by J. C. Allen
When I got home, without even thinking about it, I grabbed the bottle of gin, getting the cap off… and pausing just before I tipped the bottle. I sighed.
“Just this one day, Roost,” I said. “You fucking bastard.”
I put the bottle down, feeling the urge to drink some of it stronger. I tore myself away before I could make a mistake of any kind, heading for the bedroom.
It came as little surprise, given the lack of sleep in my body, that I fell asleep almost instantly.
What did come as a surprise, however, was that I woke up before the sunrise.
I checked my phone. It was 3:04 a.m. The sun would be up in a couple of hours, and some of the more productive members of society would be waking up now—those fuckin’ weirdos—but I was in an odd limbo of a state. I would have to stay awake much longer than normal tonight to get back on my normal schedule of falling asleep around 5 a.m. and waking up at 2 p.m., but, well, I did feel a hell of a lot better.
I didn’t know what to do, but what first came to mind was a thought I couldn’t believe.
Go see that girl. The one you saw.
For all the shit I had just given Roost about never seeing a hooker and wanting no part of one, I couldn’t help myself. She wasn’t a prostitute—she was way too pretty in the face and just looked way too… well, not like a hooker. Apparently, the morning haze also prevented me from thinking straight.
I headed to the bathroom, took a whizz, and poured myself a glass of water. Also strangely, the sleep had killed my desire to drink. Almost like Roost had a point.
It’s too bad he can’t also be God. Bringing back…
I shook my head and moved around the apartment in a haste, trying to get rid of the thoughts in my head before they ruined this unusually good morning.
Trying to build upon the good feelings that I’d developed up to that point, I threw on some jeans, leaving my shirt behind, and hurried downstairs to my old faithful, my chopper. At this early in the morning, and with as little of a shit as I gave, I didn’t worry about what anyone would say if they saw me shirtless. So long as it’s not the Falcons.
But then again, in this dark, they’re not gonna know.
I keyed the ignition, revved the girl to life, and hurried over to the corner where the girls were. I didn’t know what I would find—I didn’t even know what I would do when the gal would approach me—but I held out hope that…
I don’t know what the fuck I held out hope for. The people I loved died, the things I ran crashed, and the dreams I had got buried by me before someone else could do it for me.
I parked the bike in a secure location, one near some well-guarded Saviors territory, and saw the girl in the distance. She had her head down but wasn’t looking at her phone this time. She looked spooked out of her damn mind, as if someone had threatened to cut her for not giving her satisfying enough pussy.
Sadly, for the life of hookers these days, that seemed far too common.
Back in the old days, in the days of my father running the show, we kept it much cleaner. Well, granted, some people would never come around to the idea of hookers being clean, but we made sure that they lived fair, good lives and they earned their wages fairly. If someone got abuse on the job, we found out the John and gave him enough of a message that he wouldn’t fuck with her again.
Now, though? Prostitutes were treated even worse than they usually were. The Black Falcons had turned their profession from one acknowledged and allowed by the police—so long as it wasn’t overt—to opportunities for rape, beatdowns, assault, and sometimes even murder.
In that regard, I couldn’t blame the girl for looking so nervous as she was, given that someone had probably tried to kill her in the last few hours.
I held my head high, not trying to pretend that I was going anywhere else. I didn’t play that game.
But I really didn’t know what I wanted.
I didn’t want sex, at least not as most men approached prostitutes did. I didn’t want friendship, as some of the sadder ones did, though that was mostly out of an odd sense of altruism. I just…
It was hard to explain, and I didn’t like things that required a difficult amount of explanation. I had to get an answer for why I felt the way I did. Part of me almost hoped that she would prove to be stupid or stuck-up or some other personality trait that allowed me to ditch her without a second thought.
Except, well, she had discussed keeping the mind invigorated.
“Got to keep the mind going somehow.”
What girl, let alone a prostitute, said that in my circle?
Not a damn one, that’s what.
The girl looked up at me somewhat nervously. I saw her double-glance—I knew she recognized me. It was impossible that she didn’t. But she also looked like she didn’t want to believe I was there, for some reason.
“How are ya?” I said.
“Oh hey, baby,” she said, putting on a smile that was so obviously faked I wanted to hug her. “What are you looking for tonight?”
“Not what you’re selling,” I said, crossing my arms, as if making clear I wasn’t going to reach into my wallet. “But who you are.”
The look on her face was so baffling, I almost did something I rarely did—laughed. I almost laughed.
I’m pretty sure I did smile, though. Not that she received it well.
“Well, honey, I’m not too familiar with that game, but I can be whatever you need me to be.”
“I’m not your honey,” I said, but it was said gently. “I’m…”
I thought better of giving her my name. If she was somehow affiliated with the Black Falcons, I didn’t need word getting out that I visited this corner. It would only take one clubster in the window, perfectly positioned with his intel, to take me out, with none of the Savage Saviors any the wise.
I think she got it, though.
