No One Knows Us Here(12)

I drank my champagne in three gulps. “Let’s do this,” I said.

He sat on the edge of the bed. He was looking at me. I could see the top of his head, his thinning hair. It had turned ash with age. Not gray, not white, just this blank tone that left no indication of its former color. He just sat there on the edge of the bed, his back ramrod straight, his hands rubbing up and down his legs in excitement, like a trained dog who had been a very good boy and now deserved a bone. He was smiling a little to himself, his lips parted slightly. This was not a turn-on. But turning me on was not his job, was it? My job was to turn him on. Okay, I said to myself. Okay. I can do this.

I threw my shoulders back and stuck out my chest. The ivory dress fit me like a glove. It was so tight I didn’t need to wear a bra underneath. I was wearing one anyway, a strapless lace number with matching underwear. I stood between his legs, so he had to look up at me. He did. His eyes were wide open, greedy.

He took my hands in his and tugged at them, pulling me down to my knees.

I knelt on the floor in front of him, but the room was so small that my feet hit the counter under the television set. I leaned back and removed my shoes, maintaining eye contact with him the entire time. My knees dug into the coarse wool rug. I wanted to ask Sebastian St. James for a pillow or a little folded-up towel to wedge beneath them, but I was afraid it would ruin the mood.

He didn’t do anything. He didn’t touch me. I was supposed to touch him. I was the professional, after all. I reached out to undo his belt buckle. It was cinched tightly around his waist. His belly bulged over the top of his pants. I had to yank a little harder than I had anticipated to loosen it, and once I had, I panicked, ripped it from the belt loops, and tossed it over to the side. An inelegant gesture, but one he seemed to like. He smiled, revealing all his teeth.

I unbuttoned his pants and pulled down the zipper. I kept expecting him to join in, to pull me up or run his fingers through my hair or push down my dress so he could grab me—but he seemed content to just sit there, to let me do everything.

Underneath the pants he was wearing white boxer shorts. I reached my hand through the slit in his underwear and pulled him out. He wasn’t hard. His penis rested in my hand like a—like a hairless rodent. Like a mole, a pathetic, sightless little creature who spent most of his days underground in rotting trees, chewing on grubs with his spiky little teeth.

It occurred to me that I had made a tactical error. What I should have done was pull his pants off his body, then move up to unbutton his shirt. I should have saved the boxers for later, for much later. I could have talked him into unzipping my dress or unhooking my bra.

I shouldn’t have gone straight for the slit in his boxers. He wasn’t even hard. He just twitched in my hand. I didn’t know what to do next. Or rather, I did know what to do next—I just didn’t want to do it. I couldn’t picture Mira doing what I was doing. I couldn’t picture Mira, beautiful, glamorous Mira, up in this hotel with this man, even if he was named Sebastian St. James. Mira deserved better than this, I decided. Another dentist, maybe, someone a few years older. Maybe he could be a periodontist, or an orthodontist. She could send him referrals and they would fall in love and they would spend all their money on weekend trips to vineyards and helicopter rides over the Grand Canyon. That was the life I saw for Mira.

Sebastian St. James cupped the back of my head with his hand and pulled my face closer to the shuddering little hairless rodent in my hand and instinctively, I resisted. I could not put it in my mouth. If it so much as brushed against my lips, I would scream. Or throw up.

It wasn’t a rough gesture, the way it could be sometimes, with some guys. But still, he pulled me in so close I could smell him, that intimate, animal part of him. I could feel the heat coming off him, the odor rippling off like waves. It’s not that his smell was offensive, exactly. It just overwhelmed my nostrils, choked me.

I took my hand out of his pants and put it up to my forehead. I closed my eyes.

“You okay?” he asked. It didn’t sound like he was too concerned.

I closed my eyes tighter. I did feel dizzy. I’d eaten too much, had too much to drink. “It’s—it’s kind of stuffy in here.”

Fifteen more minutes. If I could pull off this performance for another fifteen minutes, I’d be done. Although I might need more than fifteen minutes. What if it took fifteen minutes for him to get it up? What if it took longer than that? I could be here all night. “Rosemary?” he was saying. His palm still cupped the back of my skull. I could feel his fingers raking through my hair. I had a sudden, panicky feeling that he might, at any moment, smash my face into his lap.

I twisted out of his hand and stood up so fast my vision blurred for a moment. I clamped my eyes shut. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m not feeling too well.”

What did I want more right now: $1,000, or to run out of this hotel in my bare feet, to run out of here and through the streets and back to my own apartment, my horrible, run-down apartment I shared with too many other people? I could be back in the kitchen making myself a pot of tea, drinking from a china cup and saucer, in twenty minutes. Or I could have $1,000. I could change my life. I could change my little sister’s life. My poor abused little sister. I tried my best to picture her at her most pathetic, lying in the hospital with a bandage around her wrist, her face drained of blood. White-green skin, dark rings under her eyes.