by Cynthia Dane
There were many things Alice could have said. Or screamed. Or cried, if she could get her tear ducts to work. Yet all she could think was that she had only herself to blame. Sure, Monroe was a fucking jerk for seducing her just to get her fired, but ultimately, she was the one who dropped the guillotine on her own neck. I didn’t think he would tell anyone. Alice was under no delusion that they shared anything more than some sexual chemistry. All along she had known that she was a hookup for the night. If she weren’t an employee? Whatever. But now she could kiss the sweetest gig in town goodbye…
“I’m sorry,” Susan said again. “You’ll be paid for today, but I’m afraid you cannot be employed here.”
Alice managed to keep a straight face and a straighter back as she gathered her things and headed home, never to return. There was time to cry between being fired and searching for a worse paying job.
***
Candice wasn’t home when Alice arrived forty-five minutes later. Although after three in the morning, Candice also had a myriad of jobs that sometimes kept her out until dawn. When she wasn’t on the set of the next big erotic film, she was working her share of bars and clubs as a flirty waitress. Alice had figured there was about a 50/50 chance she’d see her roommate when she got home. She didn’t know if she was relieved or upset to be alone.
“Hey, Pete,” she greeted the parrot hanging out in the living room. He was Candice’s, a feathery friend she had claimed as hers for the past ten years. Never thought I’d be sharing a home with a talking animal. Alice slumped into the couch as Pete cocked his head and chuckled.
“Hey, Alice! Hey, Alice!” The bird was sometimes too clever. Kinda freaked Alice out that he knew everyone’s names. “What’s up, buttercup?”
Normally his clichéd greetings amused her – and they certainly amused any friends she invited over – but she wasn’t in the mood tonight. So she drew her feet up on the couch and threw herself down to watch the Late Night rebroadcast.
I need to find a new job. The money I made tonight won’t be enough for rent. It was no joke that she and Candice lived above their means with their two-bedroom apartment overlooking a dingy alley and constantly smelling of the urine drenching the sidewalks outside. Yet what was there to do? Alice had been living from paycheck to paycheck ever since she graduated college. Her parents couldn’t help even if they wanted to. The cycle of poverty was too great. Not to mention her little brother’s medical bills. Terrence had been fighting his own immune system since he was old enough to complain of being constantly tired. Soon he would be old enough to go to college. Alice had dreams of helping her parents out of debt – let alone paying hers off – and sending Terrence to the college of his dreams to study anthropology. Just because her life turned out to be lackluster with nothing but a useless English degree to show for it didn’t mean her sick brother had to suffer from more of the same fate.
First, though, she needed to recover from tonight. Monroe’s scent still lingered beneath her nose. Every time she inhaled, she recalled his body thrusting into hers, his kisses hard, hot, and hungry for more.
I’m so stupid.
Her eyes were heavy when Candice finally walked through the door. “Hey, Alice! Hey Pete!” she called, filled with way too much energy for almost four in the morning.
“Hey, Candiiiicee!” Pete bobbed about on his favorite perch as he greeted Candice the way she had taught him. It was always flair and fun with that girl. Sometimes too much so.
Candice tossed her purse onto the couch, her body following suit as she leaned over the back and socked Alice in the arm. “How was your first night at the ridiculous sex club?” Long brown hair dangled in Alice’s face. At least there was Candice’s spicy perfume to finally overtake Monroe’s floral yet masculine scent. Shit.
Alice closed her eyes, too tired to deal with anything. Pete still sang his greeting on his perch, bobbing to a beat nobody but him could hear.
“I got fired.”
The mood in the room dropped about fifty degrees. Pete stopped bobbing. Candice frowned.
“What happened?”
“Don’t wanna talk about it.”
Candice didn’t ask for more details. She knew better than to do such a thing by now… this wasn’t Alice’s first time being fired, unfortunately. Last time she was let go from a restaurant, it was because she accidentally told a Brazilian delegate that he had nice feet for a chimpanzee. Last time I ever practiced my Portuguese on someone.
