Love Life

by Matt Shaw

  She often sensed when something was troubling Kirk and would often spend time chatting with him about different topics ranging from the other children to what he was watching on the television. Jackie had grown particularly fond of Kirk. He wasn’t a good-looking child and his shyness made him invisible to potential parents that came to see the children but Jackie saw something in him from the very first moment he was brought into the orphanage – when he was just a baby. As Kirk hit his teenage years she knew that he was in all likelihood going to stay at the orphanage until he was eighteen years of age as it was always harder to foster off teenagers – especially boys as they struggle with their hormones and emotions.

  The last time Kirk saw Jackie was on his sixteenth birthday, the day his new parents were finally coming for him. They were an elderly couple who left it too late in life to have children of their own. They particularly wanted an older child so they could skip what most perceive as the ‘difficult’ years. Jackie had taken Kirk into her office and sat him down. She had grown attached to him and wanted to personally wish him well with his new life. She wanted to let him know that, whatever he needed, she was always there for him. She was one of the only people, at this stage of his life, to be nice to him and actually pay him a compliment. Kirk wasn’t used to it and had blushed when she described him as a ‘special young man’. In their final chat, Jackie presented Kirk with a small gift and told him to unwrap it from the comforts of his new bedroom.

  Silver watch; engraved on the back – ‘To my special son’.

  Jackie was a good person; a good woman who didn’t deserve cancer – especially for the second time. The first time Jackie had cancer she took a long break from work but the exact reasons were kept secret from the children who were told that she was having a rest. A lengthy period of absence and one of the hardest times of Kirk’s young life as he felt as though his ‘safety blanket’ had been taken away. By the time she was diagnosed for the second time Kirk was already out of her life and was, unbeknownst to her, part of her daughter’s life; albeit in the background.

  * * * * *

  Kim pulled away from Kirk’s warm embrace – scared to get too close to him, “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be. You’ve done nothing wrong. I didn’t mean to upset you; I’m not too good at this.” Kirk said pointing out the painfully obvious. He stood up, “I’m going to get something to eat – can I get you anything?”

  “Yes, please.”

  He nodded and walked from the room without bothering to ask what she wanted. He wasn’t used to visitors in his house and didn’t have a lot of food to offer – she would have to have whatever he cooked.

  ‘Hopefully she’ll like it,’ he thought to himself as he strolled through to the kitchen and opened the cupboard door revealing stacks of different branded tomato soups.

  4

  “TOMATO SOUP, PLEASE,” said Tracy when the waiter asked to her take order for the starter. He duly wrote down her request, took Kirk’s order for the prawn cocktail, and walked away from the table. “Are you sure you are happy?” asked Tracy nervously.

  “It just came as a bit of a shock,” said Kirk, “I think its great news. I didn’t even know you were worried about being pregnant though.”

  “I didn’t want to worry you so I waited until I was one hundred percent sure. You’re sure you’re happy?”

  Kirk laughed, “Yes. A million times yes. I’m happy.” He lifted her hand from the table and kissed it softly with his warm lips; the scent of her sweet perfume filling his nostrils. Tracy smiled at him and pulled her hand away, embarrassed by the public display of affection – even more so as she realised an elderly couple kept looking over at them both. “I love you,” said Kirk as he poured himself another glass of wine. The loved-up Kirk a million miles away from the Kirk of today; the broken shell of an empty man that’s been consumed by grief.

  “Marry me,” blurted Tracy completely catching Kirk by surprise just as he took a mouthful of his drink.

  “What?” Kirk spat his mouthful back into the glass. It was either that or he would have choked on it. The posh couple on the table to the right of him give him a stern look as much to say, ‘we don’t do that sort of thing in this restaurant, sir’.

  Tracy laughed, “I’m sorry that came out wrong – will you marry me?”

  Kirk wiped his mouth with his hand, “What are you trying to do to me?”

  Tracy took hold of his hand – a sign of her love for him and a gesture to stop him from running from the table, “We’re having a baby, we live together, it’s the right thing to do. It’s what I want to do. I want to be your wife…”

  “It’s just that…” he went to say before getting interrupted.

  “It’s what?” said Tracy as she feared for the negative answer.

  “Well,” explained Kirk as he pulled the small box containing the engagement ring from his pocket, “you’ve kind of stolen my thunder.”

  “What?” Tracy dropped his hand and pulled away from him; shocked.

  “I asked you here so I could propose. I was going to wait until the end of the meal but, well, I guess now is a good a time as any. Tracy, will you marry me?” He opened the box to reveal the diamond, platinum engagement ring. A ring that he had been saving for since he first met Tracy three years earlier.

  “Say that again,” said Tracy – her eyes transfixed on the beautiful ring. The old man was right, Kirk could say anything now and she wouldn’t hear it.

