by Matt Shaw
Kirk duly handed the payment over, failing to realise that, standing in front of him, ‘Stacey’ was in fact Kim; the daughter of Jackie – the teenager who shared some of his college classes.
He beckoned her into the lounge where she went in and took off her coat, revealing a red crop top that showed off her toned stomach and a sexy, short black leather skirt. She turned to him and took her top off revealing a black, satin bra that pushed her breasts close together forming an enticing cleavage. Kirk stopped in his tracks.
“I’m sorry,” he said, “I thought you offered companionship.”
With the drugs working her mood ‘Stacey’ approached Kirk and started to unbutton his dark blue jeans, “What do you call this?”
He pulled away, “This isn’t what I wanted.”
Stacy backed away bemused, “You called me.”
“Yes, I wanted some company.”
“Some company?” she repeated. She was new to this and Kirk was the first man that she had met who didn’t want company to mean ‘sex’. “Some company?” she said again, confused.
“You know. Talk. Cuddle up.”
“You want to pay me to cuddle up and talk to you?”
“I just want some company,” he said.
Kim backed away from Kirk. He didn’t seem like the other men who had booked her – all perverts in their own way. All dirty men who couldn’t keep their hands to themselves – booking her because their partners refused to do the sordid things they actually got off on. Kirk seemed stranger to her – almost alien.
“Don’t you have any real friends for that?” she asked as she backed up to the sofa and sat down.
“No,” he replied without hesitation. She looked at him, as he stood there pitifully, wondering what sort of man would need to pay a stranger to come over and pretend to be his friend for an hour or two.
“I’m sorry,” she said, “it’s just that I don’t get people like you often.”
“Maybe I misunderstood what you were offering when I called,” he said taking the blame away from Kim, “I just thought that you wouldn’t mind.”
“So what did you want me to do then?” she asked as she picked up her top and slipped it on again.
“I thought we could watch a movie together, or something. You know, just cuddle up on the sofa. You could stroke my hair. I could just hold you.”
“You want to pay me to watch a movie?”
“If you’d like.”
“What movie?” she asked half expecting him to pull out a pornographic film containing random acts of hardcore intercourse and sodomy.
“I have the James Bond collection. On DVD,” he said; proud of his collection like a little school boy who was proud of his collection of insects.
Kim couldn’t help but laugh. It wasn’t a laugh brought on by the fact that the situation was funny – it was a laugh brought on because the situation was so strange. She apologised when she realised Kirk looked a little upset by her outburst.
“If you’d prefer to watch something else?” he gestured to the pile of films that scattered the floor in front of the television – a mixture of random film titles and what appeared to be home-made video tapes.
“James Bond would be fine,” said Kim trying to keep him happy. Kirk smiled.
“Great. Which film did you want to watch?” a question that Kim couldn’t answer. She had never seen a James Bond film. She had rarely watched movies.
“Whichever one you are happy with will be fine with me,” she said – keeping him sweet. The way she looked at it, it was going to be an easy appointment.
Kirk selected a random disk and put it into the player before turning back to the settee where Kim had made herself comfortable. She sat up and patted the cushion next to her – gesturing for Kirk to sit with her.
“Would you mind if I sat there?” he asked signifying where Kim had sat. “I thought I could stretch out there, at the back of the settee, and you could stretch out in front of me with me cuddling up behind you.”
He explained himself clumsily but Kim knew what he wanted. Leon and Kim used to cuddle up on the sofa in the same manner - that is, before he changed. She stood up and allowed Kirk to get comfortable before she lay down in front of him. She rested one hand under her head and the other one her leg. Kirk, in turn, rested his free hand on top of hers and pressed in close behind her.
He closed his eyes and breathed in Kim’s fragrance. Her hair smelt like coconuts. Her perfume smelt like freshly cut roses. She smelt great just as Tracy smelt great when she used to cuddle up to him in the same manner. He opened his eyes again when he realised something wasn’t right – he wasn’t as comfortable as he should have been. His watch was digging into his wrist as he leaned on his head down on his arm. Kirk stopped the film before it had even properly begun and shifted uneasily behind Kim causing her to sit up.
“What’s wrong?” she asked as he moved his watch up his wrist and rubbed where it had dug in.
“Sorry – my watch was digging in,” he said as he took it off, “I’ll just put it on the coffee table.”
Kim took the watch from him so he didn’t have to get up, “Allow me.” She was going to pay a compliment about the watch. She was going to say how nice it looked but she couldn’t – not when she really got a good look at it and recognised it. Memories of her mother and past flooding back into the forefront of her mind. “Where did you get this?”
