PART ONE: SUMMER IN THE CITY – CHAPTER 2   Still in the middle of enjoying our punch-drunk Wall Street intern gallows humor, we both turned as someone suddenly appeared before our booth. The men who lined Stella’s famous zinc bar usually ran older, fifty- or sixtysomething Hollywood or European types, their wrinkles smoothed away with plastic surgery, fake tans, and impeccable clothes. But with his tousled strawberry blond hair and beard, the cute twentysomething guy standing by our booth looked more like an aging frat boy than a millionaire. When I noticed he was very thin, I thought maybe he was a model. Though he wasn’t really tall enough. Everybody was someone at Stella’s. It was an ironclad rule. Well, except for snuck-in stowaways like me, of course. “May I?” he said, sitting down next me. As I reluctantly scooted over, I turned to see that Priscilla’s face was as puzzled as my own. “And you are?” Priscilla said. I was taking in the guy’s vacant expression and glassy eyes when I noticed that the sleeve of the suit jacket he was wearing was opened up from the wrist to the elbow. Then I caught a whiff of body…

Bouthier had been busy setting up in the hotel room all morn­ing so when there was some unexpected downtime, he de­cided to try to squeeze in a quick workout. The hotel gym was downstairs off the lobby and even before he fully pulled open its glass door, he saw without surprise that it was tiny and complete shit. The only good thing about it was that its sole occupant, some pudgy thirty-something insurance-salesman-type on the exer­cise bike, immediately put on the brakes and began gathering up his stuff the split second Bouthier peeled off his shirt. It wasn’t surprising. Six foot and hard bodied with dark pitbull-like eyes, doorway-filling shoulders and a slab of a face that looked like it had been squared into shape with a bricklayer’s crack hammer, Bouthier rarely found social distancing to be too much of a problem.   “Before,” he said as he tracked the soft bubble butt’s hasty exit in the wall mirror. “After,” he said with a gruesome smile as he popped a rock-hard front f lex. He looked around. Without anything real to lift, he decided to do some CrossFit. Burpees, renegade rows, jumping lunges then some dumbbell thrusters with the pathetic…