Something dinged in the microwave. I never bothered with dinner. Luckily, Candice brought out enough cardboard pizza for the both of them. She also found an episode of Bob’s Burgers recorded on the DVR. Great way to kill the rest of the night before Alice dragged herself to the shower and then bed.
Halfway through their dinner of cheese pizza, Alice turned to Candice and asked, “Do you have any more of that Plan B you got a while ago?”
Candice dropped her paper plate into her lap. “Uh…”
“Yeah, by the way,” Alice continued, watching animated characters get into ridiculous shenanigans on TV. “I lost my virginity tonight.”
Chapter 4
“If you don’t hear from us, that’s good news,” the doctor said at the clinic. “You’ll only hear from us if something turns up in your test results.”
Alice left the clinic with free condoms, because she obviously could not be trusted with own lust-crazed vagina. Now what the fuck do I do? Spend the last of her only paycheck from The Dark Hour at Starbucks so she had an excuse to sit down and comb through ads? Feh. Good thing her bag of prophylactic paraphernalia could be shoved into the bottom of her purse.
Still an idiot. Yup. Definitely an idiot. That’s what she thought after she grabbed her Tall Americano and sat in the sunniest corner of the neighborhood Starbucks. She pulled out her phone and grabbed a newspaper somebody else left behind. I had the best job in town. She could have easily paid rent with one paycheck and debt with the other. The tips could’ve bought her food and gas. Sure, she’d still be saving money at a snail’s pace, but at least she would be calm about her finances for the first time since taking out her first credit card!
Nope. She had to go and fuck the boss. The one testing her to see if she would fraternize with guests at his club. Yeah. Yeah, she would have. Cause she was stupid.
That wasn’t the only reason she was so hard on herself. There was also the fact she decided to lose her virginity to some haughty billionaire who had no idea she wasn’t as experienced as he probably thought she was.
It hadn’t been easy to still be a virgin at twenty-eight. Not exactly something she talked about to people. Candice had known, but it wasn’t a huge point of discussion. If anything, Alice’s roommate probably assumed she was asexual or saving herself for marriage. The truth was neither. As usual, things were complicated.
Alice wasn’t anti-sex. Nor did she lack a sex drive – it was pretty average, really, and heavily dependent on hormones and other factors people often didn’t think about. Nope. She had no real reason to say why she was still a virgin until twenty-eight. Really? She hated the fact. High school wasn’t so bad. Alice had no interest in the boys in her class, having seen what losers they were and how they treated her female friends. She was content to explore her sexuality on her own, in the comforts of her bed or the shower. The internet taught her a lot of the things school and her sexually conservative mother wouldn’t. She openly talked about sex with her friends. She just didn’t have it.
College was going to be different. Alice had heard that college guys were hot and ready to fuck anything that moved. I figured when I was ready, I would easily get laid. She was good looking. Available. Clean!
It was not easy. In fact, Alice found it pretty impossible to get laid at all.
Oh, she had done things. Lots of heavy petting. Kissing. Touching. Monroe’s dick was not the first one she had ever seen or touched, but things never went beyond dry humping or getting handsy. The most action Alice ever got was jerking
a guy off. The worst part? She thought he would be her first round of intercourse, but after he got off, he rolled over and went to sleep. Know what I got? Cum on my hand. Oh boy.
Senior year, she met Matt.
Matt was the perfect guy. Smart. Funny. Good family and a lot of ambition for his future career as a pediatrician. Matt was at the top of his premed game when he met Alice at a senior social. They hit it off, going on multiple dates and spending whole half hours at a time making out in his apartment or in the back of movie theaters. I felt like a teenager at 22. After a month of dating, Alice wondered why neither of them had brought up sex yet. She assumed it would be a natural thing after making out and touching so many times. Yet when she asked Matt about it?
