The Companion Contract

by Solace Ames

  He walked to me, carefully moved the guitar case aside from where I’d balanced it against the suitcase, then once he’d cleared space, picked me up and held me in his arms. My feet swung in the air, and God, if only we could fly together, just like this...

  “You taste great,” I gasped, as soon as we stopped kissing. “But yeah, there’s still a little smell from your clothes.”

  “It’s all over the car. Inescapable.” He wrinkled his nose and I giggled.

  Despite the trace of cat, I kind of wanted to wrap my legs around his waist, but I reminded myself we were in public and settled for a wriggle of my hips. “So I guess this gig is going to solve all your problems?”

  “Yes.” He sighed and let me drop but wouldn’t let go any further, which was just fine with me, except I had to practically jab my chin against his shirt to look up into his face. I’d get a headache if we kept talking like this. We ended up sitting down together by the wall, comfortably close. “It also saves my reputation with the label. They hadn’t fully invested in the Avert reunion, but they were on the verge.”

  “It’ll be hard on me emotionally, but I understand. Like you said when we met, we’ve got shared values. I’ll wait for you.”

  I told him about Jacinth, but not the way I’d imagined telling him. I passed her appearance off as no big deal. I even said I felt sorry for her, even though I really didn’t, just to prove how little she affected me.

  “I’ll have a lawyer contact you about a restraining order,” Emanuel said. “I’d like to be prepared in case it becomes necessary. You wouldn’t be the first to file one against her.”

  “I could probably take Jacinth in a fistfight,” I joked. “I’m more worried about Xiomara. I haven’t heard anything from her.”

  “I can’t protect her anymore, unless she asks me to. Past a certain point, our relationship might become unhealthy.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I can’t treat her as a living symbol of the success of my family. She accused me of treating her that way, when I told Miles to stay away from her five years ago. And she was right.”

  I wondered what kind of symbol I was becoming to Emanuel. Miles was music, Xiomara was history redeemed...

  No. We hadn’t been together long enough to find out. And with his departure, the project of proving myself had just become a thousand times harder.

  You can do it. I had to be strong for him, and more important, I had to make sure he knew how strong. “Will you be all right on tour? Is there anything else you need me to do for you?”

  “You can tell me if my rock pose is adequate.”

  He stood up, glowered, made two fists, and crossed his forearms in front of his chest. I laughed so hard I had to hit the concrete with my palm, even though it hurt a little. “Yeah. You look tough as shit.”

  He helped me back to my feet. “They know about my vision issues. I won’t be moving once I step onto the stage. I dislike the band members on a personal level, but I can work well with the tour manager. Don’t worry about me, Amy.”

  He had five minutes left before he ought to leave for the gate. We spent most of it kissing. If people were staring at us, let them stare—they were strangers to us and we were strangers to them. I hoped they had good journeys, but they didn’t really matter in my life. Emanuel mattered. Emanuel would make everything all right, even half a world away.

  “Goodbye, cariño.”

  I watched him walk away, guitar in one hand, suitcase in the other.

  If I could hold on to this feeling, it would fill my own heart for the months ahead. It would be enough. It had to be enough.

  Chapter Eighteen

  It wasn’t enough.

  I tried. I really did.

  As soon as I got back to the apartment, still flying high from the kisses, I wrote up a list of exactly how I’d spend the next two months. I’d go surfing or swimming every day. Start an online Spanish course, and maybe Tagalog too, if it went well. Log back onto my website and mailing list, give my fans updates on my career wind-down, and sell them some autographed panties while they were still nostalgic for me. Set up a meeting with Isabel to go over bookkeeping. Call up Chiho and go shopping with her somewhere fun and funky but sober. I didn’t need anything for myself, but I could start Christmas shopping for my mother and brother.

  I’d spin a chrysalis around myself and emerge as a new, stronger person, Amy Mendoza two-point-oh. I had the money and the time, and no excuse to waste either.

