Bass-Ackwards: A Wrong-Way Romance

by Eris Adderly

  She was dragging a razor along the front of her shin and trying to figure out how she was going to walk around the Haul Ash like nothing had happened. Would he lord it over her now? Would he brag to the guys?

  The razor nicked her at the kneecap when the train of her thoughts arrived at that last one.

  Shit. She really couldn’t deal with it if they all knew. Sideways looks for sure. Snickers. Comments, maybe. Travis and Jonah didn’t seem like the kind of guys who would …

  She was wrapping her hair in a towel and frowning at the lack of other job opportunities in and around Ashland. This stop in the road didn’t even qualify as a whole one-horse town. Maybe a tail or a hoof, and that was being generous. And this was where she needed to be right now. She couldn’t go commuting all over.

  You’re buying anxiety over stuff that ain’t even happened yet.

  It was true. The rest of this weekend was going to have her pulling her hair out enough. Consequences for everything else would have to wait until Monday.

  And right this minute, she needed to put some clothes on and go poke around in the fridge.

  Christina stared at her current option for way too long before taking what she needed and closing the door.

  Yup. She’d gotten to court on time, and she was making herself a grilled cheese sandwich.

  “I am an adult,” she said to no one, and started spreading the butter.

  By Monday, muscles Christina didn’t even know she had were sore. She felt like she’d been run over by one of the box trucks out on the lot, and she’d been at the Haul Ash since six-thirty, just wishing she’d brought more ibuprofen.

  She’d enjoyed both the blessing and curse of the opening shift that day. Curse because hauling her stiff limbs out of bed, her puffy eyes in the direction of coffee, had felt like she’d never gone to sleep at all. But blessing because Bill was closing that day, and she was able to settle back into the routines of work at her own pace for over six hours without having to also deal with … all that.

  At the front counter, about ten minutes to one, she was skimming down the form by rote, making little tick marks with a pen.

  “If you can just sign here,” she said to the customer, “and initial here that you’re declining the protection plan …”

  The woman took the pen and glanced over the paperwork. Her husband hovered behind her, jingling impatient keys in his pocket while she signed.

  “Okay,” Christina said, tearing paper, “here is your copy. If you just go outside to the right here, Jonah will show you which truck and you can do your walk-around.”

  The man was already pushing his way back out the front door while his wife was still sliding her credit card back into her wallet, when Bill’s truck came crunching in off the highway.

  Here we go. Batten down the fucking hatches.

  By the time her boss had made his way to the front door, her nerves were singing in distress. When the string of bells clinked at his entry, she pretended to be knee-deep in examining the waiver the customer had just handed back to her, only to just ‘incidentally’ glance up at his arrival. As though she hadn’t been staring, bug-eyed since his truck rolled up, like a deer in the super-awkward my-boss-just-banged-me-last-week headlights.

  He did no more than flick his eyes in her direction before heading into the back half.

  Christina stood there, hovering in a weird nexus of uncertainty for maybe a full five minutes before he popped the door to the front open again.

  “Jonah outside?” he asked.

  “Uh, yeah.”

  His head and shoulder disappeared and the door fell shut.

  She sat on the computer stool and blinked some more.

  Sooo … that’s it? He’d just gonna ignore it?

  She could work with that. Ignore, ignore, ignore. Like nothing ever happened. If he wasn’t going to say anything, she wasn’t going to say anything. That was it.

  Unless he’s out there telling Jonah right now.

  But then, he would have had all day Friday to tell whomever he wanted. If he’d been exchanging high-fives already—something she could not picture the ever-serious Bill Marshall doing—Jonah would have already been acting weird. So far he’d just been normal Jonah: the good-natured, somewhat shy, twenty-year-old guy who worked part-time at the Haul Ash. No leers. No odd comments.

  Christina pulled up the scheduling software and put in her password. Chewed on her lip while she watched the orange loading screen.

  Fuck, fuckity, fuck fuck fuck.

  If it continued like this, no one saying anything, did that mean it would get less weird from here on out, or more?

  There was only one more pickup scheduled for that day, and it wasn’t happening until five, so she wouldn’t be the one to deal with it. Still, she printed the customer information and paper-clipped it to the forms to shove in the ‘Out’ tray, for lack of other things to do.

  When the door to the back half banged open just before two, she started, but forced herself to stare at the monitor like she was trying to set it on fire, rather than whip around and look unnerved in case it was Bill.

  “Hey.” It was Jonah and she exhaled in relief. “Here you go.” She turned on the stool as he slid her the last customer’s walk-around checklist.

  “Thanks.”

  “The car dolly’s all ready to go.” He was already heading for the time clock.

  “ ‘Preciate it.” Her chorus of aches would go on for at least another day or two, she was sure, and if Jonah had taken care of the heavy lifting for the day, it was all right by her. “See you … tomorrow?”

  “Thursday,” he said, shrugging on the backpack he always brought.

  “Oh, right. See you Thursday, then.”

  “Later.”

  In the predictable two and a half minutes, Jonah’s white Civic was pulling out of the lot. Travis liked to tease him because he was the only one of them who didn’t drive some sort of truck.

