Red refilled her glass before she could protest. They were well into their third bottle of this marvelous merlot he'd procured from somewhere in the kitchen. Andrea couldn't remember where.
"Favorite book?" he asked, with an amused grin, excited to see if her drunken response now would match the one she'd given him while on the plane under heavy sedation the day he'd met her.
"Do you always do business while under the influence?" Andrea countered.
"Don't tell me that you're one of those dreadful people who worships Ayn Rand or some other ideological dullard…" he drawled on.
"You wound me!" Andrea replied, jumping at Red's baiting remark. "The only use I have for Atlas Shrugged is as an oversized doorstop."
"Favorite book?" Red persisted, enjoying this private little game.
"Pale Fire."
"Nabokov, annotations, poetry, psychological intrigue… Excellent," he remarked, as nonchalantly as if they were discussing the weather, but privately amused by the fact that her answered had in fact differed. When they were on the plane and she was less inhibited due to the medication and perhaps less concerned about impressing him with her sophisticated tastes, she'd admitted to being a huge fan of Agatha Christie novels.
"And yours?" she asked, half-belligerent, half-interested.
"Proust."
"You would," she replied, "Good, but still a bit pretentious and long-winded."
"Is that what you think of me?" he asked with a chuckle. "Long-winded and pretentious?"
"I can tell you are putting on airs like a mask. So… yes, to the pretentious. But you're no cold-hearted sociopath, no matter how much you pretend that you are."
The remarked sobered Red up a little, reminding him to be on his guard around her.
"The CDs in this house. Yours or the housekeepers?" Andrea asked, surprising him.
"Some are mine. Some are not," he stated, with a waive of his hand.
Andrea took a sip of her wine.
"The tattoo on your hip bone is interesting. What is it?" Red asked, hoping to watch her squirm.
Andrea spat out her wine. "None of your damn business."
"Everything is my business when I do business with someone."
"Words. I have words tattooed on my body," Andrea replied tersely, speaking through her teeth.
"Yes, dear Andy. I saw as much, distracted as I was by everything else on display," Red said, flirting with her to shake her confidence and put her off her guard.
"Amor et melle et felle est fecundissimus," she said, not looking him in the eye.
"Love is rich with both honey and venom? How poetic."
Andrea finished off her glass of wine and immediately reached for the bottle to refill it. The silence was deafening.
"Well, now that we are better acquainted, I have a business proposal for you," Red began, calmly tenting his fingers.
"Fine. Why not. Let's just do everything in the most unconventional way possible. Drunken business deals… seriously, I mean, I know you a sort of underworld power broker figure, but just because you're involved in the unconventional underworld, does that mean that you have to do everything unconditionally? I mean, would it kill you to use a boardroom?" Andrea was ranting, slurring her words.
"I was under the impression that your little annotated file was an expression of interest… but if that is not the case…"
"Fine. Fine. I am interested," Andrea said indignantly.
"This work you did," Red said, pointing to the file he's left on the adjacent, "with rather limited resources but an abundance of ingenuity, is impressive. You have an undeniable talent for research. I have a need to compile some research."
"I'm listening."
"This underground world of mine that you deride could use a bit of professionalization. As a broker of power, finances, assets and such I deal with a vast number of criminal elements. Knowledge is my greatest strength in these transactions. I need to know who my client is, who they work for, who they work with, who they hate, what they want. I could use a database of sorts. I want you to research and create a dossier for every criminal element I have dealt with in the past and all of their known associates."
"I can do that, but it will take a long time."
"I am playing the long game on this one. It needs to be done properly, and if that takes time, so be it."
Andrea reached out and shoot his hand to seal the deal.
"So what are we calling this database?" she asked.
"The Blacklist has a nice ring to it, don't you think?"