by Seth King
Sheesh, I thought – that was major money.
Carol turned away as casually as if she’d just mentioned the temperature, but I thought I saw her sneak a glance at me a second later. A foreboding quiet fell over us as I turned over the offer in my mind. Didn’t I constantly tell myself I’d do anything to save Claire? This definitely fell under “anything,” after all, and Porsches and Georgetown apartments were certainly a far cry from my meager little existence…
“Tell me more,” I said softly, turning my body away and looking out the window. “You know, just…for the record.”
“Very well,” Carol said, and I thought I saw her nod a little to the driver, who sped up and started typing something into his phone with one hand. “We have a list of dozens of women who are independent, successful, and completely uninterested in commitment, Mr. Bradley. They want sex and companionship exactly when they want it, and that’s it. Your job is to show up, provide your services, and then leave. We will keep you safe, provide you with sexual protection, and ensure that no women contact you or harass you in any way after your transactions.”
“Huh? What would they want from me?”
“You’d be surprised. These women have tons of money, sure, but you have a valuable commodity to offer, too.”
“A penis?” I asked, half-jokingly. She did not smile.
“Not just that – masculinity,” she said, making my face go slack. “You’re a Ryan Reynolds in a world of Ryan Seacrests, to put it bluntly. In this age where men wear skinny jeans and sit in coffee shops reading poetry, there are quite a lot of women who’d like to be thrown around a little by a real, throwback man – the kind of man the world used to produce before ‘bromance’ and ‘metrosexual’ became words.”
“What’s the pay like?”
“A thousand a night, at the least. That’s after your signing bonus.”
“Wow. Would I have to do any weird stuff?”
“The women forward us their preferences, which we will then disclose to you. If anything proves to intense for you, you can say no and visit someone else.”
I swallowed hard. “And what if someone gets caught? This is super illegal, you know.”
“We operate under utmost discretion, Ben. Sure, there’ve been random blog posts about us here or there, but the Feds don’t give a damn about trash like that. We utilize untraceable transactions, fake names, shell corporations, etcetera. My little black book would blow your mind, and that does afford us some leverage with law enforcement, too. Our clients include several congresswomen, two senators, the former first ladies of four states, and more judges than I would like to admit. Even if the cover on our operation is blown, there’s a good chance I will still be able to blackmail my way to safety.”
“And my way?”
She narrowed her eyes. “That can be discussed at a later date.”
A static silence filled the SUV.
“You know, you’re right to be a little worried, Ben,” she said after a moment. “You’ve never done anything like this before, and it’s risky. But it’s also rewarding beyond anything your lower-middle-class mind could ever comprehend. What else are you going to do – go back to working minimum-wage jobs, fighting as hard as you can to pull ahead, and still feel like you’re running in place anyway? That’s no way to live.”
Carol stared at me, letting her statement hang in the air. And for the first time, I actually let myself consider her bizarre offer. What was holding me back? I couldn’t really say I’d been raised better than this – I hadn’t been raised at all, actually, and both of my parents had been absolutely useless. But I’d been pretty good at raising myself, and I still had my own set of moral codes – or used to, come to think of it. As I child I could remember seeing right and wrong in black and white, and instantly knowing what I thought of something by the reaction it gave me in my gut. But lately I’d started questioning all that. How was I supposed to play the game when I was no longer sure if I even agreed with its rules, or even knew what its rules were? After all, the world – and especially Washington – was full of adults seeing beyond what people wanted and needed, and choosing to get ahead by any means necessary. How could laws and morals be real when the people creating them didn’t even follow them? And didn’t the ends justify the means? How could anything that allowed me to help my sister really ever be wrong?