  His departure marked two hours left in her shift. She could make it. The Walk of Shame day was not going to get her. Bill was out in the—

  “Christina.”

  Shit.

  “Yeah?”

  “Get this door for me.”

  She got up and pushed open the door to the back half, and Bill crab-walked through carrying an unwieldy flat pack of corrugated boxes like a person-sized shield.

  “There’s more,” he said, as he leaned them against the back wall.

  Two more times he returned with stacks of boxes, and two more times she held the door.

  See? He’s all business now. You can handle this.

  The banded bundles of six cartons each were for customer purchase, and her boss straightened them in groups because, in addition to being an asshole, he was also anal retentive. At least when it came to the state of the front half. The shop was another story.

  She’d gone back to the computer and was putting on a fantastic show of ignoring him some more, by the time he spoke again.

  “Christina, when’s the last time you had a pay increase?”

  Um … what?

  “I … got one at the end of my first year?” The response came out of her at the speed of memory, which just then was coming slow. Probably because red flags were flapping all around like she was at the goddamned Chinese embassy.

  “I’d like to talk about another one.”

  Christina rotated the stool to face him, her features a map of neutrality. There was absolutely zero chance this was unrelated to what had happened on Thursday. Her posture was very straight, and she said nothing.

  “I’m looking for an hour a week from you.”

  An hour a …

  Ooooh, my fucking go—

  Then he said a number and she swore out loud. Couldn’t help it.

  Nothing about his demeanor had changed. Same sober brows, same hard mouth. No smirking or sneering, nothing to indicate a joke.

  It was at least half again what she already made. Damn sure more than Travis or
Jonah made. Coworkers talked.

  How … how did she even respond to something like this? Laugh? Call him a pervert? Storm out? That stare of his pinned her to the spot like a butterfly.

  “I, uh”—she cleared her throat—“I assume I know what the, um … the hour is for?”

  He gave her a single slow nod.

  Fffuck.

  She wanted to scoot around past him and out the front door, never to return again. She shouldn’t have said ‘yes’ last week. This shit wouldn’t be happening right now.

  But the money. Dammit, that would be enough to—

  “For how many weeks?” And there was her mouth, writing checks the rest of her couldn’t, or at least shouldn’t, cash.

  He gave the barest of dry chuckles. “How long do you need the money?” A rhetorical question to which he already knew the answer. Did her face look as pathetic as she felt?

  There’s no way you’re even going to consid—

  “Can I decide and tell you tomorrow?”

  What is there to decide? You can’t give a shit about letting him down easy, can you?

  “Nope,” he said. “You can tell me right now.”

  Christina wanted to scream.

  The only answer was ‘no’, right? She couldn’t let it happen again. It was one thing to act out of desperation that one time, but doing it for a pay raise?

  The things she could do with that money, though. She could finally hire some help. The amount of worry she was cramming into each day right now was not sustainable.

  Something small and proud inside her howled as Christina ran scenarios. Parsed logistics.

  The exchange on Thursday had been relatively quick.

  The ‘exchange’. Ugh.

  He hadn’t asked for anything creepy. Not beyond what most guys wanted, anyway. It could have been far worse.

  Who’s to say it won’t still be?

  She could deal with so many problems. Put up with his dick once a week … that wouldn’t be so big a price, would it?

  You do this for money …

  “All right,” she said. “Fine.”

  … and you’ll be a whore.

  Everyone was a whore, though, really. Everyone had a price. People sold the labor of their bodies all the time. Building houses, working on cars …

  Fucking Bill Marshall.

  He gave another nod at her acceptance, as if it were just another bullet point on a list of job duties.

  “Anything you want to add?” he said.

  “Add?” She had one leg extended off the stool, foot touching the floor as though she would bolt if he complicated it by one more degree.

  “Stuff you ain’t gonna do.”

  Fuck. How about, have sex with you?

  What could she ask for? Anal was probably out; he was clearly into that. Start making too many exceptions, he might nix the deal. The idea of no deal floated as a relief, but then what? Would he just find some reason to fire her?

  She closed her eyes. Let a breath out through her nose before meeting his eyes again. They were dark brown and terrifying in their patience.

  “No kissing on the mouth.” He dipped a nod. “No hurting me on purpose.” Another.

  After a few prolonged seconds of eye contact more she added: “You can’t pass me around to your friends.”

  “I don’t have any friends.”

  Now that she could believe.

  “And you can’t bring anyone in to watch. Or be like … talking to people about it.”

  “I don’t need other people involved in my business,” he said. “That it?”

  Her brain dashed around in a frantic recon. Was there anything else? Christina frowned, sure she was forgetting something.

  “Yeah,” she said. “That’s it.”

  “So that’s the deal.” He hadn’t moved from where he stood the entire time. “One hour a week. I don’t kiss you, I don’t hurt you. No other people. No talk.”

  She gave a hurried little nod, as though she could sneak agreement past her conscious objections.

  “I have one more thing,” he said, moving at last toward the door to the back. “From now on, you wear skirts or dresses. No pants.”

