Like You (Perfectly Flawed #1)

by Dunning, Rachel

  "Any internal itchiness?"

  "Internal?"

  "In the urethra?"

  I'm no good with medical terms. "That's where the urine comes out, right?"

  "Correct. Any itchiness there?"

  "Not at all."

  "Good. Then a swab is not necessary."

  "Do you practice anal sex?"

  "No."

  He looks at me for a second. "I didn't mean receiving, I meant either way."

  Now I look at him for a second. I guess he thinks I'm weird because I've never had the urge to stick it in a broad's poop hole. "No, I don't practice anal sex. Either way."

  "OK. I can give you the HIV results in about twenty minutes, and the rest of the results in about two hours. The resident doctor will need to side-check them. That's why it takes so long."

  Takes so long? Damn, and here I thought I was gonna need to wait twelve weeks!

  German efficiency.

  "Would you like to get all the results at once?"

  "I'd like to know as soon as possible. So, whatever I can get now..."

  "No problem. Have a seat outside or get a drink downstairs and then come and see me and I'll give you the HIV results at least."

  I get up and start putting my clothes on. "So, I thought Q-Tips were always necessary?"

  He smiles. "Only if there are symptoms. Testing has evolved dramatically in the last few years."

  You're telling me.

  I set an alarm on my phone for eighteen minutes from now and take the escalators down. I walk outside and jaywalk across the road to look at the relentless Main River. Such a force, taking anything it can with it, indiscriminately.

  A little like fate or the progress of life itself.

  Damn, all this thinking about the future has got me so freaking philosophical that it's making me soft.

  I look at the clock. Still fifteen minutes left.

  Cars rush by and I turn and watch them aimlessly. I feel my heart racing, sense my pulse quickening.

  I start planning. If I have STD's, I'll have to contact the girls I've had sex with... Right, first problem. I don't even remember most of their names. I probably won't even remember most of their faces.

  Why didn't I use a freaking rubber with Blondie!? She was the only one ever. I always use a rubber!

  Although I did read in an article that you can get herpes even when you do use one...

  Christ.

  I shake my head. I need to think about something else.

  I look at the clock again.

  Thirty more seconds have gone by.

  I pace.

  I think of Gen's call and look over at Frankfurt city on the other side of the river. I wonder what she sees when she looks at that same city, as a photographer.

  Her idea to dress a guy up as a hooker and have a girl dressed up as some loser guy and then take shots of the girl giving him money for a lay is genius. Really gets the point across.

  I wonder how she'll put the shots together.

  Maybe the guy should be wearing lingerie. Female lingerie. Surely she's thought of that. Would she know where to get some?

  I look at my phone. Another thirty seconds have passed. Maybe I could text her and let her know the idea.

  Nah, that's dumb.

  But I should save her number. I click onto the incoming call list, save her number. "Jen," I write. I must remember to ask her if that's short for "Jenny" or "Jennifer." Then again, Jenny is short for Jennifer, so it's probably Jennifer.

  I look at the clock. Another minute down. No, it was fifteen seconds, but the minute itself has changed.

  "Christ," I say.

  I start to flash over my life. What if I am HIV positive? And then? Is it over? I wanted it to be over after the accident. I wanted it to be so over. It almost was. Then Frankie stopped me. Nick of time. Surely that means something, doesn't it? I mean, if you're planning on knocking yourself out the game and then someone walks in the door just before you put your neck in the noose and stops you, surely that means something in some weird cosmic sort of way?

  There I go again, freaking philosophical bullshit!

  Another minute.

  "Fuck this." I run across the street and almost get hit by someone in a too-expensive BMW.

  I pace some more.

  Two more minutes.

  I text Gen.

  Axle: Lingerie would be a good idea for your man-whore? I can pick it up if you want. What's his size?

  It's amazing what a guy does when he thinks he's gonna die. He stops thinking about saving face or being cool or all of that shit that's all meaningless anyway. He starts thinking about who he wishes he'd spoken to, the mistakes he's made.

