Brothel

by J. Boyett

  “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” Joyce hissed.

  “Pimping.”

  “God damn it, Ken. God damn you. I told you last time. Not this guy.”

  Ken screwed up his face in consternation. “Why not? He pays his bills.”

  “He’s fucked up!” Although this was the first time Joyce had ever been obviously and undisguisedly mad at him, Ken showed no surprise, no distress, no amusement, no reaction at all other than that fake puzzlement. “I fucking told you last time, Ken. He scares me. There’s something wrong with him.”

  “Like what? Does he want you to wear a wig and granny panties and a breast pump?”

  “It’s nothing I can put my finger on. Okay? I’m just scared of him. There. Are you happy? You win. Just get rid of him.”

  “You know, he can so totally hear every word we say. This is not the way to get yourself a fat tip.”

  “Fuck yourself. Get rid of him.”

  “You are so chicken.”

  “Gobble gobble. I mean, cock-a- . . . oh, fuck it.”

  “You’re acting like a girl, dude.”

  “Hear me roar. Just get rid of him.”

  “Listen to me. Will you just listen to me? What am I? What’s my job? Have you or have you not heard my brilliant spiked bat speech?”

  Joyce groaned.

  “Well, have you ever listened? Come on, Joyce, I’m a pimp. It’s a joke, but it’s also true. I mean every goddamn word of that speech, and the day one of y’all do have to let out a holler is the day you’re going to see me shine.”

  “Well, I don’t much like the idea of seeing some guy’s brains splattered all over the wall, either.”

  “I doubt I would ever have to give anyone a literal whack. I figure just the presence of that bat all swinging around should be enough to stop anyone from getting too frisky.”

  “What if it’s not, though?”

  “So what? I’ll give them the elephant gun treatment.”

  “I don’t want to see anyone get the elephant gun treatment. Don’t you understand that?”

  “Bullshit,” said Ken, and started to laugh. “Naw, dude, I don’t understand that at all. Now don’t chicken out on me.”

  “Quit calling me a chicken.”

  “How about quitter? Didn’t you say your step-dad called you a quitter? Like, when you dropped Astronomy?”

  “Fuck off.”

  “Come on, Joyce. I thought we were going to show them.”

  Feeling herself slipping, Joyce tried to make light: “I figure I’ve already shown half the guys on campus.”

  “Since when is half enough?!” Ken cried. “Come on. You started this thing with me and I’m fucking counting on you. Don’t chicken out on me now. Don’t get fucking complacent. Don’t get ordinary. Let’s take this thing to the next level.”

  Arms crossed and standing contrapposto, she eyed him dubiously. Even though he was about an inch shorter than her, she had the weirdest impression that she was looking up at him. “All right. What’s this ‘next level’ of yours?”

  Ken pointed excitedly at the wall, on the other side of which was Atchley, perhaps a foot distant from Ken’s finger. “Walking back in there, letting me read my spiked bat speech, then walking that guy back into the weed room—hopefully before Mal gets done in mine, so you can walk through there while they’re still going at it and like so totally heighten the effect—walking him back to the weed room and fucking him, after he’s been sitting in there listening to us talk about how much you hate him, and how I’ll fucking tear him up if he makes you holler—dude, that’s the next level. For starters, anyway.”

  Joyce bit the insides of her lips to keep from smiling. “Explain that.”

  “I don’t need to explain shit and you know it. That shit is self-ex-fucking-planatory. Dude, Joyce, that would be living. You could retire after some shit like that, if you could stand to. You’d’ve already stored up a whole shitload of treasure in Heaven and you know it.”

  Joyce couldn’t help it any longer—a grin broke out across her face.

  Ken grinned too, in triumph and relief. “That a girl.”

  “I’m laughing at you, freak.”

  “Big deal. You’re still in.”

  “I can’t let you pack your bags and run off to crazy without me, can I?”

