Midtown Masters

by Cara McKenna

  His face burned and his fingers raced, unbidden. You tell me I can ask for whatever I want to see, but in truth, you’re doing that already. If there’s anything I desire, it’s things I could never ask for, things you could never offer.

  Love? she asked.

  No, not necessarily. Just dimensions. Senses. Smell and touch and taste. What you give me is very real, on that we agree. But it feels as though there’s so much about sex I don’t know, and might never know. What it tastes like. What fingernails would feel like on my back, or soft breathing on my neck in the dark. What another person’s body feels like, pressed to mine, warm and tacky with sweat. The message was far too long but he hit SEND before he could chicken out.

  Her reply didn’t come for nearly two minutes, the ellipsis seeming to blink for ages. Certainly long enough for John to be sure she was wording a tactful kibosh on this line of talk. He was well outside the bounds of their arrangement. He was mentally composing an apology when her response finally appeared.

  Sex feels and tastes and smells a dozen different ways, she wrote, with a dozen different lovers. Sometimes it feels like heaven, tastes and smells like a thing you’ll crave more deeply than the most delicious meal you could ever imagine. Sometimes it doesn’t feel as good, though. Maybe not bad, but empty. Or sometimes the smell or the taste of the person you’re with leaves you cold, or even repulsed. You can’t ever tell for sure until you go there with someone.

  The ellipsis blinked, promising more.

  When and if you do choose to go there with someone, I hope you’ll have the former experience :-)

  That was kind, John thought—the way she’d handled that. Her reply had been even longer than his confession, and explicit. Candid, but yes, explicit in its own way, when she could just as easily have shut him down with some vague non-reply, had she been worried he was trying to ask for more than the Parkses advertised.

  She assumes I’m a woman, though. If she thinks I’m hinting, she’ll imagine it’s Mr. Parks I’m longing to smell and taste and feel. Shame tempered his yearning, to register just how fundamental his deception was. Here they were both claiming this was somehow real, in its way, yet one of them was a liar and the other had no clue whom she was actually talking to.

  It doesn’t matter, anyway, he thought, heart feeling hard and heavy, body thoroughly cooled. Only an idiot would let himself believe that—that this is anything approaching real.

  Bloink. Lindsay?

  He held back an apology, typing, Just thinking.

  Me too.

  Before he could reply, her ellipsis was blinking again.

  It was nice chatting again, though I have to go, I’m afraid. But I’ll see you next week. Or be seen, rather. Until then, keep on being your wholly unique self.

  His chest was flooded with both sadness and warmth. You as well. Take care of yourself. And for once, he logged off while her dot was still green, feeling too much. Sad and satisfied and confused and guilty, and empowered in a way he couldn’t entirely pinpoint.

  One thought was perfectly clear, however.

  I care. More than I ever imagined I might.

  And he really ought to be careful. Feelings, after all, had never been a realm he’d trod in easily.

  Chapter Five

  “Meyer?”

  Meyer was sitting at Suzy’s kitchen table on Thursday afternoon, idly scrolling through the offerings on a gay hook-up app—window-shopping, you could say. Window-shopping for things one wasn’t actually allowed to buy. His masochism knew few bounds. He set his phone down as she entered, raised his brows.

  “You know about computer stuff,” she said, strolling to the fridge.

  “I know more than you, which isn’t saying much.” They’d hired professionals to manage their Web site and get the recording setup arranged.

  “You know IP addresses?” she asked, turning around with a carton of orange juice in her hand.

  “I do. Cursorily.”

  “Can you tell from someone’s IP address where they live?”

  “I think you can look it up, yeah. Narrow it down to the closest city, at least.” He didn’t trust the pensive look on her face one bit as she drank from the carton. “What are you thinking? Or do I even want to know?”

  She set the juice on the counter, licking her lips. “What would you think about us having a three-way?”

  His body went very still. His brain was undecided, his variety-starved dick rather curious. “Have we had a request?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “I’d need some details.”