  Kirk climbed down from his chair and went down on one knee; the couple next to him stopped eating their food, turned to watch, and the elderly couple in the corner of the room watched them more intently now as they waited to see how Kirk would get on. The waiter stopped dead in his tracks, holding onto a plate that contained a prawn cocktail and, in his other hand, a bowl of piping hot tomato soup.

  * * * * *

  “It’s hot,” said Kirk as he came back into the room and handed Kim a bowl of piping hot tomato soup, “I hope you like it, if not I can always go out when the shops open and get something else for you.”

  “It’s fine, thank you. It certainly smells good,” said Kim.

  Tomato soup wouldn’t have been her first choice in an ‘extremely early’ breakfast but it was light enough to maybe help settle her stomach. All night, even before what had happened, Kim had felt sick; a common feeling when she nervous. The cocaine helped ease that feeling as it replaced it with a false feeling of hope but the drugs had long since worn off and now she could feel the drugs that were given to her at the hospital were starting to leave her system too.

  She looked over at Kirk who had sat back down on the opposite chair from him, “You aren’t eating?”

  He smiled, “I don’t like tomato soup. I had something in the kitchen,” he lied as he breathed in the smell of the soup; the savoury smell that reminded him of that night. They both fell into silence again – the silence broken by the occasional ‘slurp’ from Kim as she ate her soup.

  Kirk only ate now when he felt as though he absolutely had to. When Tracy was alive he used to enjoy eating. He used to enjoy trying the different tastes of foods from different cultures – his favourite being Italian and Mexican. Now Tracy was no longer with him and he was living an isolated life he realised there was no point in trying new things as he had no one to share them with. He found it hard to get excited about anything now that his loneliness was slowly consuming him.

  Finally Kim broke the silence, “Am I the first prostitute you’ve been with?” She hated that word – ‘prostitute’ – she hated to think of herself as a woman who charged men for sex. All her life she thought these ladies of the night were people from the lowest dregs of society and, yet, here she was – a prostitute.

  “You’re an escort,” corrected Kirk, “you escort people to their functions and, if that’s around their house for a little bit of company, then that’s that.”

  Kim smiled – embarrassed at being corrected. She hadn’t heard anyone describe a
prostitute like that before now. When she used to have friends and the conversations about prostitutes came about, admittedly very rarely, her friends never spoke about them in the way Kirk did either. Everyone in her ‘previous life’ looked down their noses at them; dirty disease spreading tramps.

  “You don’t think what I do is wrong?” asked Kim egging Kirk on to say something else positive about her role. Just hearing him put a positive slant on it made her feel better about herself.

  “I don’t think being an escort is wrong. I don’t think offering companionship to lonely people is wrong,” said Kirk. Before, when he was with Tracy, he never gave working girls a thought – he didn’t need to. He was happy. He was in love. He was going to be a husband and a father. There was no need to pay someone to come over and make him feel less lonely. Kim was the first working girl Kirk had ever approached for an appointment. At the time he didn’t know he knew her as there was no picture accompanying the advert in the magazine. He just wanted someone to come over, for an evening, and talk with him. He wanted someone to make him feel a little less dead inside.

  Kim sat back and listened. She liked his positive outlook on what she did, or used to do, as it made her feel less dirty. It made her feel like she was more of a compassionate human being – offering a service to cheer up men who just needed someone to be there for them and offer a friendship that they previously didn’t have. It was a false friendship that was offered but in some cases even that can be better than nothing.

  Kirk continued, “Street girls…”

  “What about them?”

  “I think they are the ones that don’t help the industry. When some people think about working girls, or talk about them, that’s the side they hear of the most. When they drive through city centres, late at night, that’s the side of the industry that they can see – girls of all ages walking the streets because they are forced to or because they are trying to feed a habit. What you offer – and ladies such as yourself – that’s all behind closed doors. It’s private and other people don’t even necessarily know its happening. Eradicate street girls and I think you’ll find most of the stigma attached with escorting would die down too.” It was the most passionate Kirk had got about something, in a conversation, since Tracy had gone. Normally he kept his opinions to himself or expressed himself in one word, simple to understand, answers in the hope that whoever was talking to him would leave him be. The longer he was with Kim, though, the more he felt alive.

  Kim looked away from Kirk. If he suddenly got up and went through her bag he’d find a few more silver wraps from Leon. If he knew what had happened to her hours earlier – and how it happened – she feared that he would perceive her as nothing more than a lonely street girl that he obviously had such strong opinions about.

  Kirk noticed Kim look away shyly, “I’m sorry I didn’t mean to get on my soap box. To answer your original question though – you are the first lady that I’ve actually booked.”

  Kim turned back to him seizing the opportunity to move the conversation away from street girls, “And you really didn’t know who I was when you phoned up?”

  “I had no idea, the fact that it turned out to be you was just a bonus,” he smiled and Kim blushed.

  “A good thing for us both,” she said.

  Kirk stood up, “If you’ll just excuse me for a minute.” He left the room and went to the bathroom that was in the hallway. The bathroom was a small room with a tiny sink and small, broken mirror on the wall. He stood by the sink and stared at his reflection wondering, was he really flirting?

