Mister X

47

Lilly Branston stood in her Park Avenue apartment that she'd soon be unable to afford and assessed her possibilities.

The apartment was luxurious, near MoMA, in a much-desired area. Lilly had done well selling high-end real estate for the Willman Group until the markets soured. Both the stock market and the real estate market.

New York City real estate prices and demand had held up longer than anyone had a right to expect in a declining market. Then had come the big slide down in the stock market, followed by the financial turmoil and the bailouts.

It got worse as Wall Street came apart and the layoffs started at the brokerage and financial houses. As far as the real estate market went, Wall Street had caught up with Main Street, and Lilly was out of a job.

She soon learned that it wasn't going to be easy getting reconnected. Real estate prices had come back slightly, but most of the agents still active, and the agencies still surviving, were suffering declines in business. People simply weren't moving, or buying, in a drastically down market.

Lilly was still in her thirties and attractive, slimly built with dark brown hair and eyes. Her oval face with its perfect bowed lips and narrow nose looked as if it belonged in a medieval painting. She had, in fact, worked as an artist's model to make extra money during college. While doing so she'd met her husband, the one she'd helped put through law school, and who had then used his skills to gain maximum advantage during their divorce. He was now practicing corporate law in California, married to the woman who'd tutored him in tort law so he could pass the bar. From the divorce on, Lilly had thought of it as "tart" law.

No children from that mess, fortunately.

Lilly had learned her lesson, and out of necessity found that she had a gift for selling real estate. She'd started with residential property in New Jersey, and soon went on to the more lucrative area of luxury condos and co-ops in New York City. She'd helped to make the Willman Group one of the most successful agencies in the city. But her sales and listings had shrunk. Now they'd repaid her by putting her on reduced commission-which in the Willman Group was tantamount to being fired.

Lilly wasn't surprised. She'd learned long ago how the world worked. Sometimes you ate the little fish. Sometimes you were the little fish.

After a month of unemployment, Lilly realized she was lonely. Misery really did yearn for company

What she wanted was a man. Someone she could talk to, lean on, rely on. Someone who'd screw her senseless in this senseless world.

Lilly didn't like thinking that way, but circumstances were harsh and she couldn't help it. She weighed her chances. Even though she had time on her hands, she didn't want to spend it in singles bars or popular pickup spots like bookstores or produce departments in grocery stores. She was almost forty and tired of that kind of mindless dance.

Then chance played a hand. When she was reading a glossy Executive World magazine in her dentist's waiting room, she noticed something that immediately made sense to her. It was a small ad for a company called CC.com. Reading on, Lilly learned that "CC" stood for Coffee and Conversation, an online matchmaking service. It advertised in select places so that narrowly targeted people could use a special password and meet similar people. Thus philatelists could meet philatelists, ballroom dancers meet ballroom dancers, real estate professionals meet real estate professionals. Lilly saw C and C as an opportunity not simply to meet a man with whom she had something in common, but perhaps the chance to network her way back to a new sales job with actual potential.

The best thing about C and C, according to the ad, was that it guaranteed complete privacy. Its clients contacted each other directly rather than through C and C. That way there was no record, nothing that might embarrass you or jump up and bite you during some future job interview.

The next afternoon, after a job interview she knew was hopeless, Lilly visited the C and C website, registered, and paid a reasonable fee. She screened the profiles of various male hopefuls. She settled on Gerald Lone, a handsome man (or so he'd referred to himself without going into detail) who'd sold commercial real estate for a large agency in the Midwest. For the last three years he'd had his own small agency in the city. According to him, the real estate market in New York still had pockets of profitability, if one knew how to find them. And knew how to sell.

Lilly smiled when she read that. Contacting Gerald Lone might in itself be a moneymaking proposition.

Thinking of it that way made his personal profile seem like one of those thinly veiled advertisements for escort service employees. That was okay with Lilly. The prospect of employment, along with the prospect of sex, made meeting this guy seem all the more desirable. Possible ulterior motives didn't scare her away. If he was trolling for a good salesperson as well as a good time, that might work with Lilly.

Lilly walked over to the full-length mirror in her apartment's tile foyer and tried to observe herself as someone might on their first meeting. She was wearing black three-inch heels that gave her ankles a graceful turn and made her five-foot-six frame seem tall. Her dress was simple and black but obviously expensive. She'd bought it at Saks last year after closing on an uptown condo unit. Her jewelry was silver and modest, a small diamond and opal ring and hoop earrings. No necklace. The skillfully tailored cut of the dress did its own wonders with her neck, making it look even longer and more elegant than it was.

Beautiful swan.

That's what someone would think on first meeting her.

She hoped.

Gerald Lone sat in a booth in the coffee shop of the Worthingham Hotel near Times Square. The Worthingham was old but still fashionable, and its room rates were competitive with those of the older bargain hotels that were still hanging on in the area. Its restaurant, which looked out on throngs of tourists and Times Square characters streaming past, was small and intimate, with wooden booths that had tall backs that ensured privacy.

In front of Gerald was a cup of hot chicory coffee, which from time to time he sipped from as he kept an eye on the restaurant's street door as well as the entrance from the hotel lobby. He had only Lilly's description from her CC.com profile. Like many of the women, and more than a few men, who were C and C clients, Lilly had declined to post a photo of herself online.

Gerald understood. Dating services still carried a slight stigma with some people. And with most clients, as with Gerald, the whole idea was anonymity. With the direct e-mail contact, there would be no C and C record of who'd met whom, nothing to connect one client with another unless someone connected one individual computer with another.

Not likely, since the computer Gerald had used to contact Lilly was in an Internet cafe and ensured privacy.

It was a good system, he'd decided. One without exposure to personal risk. Like could find, contact, and meet Like.

Or someone pretending to be Like.

Gerald Lone settled back in his chair, sipped, and waited.

And just when he was about to give up and conclude that she wouldn't show, there she was.

It had to be her. The description, including the black dress, was precise.

She was older than he'd expected. Surely closing in on forty. But not at all a disappointment. Confident. Smart. Put together. Long, graceful neck like a swan's. The kind of neck he'd like to-

She spotted him immediately and came toward him, smiling as she drew near. He liked her smile. It was that of a woman up for adventure.

Smiling back, he slid out of the booth and stood up. He was the taller of the two, even though she was wearing high heels.

When they shook hands and looked into each other's eyes, he was sure she would be his next. Everything would work out fine.

She was the one.