  “I was thinking,” she singsonged, wandering around the room in a half-dancing sort of fashion, “that if Lindsay lives, say, on the Eastern Seaboard—”

  “Oh, Christ, shut up right now. No. No, no, no. Jesus! I thought you meant a three-way with someone we know, someone we could vet, a show for someone.”

  “We do know her. Sort of.”

  “That’s insanity.”

  Suzy dragged out a chair and sat. “I talked to her again, on Tuesday night, after you left. She’s in her late thirties, totally inexperienced but super curious. And also she seems perfectly sane and—”

  “Shut up, now. Good God, what an abysmal therapist you’re going to make.”

  Her face fell, and deservedly so.

  “Not only are your ethics a joke, but you’ve determined someone’s sanity by chatting with them twice and fucking for them a half dozen times? You ought to have your certification revoked.”

  “It’s just a feeling I have. Hear me out, okay? Humor me for two minutes.”

  He shoved his chair out from the table and crossed his legs, crossed his arms. “Fine. Two minutes—but this is purely for entertainment value, I promise you that.”

  “No commitment, for one,” she said, words rushing together. “We call up the Web guy, see if we can even check what her IP address is, and ask him where she lives, roughly. If it’s Florida or New York or hell, even Chicago or somewhere, just a flight away . . . And if she wants to pay for it, obviously—”

  “We’re going into prostitution now?”

  Suzy rolled her eyes. “Like that would even scandalize you.”

  Fair point. But he wasn’t even the tiniest bit sold on this idea.

  “So if she lives in the States someplace, was interested and willing to pony up for a flight and a few hours with us—”

  “How much?”

  “Would you quit interrupting me? I don’t know, like, a thousand bucks an hour.”

  He made a face.

  Suzy sighed. “If this was some skeezy old dude we were talking about, I’d be happy to bankrupt them, but Mey, she’s sweet. She’s lonely. She’s a virgin, for fuck’s sake.”

  “She’s a stranger you met online—there’s absolutely zero guarantee she’s any one of those things, or indeed female. If you’re so desperate to deflower this vanilla-flavored fangirl of ours, at least start with baby steps. Get her to use her microphone, for fuck’s sake. Her webcam. Let’s hear her voice and see her face before we start strategizing about how I might rip her hymen asunder, why don’t we?”

  Suzy’s eyes had narrowed and she was chewing on the inside of her cheek.

  “I’m not going to apologize for spoiling your fun or denigrating your precious angel Lindsay,” he told her. “You’re talking like a crazy person and you need to hear it. We’re not inviting some virginal shut-in from Poughkeepsie to hop on the Greyhound and come get fucked in your apartment.”

  Suzy stood, shot him a haughty look before heading back to the fridge. “I’d imagined it’d be in a hotel, for your information.” She opened the fridge and came out with a dwindling bottle of white wine, then returned to the table without a glass. It was three p.m., and they were camming in a half hour.

  Meyer eyed the bottle. He didn’t care much for wine, though hi
s alcoholism wasn’t any choosier than his so-called sex addiction. If you were desperate enough you’d drink chardonnay, same as you’d fuck a homely stranger from behind if you really needed to get off. He nodded at it. “You’re mean.”

  Suzy took a deep slug and set the bottle down, looking smug. “So are you.”

  “I’m sane, not mean. What the fuck’s gotten into you? You barely like women. Why so desperate to lure one into our marital bed?”

  Finally, she seemed to surrender. Her posture slumped and all at once she looked beaten. “Fuck, I don’t know. She’s all up under my skin.”

  “I can’t say I’ve ever seen you like this.” He’d always assumed Suzy was as cynical as he was when it came to sex.

  “I think it’s just that I’ve never met anyone quite like her, that honest and sad and . . . I dunno, poetic or something. Not in the everyday world, and certainly not through our gigs. She’s refreshing. No, not refreshing—redeeming. Somebody genuine, when all I’d expected to find were horny dudes with money to burn.”