  Maybe if I’d started on the list in a more careful order, I would have gotten farther. But I started with my website.

  Hello everyone! I have some good news and some bad news. I’m moving to a new stage in my life and career. You might have noticed that I’ve scaled back my social media presence over the past months. I’ll be retired entirely soon. I thought I’d be working in the industry for at least a few more years, so I’m sorry if this comes as a surprise to any of you—it definitely came as a surprise to me! I’ll miss you guys, and really super appreciate all the love and support you’ve shown me.

  I might still do some camming in future, and maybe pro-domme sessions, so stay on my mailing list for further updates! Since I won’t be shooting scenes or feature dancing anymore, I thought I’d auction off my costumes. Is there any item you’re especially interested in? I’d be happy to know!

  The update went out on social media, so I got some responses pretty quickly.

  Say it ain’t so, Serena! I’m crying. Will miss you XXXXXX

  Serena Sakamoto is gone but my boner rages on I’ll miss you too baby best wishes

  How much for the NGE costume? Saw you dance in Pasadena <3

  Time for some fresher slanted pussy anyways

  Have some respect you fucking troll Serena is my goddess

  She’s dating a fucking troll, dude looks like the head orc from the hobbit movies he’s locking down the precious lmao

  WTF?

  A link to a picture of Emanuel and me at the Eispalast opening got posted.

  And then a racial slur at Emanuel.

  And for good measure, one at me.

  I couldn’t figure out how to delete or de-link the individual comments. I knew it was possible in theory, but my fingers were already shaking and I didn’t feel like reading a manual or calling tech support. I just deleted the whole post and took a deep breath.

  The social media notifications were still coming in. Most supportive. A few spitting venom.

  I reposted my cheerful retirement note, this time minus the remark about the costumes. Maybe that had triggered the weird rage. No matter how clearly I explained my prices and what you got for a ticket to ride, some of these motherfuckers thought they owned my ass forever.

  It was okay. Nothing I couldn’t deal with. I cast them all aside.

  And God, I was tired of casting. I needed to rest, that was all. The past few days had been surreal, insane, an emotional rollercoaster with screws popping loose and rails on fire.

  I shut the laptop, drank a glass of water and stumbled into bed.

  I stayed there for a few days.

  * * *

  The knocking on the door wouldn’t go away. I slipped out of bed, hunted around for something to wear, wrapped a towel around myself, then remembered through a muzzy fog that I couldn’t just answer the door in a towel. I let the towel drop to the floor, but I couldn’t quite remember the next step.

  Bang. Bang.

  Right. Clothes on. I stumbled to my suitcase, pulled on a tank top and yoga pants. Something heavy and dull smoldered in my stomach. Hunger. I’d gotten out of bed to use the sink and toilet a few times, but there wasn’t any food in the apartment.

  The woman at the door was strange to me, her face grotesquely broad through the fisheye lens of the peephole. Maybe
she had the wrong apartment. I could tell her to go away. But when I looked closer, I recognized her, and I knew I had to open the door.

  “Hi, Isabel,” I said. My voice sounded rusty to my own ears. I licked my dry lips and swallowed. “I almost didn’t recognize you, with the new hair.” I hadn’t seen her in several weeks, and she had dark blond ringlets now.

  “You doing okay, Amy?” Her face was perfectly composed except for a tightness around the eyes. “It’s good to see you again, but you don’t look yourself.”

  “I was tired. I’m catching up on sleep.” Go away, Isabel. I was suddenly worried she’d think I was angry at her. I wasn’t. I just wanted her to go away. She was someone I needed to be a real person for, and I didn’t feel like being a real person right now. I couldn’t deal with the responsibility.

  “Emanuel asked me to check in on you, because your phone is dead.”

  “I think I’m a little sick. Head cold or stomach bug or something.”

  “You poor baby!” Her eyes softened. She took hold of my shoulders and nudged me toward the kitchen table, sat me down there, patted me on the back.