  Her cheeks heated in an instant, as though this demand was what made it real.

  “Bill, I have like, two dresses.”

  He made a growling noise and stuffed his hand into a pocket. Retrieved his wallet. “Go buy some more.” He thumped some folded bills on the counter, making her feel dirtier by an order of magnitude.

  The door swung shut behind him again, and Christina was numb to further reaction.

  He avoided her for the rest of her shift. She avoided contemplating what she’d done.

  Insanity, apparently, felt like nothing.

  Nothing until she clocked out at four and fled in the Bronco toward a grocery run and now, somewhere that had skirts.

  This is insane. You are insane.

  How did she even know he would give her the raise?

  ✪

  It was chocolate brown, the new skirt, and swished around just above her knees, carefree and oblivious as Christina walked from her truck to the Door to Whoredom, aka the Haul Ash on a Tuesday. She pretended to hold out some sliver of dignity up top with a yellow tee-shirt, albeit a fitted one. She could have found a baggy one as a silent ‘fuck you’, but then it would have looked weird to everyone else and she didn’t want to have to come up with excuses.

  An impressive amount of mental fortitude propelled her legs forward, when their every muscle wanted to bolt like a terrified rabbit.

  Travis pushed his way out the front door right when she was about to open it, snugging his ball cap on and joggling his keys in the bright midday light.

  “Lunch?” she said.

  “Yup. See ya in a little bit.”

  Great. Alone already.

  Bill glanced at her from behind the counter as she entered the building, but that was it. The time clock beeped at twelve fifty-eight, two minutes early for her own funeral service.

  “Credit card system is down.” He nodded to an ancient swipe machine, excavated from god-knew-where, complete with a stack of perforated carbon forms next to it on the counter. “We’ll use that if we have to.”

  Leave it to Bill to have one of those things lying around somewhere. They’d only just started running the place from a computer system or anything else even remotely electronic right before he’d hired her.

  “There’s a guy coming to spray around the foundation for ants at two,” he said, rising to give her the computer. “I’m gonna go finish pulling stuff away from the walls.” And just like that, he was out the front door, the ac kicking on in his wake.

  She put her purse away and heaved a sigh. Alone, alone. That was much better, yeah? She forced her shoulders to fall back to their usual place, stretching the tension in her neck on both sides.

  How did he do it? He was just so normal, like he gave out raises for sex every day. Nothing seemed to flap him or alter his attitude in the slightest. Who the fuck was that self-assured?

  But then again, he probably had a plan. He knew what was going on.

  Christina didn’t know anything. What had he told her, besides he wanted an hour a week? Did he want it here again? Would he wait until the end of her shift?

  Not today, at least. She was closing and he had opened: he would have to make some unlikely excuse to stay around that long after he ought to be gone. Asshole Bill and his Schedule were bffs. Everyone knew that.

  By the time the pest control guy had come and gone, Christina had settled into the reality of performing her every task with a knot in her gut. Of holding her breath any time the door to the back half opened, sure that it was her boss, and he was going to … to what? Clear the counter in the sweep of an arm and drag her up onto it?

  You have to stop. You’re gonna be a nervous wreck.

  She stopped lining the binder clips in the tray underneath the counter up in a perfect zig-zagging row.

  T
oo late.

  The door swung open again and she gasped.

  “Take it easy, Dodd.” Travis gave her a funny look while wiping his hands on a red shop rag.

  “You scared the crap out of me!”

  “Yeah, no shit,” he said. “It’s five, why don’t you take your lunch? You can go zone out in the back.”

  Her face got hot. She probably had been staring off into space.

  This whole mess with Bill was not going to be helping her reputation around here at all. It hadn’t even come to the creepy part yet.

  She’d been trying to make sure no one thought of her as the office princess since she started working there. It was her own special paranoia: that people would think she was useless. Afraid of hard work. She pulled her weight, she didn’t fuss about getting dirty or lifting heavy. Didn’t complain about whatever shifts Bill assigned her, last Friday aside. Now here she was wearing dresses and daydreaming on the clock.

  “Yeah, I probably should.” She slid down off the stool. “That way I’m back before you leave.”

  “Okay.” He was already squinting into the monitor as she moved into the back half. The guy just needed to admit he needed glasses, already.

  Despite it being a slow day, lunch was the first time Christina had been able to relax since she’d arrived. Behold, the restorative power of chewing slowly while reading a book!

  She set herself up at the card table with a chicken sandwich, a bag of baby carrots, and her second replacement copy of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. She kept lending it to people and they kept not bringing it back.

  The writing was dense, and she chewed food and words while the Haul Ash receded for half an hour and the late afternoon light turned gold. It was almost enough to reset her stress barometer to something like her normal level.

  Or at least it would have been, had Bill not come through the door to the front half while she was stashing the rest of her carrots back in the fridge.

  The eye contact was immediate and purposeful. Every fine hair she had stood on end.

  “What time does that clock say?” he asked, as the door shut behind him. There was a no-frills wall clock hanging high above the sink, but her boss didn’t bother to look at it.