  “You want to fix her,” Meyer said, realizing it as the words came out. “You want to draw her out of her sad little cat-pee-stinking hovel, blow her mind, give her a makeover, get invited to her wedding two years from now.”

  “I do not.”

  “Then what do you want?”

  She seemed to consider it. “I think she’s fascinated by us. I’m certainly fascinated by her. I want her to feel the stuff she’s missing out on, teach her how to fuck, for fuck’s sake.”

  “This is sounding more Pygmalion by the minute. Give us a few weeks and we’ll pass the burgeoning spinster off as a seasoned concubine?”

  “I want to slap you so bad, just now.”

  “Who’s watching, this afternoon? Perhaps you’ll get your chance.”

  “The guy who likes when you pull my hair.”

  “Ah. Well, you may slap me afterward, recreationally.”

  “Thanks.” Behind the sarcasm, there was more emotion packed into that one word. Disappointment, or maybe defeat. Confusion, at the very least.

  There was a lot Meyer wasn’t getting this year—dick, first and foremost, and variety in general. The money let him sleep at night, and the sexless dates and app-trolling at least allowed him to flirt. He liked the chase as much as the takedown. But Suzy, for all her liberal, slutty airs, needed more, he suspected. Meyer could quite happily sleep with a different person every night without ever knowing their names, but she was into brains. She liked picking people apart, discovering what made them tick. She fell for a man’s mind as surely as she did his body, and while she might not be the type to have her wedding all planned out in advance of ever meeting the groom, she did require romance.

  Lindsay’s brought romance back into her bed, he realized, softening. He liked Suzy, loved her as a friend, though now that he didn’t drink he wouldn’t be telling her so. Not unless she was really upset, like, dead-pet-level upset. He kept that sentimental shit to himself unless somebody was truly hurting. Still, he’d let the Lindsay crush slide, now that he’d gotten to the heart of it.

  “Maybe we ought to cut the year short,” he offered. “I’m not enough for you any more than you’re enough for me.”

  She shook her head. “No, I can keep it together.”

  “I wasn’t faulting you—I was faulting the arrangement. It works for us, not the other way around, and maybe it’s not working for you anymore.”

  “The money’s insane, and the sex is still fun.”

  “Is it?”

  She met his eyes. Nodded. “Yes. Especially now that we’re down to just the regulars we both really like. I’m not fed up, Mey, I’m just . . . Hell, I dunno.”

  “Depressed?”

  She huffed, eyes drifting up to gaze at the ceiling. “Mooning.”

  Indeed. He wondered what on earth two people could be messaging each other about to have left one of his most rational friends so thoroughly besotted. “Here’s an idea: Let’s quit seeing Lindsay. Then you can just be pen pals with her. Hell, you can run away and marry her for all I care, provided our professional arrangement wraps.”

  “You’re a wang.”

  “That’s no way to talk to your husband. And I’m mostly serious.”

  “I dunno . . .”

  “I’m going to shower. How long have I got?”

  “Fifteen minutes.”

  Fifteen minutes, as it turned out, was just enough time for Meyer to get bathed and shaved, and for terrible ideas to hatch. He pushed them from his mind as he joined Suzy in the Parkses’ bedroom.

  “What to wear, what to wear?” he mused, opening his single drawer of the dresser.

  “Black dress shirt,” Suzy supplied. She was wearing a skirt and blouse, secretary-chic, clicking away at the laptop.

  “Not a bad idea.” Tonight’s client was a man of simple tastes. He liked when Meyer dominated Suzy—kinky and a bit rough, though nothing they didn’t enjoy themselves.

  More often than not on this client’s nights, Meyer finished fully dressed, apart from an open fly. Cock aside, his body was of little consequence, though his role was key. He found the shirt in the closet and shrugged it on. Black, to add a touch of something sinister. Crisp, pressed cotton to lend an extra layer of composure and control. He found a pair of dark pants and his black belt. As he studied the effect in the mirror, his thoughts jumped to the troublesome Lindsay. Just the sort of outfit he’d wear on her nights, playing the part of an urbane gentleman. Only tonight this shirt would likely stay buttoned, and if this belt should slide free from these pants, it’d no doubt find its way around Suzy’s wrists.