  "Axle, enough with the philosophy crap already!"

  I look at the Goethe University Hospital. I remember the first time I saw it. I remember how I told Zoey I wasn't gonna have her checked out by some pimply undergrad and I remember how she and Frankie insisted that this was one of the best hospitals in Germany and that I shouldn't let the name fool me. There are interns, like in any other hospital, but it's a standard hospital. One of the best, even.

  It sure looks like the best as you walk into it. Looks like a private clinic with a brightly-lit atrium the size of Frankfurt itself inside.

  I think of how disappointed Zoey and I were when we found out she wasn't pregnant. We couldn't afford a kid, but we would have managed. We'd both panicked when she'd told me. But I'd gotten excited nonetheless.

  She held my hand after, when the test results had come back negative, and she cried. She also wanted it.

  One day, I said to her then. One day, babe.

  I start to calm down now.

  I sit on the grass and pull bits of it out and throw the pieces against the wind. Just as if I were five years old...

  I look at the clock. The time just cannot move fast enough.

  CHAPTER 18

  -1-

  G.

  Nov. 13, 2013 — Wednesday, Around eight A.M.

  I've been around the English Theater taking shots since five A.M. I got about twenty of a rabbit I saw running across a construction site. A rabbit in the city, can you believe that? Then there were two lesbian girls who looked like teenagers but who I later found out were in their early twenties. I asked them if they'd mind if I took a few photos of them and they said they didn't. I spent an hour with them in the park while they hugged and smiled and looked deep in each other's eyes.

  In the end they gave me their number and asked me to call them if the photos ever go on show.

  I got a photo of a newsstand near a tourist office called the "European Information Center." There were all sorts of suits grabbing the English Financial Times even before sunrise.

  Then there were the shots at Starbucks, one of the five or six that Axle showed me on our walk-slash-marathon-slash-hike on Sunday. Outside it were people sipping steaming coffee with steaming breaths and wearing a mixture of gloves and suits and liberalist beanies.

  I got shots of people rushing out the subway near the same Starbucks, in twilight, bodies blurred slightly from the longer exposure.

  And that's when I called Axle. I was surprised that he was awake because he doesn't strike me as an early riser. Maybe he was up on someone's roof this morning. In the dark?

  When I get his text, about the lingerie, I'm a little taken aback. Pick up lingerie for the guy who'll be posing as the hooker? It's...sweet. And I didn't expect Axle to be the sweet type.

  But he is sweet. It's sweet how he stayed with me after the humiliation of breaking down in front of him. It's sweet how he showed me around the city, probably completely aware that my unstable mind would likely get me run over by a car. It's sweet how he got Frankie to walk me home.

  There was something about his face that had gone dark just before that. I haven't been able to get it out of my mind. I know that look. It's like I had when...

  I struggle to say her name in my mind.

  Emily.

  Emily.
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  That's the look I had after it happened.

  He had that kind of look on his face when he told me he needed "to work."

  I text Thomas about the lingerie because I want to know what size he is and I also want to know if he doesn't happen to already have women's lingerie tucked away in his cupboard that he's be willing to slap on.

  He doesn't reply. Probably getting that beauty sleep he told me he needed.

  But Axle's message gave me another idea. Because it seems he wants to jump on board.

  I start writing him a text.

  Gen: Not sure re lingerie. But could you arrange a room in a brothel for us?

  That sounds so wrong so I don't send it. I try writing again.

  Gen: I'd like to take shots of a brothel. Can you arrange to get us in one?

  It's still coming out weird.

  I call instead. He answers instantly.

  "Wow, I didn't even hear it ring," I say.

  "Uh, yeah, I was...just looking at my phone actually."

  I hear a lot of wind where he is. "You're working?"

  "No."

  "But you're outside."

  "I am."