  She plugged in my phone, went out and bought me an assortment of organic frozen dinners and cups of chicken soup, fed me vitamins and cough syrup. I was committed to the head cold story at this point, so I mustered up a few feeble coughs and felt like a piece of shit for lying. I didn’t even know what I was doing anymore.

  Isabel told me she was going out of town tomorrow on business, but her brother would check up on me and bring me anything I needed. This weekend, her family would take me out to lunch, and her tone signified the invitation was mandatory. She hugged me, air-kissed my cheek and left me alone in my little kitchen that smelled of chicken soup and lies.

  As soon as she left, I cursed myself for letting her go. I shouldn’t be alone right now, but I didn’t want to inflict myself on other people, either—the double bind of depression.

  I closed my eyes and traveled back to my days at the mansion, surrounded by music and laughter, Emanuel by my side. The band reunited...

  Nostalgia didn’t help. Those days would never come again.

  I cradled my head in my hands and stared at the charging phone. Europe was nine hours ahead, or behind, I could never remember.

  I had to remember. I had to pull myself together.

  Why did he leave me?

  It’s just a job.

  Be strong.

  I put together a new list, a lot less ambitious than the old list. Eat some soup, even if the thought of food nauseated me. Shower. Practice what I’d say when Emanuel called. Ask a lot of questions and keep a smile in my voice, mainly. Then I could crawl back in bed and close my eyes and fight this heavy time, kill it minute by minute.

  * * *

  I made it through a few weeks like that, scraping through each day, dreading the minutes I was obligated to pretend I was a living human instead of the zombie I’d become. Talking to Emanuel was terrible. It was nothing like having him physically present. When I saw him on video calls, the psychic disconnect got worse—I was angry at the air around him for being close when I couldn’t be close, angry at the fucking European air molecules.

  I was going crazy.

  He held up his phone and showed me the skyline of Paris. I asked him what he had for breakfast. He told me he missed me.

  I need to feel it.

  But I didn’t say that out loud. I think I managed to convince him I was functional, although he still sent people to check on me every few days.

  More than once I had the same thought, brutal in its simplicity: I could end the charade by drifting away from him. He’d always had reservations about our age gap, from the first night we met. The faintest signal, and he’d let me go for my own good. Maybe giving that signal was the easiest way out for both of us.

  I wriggled out of lunch with Isabel.

  Chiho was the one who finally dragged me out of the apartment—when I told her I was feeling a little blue, that seemed to trigger an unexpected alarm.

  I heard her car parking. I knew it was her car because it was loud as hell. I smiled fondly to myself in the darkened room.

  “You didn’t need to come,” I told her. She’d burst through the door already clucking her tongue and sighing at me. Her skintight clothes and immaculate makeup shocked me—I used to dress up like that. It seemed like so much work.

  She hissed something in Japanese that sounded rude. Japanese is always polite until it’s very, very rude. “This is serious,” she said, looking right into my eyes.

  I didn’t like people looking at me anymore, but I couldn’t make her stop. So I looked away, like a stupid child playing hide-and-seek. If I can’t see you, that means you can’t see me. “Not really. I’m just down. I’m not suicidal or anything.”

  “Come with me.” She herded me out the door. Down the stairs.

  I’d forgotten what the apartment building looked like from the outside. It was pretty. A big tree with dark glossy leaves shaded the entrance. The air was warm and dry, a typical Los Angeles day, but the tree made me think of cool, welcome rain.

  “Where are we going?”

  “It’s Sunday morning.”

  “That better not mean church.”

  “You know that crucified god scares me. No, we’re going to brunch.”

  She’d sold her Honda S2000 for cocaine earlier this year, and her new car was a beaten-up Acura Integra with something welded to the trunk that looked like the back half of the Starship Enterprise. I flopped into the bucket seat when she opened the door for me. I’m not sick, I almost protested.