‘To my special Son’
“Where did you get this?” she asked again, knowing the answer. She looked at Kirk again and, with her memory recently jogged, remembered him straight away; the quiet boy in the back of the classroom that introduced himself to her by explaining that he knew her mother and showing her the watch he was given. She remembered the watch perfectly because it was an unusual timepiece and especially expensive looking. The first time she saw what her mother had given a stranger, she was a little jealous. At the selfish age of sixteen she failed to understand how it was easy for her mother to buy a stranger a gift like that and not spend the equivalent on her – her own daughter. It was too much of a coincidence that someone else could have the exact same watch with the exact same message inscribed on the back of it. Kirk sat up and looked at Kim.
“Your name isn’t Stacey is it?”
“Where did you get this,” Kim asked again.
Just as Kim had now recognised Kirk – he too had now recognised her. The pretty girl that sat towards the front of the class and consistently managed to ignore him; even after he had introduced himself hoping that the fact he had known her mum would help them form a friendship.
“It was a gift,” said Kirk as he took the watch back and put it back onto his wrist.
The answer wasn’t good enough. Kim had to be sure he was who she thought he was, “Who from? What was her name?” She knew the answer.
“Jackie.”
* * * * *
Kirk didn’t want to go into details about why he made the appointment with Kim just as Kim didn’t want to go into details about what had happened to her in her life to make her take the path she was currently on. He felt that, if they continued the conversation about why he originally wanted the appointment with her – she would get angry, just as she had done when she left him earlier in the day.
To be faced by someone who knew her before she was a working girl added more shame to Kim’s current predicament. When she was having appointments with strangers at least that’s all they were to her – strangers. Kirk knew Kim before she was a working girl. She didn’t want him to suddenly laugh at her for, obviously, failing in successfully achieving her dreams. Kim had felt that, when he made the appointment, somehow he knew it was her and he was only getting the appointment so he could see, first hand, how bad she had fallen. She thought he only wanted the appointment just so he could laugh at how pathetic she had become. Because she believed the whole thing to be a set-up she couldn’t go through with it and had started to swear at him before throwing the money back into his
face and running from the house – running from her past that could point her out in the street as the failure that she knew she was. What made it worse for her was that her mum was also mentioned. There she was, on the sofa, acting the part of a cheap prostitute just to try and earn enough money and suddenly she had her mother’s memory thrust back upon her. If her mother could see her now, she would be turning in her grave.
Kirk picked up the near-empty bowl of tomato soup, “Can we talk about something else?”
“Did you really not know it was me that you were booking earlier? You really did just want someone for company?” Kim didn’t need to ask and she didn’t know why she did. She knew what the answer was going to be. From the time he had picked her up from the hospital to the time now – she knew that he really was as lonely as he said he was during their appointment. What she couldn’t understand was ‘why’. He seemed like a genuine, caring soul. He seemed as though he was torturing himself. As expected, Kirk didn’t answer her. He just looked at her and smiled.
Kim steered the conversation away, “I can’t believe you still have the watch.”
Kirk looked down at the watch, which was still on his wrist, “I like it. It reminds me that not everyone in this world is horrible. Some people are still nice.”
Kim smiled. She liked that Kirk thought of her mum in such a positive light. She liked that Jackie’s memory lived on in someone else too. Kirk looked back to Kim and smiled back. All these years later it looked as though a conversation about a watch was going to help them achieve a friendship between them.
Kim laughed, “I just can’t believe that, with all the adverts out there, you managed to find one that brought us back into each others lives.” She cringed when she thought about what she had just said – she made it sound as though they were now an item and she knew that could never happen.
Kirk replied, “I’m glad I found your advert.” He mentally told himself off for sounding like he was flirting again before he took a deep breath in and said, “You know I like you and won’t judge you…”
Kim didn’t like where this was going.
“What happened to you today?” he asked hoping that they had bonded enough that she wouldn’t clam up again – hoping that she would trust him enough to give a truthful answer.
She paused for a moment, not sure whether to share her secrets with him. He was, after all, still a practical stranger. A kind stranger who had taken her in and looked after her – even after the way she stormed out of his life previously. She could trust him. At least, she thought, she could trust him with some answers.
6
KIRK HAD OFFERED TO CALL KIM A TAXI but she didn’t wait around long enough to take advantage of his offer. Instead she had thrown the money back in his face and left his home as fast as she could. Even though she felt it was a set up she had wanted to break down and cry on his shoulder but she knew she couldn’t afford to. Just because he knew her all those years ago she knew he wouldn’t understand what she had become and the situation she found herself to be in. When she left the house she tried as hard as she could to put the encounter and memories that were awoken, to the back of her mind – give her a chance to concentrate on the unpleasant tasks at hand; to earn more money and run away from it all.