  Oh, if you could see us now. Miss Lindsay’s ideal couple. The passionate and catered-to wife, moaning as she got her ass spanked and her hair pulled. The polished and solicitous husband, turned callous and sneering by the tastes of tonight’s client.

  You’d faint dead away, wouldn’t you? Meyer nearly wished he could find out.

  “One minute,” Suzy called, standing from the desk to give their stage its final preparations.

  “He won’t care if the pillows are fluffy.” Meyer checked the camera angle and dimmed the lights, but not too much. Men wanted to see it all. Well, all of Suzy, perhaps. Meyer could admit he did enjoy one thing about Lindsay’s nights—the eye contact. Staring into that lens, knowing there was a woman on the other end likely catching fire from the sight. No such luxury this evening, but plenty of other fun to be had.

  Suzy sat at the end of the bed. Meyer sat as well, but behind her, not beside. There would be no hand-holding, no improvised remembrances of wine bars or art galleries. He wrapped an arm around her, half pinning her shoulder, hand cupping her throat softly, possessive. He felt her swallow against his palm, no doubt getting into character.

  “Ready?” he asked.

  “Ready.”

  “Record.” He waited until the camera light turned red. “Good evening.”

  A real voice answered him—this client was all about the orders, though he didn’t let them see him in return.

  “Evening. You look real good tonight,” the man said, meaning Suzy. “Come closer. Lemme get a look at you.”

  Meyer let her go so she could approach the camera. She made a coy little show of her clothes while Meyer kept his expression cool, reducing himself to a prop. Reducing himself to a shadow, dark and faintly ominous.

  “Real good,” the man echoed. “We’re gonna have some fun tonight. That sound good to you, missus?”

  “It does.”

  “Go on back to the bed, then. We’ll get this party started.”

  Chapter Six

  “I have a surprise for you.”

  Suzy turned from the computer, finding Meyer at the threshold, tying a tie. It was Tuesday, twenty minutes before they were due to cam for Lindsay. Suzy was excited, but also calm. Resolved. He
r temporary insanity was over, and she was ready to get her head back where it needed to be where their exceptional client was concerned.

  “Oh?” she asked, plugging in the laptop’s power cord.

  “I’ve been thinking.”

  “Well, that is a surprise—”

  “Hush,” Meyer warned, and strolled to sit on the end of the bed. “I’ve been thinking, and I’ve been sneaking around behind your back.”

  She frowned. “How so?”

  “I e-mailed our Web guy. And here’s your surprise: Our frigid little Miss Lindsay lives in Philadelphia.”

  Her jaw dropped for too many reasons to count. “Philadelphia?”

  “Phil-a-fucking-delphia. So says her IP address. And I think you were on to something. I think we should invite her to fuck us.”

  She shook her head, attempting to clear the fog. “Hold up. This is a one-eighty. A few days ago you made me feel like an asshole for ever having wanted that, now you think it’s a good idea? Why?”

  “I just took the time to think about it. And it occurred to me that I really, really miss fucking people who aren’t you. And there’s some twisted appeal to sullying a forty-year-old virgin.”

  “Okay, stop. You’re taking something sweet-dirty and making it sleazy-dirty.”

  “I’m just teasing. About the sullying. It’d be romantic, naturally,” he said, getting to his feet, pacing the floor. “Her every fantasy made flesh.”

  Suzy waited for him to go on.

  “I’ll get a little variety, you’ll get to indulge this weird crush of yours, we’ll make a boatload for a couple hours’ work, and she’ll get her mind blown.”

  “Right.”

  He stopped pacing and held her gaze. “You still want that?”

  “I’d just convinced myself I didn’t, but then you marched in and ruined that lie.”

  He shrugged. “Ask her. After tonight’s session, during one of your little bosom chats. She could easily run screaming, but maybe not. We’re in the same state. How’s that for fate?”

  “I’m not sure how I’d feel about charging her.”