“I’m Eve,” she said.
“That your real name?”
“Yes,” she said, annoyed.
“Got it,” I said, trying to calm her anger. I suppose she had a point—if people thought I used a fake name when I was trying to be serious, I’d be pretty damn pissed too. “Listen…”
I sighed. No amount of thinking would provide any sense of what was to come. No amount of slow thought or quick wit would make what I was going to say sound good. I just needed to charge ahead.
“I just saw you for the first time yesterday driving to work,” I said. “And you caught my eye immediately. I know what you are. I don’t think either of us need to bullshit.”
“No shit,” she said.
Spunky. Interesting. It’s like she’s guarding herself against something.
“Agreed,” I said. “Where I am in life, though, I sincerely don’t want sex. At least, I don’t want inconsequential sex.”
Even if my actions from the previous night prove it.
“I just am curious to know more about you. And when I get curious, I do what I can to find out more. So, let me ask you a crazy question you probably get all the time.”
I nodded about two blocks down.
“Can I grab you some Waffle House and talk to you?”
It was beyond insanity. I had no good logical reason for talking to this girl. Smart as she was, cute as she was, mysterious as she was, that in no way made it a good idea to take her out at 3 a.m. on a Wednesday night to a seedy Waffle House that, while it may not have had Black Falcons, still had people who would talk and become curious.”
“You gotta pay me,” she said. “It’s not going to be a good luck when I desert my duties to grab an early breakfast.”
“How much?”
“Three hundred.”
“Done.”
She blinked at me like I was the dumbest man alive. She wasn’t wrong.
But I didn’t want to be unsure.
“Prove it.”
Without blinking, I whipped open my wallet and showed two hundred dollars. It was a hundred short, but it was more than enough to prove I
was serious.
“Why are you doing this? What are you going to do?”
I bit my lip. Why was I doing this?
She was young, younger than Maggie. She was a prostitute, not an aspiring musician like Maggie. She was beat up, a bit meek at times and a fiery, angry beast at others, not calm and stable like Maggie.
But underneath those contradictions, underneath it all… there was something to her.
Perhaps I was more attracted—yeah, I had to say that word. Attracted—to the image of her than the reality. Perhaps she had just been reading some dumb article, and her idea of stimulating the mind was nothing good. Perhaps I would find this was a waste.
In any case, for how much of a mess I’d let myself become in the last 48 hours, I owed the world some good behavior. If I could show a hooker a good time—and I meant a truly, honestly, genuine good time, not the hot and dirty and not-really good time—then maybe it would give me some karma points.
“I don’t know,” I said. “But maybe I’ll know by the end of the dinner.”
The girl rolled her eyes. It was a little aggravating, in part because it harmed the image I had of her, but it was probably the most honest thing she did the entire time.
“If I’m being honest with you, you sound like one of my Private Johns,” she said. “But if I’m also being honest… that’s probably not entirely true. You seem too put together to be like them.”
I laughed at that but quelled my laughter for fear of drawing curious ears and eyes.
“C’mon,” I said. “Let’s get the hell out of here. I want to get to know you.”
10
Eve
Is this real?
Or is Rock testing me?
I mean, I have the money, so that’s what matters, but…
Something about this…
It killed me that these utterly paranoid but also utterly rational thoughts were consuming my mind. Everything in my life did feel like a fucking set up, and if I did not properly account for it, I knew I was going to be paying for it with something other than money.
But as I walked with the man, by his side, stealing glances at him, I just didn’t get that vibe. Sure, my mind thought the worst, but when I returned to my “base” instinct, I just… I wouldn’t say trusted him, but not distrusting seemed accurate. Still…
“Who the hell are you, anyways?” I blurted out.
He sighed.
“An idiot,” he confessed, shaking his head. “But not because I’m with you.”
Not sure what that’s supposed to mean.
You’re nice, though. I’ll go with it. I can pretty safely assume this is not some long con for anal.
He grumbled something about someone named Matty, let out a long, loud sigh that actually seemed to knock his head back until he was basically growling up at the sky, and then, finally, he looked back at me.
“I’ll tell you more later,” he said. “Once I get to know you a little better.”
Fair enough, I thought. Anonymity was the name of the game for many of these men, and if this guy didn’t want to talk about himself, I wasn’t about to pry it out of him. Last thing I needed as a complaint filed with my manager.
We moved in silence, and I suspected a large part of him was trying to rationalize what he was doing.
For me, my rationalization was simple—he was paying me. I usually got paid to be a product, but now I was being paid for my time.
What felt strange, though, was that even if he wasn’t paying me, I still would have agreed to this. The money was just insurance in case Rock had something to say to me.
I couldn’t say why—well, on a primal level, I could say this guy was hot as hell, had a mysterious, darker-than-night, mysterious aura to him, and he could converse with me on a level that had nothing to do with what my tits would do to his dick.
But beyond that?
