I imagined myself on the arm of a sixty-year-old man and my guts twisted. But really, who cared how old he was? I could go on a couple dates with him. It’s not like I was signing a contract to go home with him.
This is a really stupid idea.
But I could choose whom I went out with. He didn’t have to be sixty years old.
I took the Time magazine with me, stuffing it into my bag. It wasn’t the first time I had ever stolen something, but I still felt a little guilty.
Like a zombie, I walked back to the shuttle and returned to the BART. I was so out of it that I almost got off the wrong stop. A battle raged inside me as I took the BART home, wondering whether I should tell Natalie or not. I knew that she would not approve.
Jessica, don’t be stupid. This is just an escort site disguised as something else.
A part of me was scared that I was considering doing something so desperate. But my situation was truly desperate. I needed a job. I had no desire to return to retail. This seemed like such an easy thing. A couple dates a month for a fat paycheck. I could at least try it. If I was uncomfortable with the experience, I could just delete my profile and never do it again.
You’ve lost your damn mind.
I ignored Natalie’s voice as I unlocked the door to my apartment and walked inside. It was a grimy, two-bedroom apartment in the East Bay that I could barely afford. Though Natalie’s parents were well off, they had the opinion that once you turned eighteen, you were on your own. As a result, our apartment looked like shit. A moth-eaten sofa that might have once been beige laid in the living room, and a chipped, circular wooden table surrounded by fold-up chairs sat in the linoleum kitchen. That was it. We didn’t even have a coffee table.
Natalie, my best friend and roommate, was in the kitchen, eating leftovers. I couldn’t believe how late it was. It was almost suppertime. How many hours had I spent in that library researching?
“Hey,” she said from the table. “How’d it go?”
So well that I’m considering prostituting myself. I shook my head. “He can’t help me. I’ll have to figure something out.”
Her face fell and she shook her head. I was dying to tell her about what I had read in the magazine. The secret was burning a hole in my bag where I had stashed the magazine.
Instead, I crossed the room and sat on the couch. I didn’t feel very hungry. Sometimes, I felt so tired that I didn’t have the energy to contemplate hunger. Besides, the article had filled me with something so much more substantial than food—hope.
I turned the TV on and left it on the Entertainment Tonight channel, not really caring about what I was watching. Natalie sat down next to me with a bottle of beer.
“I applied to a bunch of jobs and stuff while I was at the library.”
She said nothing for a while. “That’s good.”
There was a montage of an extremely handsome, well-dressed man on the screen.
“God, look at this guy.”
I snapped my attention to the program.
“Billionaire playboy Luke Pardini was spotted partying in San Francisco last night.”
The screen flashed a series of images of a young, twenty-something man stumbling out of nightclub with tall, gorgeous women hanging on each arm.
“The troubled billionaire left Ruby Skye with two employees at 3am and was seen entering a Pardini hotel in Union Square. Luke’s father, Giacomo Pardini, is the owner of the multi-billion dollar hotel industry. Last year, he was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. The business magnate has had a reportedly strained relationship with his son, who is expected to take over Pardini Worldwide.”
“He’s like Bruce Wayne.” Natalie sniggered as she took a swig of her bottle.
Yes, he was just like him: rich, famous, handsome, and a playboy. The difference was that Bruce Wayne had an important job—defending Gotham from evil villains. Luke had grown up with money and would always be rich, even if he never shouldered any real responsibility. My mind fell into a fantasy as I imagined what it would be like to be filthy rich, to not have a care in the world. Dining at the most fabulous restaurants in the world, staying at five star hotels and paying ridiculous amounts of money for bottles of vodka at the VIP section in clubs. How could anything be savored when it was so easy to get?
I was reminded irresistibly of the whole sugarbaby thing, and I wondered if Luke was on one of those websites. No way. He was way too gorgeous. Still, it was fun to fantasize about it.