  Since being with Kim he had begun to feel emotions again and, although he struggled with it, he had enjoyed the sensations that stirred within his soul and had even enjoyed the awkward conversations that, now, seemed to flow a little easier between the two of them as she was obviously getting more comfortable with him too.

  ‘Was she flirting?’

  It had been a long night. Perhaps the tiredness was getting to them both – perhaps the shock of what had happened to her was making her act differently to how she would normally act as she desperately tried to cling onto someone who was being nice to her and not trying to use her. Kirk didn’t know and although he wasn’t entirely comfortable with the situation – he also didn’t feel entirely uncomfortable with it either. He closed his eyes tight and tried to put Tracy’s face to the back of his mind. Surely she would want him to move on?

  Kirk flushed the toilet to make it appear that he wasn’t just in the bathroom to get some sanctuary, and did actually need to go, before he returned to the lounge where Kim was still sitting. He sat down opposite her and smiled.

  “Did you want any more soup?” he asked.

  Kim answered his question with a question of her own, “So what really made you pick up the phone this time then?”

  5

  ‘I LOVE YOU’ was Tracy’s last words. A sentence that stuck in both Kirk’s mind and heart ever since. No one could replace Tracy - no one. He knew that, if he phoned the mobile telephone number written on the advert in front of him – this lady wouldn’t replace Tracy. She wouldn’t try and replace Tracy and he wouldn’t allow her to. He knew that the arrangement made between the two of them would strictly be a business deal and nothing else and yet, even with that in mind, he found it extremely hard to pick up the telephone and dial the numbers that were trying to tempt him. Tracy wouldn’t like it. He dropped the magazine, displaying the advert, to the floor and threw the telephone onto the settee next to him.

  ‘Tracy wouldn’t like it,’ he thought.

  “I wouldn’t mind,” said Tracy as she sat down next to Kirk, “I know you still love me.”

  Kirk shut his eyes tight. As much as he wanted to believe Tracy was by his side he knew that she was nothing but a figment of his desperate imagination. A figment of his fragile state of mind convincing him that booking some company would be an ‘okay’ thing to do.

  Kirk ran his hand through his hair. In his mind it was Tracy’s hand that was stroking him and he couldn’t help but smile as he remembered how she used to do it.

  “If you just want to book her for some company then that’s fine,” continued Kirk as though he was Tracy, “but you can’t sleep with her.”

  Kirk didn’t want to sleep with her. He didn’t need to. He just needed someone real to talk to. He just needed someone real to snuggle up to on the sofa whilst they watched whatever was on the television. He desperately wanted them to cuddle up to him so that he could close his eyes and pretend it was Tracy that was there with him for real as opposed to just in his mind.

  “If that’s all you want,” continued Kirk / Tracy, “then that’s fine. I know you’ll be thinking of me.”

  Kirk picked the magazine up again and flicked back to the page with the relevant number. Another couple of seconds passed before he dared to pick up the telephone; scared ‘he’ was going to talk himself out of making the call again. No voice stopped him.

  ‘0-7-8-6-8-6-6-0-3-4-9,’ he thought as he dialled the digits. He waited again for a voice to stop him. No voice stopped him and he pressed the little green telephone image on the keypad. There was a brief delay as he heard the digits, which he had already pressed into the pad, get dialled for him and another brief delay as the line connected with the number. It was ringing. He could still hang up but he didn’t. His heart pounded hard and fast.

  Finally a female voice answer, “Hello?”

  “Is that Stacey?” asked Kirk. He thought he had the wrong number. The female voice sounded faint and timid. The female voice sounded scared.

  There was another pause, “Yes.”

  “I was wondering whether I could see you. You know, for an appointment? Please.” Kirk was embarrassed. He hadn’t done anything like this before and couldn’t quite believe he was doing it now either. Stacy didn’t reply. “Hello, are you still there?”

  “I’m here,” she said. “I’m sorry it’s a bad line,” she lied. “When would you like to see me?”
<
br />   “Are you free now?” Kirk felt that, if he didn’t follow it through as soon as possible, he would end up trying to cancel it as his nerves, and guilt over Tracy, got the better of him. There’s another slight pause before ‘Stacey’ agreed to the appointment details and took Kirk’s address from him. The appointment was set and she was on her way round.

  When Kirk hung up he couldn’t help but think about how shy the lady on the other end of the phone seemed. He thought that, in that line of work, the woman would be full of confidence. If anything, she sounded scared about accepting the appointment – scared of Kirk.

  ‘Stacey’ was a different woman when she finally arrived at Kirk’s house. When he opened the front door to let her in she walked in with an air of confidence that wasn’t anywhere near noticeable on the telephone. It was an air of confidence that we now know was induced with the help of cocaine. Her shyness and embarrassment only came back to the surface, temporarily, when she asked for the payment to be handed over and enquired as to how Kirk wanted to do ‘it’.