  Atchley hadn’t moved; his pose proved that it was possible to swagger while sitting down. He sneered at them, and especially at Joyce, while she did a pretty respectable job of meeting his gaze with equal scorn, and mixing in some sultriness. Ken read out his spiked bat speech. Then Joyce led Atchley—who was very tall—back to the marijuana room. Usually Joyce led her johns by the hand, but not in Atchley’s case. She didn’t even turn over her shoulder to smile invitingly, or sway her hips as she sauntered ahead of him. Nor did she check to make sure he wasn’t up to any funny business. In Ken’s bedroom, Mal was riding the hell out of some guy like he was an electric bull. The sheets had fallen away, so they could see pretty much all of Mal, along with the jiggly top half of the chubby john. Joyce knew that all the effort she was putting in must mean that the guy wouldn’t cum. Mal paused as Joyce and Atchley walked through the room. She grabbed a burning cigarette from the ashtray on the bedside table and, after a quick glance at Atchley’s leer, which seemed calculated to give maximum offense, she looked Joyce in the eyes. Beneath her, the john timidly protested: “Hey, what’re you guys doing in here . . . hey, don’t stop. . . .” Everybody ignored him. From the closet could be heard the sounds of more fucking. Joyce said, “What’s up? I thought you had permanent dibs on the closet.”

  Mal shrugged and exhaled a cloud of smoke. “We got off to a late start, and we knew you’d turn up before we were done. And you know how Sherry doesn’t really like to be looked at. So she threatened to walk if you were going to come through before she finished.”

  “Fair enough,” said Joyce, and took another step towards the marijuana room.

  “Hey, hold up,” said Mal. She looked at her john with very mild surprise. “Don’t you go away,” she admonished, and wagged her hips back and forth a few times to keep him primed. Then, after another glance at Atchley, she said, “Ken’s fucking with you, huh?”

  Joyce grimaced as if to say that she was an old sly dog herself, but yes.

  “Just let out a yell if there’s any trouble. Ken’s an unreliable dick, but he won’t be unreliable about that. If you yell, he’ll come and hit this guy with that thing.”

  “Shit, I know that. It’s his job.” She glanced derisively back at Atchley and led him the rest of the way into the marijuana room, while Mal ground out her cigarette and got back to work.

  The lonely mattress had fresh sheets. Ken had been surprisingly good about that sort of thing. Joyce left it to Atchley to shut the door behind them, which he did, roughly. She kicked off her sneakers, then unzipped her jeans and pulled them and her panties off at the same time, with her back to Atchley so as to moon him when she bent over. She turned around, still in her socks and sweater. “You got your own condom?” she said.

  “Yeah,” said Atchley. “Ain’t you going to finish getting undressed?”

  “Naw. I don’t feel fucking romantic enough.”

  “Shit, bitch, you like to play too, huh.”

  “Blah blah, tough guy. Why don’t you just go ahead and wrap up your little needle cock so we can get this over with.”

  “Bitch, I said, ain’t you going to finish getting undressed?”

  “Nice to see you’re more like a regular asshole this week, without all the weird dumb jokes.”

  “My jokes are funny, bitch. Answer my question.”

  “I already did, jackass. Why? Can you not get hard as it is?”

  “I wanted to nut all over your fat titties, is all.”

  “Tough titty. You pay for pussy, you get pussy. Nothing else.”

  “That’s fine.” He undid his pants, took out his erect penis. Joyce looked at its swollen reddish-purple head and fo
rced herself to smirk. Atchley took out his wallet and got a condom out of it, which he unwrapped and began to roll onto himself. “I got me a big rubber spermicide wall to protect me from all your nasty jungle juice, bitch.” Joyce rolled her eyes. He continued: “Shit, I kind of like the idea of you staying dressed. Why should I have to look at your nasty fucking fat body?”

  Joyce walked over to the windowsill, where the room’s supply of KY Jelly was kept, and applied a handful to herself in a businesslike way. Dully, she said, “You want bottom or top?”

  Naturally Atchley wanted the top. He fucked her obnoxiously, one claw pinching the bone of her pelvis and the other rammed up her sweater to squeeze her tit. He hadn’t gotten undressed either, and he grinned and sweated down into her face. The bill of his cap, which he also had not taken off, kept whacking her in the forehead and nose. Joyce gazed coolly over his shoulder, trying to look bored and vaguely disgusted and unhurt. It was the face she sometimes used to punish guys, to send them back to flaccidity so that she could then rescue them, and teach them that they needed her (that was always her plan, anyway). With Atchley, though, it seemed to have the opposite effect. Fine. Whatever. He certainly didn’t seem like the great-lover type, at least, which meant he’d probably finish up pretty quick. He sure had last time, mercifully.

