“Physical therapy? It was almost midnight.”
“The physical therapy I do is… Well, not the kind of physical therapy you think. I’m an escort.”
There was a silence. He cracked a smile. “Oh, okay. You’re joking.”
“Not joking,” I said quietly.
“You’re an escort?” His opinion of me rearranged itself, went plunging downward. I saw it happen in real time. “You mean, like, a prostitute escort?
“I’m not a street hooker. I’m not even a hundred-dollar-an-hour kind of deal.” Like I could put a positive spin on my job. “I work for the best agency in New York. Big spenders. It’s very classy.”
“Like, Heidi Fleiss classy?”
“Better than Heidi Fleiss. I make a lot of money,” I said, hoping, praying, wishing that he wouldn’t stand up and stalk away from the table. “It’s very lucrative.”
“And illegal,” he said, frowning again.
“Not really. The dates are what the client pays for. Not the sex.”
“Although you usually have sex with them.”
“Not always.” I shrugged. “Some of them just want dinner conversation, or a travel companion. Some of them want a pretty woman to take to the company party.”
He’d turned a little pale under his olive Mediterranean complexion, but he didn’t stalk off. After a moment, he picked up his drink and smiled. “So, I’m lucky then, I guess. I’ve had drinks with you, and now dinner, pretty much for free. I mean, for the cost of a meal.” He waved a hand at all the dishes. His lips were curved like he was smiling, but the warmth had left his gaze.
“I don’t even know why I started doing it,” I said. “I’m saving money to get out of the business, to go back to school. That’s my ultimate plan.”
“So it’s just temporary.”
“Yes, absolutely. A temporary thing.” That wasn’t a lie.
He blinked rapidly for a moment while I clasped my hands together under the table. “How does that work with your boyfriend, and your job?” he asked.
“Well, this is hard to explain, but it’s really just business. The men I see in those hotels are just customers, you know? It’s a transaction.”
“A transaction that pays well,” he said with another smile.
“Yes. I make way more than I should.”
“So that night at the Gansevoort, you had just seen a client? Or you were waiting to see a client?”
I looked down at my lap. I didn’t want to talk about any more of the details. I just wanted to be real with him, and I wanted him to accept me, at least as a friend.
“I’d just seen a client,” I admitted. “Honestly, I couldn’t even tell you the guy’s name.”
I sensed he wanted to ask more questions, but he was too classy to do it. I imagine he wanted to know what I’d done with W that night, all the lurid details, because even the classiest guys were obsessed with sex. At least I knew Tony wasn’t an undercover cop. He would’ve whipped out the badge by now. He would have been reading me my rights.
And in some way, that would have been a relief.
“I’m sorry I lied to you,” I said. “I’m sorry I wasn’t myself, but I think you’re great, and you helped me that night, and I thought you deserved to know the truth.”
“Thank you for telling me the truth.” He let out a breath. “This is kind of anticlimactic, but after all the margaritas, I’ve got to hit the restroom. I’ll be right back.”
“Okay.”
And I knew from the way he stood up that he wouldn’t be right back. That he wasn’t coming back.
He didn’t come back, although I waited almost half an hour, nursing my drink and picking at the food left on the plates. I would have felt sad if I didn’t feel so humiliated and numb. I took out my wallet to throw down the money for the check, but then I realized Simon had taken all my cash. My wallet was fucking empty. One of my credit cards was missing too. Shit.
I paid with a different card, a secret one Simon didn’t know about, that I kept hidden in a different pocket in my bag, then I stormed home planning to rip him a new one. But when I got there, he was super high and super messed up.
“Where have you been?” he asked. “Where the fuck have you been?”
His eyes were wet, his clothes covered in paint. He’d been in the middle of working when the drugs took him to a bad place.
I made him some coffee and sat with him on the floor of his studio. I let him talk because he needed to talk, and because that way, I didn’t have to admit I’d been out with someone else. He talked about his art and his upcoming show, and the way nobody wanted him to succeed. Anxiety and paranoia didn’t mix with whatever downer he was on. He felt heavy and listless in my arms.