  I'm chit-chatting, I notice. I get to the point. "Um, look, I was wondering, I mean, because you sometimes bounce at the Red Light District. Would it be possible to get me inside a brothel to take some pictures?"

  "Of the girls?"

  "No! God! Of the male model I'm taking shots of."

  "Wow. Um, sounds...interesting."

  "Yeah."

  "I know just the place."

  "Awesome. I mean, could you arrange it?"

  "Probably not. Women aren't allowed inside some of these places. There are different kinds of places, but I assume you want one specializing in providing rooms and gear—not like a social club with a pool and sauna inside it. Right?"

  "Sorry, you've lost me."

  "There are different ways to procure sex in Germany. There are places that provide gear—whips, chains, handcuffs, rooms, role playing clothes—that kind of stuff. Those look more typically like the brothels you probably have in mind. Then there are open places where women walk around nude and men have robes and there's a sauna and sometimes couples go inside—"

  "It sounds disgusting."

  "It is."

  "Um, well, I've never been a brothel—"

  "I can tell."

  "—and I was looking to take shots of the male as if he were the one providing the service to the female."

  "Roles reversed."

  "Correct."

  "For the irony."

  "Correct."

  "And it's not good enough to do that in the street only?"

  "Um, I...I need to literally blow someone away with this portfolio. I...I have to push this all the way. I have to come up with something ground-shaking." I hesitate for a second. "It's pretty...important...that I make it."

  "Sounds important."

  I feel bare and nude telling him all these things. And even though I'm not really telling him anything, it still feels like I'm letting him peer into the dark vault of my thoughts and my memories, and my mind.

  "It is important."

  "Well, if it's that important, I'll see what I can do. So, yeah, room or sauna type?"

  "I'd like to do the shots in a room."

  "Right. And in those types of places, women who haven't rented a room for service themselves are absolutely forbidden from entering the establishment. And if you have a camera, well..." He whistles.

  "Look, if you can't do it—"

  "I never said I can't. It will just be difficult. When would you need it by?"

  I do the math in my head. There are the shots I'd like to do in Thomas's bedroom. Those will be sensual. Then the ones outside in the Red Light District, Thomas dressed like a hooker. Or, as Axle suggested, maybe even in lingerie.

  "Um," I say, "whenever possible."

  "How soon?" Axle asks.

  "Tonight?"

  "Wow. Are you available in case the manager wants to meet you upfront?"

  "He'd want to meet me?"

  "Maybe. These guys are very secretive. Even though pimping is illegal in Germany, you know there's shit going on under the table. The manager might want to make sure you're not a cop or some undercover reporter or something. And he risks losing business for the night if someone's walking around with a camera. A lot of the punks who go there to get laid are married as well. One sight of a camera and word might spread. The brothel will lose business for the night. It'll stop me from getting you in."

  "It's sounding more and more impossible."

  "It's not impossible. But there is one more problem. You're gonna have to choose either the outside shots, or the inside ones. If you do the outside shots, people will know you're taking photos. That's a sure way to get you blocked from taking shots inside. I wouldn't be able to sneak you in."

  "I see."

  "You just have to choose. Inside or outside."

  Now I'm curious. Everyone gets shots outside, but if it's so forbidden to get into one of these brothels as a female, I'm prone to take the forbidden route. It's just like the child who sticks her hand in the cookie jar after she's told not to.

  Never tell people they're not allowed to do something. It's a sure-fire way to have them go ahead and do the thing you've forbidden them from doing! "Inside if possible."

  "Fine. So, like I said, the manager might want to meet you."

  "Well, then let him meet me. Why wait? I'll go with you. When could we go?"

  "If you're on a schedule, ASAP I guess."

  The sun is up now. The shots I take now on a cloudy day will be as good as the shots I take in an hour or two.

  "I hate to be pushy, but, could we, um, go there now?"

