rich-quick schemes.
But I’d wound up here even knowing the whole time it was a bad idea. He wasn’t charging me until I, quote, became a king.
And besides, I was, uh, lonely. Getting to yell at Kingmaker and cry on him felt like it was something I needed for a while. I hadn’t really had a friend in a while. Even Guin had mostly been ignoring me for the last few months of our relationship, if you could call it that.
I clasped Kingmaker’s sweaty hand. “Limousine ride with my supermodel girlfriend,” I said. “I’m counting on you, Kingmaker.”