“I’m aware of how I make my living.”
“It’s illegal.”
“Yes-for both of us. Whether you pay or are paid, you’ve broken the law.”
“Well, you’ve just lost one paying customer.”
Was that all he wanted to establish? Maybe he wasn’t as big a dick as he seemed. “I understand. If you’d like to work with one of my associates-”
“You don’t get it. I’m not paying anymore. Now that I know who you are and where you live, I think you ought to take care of me for free.”
“Why would I do that?”
“Because if you don’t, I’m going to tell everyone you’re a whore.”
“Which would expose you as my client.”
“Who cares? I’m divorced. Besides, how are you going to prove I was a customer? I can out you without exposing myself.”
“There are your credit card charges.” American Express Business Platinum, the kind that accrued airline miles. She was better at remembering the cards than the men themselves. The cards were tangible, concrete. The cards were individual in a way the men were not.
“Business expenses. Consulting fees, right? That’s what it says on the bill.”
“Why would a personal injury lawyer need to consult with the Women’s Full Employment Network?”
“To figure out how to value the lifelong earning power of women injured in traditional pink-collar jobs.” His smile was triumphant, ugly and triumphant. He had clearly put a lot of thought into his answer and was thrilled at the chance to deliver it so readily. But then he frowned, which made his small eyes even smaller. It would be fair to describe his face as piggish, with those eyes and the pinkish nose, which was very broad at the base and more than a little upturned. “How did you know I was a personal injury lawyer?”
“I research my clients pretty carefully.”
“Well, maybe it’s time that someone researched you pretty carefully. Cops. A prosecutor hungry for a high- profile case. The call girl on the cul-de-sac. It would make a juicy headline.”
“Bill, I assure you I have no intention of telling anyone about our business relationship if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“What I’m worried about is that you’re expensive and I wouldn’t mind culling you from my overhead. You bill more per hour than I do. Where do you get off, charging that much?”
“I get off,” she said, “where you get off. You know, right at that moment I take my little finger-”
“Shut up.” His voice was so loud that it broke through the dreamy demeanor of the counter girl, who started and exchanged a worried look with Heloise. A moment ago, Heloise had been pitying her, and now the girl was concerned about Heloise. That was how quickly things could change. “Look, this is the option. I get free rides for life or I make sure that everyone knows what you are. Everyone. Including your cute little boy.”
He was shrewd, bringing Scott into the conversation. Scott was her soft spot, her only vulnerability. Before she got pregnant, when she was the only person she had to care for, she had done a pretty shitty job of it. But Scott had changed all that, even before he was a flesh-and-blood reality. She would do anything to protect Scott, anything. Ask Brad for a favor, if need be, although she hated leaning on Brad.
She might even go to Scott’s father, not that he had any idea he was Scott’s father, and she was never going to inform him of that fact. But she didn’t like asking him for favors under any circumstances. Scott’s father thought he was in her debt. She needed to maintain the equilibrium afforded by that lie.
“I can’t afford to work for free.”
“It won’t be every week. And I understand I won’t have bumping rights over the paying customers. I’m just saying that we’ll go on as before, once or twice a month, but I don’t pay for it anymore. It will be like dating, without all the boring socializing. What do the kids call it? A booty call.”
“I have to think about this,” she said.
“No you don’t. See you next Wednesday.”
He hadn’t even offered to pay for her chai or buy her a muffin.
SHE CALLED BRAD FIRST, but the moment she saw him, waiting in the old luncheonette on Eastern Avenue, she realized it had been a mistake. Brad had taken an oath to serve and protect, but the oath had been for those who obeyed the laws, not those who lived in flagrant disregard of them. He had already done more for her than she had any right to expect. He owed her nothing.
Still, it was hard for a woman, any woman, not to exploit a man’s enduring love, not to go back to that well and see if you could still draw on it. Brad knew her and he loved her. Well, he thought he knew her and he loved the person he thought he knew. Close enough.
“You look great,” he said, and she knew he wasn’t being polite. Brad preferred daytime Heloise to the nighttime version, always had.
“Thanks.”
“Why did you want to see me?”
I need advice on how to get a shameless, grasping parasite out of my life. But she didn’t want to plunge right in. It was crass.
“It’s been too long.”
He placed his hands over hers, held them on the cool Formica tabletop, indifferent to the coffee he had ordered. The coffee here was awful, had always been awful. She was not one to romanticize these old diners. Starbucks was taking over the world by offering a superior product, changing people’s perceptions about what they deserved and what they could afford. In her private daydreams, she would like to be the Starbucks of sex-for-hire, delivering guaranteed quality to business travelers everywhere. No, she wouldn’t call it Starfucks, although she had seen that joke on the Internet. For one thing, it would sound like one of those celebrity impersonator services. Besides, it wasn’t elegant. She wanted to take a word or reference that had no meaning in the culture and make it come to mean good, no-strings, quid pro quo sex. Like…“zephyr.” Only not “zephyr,” because it denoted quickness, and she wanted to market sex as a spa service for men, a day or night of pampering with a long list of services and options. So not “zephyr,” but a word like it, one that sounded cool and elegant but whose real meaning was virtually unknown and therefore malleable in the public imagination. Amazon.com was another good example. Or eBay. Familiar yet new.
But that fantasy seemed more out of reach than ever. Now she would settle for keeping the life she already had.
“Seriously, Heloise. What’s up?”
“I missed you,” she said lamely, yet not inaccurately. She missed Brad’s adoration, which never seemed to dim. For a long time she had expected him to marry someone else, to pursue the average family he claimed he wanted to have with her. But now that they were both pushing forty with a very short stick, she was beginning to think that Brad liked things just the way they were. As long as he carried a torch for a woman he could never have, he didn’t have to marry or have kids. Back when Scott was born, Brad had dared to believe he was the father, had even hopefully volunteered to take a DNA test. She had to break it to him very gently that he wasn’t, and that she didn’t want him to be part of Scott’s life under any circumstances, even as an uncle or Mommy’s “friend.” She couldn’t afford for Scott to have any contact with her old life, no matter how remote or innocuous.
“Everyone okay? You, Scott? Melina?” Melina was her nanny, the single most important person in her employ. The girls could come and go, but Heloise could never make things work without Melina.
“We’re all fine.”
“So what’s this meeting about?”
“Like I said, I missed you.” She sounded more persuasive this time.
“Weezie, Weezie, Weezie,” he said, using the pet name that only he was allowed. “Why didn’t things work out between us?”
“I always felt it was because I wanted to continue working after marriage.”
“Well, yeah, but…it’s not like I was opposed to you working on principle. It was just-a cop can’t be married to a prostitute, Weezie.”
“It’s my career,” she said. It was her career and her excuse. No matter what she had chosen as her vocation,