  But then he stopped abruptly. Joyce snapped a hostile glare onto his face. He was grinning down at her. “You want me to hurt you?” he whispered.

  “What?” She loaded the word with all the derision she could muster.

  “You heard me, bitch. You want me to hurt you? Like, really hurt you? Fucking break your nose or rip your nipple off?”

  Joyce snorted. “You’re pretty dumb if you can’t remember the fucking spiked bat speech after having heard it twice.”

  “Oh, I remember it. Your little pimp with the baseball bat with the nail in it who’s going to smack my brains out the second you call him.” Atchley whispered, “Call him.”

  “You’re nuts,” said Joyce.

  “Uh-huh.” He tightened the claw on her hip. Joyce struggled to break loose but couldn’t. “I’m nuts, so you better call him. Miss Smarty Pants.” The pain in her hip became so intense that an involuntary little whimper broke free.

  Atchley looked gratified. He eased the pressure. Joyce refused to look grateful. Then she noticed the spit bubbles rapidly multiplying at the midpoint of Atchley’s lips. “You better not,” she had time to say, before the spit landed right in the corner of her left eye and she had to squeeze it shut against the sudden burning. “Call your pimp,” said Atchley.

  Joyce was on the verge of doing exactly that, but then, horrified, she stopped herself. Suddenly she saw the whole deal: if she cried out, Ken would be true to his word, all right—he’d rush in to bury that nail somewhere in Atchley’s flesh. And Atchley was just as ready for a showdown. Ken and Atchley, in their mutual hunger, had somehow found each other in the cosmic current, and she was to be the medium of their conflagration. Ken was no doubt waiting by the door of his bedroom, squeezing the handle of his wooden bat with hot slippery palms. There had been no plan between the boys, no spoken conspiracy. But Ken knew that Atchley would hurt her because he would have recognized it in Atchley’s face, and Atchley knew that Ken would burst into the room swinging his spiked bat because he would have seen it in Ken’s. . . . Well, Joyce had no desire to have the penis of the apocalypse within her. Nor did she want to be sprayed with Atchley’s blood. So she would keep it to herself and they could go kill each other on their own time. She spat, “Go ahead and fuck me and get it over with.”

  He laughed as cruelly as he could manage, but Joyce heard his disappointment. Later she would try to squeeze some satisfaction out of that. Anyway, he did at least go ahead and fuck her quick and get it over with. He was rough, but there was nothing barring that in the contract (i.e., the spiked bat speech to whose conditions Atchley had tacitly assented), so Joyce was able to preserve some pride and pretend that what had happened had not happened. When it was all over, she went to the bathroom to wash her face. Reclining nude on the mattress, Atchley called, “What, I got to sit here and wait for you to wash that shit off your face?” He was talking about her tears.

  “Fuck off,” she answered over her shoulder.

  She forced herself to be tough and not shut and lock the door as she bent over the sink and washed her face in the crisp cold water. She wanted very much to get some clothes on, but she wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of seeing her hurry. “It’s going to take an awful lot of washing to make you presentable,” he called. This time she ignored him. When they finally dressed, she saw that he was smirking; then his shirt slid over his face.

  Sherry and Mal had finished fucking, and the duplex was quiet except for the sounds of Ken puttering around in the living room. But a tear-streaked Sherry was waiting on the loveseat, while Ken sat on the floor and idly flipped through his CDs, ostentatiously not looking at her. “All right,” he muttered, without looking up at anyone, “Joyce is done finally, you can fucking go now.” It was impossible to guess how much of his bad mood was due to Sherry’s extended presence, and how much from his missed chance to really use the spiked bat. As soon as she saw Joyce walk in, Sherry sprang up from the loveseat and hurried to her, blue eyes sticky and red-rimmed, her hands folded between her breasts. Without glancing at the departing Atchley, Sherry loudly whispered, “Joyce, can I talk to you outside?”