Needless to say, my grandmother, the only decent adult to have ever been in my life, would be absolutely horrified that I was even sitting here, listening to Carol’s nonsense. My grandma was as gentle as a lamb, but even she would probably smack me upside the head for considering this. But still, the stroke had taken her up to the sky eight months ago, and tonight I was sitting here, broker than a proverbial joke, with no other options before me…
“Before we go any further, we do have some rules to take into account,” Carol said, and I was thankful for the distraction. “First off, before you so much as take off your shirt for the first time, you will sign the strictest confidentiality agreements known to lawyerdom. I don’t want a word about this, ever, to anyone.”
“Hey, now,” I said. “Beggars can’t be choosers. You’re obviously desperate to sign me, or else you wouldn’t have put on this whole show. Assaulting me with demands right out of the gate isn’t exactly the best way to win me over.”
“Hmm – you’re more discerning than I initially thought,” Carol said with a raised eyebrow. “I like that. But I am going to continue. No exchanging of contact information – period. No personal questions, no long conversations. I don’t want you so much as learning the clients’ favorite nail polish colors. Anonymity is what keeps this operation going, and it needs to stay that way.”
“Gotcha,” I muttered. “Not that it matters.”
“Good. Additionally, no exchanging of semen – we don’t want to be linked to any pregnancies.”
“Ha,” I laughed. “I doubt that will be an issue.”
“You’d be surprised,” she said as she stared down at my thigh somewhat longingly. I shivered a little, remembering how my cum had looked as it dribbled down her face in the shower before she’d licked it up and swallowed it…
“And now for my demands,” I said to get my mind off the flashback, and she looked at me a little differently. “First, the women – how do I know I’m not getting Judge Judy or someone? How am I supposed to get hard with someone like that?”
Carol laughed. “Just like the women will be able to screen prospective Hookd boys, you will be able to screen the women, too. You’ll be shown photos beforehand, and you’ll be able to say yes or no. I wouldn’t be too selective, though, as I’m afraid you’re probably not going to get that one gorgeous former Republican vice-presidential nominee, or anything. Trust me – I’ve tried to recruit her, but her husband seems to be pleasing her adequately. And anyway, you’d be surprised at what closing your eyes and using your imagination can do – especially when money is involved.”
“You say that with experience,” I said, and she cut her eyes away.
“My experience is none of your business. Any more demands?”
“Yes. What’s the schedule like?”
“You work whenever you want to work, however often you want to work.”
“Seems reasonable. When would I start?”
“Tonight.”
“Tonight?”
Carol smiled. “Why do you think I drove all the way to your house? We’re experiencing a major backlog right now, and when I realized I had a shortage, you instantly came to mind – for obvious reasons. You were phenomenal the other night. It’s too bad you were too drunk to finish the deal, actually – I would’ve enjoyed the full-service package from you.”
I fidgeted a little. “Um, yeah…I was drunk, like I said. Sorry.”
“Forget it. Anyway, a myriad of tests and training would usually be involved in your hiring, but since I’ve already ‘tried you out,’ in a sense, we’re making an exception – as long as you wear a condom until yo
u submit to testing, of course.”
I looked off into the night, fiddling with my fingernails. I pictured what someone else my age would say to this, even though I found it hard to relate to people my age and didn’t really have many friends. “Get paid to fuck a hot cougar? Fuck yes!” they’d probably exclaim, fists pumping in the air. But for some reason I just felt different from them. My feelings tended to get intense and run deep; sink into me and put down roots…
“One night,” Carol said into the darkness. “This is only one night of work. Even if you walk away tomorrow, you’d still be making enough money to save your house and keep your sister out of a welfare hospital. You already had a successful audition, technically, and the rest of the steps can be taken care of later. All you have to do is have sex. But it’s getting late and I need an answer. What do you say?”
As my stomach churned and my fists slickened with sweat, I pressed the Home button on my phone to display my favorite photo of my sister. She was smiling, but her eyes were still heartbreakingly empty and vacant, just as they had been ever since that night five years ago when my world had collapsed. I stared out of the window again and clenched my fists as that urgent, overpowering, and somehow very male urge coursed through me – that urge to provide for her, to be there for her, to save her. I reminded myself of what drove me to work minimum wage every day, and thought of that burning guilt in my chest that kept me up all night…
Come on, man. Claire, Claire, it’s all for Claire…you gotta help her, she has nobody else and you know it…you’re the reason she’s like this in the first place, actually, and you can’t deny it…
But still, even if I did say yes, I knew there was one thing I’d have to tell Carol – one very big thing. One gigantic thing. But how could I even broach the subject?