She had managed to find the perfect guy… if she was hellbent on saving herself for marriage.
Matt had his reasons. While not a virgin like she was, he had discovered at his young age that sex overly complicated his relationships with women and heavily distracted him from his studies. “I love you, Alice. I don’t need to have sex with you to love you.” Alice had found it terribly romantic. And frustrating. She was ready to get laid, damnit! But her love for Matt was two-sided. She desperately wanted to sleep with him, to show off her affections in such classically carnal ways, but she also loved him enough to stay with him even though sex was off the table. He promised they would discuss marriage after he started his residency.
That sexually frustrating relationship lasted a whole three years and was Alice’s most serious one. I thought we were going to get married. I thought sex didn’t matter if I found someone I was so perfectly compatible with in other ways. Alice was a fool, though. Matt was barely out of med school when one of his classmates showed up at her front door with photographic evidence that he was making out with someone behind Alice’s back. The worst part? He was a cheater who wasn’t even having sex! I don’t know what’s worse. Having the guy who says he’s waiting to fuck you until your wedding night stick it in someone else, or not even bother. A cheater was a cheater, though. Alice dumped his ass… and proceeded to try to rebound with every guy she met.
She never got lucky. Either the guys were such turn offs that she actually feared sleeping with them, or they were taken, or they had no interest in her. I started to feel like a freak. By twenty-six, however, when she was fully committed to the work force and acting like a real adult, she stopped caring.
Sex didn’t matter. If it was going to happen, it would happen.
Well, it happened a few nights ago!
Alice had finished her Americano before finishing the Classifieds. That’s how distracted she was with her own thoughts. I can’t believe I did that. Monroe was her first time going all the way with a man. She was old enough to be mature about it, to even be relieved that it had finally happened and was out of the way, but it was still a big deal. Sort of. Losing her virginity stopped sounding like a big deal after she broke up with Matt.
So here she was. A young woman at the tender age of twenty-eight, reflecting on her first time… a few nights ago. With a sexy billionaire.
On the job.
Which he did to get her fired.
And they didn’t even use protection!
A man sat down next to her at the bar overlooking the highway. Alice caught a whiff of musky cologne and shivered. No, this guy, with his suit and tie and clean brown hair, didn’t smell like Monroe at all. But he was good looking. Smart in his office clothes. Smart in the paper he asked to borrow and the iPad he brought. No ring on his left hand. Should Alice go for it? She was an experienced woman now. Maybe it would be easier to get dates now that she no longer exuded a VIRGIN! aura to every man in the room. The only men who went out of their way to go for virgins were weirdos she had no business sleeping with.
Besides, she needed something to fill the time between jobs with.
The man left before Alice could drum up the courage to talk to him. Oh, well. Back home she would go. Maybe Candice would come back early and help her look for a new job.
Candice was, in fact, home. She had also made omelets, stuffed with fried rice and fresh vegetables. Slathered in marinara sauce, too! Oh my God, my favorite. Alice smiled for the first time in a week as she sat down to savor her impromptu dinner.
“How were things at the clinic?” Candice asked.
“Boring. Sterile. Got my vag swabbed and a bag full of rubbers. The usual.”
They were halfway through their omelets when the doorbell rang.
“I’ll get it,” Candice said, tossing her napkin down before getting up. Pete called her a sexy hussy on her way by his perch. Should be calling me that right now. Alice tried not to think about it. No point thinking about Monroe anyway. “Uh, Alice?” came Candice’s voice from the other room. “There’s someone here to see you.”
Alice didn’t like the uncertain tone in Candice’s voice. “Coming!” she called, tearing herself away from the delicious omelet straight from Heaven. She made sure to straighten out her T-shirt and denim shorts before entering the living room.
Good thing. The person waiting for her was so well-dressed she might as well have been walking right out of a catalog!
