This wasn’t where she should be. It wasn’t a place any decent girl should be. But she wasn’t a girl anymore. She was a woman. A mother. A single mother.
Her inquiry into side jobs had started honestly enough. Her post online had listed her qualifications: 60 words per minute, computer skills, a hardworking spirit. She was aiming for some temporary secretarial work. She wasn’t aiming for this.
When the e-mails arrived, they were two part. One part was spam. Pyramid schemes. Work-at-home scams. The other part was sex trade. Pornos. Sex phone callers. Outright (illegal) whoring. None of these were even possible for a nice girl like her.
But one e-mail was a maybe among a sea of noes. One hour. No touching. Nothing but panties. One thousand dollars.
She was a single mother. One thousand dollars was more than half her monthly paycheck. She reasoned and then compromised. Didn’t good girls take care of their responsibilities? If there wasn’t any touching, was it wrong?
Before she could emerge from her illusions, she was on the road to a house in a neighborhood that she should never be seen. The house should have been condemned. The decay. The smell. The lives that had lived there in misery.
The man who hired her for the evening was worse. She was afraid to look too hard or she would run away, and she needed the money. She pretended to be a woman who was okay – really, everything was fine – she was totally comfortable in her skin and satisfied with her surroundings. She was there to work, not judge.
She pulled a bottle of whiskey out of her purse and asked for a glass. It was as clean as the house.
The man looked at her like her children looked at the pizza commercials on the television when she had run out of food. He was hungry. He told her to take her clothes off.
She was fine. This is normal. She strips her clothes off every night, so why should this be any different? She tried to make eye contact because that would be something a confident woman would do, but fear and shame wasn’t what he wanted to see in her eyes. She kept them down.
He pushed her arms away from where they were covering her breasts, so she reminded him there would be no touching.
“Turn around,” was his response.
When she saw his face again he looked like he had quenched some of his hunger. She poured more whiskey and pretended to be in control. Her hands were shaking.
“Is this your home?”
“I just bought it.”
She rolled onto her stomach. He seemed to like the back side of her, but she also hated the way he was ravaging her breasts with his ravenous eyes.
She took another sip of whiskey.
“What do you do for a living?”
“I drive a truck.”
“Do you do this often? Pay to see women naked?”
His hand snaked to her lower back to trace a thumb under her panties.
“Hey, I thought there was no touching–”
“Five hundred dollars.”
“What?”
“I’ll give you five hundred more dollars to touch your ass right now.”
Fifteen hundred. She could pay off her entire credit card bill with that amount. Fifteen hundred dollars.
Drink the whiskey, girl, and let him touch you.
The panties came off.
It had been a hour. Her bravado was weaning and she was glad she hadn’t been asked for anything else, because the whiskey had made her apathetic. She kept a confident smile on her lips and her mind on the money.
“I need to go.”
“I’ll get your money.”
She stood up, swaying, searching for her clothes, contemplating when she should make the deposit in the bank. Her back was to the bedroom door when she got off her knees from looking for her shoes under the bed to find a serrated kitchen knife at her throat.
“What are you doing?”
“Leave.”
“I need the money. I’m a single mom. I need it.”
“You’re not getting any money. You need to leave.”
Her children’s hungry faces flashed in her mind. She clasped the hand holding the knife that would make them orphans. They needed her, but they also needed the money.
“Okay. I’ll leave.”
He loosened his grip, which is what she had been waiting for. She wrenched the knife out of his hand and spun around, fear moving her once-unsteady feet. The half a bottle of whiskey she had consumed wasn’t a concern any longer.
Now she met his eyes. Her eyes still held the fear and shame, but there was anger, too. There was fury. The hunger had fled his eyes.
“I should kill you now. Where is the money?”
“There ain’t no money here.”
She believed it. She should have known.
“Get out of my way before I change my mind.”
She doesn’t remember getting out of the house or into her car or even onto the highway. She threw the knife out the car window when she realized she was still holding it.
Stupid, stupid girl.