He doesn’t expect a response from me, so I remain quiet until he instructs me where to go and what to do. We’re often alone during our appointments, so worrying about an employee watching too carefully isn’t a concern. Sporadically, a newly hired intern will look busy by making phone calls or following leads online. They never last long, unable to handle Gary’s general disinterest in people and his particular work ethic.
Unless you’re here to suck his cock.
“Wait in my office, please.” He presents a set of keys from his front pocket and goes to the gallery entrance to lock the door.
Admiring art isn’t on the agenda today. The colors are vague, the patterns make my head spin, and the taste of whisky resurfaces on my tongue tinged with mint. Heaviness settles in my joints, and the tight ponytail isn’t enough to keep me from looking like the walking dead. When I see the black mat Gary likes me to kneel on in the center of his office and my stomach heaves, I know this was a mistake.
My shoes pat on the marble floor as I cut across the space, dropping my purse in its designated spot before taking my place on the mat. My knees immediately protest, and I play with the idea of lying flat against the cold marble when Gary arrives.
He walks in circles around me with his hands clasped behind his back. Just as cold as the floor, his facial expression doesn’t give a hint about his mood. Anticipation, disapproval, and indifference look the same on him. The only time I’ve seen him smile is when a piece of art catches my interest and we discuss his interpretation of it.
Our time together never differs. I arrive, kneel on this mat in his office, and take him into my mouth before he fucks me doggy style. His routine is easy to respect given that before Talent, mine was just as stringent.
“I like your hair down.”
While Gary inspects my appearance, I wonder if Talent feels as badly as I do. Is he sitting in a meeting with regret for the previous night like I am? The universe does have a disgusting sense of humor. It wouldn’t shock me if he woke up after a few hours of sleep in tip-top shape, while actual liquor seeps from my pores.
“Cara, if you’re sick, you should have rescheduled.” To my surprise, Gary’s tone is sympathetic, and this might be my last chance to talk my way out of our appointment without ruffling any feathers. No harm done if I allege food poisoning and return in a day or two when I’m back to myself.
The glimmer of hope his sympathy offered vanishes when Gary stands in front of me, feet shoulder-width apart. His dick is hard, pressed against the inside of his slacks. Talk is so cheap, even from a sixty-something-year-old art dealer with a serious personality disorder. I shouldn’t be disappointed.
“I’m fine,” I lie and unzip his pants.
Strange how Gary prefers me to feel, look, and smell a certain way during our time together, but the anticipation of a blow job is enough to excuse the fact that my hair is windblown and I smell like chemical roses. Sex will make the strongest person weak. Maybe if his interns start blowing him themselves, they’ll have a better work experience.
His eyes darken as I pull his slacks down and hold his dick in my hand. “Don’t disobey me again, Cara.”
“You got it,” I say, swallowing a mouthful of saliva.
The last thing I want to do is put him in my mouth, and that’s not only because I overdrank. Consciousness and remorse have crept up on me since Talent entered my life, and despite how hard I fight back against the realization that I’m unhappy, it’s not going anywhere until I face my new reality. Returning to a place where I feel nothing at all doesn’t seem possible, but I can’t continue to live in this purgatory.
Gary’s an innocent bystander, and I don’t fault him for wanting to be with a beautiful woman, but I’m not doing this.
And I don’t have to.
My stomach involuntary contracts once my body seems to make up its mind, and I don’t have time to crawl to the small trash can beside the desk before I throw up all over the beautiful marble floor. Instantly relieved, I fall on my bottom and wipe my mouth with the back of my hand.
Gary’s speechless, left standing with his pants around his ankles and his dick hard.
He must take Viagra.
I keep a bottle of vodka in my freezer to feel closer to Cricket.
At the end of my work week or if I wake up in the middle of the night lonely, I’ll crack open the bottle because the bitter liquor sparks a memory of her. It’s fucked-up that the scent of vodka reminds me of my childhood and a time when I wasn’t entirely alone on this planet. But it’s all I have to hold on to. I don’t even have a picture of her.
Bringing the neck of the bottle to my nose, I inhale and close my eyes as familiarity washes over me. My memory of her is fading, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it. While I see small parts of Cricket in myself, I can’t remember what her hands looked like or how tall she was. She had blonde hair, but it’s a generic description. There’s no depth or undertone, and I don’t particularly remember a time before she bleached it.
My most vivid memories of my mother are of her leaning close to the mirror, pressing her lips together after applying red lipstick. She’d scrub excess rouge from her teeth with the tip of her finger and then pucker her lips at her reflection. But the clearest memories of all were the occasions when we had a steady place to stay and we’d lie in bed together. She’d whisper to me with breath that smelled like eighty proof, brushing my hair out of my face.
“You’re all that matters, baby girl,” she’d say. “I can’t believe I made you. I can’t believe I made someone so beautiful.”
I pour the contents down the kitchen sink and drop the glass bottle into the trash.
After I disgraced Gary’s office this afternoon, I didn’t offer an explanation. I did try to clean up after myself, but Gary sent me away with a flick of his wrist and I couldn’t get home and back in the bathtub fast enough. When I woke up from a six-hour nap, the room wasn’t spinning anymore but fatigue loitered. Thoughts of my mother still haunted me, and that’s when I decided enough is enough. I’ve allowed too many distractions into my life lately—booze, coffee, Dog, Talent Ridge—and I’m suffering. The dog can stay, but everything else has to go in order to get back on track.
Pouring the vodka down the drain was only the first step. Now I need to get rid of the phone with Talent’s number and the messages he sends me every night. Without it, he won’t be able to get ahold of me, and I won’t be sidetracked by waiting for attention I don’t need from a man I’ll never have and a life that’ll never be mine.
I’m a whore, and to pretend anything different is absurd.
Dog is on my heels as I head back to the bedroom to find the phone plugged into the charger beside my bed. My stomach plummets to my feet when I see there’s a missed call and text from Talent, and I hesitate before pulling the phone free from the cord. Without checking the message, I delete the text thread and his contact information. My plan is to snap the phone in two when there’s a knock on my door.
By the way dread stops me in my tracks and fills me up like an over poured glass, I know it’s Inez. No doubt she’s heard about what happened at the art gallery and is here for my head. She’s in charge of a lot of girls, but she doesn’t bear embarrassment without consequence and I can’t think of a time when one of her charges puked on a client. I’m surprised it’s taken her this long to arrive.