He was right. There was just some mystery that we needed to figure out. We needed to figure out why we kept thinking about the other as we were.
We reached the entrance, and I quickly moved to open the door and let myself in, holding it open behind me for him as I did. My mind raced, suddenly worried that I might have put myself in danger by coming with this man. The hostess did a double-take as we came in, caught herself in mid-sneer at our obviously disheveled appearances, and worked to bring herself back into the realm of professionalism.
Damn, I really do look like a whore.
But, then again, it was Waffle House at 3:15 a.m. Did she expect to see a couple from church?
In any case, my fear of coming with this man subsided, a temporary instinct that kicked in whenever I went with men somewhere alone. Chuck has ruined me when it comes to men.
We sat ourselves at a booth. I followed this man’s lead, as confident and cool as he moved, trying my best to follow his example. No one else was in the restaurant aside from the staff, which I think was to this man’s liking—he was noticeably more relaxed in here than he was in the streets.
This, most certainly, was not some working class man trying to sneak one in while the wife was out of town.
And, sitting across from him, the light of the restaurant casting his features in full presentation, I could not help but say anything other than holy fuck was he hot—no, he was handsome.
I wasn’t used to feeling attracted to men, especially as of lately. It wasn’t common to work with attractive men, most the ones who had to pay for sex weren’t doing so because they had a ton of other options.
I wondered why this sort of man would’ve had to pay for sex—which he’s not, Eve. Remember that.
I could imagine that a lot of women would’ve been eager to get with him for free. Blushing at that, I wondered if I’d just confessed to myself that I wanted to sleep with him…
Jeez, Eve! Get a grip. It’s not like you don’t work with men daily. Whatever happened to getting more aroused by intellect than dick size?
The handsome man stared back, seeming to know that there was something going on in my head. He raised an eyebrow at my obvious shimmy of discomfort.
“What?” I bit my lip. “It’s… it’s just weird to be sitting at a Waffle House with basically no underwear on. I mean, I came in expecting to take clothes off, not take ketchup lids off”
He shrugged and grinned, a surprising reaction to me. It’s the first time he’s smiled at me.
He thinks I’m cute?
“I’m sure it’s not the weirdest thing they’ve seen. Besides, I imagine it would be kind of exhilarating, right? The thrill of being somewhere public and so undressed? Would be for me, at least.”
“Yeah, well, you aren’t the one doing it.”
“What if I am?” he grinned, raising an eyebrow.
Woah now.
Why do I find this funny?
“Then they wouldn’t know anyway.” I gestured to his pants. “These kind of block anything from being seen.”
“You want me to strip?” he said. “I’ll do it. Get down to my boxers if it’ll help you feel better.”
Oh my God!
This guy…
“Boxers? So you are wearing underwear!”
“I can take those off too if you want.”
The oddest part of this whole interaction, the one that just hit me, was that this conversation was rapidly turning sexual, or at least heavily flirtatious. There was little doubt he was imagining me naked, and I was certainly doing the same for him.
And yet, it didn’t feel transactional. It didn’t feel like a negotiation. It felt…
Oh my God, it felt like flirting.
I couldn’t help but smile at that, which I’m sure made him think I wanted to jump his pants. But honestly, sitting at this booth with him, being able to freely laugh, being able to say whatever I wanted—this was exhilarating!
The feeling was incredible. Perhaps I was getting carried away with my good feelings, but I couldn’t help myself. I truly, really, honestly was beginning to feel overjoyed.
> I silently thanked any and all gods that made this meeting possible. I had wanted to end my shift with no more Johns, and he had come to me at the exact moment I needed. OK, maybe I could have used him a little earlier, maybe before Rock showed up…
But I don’t even feel stressed…
And now, free from that place, I got to take the night off from being Eve the whore.
Until 4 a.m. comes. And you have to go back to Rock.
Rock…
Part of me reminded myself that this man in front of me had technically paid for me.
That he was choosing to use the time he’d bought to do this instead of using my body in some way didn’t change the fact that I was being used as a commodity. That part of me went on to remind me that, in any other circumstance, he wouldn’t have been caught dead with me. At that, I looked down, trying to ignore the sudden shame I felt at feeling any differently in this circumstance.
“What’s wrong?” he said, seeming to sense the shift in my attitude.
“You are paying me for being here,” I said. “I think you’re sweet, but this is still—”
He stopped me, raising a hand. I instinctively flinched, which drew a grimace from him. He put his hand down, apologizing.
“I just wanted to make something very clear,” he said, his voice gentle and kind. “Before you go thinking that I bought you, I think it’s worth stating that I would’ve thrown all of the money I’m paying you and more to grab five hookers at once if all I wanted what your profession demands. Please remember that, okay? I just got done telling a friend about how disinterested I am in taking him up on an offer for a prostitute these days, and I feel like it would get back to him if that’s what you’re taking away from this. I paid you…”
His voice trailed off. He looked befuddled at something.
“What?”
“What’s your name?”