  I've never been pushy my whole life. I've always been a pushover. I was a pushover when Mason met me, when he proposed to me, when I found out he fucked another woman and so gave me those horrible infections I needed to take antibiotics for.

  Thinking of him puts the notes threatening my life front and center in my mind again.

  I can't go back.

  Threats to your survival can make you pushy...

  "Now is not a great time," says Axle. "And these men work at night anyway, remember? A little closer to midday would be better."

  "Right."

  "I'll call my guy and then call you back."

  "Thank you." The statement comes out desperate. If only he knew how much he was helping me.

  His voice breaks as he speaks again. "No sweat."

  There's a pause, neither of us putting the phone down. When I ask the next question, I don't know why I do it. All I know is that I feel a connection with him. Not romantic. Something else. Something deeper. "You OK?" I ask.

  There's a long moment. Then, again with a cracking voice, "Peaches."

  "Peaches?"

  I feel him next to me, as if he were right here at the Starbucks, on a stool facing out the window, looking at the luxurious five star hotel in front of it, and the subway entrance just before it. I see his azure eyes in my mind and how they darkened at that other Starbucks.

  I hear his voice as it called out to me the morning I arrived, his fingers in the mail slot of the gallery door.

  "Yeah, peaches," he says. "Someone I knew used to say that."

  We hang on the phone some more, neither of us putting it down.

  I feel the sudden ache of hunger in my stomach.

  "Hey," I say, "have you had breakfast?"

  "I haven't."

  I hesitate before asking the next thing. My heartbeat thunders like a Boeing cutting up the sky. "Wanna get some? I mean, instead of waiting so long for that beer you offered. And it's easier for me to get breakfast than to grab a beer, because there are always interesting things happening at night that I could take pictures of."

  He clears his throat, and I slap my forehead and curse myself in my mind for being such an idiot and telling him that.

  There's a pause too long
for me to easily bear.

  "Nothing romantic," I say. "I just..."

  "Gen, I do want to get breakfast with you. Just not today. There's...something I need to take care of first. But I do want to. Rain check?"

  "Sure, sure, of course."

  "I'll call my guy when he's likely to be awake. Then I'll call you back. You need that lingerie?"

  I think of myself in lingerie. Then the image corrects itself in my mind. "Oh, for Thomas. Right. Um, I need to find out his size."

  "Will he really wear lingerie and get photos taken of him by you?"

  "Yeah, um, I think Thomas would do pretty much anything I ask him to."

  Axle laughs. "You're a real go-getter, aren't you?"

  No, I'm just someone fighting for a new life. "Actually, not really."

  Again, the silence. Neither of us putting the phone down.

  I hear what sounds like a phone alarm at his end. "Gen, I have to go. I'll call you later."

  "Sure, sure. Uhm, thanks again."

  "No sweat."

  He hangs up.

  I look at my phone a bit, heft it up and down. Then I look at the Canon camera around my neck. My mind drifts for a second. And I feel a smile creep up on me. A wistful smile.

  Smiles like that don't last.

  So I put the viewfinder to my eye, and I fire.

  CHAPTER 19

  -1-

  A.

  Nov. 13, 2013 — Wednesday

  I sit in doc's consulting room. I'm on a bed. He doesn't have his own office because he's an intern but the room is personable. He's standing. He doesn't look too serious. He doesn't look too happy either. He must tell people they have AIDS or gonorrhea or syphilis every day.

  Oh, brother, just thinking the words makes me sweat.

  "So, you don't have HIV."

  I release a breath, feel all the blood rush up into my cheeks.

  "Wow, that's a relief."

  Even the doc smiles.

  "I also have the results of some of the other, faster tests. I do need to give you one of the results now."

  German efficiency.

  "S—sure."

  "You have Xinastriasis, more commonly known as Xins."

  The roof falls on my head. I can't feel my arms. "Oh."

  "It's not a problem. A simple antibiotic and it's cured. It's the most common of curable venereal infections, and the one with the least amount of symptoms."