I looked at Natalie’s face and wondered if she’d be receptive towards my idea, but she looked back at me with a rather serious look and I lost my nerve.
“Hey, listen. I don’t want to rush you, but I really need money for rent this month.”
My chest tightened. “Yeah, I know. I’m working on it, I promise.”
I could feel her quiet disappointment and I stood up from the couch to head straight for my room. Natalie was the only family I had and I hated myself for putting her in this difficult position. I sat myself in front of my computer and stared at the screen. My mouse hovered over the registration button to make my sugarbaby profile. I felt very nervous about it. I had never done anything remotely resembling online dating. I had never had time for dating, and admittedly, I was terrified of men.
This is stupid. I should at least wait to see if anyone contacts me.
But there were only two weeks left in the month, and Natalie needed her rent money. I looked around my room as my fingernails dug into my palms and tried to find something that I could sell. My closet consisted of clothes from the Salvation Army and some gifted to me from Natalie’s family. There was my old Super Nintendo system sitting in the corner, but that would net me at the most a couple hundred dollars. The only real asset was my computer, and I couldn’t give that up. Everything else was been passed down. Natalie usually gave me clothes that she would no longer wear. It was lucky that we had the same body type. Everything that I owned was frayed and unwanted. Natalie bought every stick of furniture in this place. The one exception was my dresser, which I bought in a Craigslist ad.
My eyes stung. I’m so fucking poor. The helpless feeling suffocated my chest—I couldn’t deal with it, I couldn’t handle this. Natalie would marry Ben and I would be alone, with no one to care about me.
Just wait a few days.
I clenched my fists as a tear rolled down my face and splashed on the dirty carpet. I bit my knuckles to keep myself from sobbing out loud. I didn’t want Natalie to hear. A voice screamed inside me, repeating the same question over and over—What am I going to do?!
I waited in the dark, hoping that a brilliant idea from the back corner of my mind would suddenly scream out something I had never considered. But all I could come up was—I don’t know.
My head was pounding from the stress. I crammed two aspirin down my throat and ripped off my clothes to change into my pajamas. I could deal with my crisis in the morning.
Chapter 2
My car’s gas tank was dangerously low when I parked it behind the soup kitchen I volunteered at every Tuesday. What started off as an annoying thing to beef up my resume eventually became an activity I looked forward to each week. I had so much in common with a lot of the homeless people that I didn’t feel like I was such a failure when I was there. A lot of the regulars volunteered information about their past when they realized I wasn’t some kid doing this for college credit. They told me about how their families kicked them out, or how they grew up terrorized by foster families, and ran away only to be drawn into a seedy street life. Their stories made me realize how lucky I was to have someone like Natalie in my life. Without her, I could’ve ended up in a group home somewhere.
Clenching printed recipes in my hand, I used my key to enter through the back and wove through the stainless steel kitchen. The back was a maze of ovens, huge, walk-in refrigerators, and stoves. Near the front was a long counter that opened to the cafeteria, which had three bland, yellow walls with fraying posters affixed to them. Cheap, fol
d up white tables and chairs filled the floor.
After months of work, they finally let me cook my own recipes. Sometimes it was hard to think of ways how to turn canned green beans into something edible, but I think I did a pretty good job. Most of the homeless here never had a real, home-cooked meal.
I waved to one of the volunteer cooks. Shelly was a forty-year-old single mother of two who had gone through hard times. Her son was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis, and sometimes I’d hear her arguing with her crappy HMO insurance company on the phone.
“How’s the job hunt going?”
My insides rotted at the mention of my least favorite conversation subject. “Badly,” I admitted.
She gave me a sympathetic look and patted my arm. “You’ll get something soon.”
I slid the recipes over to her. “I figured we should make some stew today since it’s getting cold, and use whatever rice we have. We still have a bunch of carrots, right?”
She looked at it. “Yeah, this will be great. Let me run it through Carol.”