Tell her…she needs to know…tell her…
I pushed down the voice and shook my head. It was time to step up and provide, no matter how I was doing the providing. I wasn’t going to let myself let Claire down.
As my sister’s sweet face swam in my brain like a mirage, I chugged the last of the golden liquid in my glass and then turned to Carol with my hand held out.
“Okay – I’ll do it. But I’m gonna need a lot more of this first.”
4
Grace Robinson
An hour after the butt dial incident I sat on my sofa and burped. After Richard’s call I’d tossed a hundred dollar bill onto the table, wandered out of the restaurant, and started down the sidewalk in a daze, autumn leaves falling down around me like shrapnel in the war zone my life had become. Somehow, I’d ended up at home without being flattened by a passing car. As I sat there I glanced at an old VHS copy of Fatal Attraction gathering dust on a shelf below my window and thought of love, and of how quickly love can turn to hatred, and of all the things hatred can drive people to do to people they’d once loved, and somehow I felt that big things were coming.
As I scratched my elbow, my go-to anxiety move, my bird called lazily from her gilded cage in the dark corner. I glanced over at her and then noticed a photo of myself with Samantha, the “friend” from the phone call, on holiday in Venice. I should’ve known that Samantha “volunteering on Richard’s board to end childhood hunger in the D.C. suburbs” would lead to her becoming hungry for a lot more than just charity. As outrage pounded in my ears, I stared at the stupid bracelet on Samantha’s left wrist in the photo. I’d gotten it for her in Paris during that same trip, actually. Samantha and Richard had gone back to the hotel together after lunch one day, claiming that the caviar had treated them badly, and like the complete idiot I am, I’d spent the afternoon at Hermes buying the three of us matching bracelets engraved with the saying AMERICANS IN PARIS - BEST FRIENDS – 2012. Meanwhile they’d probably been having a bang-fest in my hotel room the whole time. I didn’t even get to enjoy Paris, actually, as I’d been left to walk the streets alone all week while they’d come up with a laundry list of different excuses to go back to the hotel together – sicknesses, jetlag, a fear of heights Richard had suddenly invented when we’d found ourselves at the Eiffel Tower, etcetera. “But didn’t you skydive two different times at that work retreat in Arizona last year?” I’d asked Richard after his claim that he was too scared to get in the elevator, only to have him nervously mumble something under his breath and then scurry away with Samantha, leaving me standing alone under the tower with a tour guide in my hand like a moron. As the bird squawked in the corner again, I said a silent prayer that the Hermes bracelets would turn both of their hands ugly and rotten and green before reaching over and knocking the picture off the table, sending razor-sharp shards of glass flying across my parquet floor. Samantha could – and would – be dealt with later. Right now it was time to focus on Richard’s fate.
The way I saw it, I had three options: file for divorce and risk destruction at the hands of my vindictive husband, say nothing and continue living this miserable life, or play Richard at his own game. This third one was the riskiest – and most appealing – of all, and thanks to a little news story I’d noticed, I knew exactly how to do it.
