With lead in my throat, I take my phone out of my pocket and hit dial on the number.
“Hello, this is Estelle,” says an older woman. “Would you like to schedule a service with one of our escorts?”
“Yes,” I croak, guilt causing me to turn away from the picture of Ripley. “You wouldn’t happen to have any redheads, would you?”
She laughs. “As a matter of fact, we just hired a stunning redhead.” She drops her voice to a whisper. “A virgin. How would you like to be her first? It’ll cost you, but she’s worth it.”
You can imagine she’s Ripley.
Okay, picturing my niece while I get rid of this pent-up sexual frustration isn’t the best way to get over her, but I don’t know if I’m capable of going cold turkey, anyway. Once again swallowing my guilt, I say, “I’ll pay whatever it is.” No way I’m going to negotiate terms when this stranger is giving up something as important as her virginity. “Tomorrow.”
“Consider it scheduled,” she purrs. “As luck would have it, actually, we have two virgins on staff. You wouldn’t happen to know anyone else who’s interested, would you?”
I think of my buddy, Gavin, who has been going through a self-imposed dry spell lately. Spending too much time focused on his work as a professor and taking no time for anything else. I’m kind of reluctant to tell him I’m visiting a brothel, but he doesn’t have know the sordid details. That I’ll be envisioning my niece. Plus, he’s not the type to ask too many questions. “Yeah. I might know someone.”
4
Ripley
“Holy shit.” I dance in a circle in front of my best friend, Alana. “We’re doing this.”
“Are we? I mean…” My best friend since forever paces the room in her short, white silk robe, wringing her hands. “Who profits off their virginity? That’s crazy, right?”
“Is it? Ask any woman, she’ll tell you her first time having sex was horrible,” I say, matter-of-factly, though I’ve mostly garnered this knowledge via Netflix and viral memes. “This way, we’re guaranteed to get something out of it.”
Two days ago, after I found the number to this place in my Uncle Mase’s phone, I swung by Alana’s house in my purple Volkswagen Bug—which my parents like to call gauche—and told her what I’d discovered. The town bed and breakfast is operating a brothel in the basement right under everyone’s noses and I just Nancy Drew’d my way into the know.
Alana is an aspiring photographer and has been mega-stressed out about not being able to afford tuition for art school. We’re supposed to move up the coast next week and attend the university together. It’s our dream. She refuses to accept a loan from my parents, even though I’ve offered ninety-nine times and now the window is closing. A payday like the owner of this place offered us could be her last chance to make tuition by the beginning of the semester.
We’ve done everything together since we met.
And now, it appears we’re both going to trade our hymens for money.
If that doesn’t bond two girls, I’m not sure anything will.
The madam of this hidden establishment is a seventy-year-old widow named Estelle. When her husband died in the nineties and she couldn’t make ends meet, apparently she entered the sex-for-cash game. When we walked through the door, she all but pounced.
Apparently virgins are the brothel jackpot.
Estelle found us both clients in a matter of hours. Alana doesn’t know who she’s meeting in her respective room tonight…but I do. I needed to be one hundred percent positive that Estelle matched me with Mase, so I did some recon in the parking lot and just moments ago, he pulled up on his Harley, those long, thick legs straddling the seat, his long, midnight hair messy from the wind. After the usual wave of worship and yearning rode over me, I almost jumped out of my hiding space and kicked him in the shin. How dare he visit a brothel when he has a perfectly good niece waiting right down the street?
Listen to yourself, crazy pants.
A lump forms in my throat. Mase paying for intimacy from other women is definitely a major concern, but my current worry is the confession I have to make to Alana. Our scheduled times are almost here and that means the moment of truth has arrived.
Taking a deep breath, I slide a mask out of the pocket of my royal-blue robe and tie it behind my head, concealing the top half of my face.
“Why do you have a mask?” Alana complains. “I didn’t get a mask.”
I square my shoulders. My poor best friend. I can see it in her eyes that she knows the other shoe is about to drop. She had the misfortune of taking up with me, a full-fledged troublemaker. I can’t stay out of mischief and I’m starting to think it’s a serious medical condition. “I have to tell you something,” I say quietly. “I’m invoking the no judgment clause.”