by Jane Smith
As her kids fell asleep during the first 10 minutes of the movie, Kelsey watched the light from the little TV glowing against their little faces as she knit them hats for Christmas. Her biggest fear in life was that her husband had been right, she’d never make it financially without him.
She appreciated the glow of the TV because it reminded her that she hadn’t had to deal with the electricity being shut off since the separation. The water was always running, the heat worked, and the girls would never be jarred awake by the voice of an angry man. She loved her new life because it gave her peace and solitude that she’d been craving for years.
Wrapping up the divorce in her favor was her highest priority and she was willing to do whatever it took to ensure that her kids were safe and living in a stable home. Unfortunately, teaching preschool might pay the bills, but it didn’t leave any room for extras, and divorce was out of the budget. She could save $12-$40 a month and maybe afford an attorney in ten years. That wasn’t acceptable. She needed a windfall and only had one bargaining chip left.
She feared that this whole expedition would be fruitless and she’d end up scrambling to make up the gas money in order to keep food in the house, but she was determined to take a chance. It was a long shot, but it might be her only shot. Without a college degree or an upwardly-mobile job history, Bend wasn’t exactly leaping with opportunities for women like Kelsey. If she stayed there, teaching preschool, the only way she’d get out of poverty was by marriage or finishing one of her half-written novels. Marriage was out of the question, and finishing the novel was a self-indulgent gamble of her time and energy, neither of which would help her keep the bills paid. This was the most solid plan she could think of.
All she wanted was money. All she had to offer in exchange was sex.
Chapter 4
Michael kicked himself. His quest to avoid truly connecting with someone had hit an all-time low. He enjoyed the fantasy of hiring a lover but something didn’t seem right about it. He made sound financial decisions, he had a healthy savings account and his retirement funding was on track. He probably spent more than he should on electronics and books, but he wasn’t wasteful and he wasn’t a gambler. This wouldn’t be the first time he’d paid for sex. He liked that in the end it was a business transaction, that made it easy to keep from getting attached.
He had an unfortunate combination of being blessed with a high sex drive and cursed with an unlucky love life. If he could find a way to satiate the sex drive, he might have an easier time focusing on work. At the very least, he wouldn’t feel like a hormonal teenager on the train to work, distracted and preoccupied with thoughts of sex all the time. He’d climbed to the top of his position in a Fortune 500 company and enjoyed the respect and esteem of his coworkers, as well as a healthy income to fund his sexual exploits.
This girl seems interesting. She seems to have a full and busy life that doesn’t allow much room for a real relationship. She seems to have a high sex drive and she doesn’t want to fall in love. What could be more perfect?
Michael didn’t have time for a broken heart. He didn’t want to get to know anyone, he didn’t want to play the stupid game of dating someone and dressing up and going out to eat and talking about the relationship. He didn’t want to worry about her intentions or deal with the stress of being pressured to propose one day or feel obligated to spend all his free time with her. He didn’t want to have to introduce her to his friends and family, deepening her hold on his freedom and autonomy. And if it didn’t work out, he didn’t want to have to deal with people asking him if he was OK. Pretending would be hard enough without their worry and concern.
All he wanted was sex. All he had to offer in exchange was money.
He finished his breakfast and took a look around his condo. He had a list of errands to run for the day, but he was hoping that when it was all over he’d be bringing her home. He hoped her photo was accurate. He hoped she didn’t have annoying mannerisms or offensive political or religious beliefs.
For a guy who didn’t want to get too involved, he’d built up quite a list of things that would ruin this arrangement.
Chapter 5
Kelsey looked in the mirror, the avocado green pleated skirt said “sweet and innocent schoolgirl” which is like a universal fantasy for older men, right? This website was filled with college girls, but she was a 33-year-old nearly divorced woman with two daughters to take care of. So she had to look younger.
Avoiding the school-girl cliché too much, she decided to take her hair out of its perpetual braids and let it hang down her back. On one hand, she loved her long hair and always felt liberated and free when she wore it down. She'd meant to do it more often since the separation, but it was difficult at work. She took the chance once and wore it down, but halfway through the day she ended up searching her purse for an elastic after spending her entire lunch break rinsing glue and glitter from the ends of it. Preschool teachers can't wear their hair down, apparently.
Kelsey slipped on the avocado green low-heeled boots and looked at Amanda for feedback. “You look so chic, so Portland. That sweater is perfect.” Kelsey rolled each sleeve up one fold, to hide a Play-dough stain on the cuff.
Kelsey felt ready for her dates. Or were they interviews? Whatever. She was ready. “Let's do this.”