“Ms. Culver.” A nondescript brunette in a designer pantsuit extended her hand to Alice the moment she walked into the room. “I’m glad I found you while you are at home. This matter is most urgent.”
Alice exchanged looks with Candice, who slowly walked to the corner of the living room and pretended to be more interested in cleaning one of the bird cages instead of listening in on this strange conversation.
“Who are you?” This woman seemed vaguely familiar. Or maybe Alice was losing her mind. Again.
“Sarah Clayborn. While we haven’t formally met before, we saw each other at The Dark Hour about a week ago. I was with Nigel, Mr. Monroe’s other assistant.”
Alice took a step back. “Oh. Oh.”
This woman had been in Monroe’s entourage. As Alice recalled, Ms. Clayborn spent most of the evening thumbing through a tablet.
“If you would, I need you to come with me.”
“What’s that now?” Alice scoffed. “No offense, but your boss got me fired from that job. I don’t have anything to do with it anymore. If he thinks I stole something, he’s wrong.”
The woman’s already blank expression did not change. “I do not know why Mr. Monroe wishes to speak with you. All he has asked is that I bring you to him as soon as possible.” Now her look changed… and it insinuated that Alice didn’t have too much choice in the matter. What was this woman going to do? Forcibly remove Alice from her apartment? What was she? The police?
Worse, perhaps. Her boss was one of the most powerful men around. He probably had more clout than politicians.
“I see no reason to go with you.” Alice crossed her arms. “I have nothing to say to him. What could he possibly have to say to me?”
“I do not know, Ms. Culver, but I will say that Mr. Monroe rarely wastes people’s time. His own time is precious to him. Mr. Monroe has asked that you meet him in his home downtown.” Ms. Clayborn paused. “I am confident that you are not in trouble, Ms. Culver.”
Alice looked to Candice for help. The roommate merely shrugged.
“All right.” Alice checked her reflection in the living room mirror hanging by the window. A ratty white T-shirt and frayed denim shorts looked back at her. Her hair didn’t look much better. Needed a good combing, that was for sure. “Give me ten minutes to get changed. Tell Mr. Monroe that I’ll be…”
Alice hadn’t even finished talking when Ms. Sarah Clayborn lowered her headset and confirmed that Alice Culver would be coming. Promptly.
Chapter 5
Alice rode in the back of a Lincoln Town Car. A common enough sight on the streets of downtown, where high-rollers lived and played during the week. Never thought I would be riding in one of these, though. Sarah Clayborn sat beside her, silent and stiff. The driver was an older man who spoke with a posh accent and had the shiniest
hat Alison had ever seen. She had tried to introduce herself when she got in the back of the car, but the man kept his eyes forward and pretended to not know that she existed.
She was offended at first, but as the car rolled down the street, diving deeper into downtown, she realized this man was paid to keep his nose out of everyone’s business.
I look and feel ridiculous. Alice had no idea how to dress so she could compete with designer labels. The best she could do was a black pencil skirt and a black and white striped silk blouse that showed off her cleavage. Not that either pieces were anything more than simple department store fare. She hadn’t even bought them at DeMarco’s, the ritziest chain around.
Her jewelry was made out of nickel and cubic zirconia. Her hair was pulled back into a simple ponytail that showed off the nicest makeup in her apartment – Candice’s Sephora collection. Monroe wouldn’t hold any of this against her, right? He knew she was a poor girl, right? Ms. Clayborn hadn’t said anything when Alice walked out of her room dressed to go to a middle-class job interview. Had the tights been a nice touch? Or too much? With her luck, her black heels would break halfway up Monroe’s front stoop.
Haha. Like he had a stoop!
Alice didn’t know where the man lived, but she was not expecting to park in front of a high-rise building. The driver got out and opened the door for her. “This is it?” she asked Ms. Clayborn, stepping onto the busy sidewalk swarming with office workers on their commute home. “I thought you said he had a house downtown.”
“He does.” Ms. Clayborn pointed upward. “In there.”