I rolled my eyes. Carol was in charge of the kitchen and didn’t like how much I spent on groceries. A soup kitchen couldn’t exactly afford the best cuts of meat, and it wasn’t a surprise when Shelly returned with an apologetic smile. “She said to use the leftover ground beef in the freezer, not the chuck.”
I slammed my fist on the stainless steel counter. “What the hell is she talking about? You don’t put ground beef in a stew!”
It was annoying how little control I had at this place. Carol always found something to criticize about my recipes. “Kale is too expensive. Use collard greens instead.” Or “Just use the brown rice. Do we really need two kinds of rice?”
She raised her eyebrows. “Relax, Jessica. This place runs on donations.”
“I know, but the chuck needs to be used for something. Why not this?”
Leaving Shelly and the others to make the stew, I switched my focus to making bread pudding out of all the stale bread we had. The local bakeries donated their stale products after I asked them. What was useless for them was great for the soup kitchen, and we made breadcrumbs, bread pudding, stuffing, meatloaf, and French toast out of the discards. Anything leftover filled the bird feeders next to the garden.
After I gathered the loaves from the pantry, I sliced them with a big, serrated knife. I put so much time into this place because it allowed me to channel my passion for cooking, and it felt good to help the needy. A warm glow of pride washed over me whenever they complimented my food, and I rarely had the opportunity to feel good about myself.
Still, the soup kitchen wasn’t a permanent thing. One day, I’ll have a life. And a real job as an editor. I could write about anything: fashion, sports, video games, whatever. I knew I wouldn’t stop until I had my foot in the door somewhere.
I shoved the huge loaf pan into the oven and walked back to oversee lunch preparations. The overpowering grease smell wrinkled my nose.
“Make sure you don’t pour that down the drain,” I said, pointing to the bowl of piping hot grease.
As I looked inside the pot, fire roared up my throat. The beautiful stew I envisioned was now an unappetizing slop. Fuck.
After the mashed potatoes were prepped, the doors opened to the awaiting crowd. A neat row of people filed in line as we placed the steaming trays of food under the window. One of my favorite regulars was in line, and I hoped he’d like the meal.
The smell of comfort food filled the kitchen. We also made a tray of baked squash, pumpkin, and yams. I loved fall, even though it was always the beginning of a lonely time of the year for me. There was never a place for me to go on Thanksgiving or Christmas. I used to go with Natalie, but when she and Ben got serious, I declined her invitations to spend the holidays with her family. It felt weird tagging along and I wanted to give them some space. Natalie always begged me to join them, but I lied and told her I would be fine and already had plans here. With a pang in my chest, I remembered the first time I spent Christmas alone. I sat on my couch the whole day, watched a channel that played A Christmas Story nonstop, and bawled like a baby. After that, I went to the soup kitchen on holidays.
I more or less came to terms with not having any family, but the fact that no one except Natalie would notice if I died brought on the bout of depression. It was pathetic that I didn’t have any other friends that I could spend the holidays with. Absolutely pathetic.
The serving spoon shook in my hands. I can’t spend the rest of my life like this. The sting of tears threatened. In a few years I’ll be thirty. The soup kitchen faded away as depression wrapped its coils around my chest like a python, squeezing me of air. I gave up years ago on a happy, picture-perfect life, but it was hard to bear this soul-crushing despair. Where had it gone so wrong?
When I was young, my long blonde hair was the target of compliments from many boys expressing an innocent crush at school, but I didn’t know how to handle them. I couldn’t deal with the abuse at home— and I still haven’t. I took my scissors into the bathroom after school and cut off my long strands just under my ears, leaving me with a horrible jagged haircut my foster parents surprisingly didn’t care to comment on. The kids at school whispered behind their hands and laughed at me. Pretty soon after that, the boys left me alone.
“Hey honey, what did you make me today?”
The raspy, deep voice snapped me out of my gloom. I smiled as I recognized Frank’s voice. He was a thin black man who always wore a winter coat and cap no matter the temperature.