Wait – no. That was ridiculous. Once again, I sat taller on the sofa and chided myself at even considering using that stupid app. I could never do that, and not only because I’d been raised Catholic, and using Hookd would be literally paying for sex, no matter all the flashy technological jargon its inventors attached to it. They were simply taking the world’s oldest occupation and glossing it up for the digital age. I mean, I was desperate, but not that desperate. Everyone had good and bad in them – that was human nature – and it wasn’t the absence of bad that separated the wicked from the good, but the choice to overcome the bad. And there were other, slightly more embarrassing, reasons not to download Hookd, too. Honestly I wasn’t really where I’d like to be, looks-wise. Old age was running right at me like a freight train, frantic in its unending assault against all that I knew, and my body was changing swiftly. It seemed that while my light dimmed with the years, Richard’s just got brighter. While I had to start putting all sorts of creams and potions on my skin every night to keep from looking like Margaret Thatcher, he just became George Clooney with better hair. My laugh lines got deeper every month, certain body parts were starting to droop, and I’d even found four grey hairs the other morning. Four! Long nights spent on my ass (along with the Lil’ Debbie cupcakes I routinely kept in my pantry) had made me about ten pounds bigger than I would have preferred, and my depression wasn’t exactly helping me get the motivation to hit the sidewalks and melt off the weight. My face wasn’t terribly unattractive and my eyes were a pleasant hazel, but I was by no means a MILF or a cougar or whatever horrible name the kids were using these days to refer to any woman over the age of forty who still possessed a healthy sex drive. And sure, Richard had cheated, but he was a man, and male indiscretions were far more accepted in this world, no matter how much people claimed we had moved forward. I was already seen as enough of a failure for being forty-two and childless; I didn’t need even more labels added onto my Resume of Doom, too. I’d seen it time and time again: a straying husband was almost always pitied by society, and if not pitied, than at least understood. People assumed the wife had neglected him at home, and somehow failed to fulfill her womanly duties – she hadn’t given him enough pussy, or emotional support, or Eggos, or whatever – and the poor shmuck had been forced to seek companionship outside the home. Meanwhile a cheating wife was sneered at and seen as some pathetic, predatory Demi Moore-type figure who went out every night to chase men (and, not to forget, her fading youth) while her poor husband and children sat at home with no dinner on the table. Every way I looked at it, I lost. And there was another big factor, too. I hadn’t even considered what would happen if anyone discovered my real identity, and who my husband was, and why the stationery on our side table held government seals. I hadn’t asked for this life, and I’d been just as astonished as everyone else to watch Richard rise through the ranks with dizzying speed and reac
h his current lofty position. He had become so successful, in fact, that there was talk about him reaching for an even higher office, a prospect that would complicate my life to an extent that I couldn’t even think about…
I shivered a bit, pulled in my legs, wrapped my arms around my knees, and pushed the stupid app from my mind. I was going to sit on this couch, treat my Acute Numbness of the Heart with white wine, and be content with my weird little life. The risks of using the app and alienating Richard were too much to even consider. And I didn’t have to do this – if worst came to worst, I could always slip into my favorite red dress, grab the keys to the ’86 Corvette my husband kept in the garage as a passion project, and thunder down the road; maybe find redemption in the burnt-out canyons of the West like something out of my windswept romance novels. I didn’t have to make such a bold move as Hookd, especially now…I still had time...and maybe, just maybe, Richard would make everything right and rescue me from myself…
I was a few chapters into my latest book, trying not to cringe as the main characters had a terribly overblown sexual interaction involving an apple and a mirror, the biblical imagery all too obvious, when my phone rang. Something between terror and anticipation shot up into my stomach as I noticed the name “Richard” on the screen. And for some reason – maybe some insane hope that he had realized what he’d done, and was going to beg and plead for forgiveness for the rest of his stupid life – I answered.
“Hi,” I said, putting the proverbial knife to my proverbial wrist, my voice sounding like it had come from a corpse. Why, again, did I subject myself to this?
“Yeah, uh, bad news,” Richard said, sounding thoroughly untroubled about whatever it was. I could picture him looking over his shoulder at that whore, who was no doubt beckoning him back to the desk, or whatever surface she’d just fucked my husband on. “Looks like I won’t be able to make it home tonight at all. This Campbell file is taking forever, the interns are losing steam, and I’m gonna need to stay here tonight and guide them into morning. I’ll probably just crash on my cot here, or get a room at the St. Regis like usual, if I can’t make it home.”