  Joyce hesitated and glanced down at the back of Ken’s head. Oh, he deserved so much shit. But maybe it was for the best that Sherry was here to distract her. Screaming at Ken was unlikely to provoke a very satisfying response—not satisfying to her, at any rate. She shrugged and said, “Yeah, sure.” As the girls left, Joyce said, “Bye, Ken,” and got an uninterested “Bye” in return.

  It was a clear day. The green leaves against the blue sky looked sort of yearning. Even the cracked and peeling white paint of Ken’s duplex had a certain loveliness in this light. The girls stood facing each other in the front yard. Joyce folded her arms and said, “What’s wrong?,” perhaps more brusquely than she’d meant to.

  Wiping away a fresh tear, Sherry said, “I’ve really had a lot of fun, hanging out with you guys at the brothel, Joyce.”

  Joyce waited. This in itself did not seem like something to cry over.

  “I mean, I don’t even care about the money. You know I’m okay for money. It was just . . . it was just about being one of the girls, you know? And about being on this big crazy adventure.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “And, Joyce. The girls I wanted to be one of was really just you. Not so much Mal and Ken. You know that, right?”

  Joyce widened her eyes. She opened her mouth and closed it. “Wow. Thanks, Sherry.”

  “It’s true, swear to God. That’s why I wanted to talk to just you about this. And not those others.”

  “Okay. Talk about what, Sherry.”

  Sherry took a few seconds to work up steam. “Well,” she began, and then the words came rushing out: “Well, I guess you know I’ve been seeing that one guy Bryce outside of work? Like, we haven’t even been fucking except in the brothel, which we only did a couple times and then stopped, even though when we did it it was really nice. We’ve just been going out on these really gentlemanly dates where there’s only kissing, and even then only at the end, or else maybe during the boring parts in the movies . . . and he, like, says that he loves me, Joyce, which is nuts but he cries and looks like he means it, and also he says he’ll stick by me even if I decide to keep on fucking at the brothel but he really wishes I’d quit.”

  Sherry paused, either to catch her breath or else to give Joyce a chance to respond. Joyce found it nearly impossible to remain impassive—not so much at the revelation that Sherry and Bryce had embarked upon an affair, but at the news that sensible-looking Bryce had so quickly professed his love for the rich spoiled whore he’d happened upon. Ah, the mysteries of the human heart. All hail the harveste
r of virginities. She blinked and said, “Really?”

  Sherry nodded. “And I’ve always told him that I couldn’t stop. That I was, you know, like, finding myself. That I couldn’t sell out so easy. And actually, Joyce, I so totally love the whole fellowship thing. Like, especially between you and me. The sisterhood. And that’s why I didn’t feel like I could just up and quit fucking the guys here.”

  “I know what you mean. So what’s changed?”

  “Well, I was in there, you know, in the closet. And there was this big boy on top of me. And all of a sudden it was like I couldn’t stop thinking of Bryce, and of those couple or three times when we did it, and how much nicer it’d been than it was with this great big boy, and how much I want to like marry him and do that again and have babies. Marry Bryce, I mean, not that big boy. You know what I mean?”

  “Sure.” At least they would be getting rid of Sherry and the blowup between her and Ken might be avoided after all. Joyce’s nerves were still raw, and all this fuck-talk creeped her out. Instead of merely crossing her arms, she now hugged herself, rubbing her upper arms to keep warm enough to stop her shivering. She kept glancing over her shoulders and out of the corners of her eyes. “I’m happy for you.”

  Sherry burst with relief: “Are you?” she said, beaming.

  “Yeah, sure. Totally.”

  “But, Joyce, really, I meant everything I just said about being in the brothel. I feel so much less . . . scared. And so much more alive.”

  “It sure is a great big crazy experience.”

  “You can so totally say that again. And that’s sort of why I wanted to ask you if I could still hang out here. Even if I’m not fucking.”

  Joyce could have sworn that her face fell, except that Sherry didn’t seem to register anything. “But why would you want to hang out at the brothel if you weren’t fucking anybody? I mean, when me and Mal’re in the back, you’ll just be sitting there with Ken. And y’all hate each other.”

  “Just to feel like a part of things. Anyway, I can handle Ken.”