“Well, I wanted to make you guys a nice stew,” I said as I took his tray and gave him extra helpings.
“Carol being a bitch again?”
I laughed and slipped him an extra bread roll. “Hide it.”
The bread roll disappeared inside his coat. He gave me a quick wink before he moved down the line and continued his banter with the other cooks.
A tiny voice whispered out to me. “It smells so good.”
I never saw her before, and she didn’t want to look at me. A lot of them were like that at first; probably ashamed they had to come here. The Hispanic woman stared at me as I handed her a heaping bowl of stew. Her eyes were red and I realized with a shock that she was crying.
“Bless you. You have a kind soul.”
She seemed unable to say any more. Before I could respond, she moved down the line with her scarf pressed against her eyes.
I smiled to myself. The little things.
My mood was soaring when I left the kitchen and walked across the parking lot. Everyone loved what I made, even though I was unable to make it exactly how I originally planned. Next time, I vowed to choose a recipe Carol would definitely approve.
The horrible sight of a cracked windshield stopped me cold. A brick sat on the pavement next to the front wheels. I walked around the side of my car to find the driver’s window completely shattered. Glittering glass shards covered the ground like powder.
No, no, no, no, NO!
My hands shook as I unlocked the car door and swept the broken glass from the seat. The glove compartment hung open. My GPS was gone.
Why? Why would someone do this? And why smash in my windshield?
Replacing the glass would cost a couple hundred dollars that I didn’t have. I collapsed beside my car and screwed up my face, but the tears wouldn’t come. It must’ve been one of the homeless. I wanted to blow up the damn place.
“Fuck!”
Simmering with rage, I opened up my phone to search for the nearest auto shop and found one a few miles from the kitchen. I couldn’t believe my luck. Out of all the cars, the asshole chose mine and stole my GPS, which I relied on. Jesus Christ, it was only one year old. Natalie gave it to me for Christmas after I constantly complained about printing out directions all the time. One of the most thoughtful gifts she gave me, and now it was gone.
I pounded the steering wheel in anger as I drove down the street, looking around the cracked glass to see where I was going. A large, peeling sig
n by the road read, “Randy’s Auto Glass.”
I pulled into the parking lot and parked my car, hoping to God that I could get this fixed right away. A man in overalls with his arms covered in grease peeked out of the garage.
“Can I help you?”
“Yeah, someone broke into my car.” I gestured towards it with my thumb.
“Ah,” he said as he saw the smashed glass. “Shouldn’t take more than a couple hours.”
Great.
He led me inside the shop where there were a couple lawn chairs and a TV playing Seinfeld reruns. I threw myself into one of them as I handed him the keys, then texted Natalie my car got broken into and I’d be home late.
How was I going to pay for this? My leg jigged restlessly over my knee as I tried to push my pathetic financial state from my mind. Maybe a couple hundred dollars would miraculously appear in my bank account. An hour and a half later, Randy slapped the keys onto his desk and beckoned me. He printed out the invoice as I listened to him drone on about how everything was repaired.
“Total comes to…three hundred and sixty-seven dollars and fifty cents.”
My hands shook as I took it from him, pressing my lips together in a thin line to keep myself from screaming.
I handed my credit card over to him numbly, trying not to think of how the hell I was going to come up with that money. I squeezed my eyes shut as I heard him swipe the card.
“Uh, ma’am?”
I opened my eyes to find Randy looking distinctly awkward. My heart sank as I saw the angry capital letters glow from the credit card reader.
DECLINED
Heat rushed into my face as if I’d been slapped. Without looking at him, I mumbled something about contacting my bank and dialed the numbers, pressing the phone to my burning face.
“Hello and thank you for contacting Fargo West, my name is Melissa, how may I assist you?”
I gave her my account information and waited with crossed fingers, praying to every god I knew that she would raise the credit limit.
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