She had been walking for less than ten minutes when her phone buzzed, in her jacket pocket, with a series of strong vibrations as another call had rung in. Kim hadn’t taken any money from Kirk. She didn’t feel that it would have been right and, because of this, she knew she was behind in achieving her financial target for the day. With no hesitation she had answered the telephone and been invited to another appointment – this time in a posh hotel not too far from the city centre. The client, a well-spoken man, who called himself ‘John’, wanted to see her later in the evening the hour and money weren’t an object. Kim didn’t need asking twice.
By the time Kim had left ‘John’ she had seen four clients in total; three of them had been paying customers. With three hundred and sixty pounds in her purse and the clock only just having struck midnight – she knew, as she left the hotel, there would still be enough time to get the necessary finances behind her to run from everything. She’d have enough money to run from what she’d done and become. As she walked towards the city’s Red Light District, to join the other street girls, she knew that it would all be over in just a few more hours and she knew she had the drugs needed to get her through it.
Kim’s heart raced as she approached the Red Light District. She had never been there and didn’t know what to expect from it. Although it was close to the night’s popular hotspots and fancy restaurants it was far enough away from the beaten track that she never had the need to go there. Even working as a working-girl she had never had the need to go there – until now – as Leon had made all of her appointments for her; not that she had ever thanked him.
Kim’s imagination had told her what to expect; girls standing around on every available street corner with an endless supply of cars slowly passing them - the occupants carefully making their selection for the night’s entertainment. Other girls, her mind told her, would be sat in alleys with semen trickling from various orifices and syringes hanging from their recently punctured veins. The reality was completely different and she thanked God that it was. Even so she knew that appearances could be deceptive and kept her guard up.
The roads were empty of traffic and, although one or two girls were milling around somewhat aimlessly, there was no mass-fucking going on in the alleys or gutters. There were no obvious signs of drugs. There were no obvious signs of anything underhand. A little, tiny piece of Kim felt disappointed as though her mind had cheated her from the truth for all this time. She stepped back into the shadows to observe how the ladies of the night got their business so she could see what to expect; so she could see what she would have to do.
For half an hour she waited, and watched, with nothing happening hoping that her phone would go off to offer her a better source of client. For half an hour she couldn’t help but think that she couldn’t spare the time to be standing around, waiting for business to approach her. The clock was ticking and she knew time was running out – slowly but surely. She kept having to reassure herself that she was doing the right thing by being there – waiting. She had to reassure herself that she wasn’t wasting her precious time.
She shook a thought from her head, ‘If I don’t get any more money, time is all I will have.’
Part of her wanted to leave but she knew it was the only way to pro-actively get any more punters that may pay her the money she needed. Kim overheard one of the other ladies as she turned to her ‘colleague’ and moaned about what a quiet night it was.
‘Typical,’ thought Kim just as a stranger approached her from behind.
“Hi,” he said.
“Shit! You scared me!” said Kim as she span around, to face the stranger, with a look of horror on her tired face.
He smiled at her reaction but didn’t apologise. Instead he just looked her up and down and licked his lips, “Are you working?”
Kim spotted the potential to make more money, “If you’re looking. Sure. Did you want to go somewhere quieter?” Kim hadn’t seen the other girls’ tactics. She didn’t know about the procedure outside of the hotel rooms that she normally frequented. She hoped the stranger did know what he was doing. She hoped that he knew where to go.
“My car’s around the corner,” he said, as he turned and started to walk. He knew she’d follow. He knew they always followed.
True to his word, the stranger’s car was parked up in an adjacent road – the hazard lights flashing away. Unknown to Kim, he had obviously been watching her from afar before deciding that she would be a good ‘visit’. He had left his car long enough to fetch Kim from where she stood. He suddenly walked ahead of Kim and opened the passenger door for her. He didn’t wait for her to climb in so he could close it for her – instead he went around to the driver’s side and let himself in. Kim clos
ed her own door.
“What’s your name?” asked the stranger as he turned on the interior light.
Kim tried her best to sound confident and cast her mind back to the only experience of street-girls that she had – the film ‘Pretty Woman’. “You can call me whatever you want,” she purred as she turned, to sit at an angle, to face him.
The stranger snapped back, “I asked for your name, not a fucking cliché.”
Every bone in her body told Kim to get out of the car there and then but she knew there was very little choice – even if the car door hadn’t been locked; there was little choice. Money was money – no matter where it came from.
