Page 67 of Back Room Host

The conditions were clear, though. No videos. Just audio recordings. He had agreed to that. So technically, it shouldn’t matter to me. But was I ready to face his questions?

“Please,” he pleaded, wearing a puppy-dog expression I had never seen before.

I should remember that.

“If the questions get too personal, you can always refuse to answer,” he added.

“Is this for your project?” I asked, crossing one leg over the other. “I thought you wanted something about back rooms …” I didn’t need to continue. The connection Luca tried to make was clear even to me. I sighed. “Alright, fine.”

“Yesss!” Luca pressed the coffee maker button and disappeared into his room. He emerged with a phone cable, notepad, and pen. With a cup of coffee in his hand, he sat down at the table with me, beaming like a Christmas ornament.

“What? Now?” I asked, taken aback.

“Yeah … Or do you have something else going on?” He furrowed his brow in confusion.

“Don’t you want to prepare first?”

“I prefer to do things spontaneously and approach them more intuitively. That way, I get more out of it compared to overthinking it beforehand. Best example of this is the concept,” Luca said, shrugging mischievously.

Since when is he so focused?

Automatically, I reached for my pack of cigarettes. “I … uh … I can’t do this without smoking.”

“We can make an exception.” Standing up, Luca opened the window and placed the ashtray between us on the dining table. “It’s okay. Hector has smoked cigars before.”

Damn …

“Do you want a beer?”

I could only nod at his thoughtfulness. Everything was happening so fast, so I lit a cigarette and took a deep drag.

“Here,” Luca said, handing me a beer.

He had taken one for himself too but drank his coffee first. I watched him suspiciously as he plugged in the phone and leaned it against his water glass on the long edge. It made sense because the cable was a bit short. By placing it like that, the microphone was aimed at me. Even though the camera pointed away from me, an unsettling feeling crept over me that I was being filmed.

“Just relax. Forget about the phone. Look at me.”

I cleared my throat and sat up straight.

“Is this the first time you’ve been interviewed?”

“Of course,” I said, tapping the cigarette over the ashtray.

“Really? You’ve never been questioned about anything before?”

I furrowed my brows. “Well, I’m constantly questioned. And then … I tell people what they want to hear.”

“People? You’re talking about your clients?”

“Mhm …” I didn’t want to say more about it, so I took another deep drag from the cigarette. But Luca wanted to know more.

“What do you tell them?”

“Well, it depends. With new clients, I have to first figure out what they want to hear. I know my regulars pretty well by now.” I bit my lower lip and paused. Then I looked at Luca. Before I knew it, he had engaged me in a conversation, and I wondered how much information I should disclose here. I toyed with my lip piercing, weighing the response. I tapped the ash again and cleared my throat. “There are clients who are genuinely interested in me. Who I am. What I do. What I’m interested in. Others pay me to be someone else for them.”

“Do you like the job?”

The incredulity in Luca’s voice threw me off a bit. Whatever I had tried to make him believe earlier, he apparently hadn’t bought it. I stared at the beer bottle in front of me, searching for the right answer, because even I knew I had deluded myself a lot in this regard.

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