  Yes, I was. I needed to face the facts.

  Chiho climbed in and revved up the engine. I remembered when we’d stayed in a bed-and-breakfast in Baja, and there was a crucifix on the wall opposite the bed. I’d grown up around them—they were décor to me. A simple, familiar part of life. But Chiho hung a T-shirt over the crucifix before we went to bed, so she wouldn’t have nightmares, and I wondered how I’d ever grown so comfortable with the image of a man tortured to death.

  “What happens with your accounts?” Chiho asked accusingly. “You don’t update anymore.” She pulled out of the parking lot. Panic hit—I was being severed from the shelter of my bed. I squashed the panic back down. Someone was trying to help me, and all I had to do was let them.

  “It got too much for me. I’m going to delete a lot of it soon. Maybe even delete my whole website. I’m beyond burned out.”

  “Your boyfriend...”

  “He’s not the problem. Everything else is. I’ll be fine. I’ve got money. Tell me about your life. Please. I want to know.”

  She took the cue and began to chatter away. Her agent wasn’t working with her anymore, and she’d only shot a few scenes since she’d gotten clean. Her credit was shot and her bills were huge, but a steady escort client kept the credit card minimums paid. Her girlfriend was still in the picture.

  I nodded and smiled, genuinely happy, because on a cosmic scale, her relative lack of angst balanced out my overdose of the stuff. “It’s going to get better and better,” I said. I didn’t really believe that, but it sounded good. What was the alternative?

  She drove far away and up into the hills.

  Brunch was at a little café in Griffith Park. I climbed out of the car and shielded my eyes from the sunlight. A green belt of trees separated us from the city, but I could look down, past the trees, and see the great gray blocks wreathed in smog rising out of the valley floor.

  We walked into the café, and Chiho led me to an outdoor table with a white man and a black woman. I recognized the man.

  I’d had sex with him, actually.

  “Paul?”

  “Have we met before?” he asked, rising to shake my hand.

  “Amy. I used to go
by Serena Sakamoto.”

  “You had long hair. I remember now.” He flashed me a welcoming smile. “This is my friend...” He gestured to her, but left the name a blank.

  “Valerie,” she said. “I’m going by Valerie now. Used to be Ebony.”

  I was impressed by Paul’s discretion. He was reassuringly professional. I knew him when he was mostly a pro dom—we’d done an outcall together. He looked too handsome and wholesome, with his fifties hair and his pale green linen camp shirt, for the twisted business I knew he was so good at.

  We talked about names for a while. Chiho’s porn name, Kimi Su, was fairly ridiculous, and she didn’t bother using it except on set. Chiho knew Paul and Valerie casually already. These Sunday sex worker brunches were a long tradition.

  I ordered the biggest sandwich on the menu. I hadn’t eaten a thing all day. I wondered how much weight I’d lost, and how much more I could afford to lose.

  “Valerie is a pro domme,” Chiho told me. She sipped at a glass of red wine. I decided not to be fussy about the drinking, and kept my eyes on my own glass of water. “Amy is thinking about that.” Chiho must be desperate to drag me into conversation somehow, since BDSM talk bored her to tears, and she never brought it up willingly.

  “Everything’s up in the air right now,” I said. “I’m just not doing porn.”

  “I’m in it for a few more years,” Paul said. “The gay side.”

  “I don’t take direction well.” Valerie had classic Bettie Page short bangs and a chiseled, ageless face, the outer folds of her eyes weathered in a way that seemed more from laughter than pain.

  I wasn’t ready to be social, but when the conversation started flowing, I found I could dip my toes in now and then. We gossiped about the more famous stars in the business and talked legal issues.

  I didn’t bring up the job I’d done with Paul. It wasn’t awful, just a little embarrassing. We’d done a roleplay scenario where I was the client’s mail-order wife, cheating on him with a younger lover, and I had to put on a thick fake Asian accent and yell insults about the client’s penis size.