The bimbo in limbo
said the future is free.
— The Faker Fake
The date was February 14th, 2022. Valentine's Day. But instead of being with a Valentine, I was with a clown. Sort of.
The name on her resume said Abigail Porterfield. Her name on Facebook was "Abbie Right Over!" The exclamation point was hers, not mine. It was the first of too many. She even spoke in exclamation points.
She said, "Wow! I've never gone to a bar for a job interview before! It feels so informal! But I've never been on a real job interview before, so, y'know! I don't know! Maybe this is how it's done? I've been in employment limbo for a while. The job market for entrepreneurs is, like, y'know, really tight!"
Wow, indeed.
So much wow.
So little substance.
We were at The Lounge Lizard, which is exactly the kind of place you think it is. Dirty. Dingy. And dark, though not dark enough to hide the dumbness. My God, there was a light in this girl's eyes that could shine across the whole world without illuminating a goddamn thing. I wanted to put my ear to her head to see if I could hear the ocean. Or would it sound like tumbleweeds rolling across the prairie? I couldn't help wondering.
Claire was gone. I needed to find another way to lure marks, and I sure as shit wasn't gonna split profits with another girl.
I found a better way.
I posted an ad on Facebook Marketplace, looking for a "social media maven ready to make the leap into offline events planning and coordination." Maven was code for "must be a chick." Everything else meant "and gullible."
Abbie was both, and she was the first to reply. I kept the ad up for a while, but even if I'd left it up for a lifetime, no reply could top hers.
She sent a picture that was mostly of her boobs, along with a resume which was three pages long, but only listed one job. In high school, she worked the fryer at Shark's Fish & Chicken, a job which she'd just told me she didn't even interview for.
The whole resume read like a what's what of what the fuck?
It said she was a Social Media Influencer, Entrepreneur, Independent Filmmaker, Model, Personal Trainer, and of course, a mother fucking Life Coach, but there were no references for anything. Just social media links, most of which were dead, plus job descriptions for non-jobs, and an endless list of personal attributes, my favorite of which was that she's A Real Go Getter. Her resume said so, caps and all. And it must be true, because I got her.
Her Instagram had a couple hundred followers. Mostly bots, plus a couple guys who wanted to bang her. Her TikTok had thousands of followers. All of them bots and MLM scams.
She was exactly what I needed: over-eager and too clueless to ask questions. Everything about her was too much. Even her boobs. Too perky. Her hair was too. It fluffed out in tight curls that went everywhere, yet had nowhere to go.
"This is a different kind of job," I said. "I have venture capital money, earmarked to create a service oriented sustainable Bitcoin events service that sustainably serves others."
Just saying that sentence made my brain ache.
Abbie said, "Ooohhh, that sounds amazing!"
"Let's talk specifics. I need someone who can create a couple Bitcoin-oriented meetup events per month. I'll give you the locations. Bars and pubs mostly. Under the radar places." Places where I could run valet parking scams. No more hot tub. The new plan was to have marks hand over their keys to a shady valet so I could copy 'em. Shhhhh. Abbie didn't know.
I said, "If you get the job, you'll be the only one who knows you're being paid," because it's a scam. "And you'll be paid in cash," for the same reason. "You'll earn $500 per event, assuming you get at least twenty Bitcoiners to show up. Each event will be somewhere different, because we want as many people to meet as many people as possible, all without them knowing this was being funded. That way, it all feels organic."
I was laying it on, thick. "Our mission is to energize decentralized engagement by facilitating scalable interpersonal ecosystems."
THiiiiiiiCK.
"Abbie, your official job title would be Bitcoiner Integration & Meetup Benevolence Officionado," because she's such a fucking B.I.M.B.O., and yes, I know that's not how aficionado is spelled, but she didn't and I didn't care. "Our job is to build it, so they can grow it, organically."
"So, it's, like, a business?" Abbie asked.
"It's venture capital, invested, in the hopes that money spent now will lay the foundation for building a community of the future."
Oh, holy shit girl! Wham! Bam! It's a scam!
"Right," she said. "I totally get that! And I'm obsessed!!! There's so much we can do! The future is free, you know!"
This, I did not know.
"Free?" I asked, mistakenly.
"Free range," she said. "Ideas will just flow! Organically!!!"
"We are the world, Abbie. And the future is now."
Never doubt the power of platitudes.
"I'm obsessed!" she shrieked. "I love this, and I'm in love with this, Phoebe!!!"
Yeah, you read that right.
I took one look at this chick and knew I wasn't giving her my real name. Not even my preferred fake name. I gave my dumbest partner my dumbest alias: Phoebe Delgado.
And that's why the new plan was perfect.
I was fully insulated.
I didn't meet the marks.
I didn't enter the homes.
I didn't suffer the consequences.
This chick didn't even know my real fake name. And she was too stupid to wonder why I only met her at places like this.
Good God. If my scam didn't get her, somebody else's would.