Conditioned

Chapter One

Jason found the bar at eight-fifteen and decided to stay close to it.

He didn't mind these parties. Claire's agency did them well enough, open bar and a decent view and people who mostly knew how to talk.

He just didn't know many of them. He was an engineer at a firm across town with no connection to advertising beyond the woman he had married, which meant these events were an exercise in being charming to strangers for two or three hours before he could reasonably suggest they leave.

He was good at it. He had always been good at it.

He ordered a bourbon and turned to face the room.

The rooftop was filling steadily. He recognized a few faces from previous parties, nodded at a man whose name he couldn't remember, and scanned the crowd for Claire.

She was near the far railing, talking to a woman he didn't know, her hair down the way he liked it, her dark blue dress professional and pretty in exactly the way Claire always managed.

Put together. Polished. She caught him looking and gave him a small smile before turning back to her conversation.

He loved her. That was never in question.

He was on his second drink when Sandra Holloway walked in.

He had met Sandra once, briefly, at last year's party. Greg's wife. Greg was in media buying, a decent enough guy Jason had shared maybe four conversations with across these events. He remembered Sandra as attractive, polished, the kind of woman who looked good without making a point of it.

The way she looked tonight was definitely making a point of it.

The dress was tiny. That was the only word for it.

Black, skintight, the hem stopping high enough on her thighs that every step she took made it a question.

But it was the top of the dress that stopped Jason mid-sip.

She had gotten work done, and the dress she had chosen left absolutely no ambiguity about it.

The neckline plunged deep, her cleavage full and round and impossible to ignore, and she moved through the rooftop like a woman who wanted eyes on her and wanted everyone in the room to know it.

They knew it.

Every man she passed did the same thing.

The eyes went first, that involuntary drop, and then came the recovery, the careful look away, the recalibration.

Sandra touched arms when she talked. She leaned in when someone said something interesting and the men she leaned toward stopped being able to remember what they had just said.

Jason watched her and his pulse quickened in a way he knew too well.

He looked at Greg.

Greg was watching his wife with a drink in his hand and a slow satisfied smile on his face.

Not anxious. Not hovering. Just watching, the way a man watches something he was proud of, something he put on display on purpose and is pleased with the result.

Sandra said something to a guy Jason vaguely recognized from accounting and the guy laughed too loud and Greg just sipped his drink.

Jason understood it completely. He didn't find it strange at all. He found it electric. The idea of standing where Greg was standing, watching other men want what was yours, their eyes on her body, on every piece of her body that dress revealed, and feeling turned on by it.

He thought about Claire in that dress.

He was still thinking about it when a man appeared beside him at the bar.

Jason noticed him the way you notice someone with a certain kind of presence.

Not loudly, not announced. Just a shift in the air.

He was Black, tall, broad through the shoulders, dressed in a dark suit with the collar open, and he settled beside Jason with the ease of someone who was comfortable in rooms like this one.

He glanced at Jason. Then he glanced at where Jason had just been looking.

The faintest amusement crossed his face. "Hard to miss," he said.

Jason laughed, caught and not particularly embarrassed about it. "Yeah, you’d have to work at it."

The man ordered a drink and turned to face the room beside Jason.

"Women who dress like that know exactly what they're doing.

They command a room." He said it the way you state something obvious, a fact about how the world works.

"They open doors. The right people start noticing.

The decision makers. The ones who actually move things.

And she's the reason they're in the conversation at all.

" He took a slow sip. "There's more power in it than most people realize.”

Jason found himself nodding. He didn't know this man but he understood exactly how his mind worked.

"Her husband's over there," Jason said, nodding toward Greg. "He seems to be enjoying the view as much as anyone."

The man looked. Took it in. "Good for him."

They fell into it from there, the easy way two people at a bar with nothing else to do and no particular reason not to talk will fall into things.

The city, the view, the open bar. The man was sharp and certain and asked the kind of questions that made you want to actually answer them.

Jason found himself talking more freely than he usually did at these parties.

The bourbon helped. The conversation helped more.

At some point Jason nodded back toward Sandra, who had migrated to a new cluster of people and was currently making a man in a gray suit forget his own name.

"I wish my wife dressed like that," he said.

It came out easy, honest, the way things do when you have been drinking and the person beside you feels like someone you can say things to.

"She's got the body for it. More than." He shook his head a little.

"She just keeps it pretty buttoned up. Especially for work stuff. "

"She here tonight?"

"Yeah." Jason scanned the room. Claire had moved from the railing and was now closer to the center of the rooftop, fresh drink in hand, laughing at something the woman beside her had said. "There. Blonde. Dark blue dress."

The man looked. A beat of quiet.

"She's beautiful," he said. No performance in it. Just a direct, simple statement.

"She is," Jason said, and felt the warmth he always did when someone saw it.

"Seems like she could own a room if she wanted to."

"That's exactly it." Jason pointed his glass loosely in the air, the way you do when someone has just articulated the thing you couldn't. "She could own any room she walked into.

Dressed like that she'd own it in about thirty seconds with her body.

She never would though." He looked back at his drink, his voice dropping to the kind of low that happens when a man stops performing and starts just thinking out loud.

"I mean maybe if I played into her praise kink, she'd slowly let loose.

She has this real weakness when she's told she's a good —" He stopped.

Laughed at himself. "That’s the booze talking. Jesus, pretend you didn't hear that."

The man listened without comment, the way someone listens when they intend to keep what they’re hearing.

"Does she work here?" he asked. "At the agency? Or is this your work thing?"

"Hers," Jason said. "She’s a project manager. Really good one." He looked at the man. "You? What do you do for work?"

"I'm the new VP of Client Services," the man said. "Xavier Morrow. I start Monday."

Everything in Jason stopped.

He heard himself starting to walk it back and apologizing. Something about not realizing, about Claire being as professional as anyone he knew, genuinely excellent at her job, that none of what he'd said reflected on her, he'd just had a few drinks and run his mouth.

Xavier Morrow stopped him with a slight raise of one hand. Easy. Unbothered.

"Nothing to apologize for," he said. "It was a good conversation." He looked at Jason with a directness that carried no edge in it. "She sounds like someone worth knowing."

"She's the best person I know," Jason said. "Honestly."

Xavier nodded. He accepted a fresh drink and scanned the room once, slow and easy, and said it was good to meet him. Then he was gone, moving away from the bar with the same certainty he'd arrived with.

Jason stood there watching Sandra work the room for a moment.

Then he looked across the rooftop and found Claire.

She was talking to Xavier.

He didn't know how it had happened so fast. Somewhere in the thirty seconds since Xavier walked away from the bar he had crossed the room and now he was standing close to Claire near the far railing, the city spread out behind them, and they were talking the way people talk when the room around them has stopped existing.

Claire laughed at something and tucked her hair back behind her ear and Jason watched her the way Greg had been watching Sandra all night.

Xavier knew she lit up for praise. He knew because Jason had told him, sitting at the bar, drinking, feeling loose and easy with a man he'd thought was nobody. He knew Jason wanted her in a dress that stopped traffic. And now he was standing two feet from her with his full focus on her.

Jason watched them. The way Xavier gave Claire his undivided attention, like she was the only thing in the room worth looking at. The way Claire stood differently than she had all night. Straighter. More present. Like something in her had been turned up a degree without her noticing.

Across the rooftop Sandra Holloway laughed at something and every head nearby turned toward the sound.

Jason thought about Greg's quiet satisfied smile.

He thought about Xavier saying women like that open doors.

He thought about Claire in a dress like Sandra's, in a room like this one, with men turning toward her the same way.

He finished his drink and went to find his wife.