She left before the girls woke up, knowing that they'd be safe and excited to see Amanda when they woke up. She'd undoubtedly come home to a fashion show and the remains of some fancy dinner spread. As fancy as possible, given the chipped dollar store dishes, half a kitchen full of broken appliances, and lack of grocery money, but the mac and cheese would be artfully arranged, garnished with cookie-cutter apple slices and octopus-sculpted hot dogs, and the girls would forever ask why she wasn't as cool as Amanda. That was fine, as long as they were happy and healthy. She left lipstick kisses on their foreheads, so that when they woke up they'd know that she’d kissed them goodbye.
Her drive-time pep talk started off as 25 minutes of a completely blank mind. She shifted in her seat and suddenly panicked. The gas alone was going to cost more than she had right now and she knew that if things didn't work out in her favor, she'd be panhandling at the gas station at The Dalles. The monthly cycle of bills and paychecks never seemed to work out in her favor and this gas money really wasn’t in the budget.
Kelsey was known for taking a systematic approach to things and it would have been just plain stupid to drive out to Portland for one date. She'd set up appointments every hour from 9:30 AM til 4:30pm simply for the purpose of optimizing her time investment. An hour was plenty of time to decide if she ever wanted to see anyone again. Surely these wealthy men would admire her business-like approach to the day, they must understand the importance of not wasting time, right? She hoped so.
Highway 84 was one of her favorite drives. It wound along the Columbia River where the forest met the water. Waterfalls, Fiddleneck Ferns, and basalt columns were perfectly arranged so that you could almost see the passage of time. The basalt columns were volcanic phenomena and always looked like they were rising up from the earth. In her mind, she'd continue their motion and imagine the entire landscape transforming before her eyes, the columns growing taller, the water levels rising and falling over the years and the trees changing colors with the seasons.
This time of year, the waterfalls were frozen, so instead of hitting the ground, the water turned to snow as it fell from the edge of the cliff, disappearing in a cloud that looked like smoke and blew whichever way the wind took it. Halfway down the cliff the edge of the rocks was covered in snow that hadn't fallen from the sky. It seemed magical and helped calm her down. She decided she should go hiking more often, but not in the snow.
She wasn't normally a nervous kind of person, but the lack of gas money, and Amanda’s confident insistence that today would be the day her life changed, and the solitary road trip were all weighing heavily on her. Everything was on the line. Somehow, this would have to work. Finally, she turne
d the music on and cranked it up to sing her way down the highway. Music always took her mind off her troubles. Loud music helped drive away her anxious thoughts. Louder music masked the strange sounds her engine was making.
Chapter 6
Charles hated Portland. He hated parking in Portland most of all at this moment. And he didn't even like coffee, which always felt weird in Seattle. He'd have a hot tea and sit and chat with this girl for an hour or so and get to know her, in the hopes that she'd be the one to fill the empty hole in his life. She hadn't said much about herself, but she seemed to understand him and it seemed like the universe was pushing him to meet with her.
He remembered waking up at 4am to take a call from Boston and discovering that his Sunday morning appointment had cancelled only 3 days before they were to meet. Killing time, he’d logged into the new Sugar Daddy web account he had made and discovered that one other user was online. He’d quickly changed his profile details to say that he lived in Portland, in case she didn't want to meet up with someone from Seattle. She might think Seattle was too long-distance for a real relationship and he didn't want that to be an obstacle in her mind. Nothing would stop him from finding a woman to fill this emptiness inside of him, and her sweet and intelligent demeanor made her a great candidate. He'd sit down and run her through a familiar set of questions that didn't sound too much like an interview and then decide if he wanted to see her again. Most girls failed this interview, but she seemed different.
Then again, she was different. He didn't usually seek out girls who wanted a Sugar Daddy, but these days he didn't feel like he had much to offer in a relationship other than money. Money was the only problem he didn't have.
Charles’ father had invested wisely during his short life, but he hadn’t grow up wealthy. When Charles was born, his mother returned to her position at an architectural firm just 2 weeks after he was born. His dad had been an author and achieved a minimal amount of success. It wasn’t enough for his mother to quit her own job, but it was enough to invest in this friend’s startup business. When his friend sold out to a major corporation, he invested his returns again and each time, the pot grew. After Charles was in college, the jackpot rolled in. Several billion dollars from the sale of one startup were deposited into Charles’ father’s account, and suddenly the family had a legacy. Charles would never want for anything again. Supposedly.
Charles wasn’t able to access his trust fund until he was 34, after his father’s death. Following in his father’s footsteps, he reinvested wisely and often. The dividends were funneled into an interest-bearing account with a daily return rate that was more than the average American couple made in a year. He was gradually moving past the billionaire stage. Money was no concern to Charles. His biggest demon was loneliness.
In his mind so far, Kelsey was a pretty, English-speaking girl who seemed smart. While he was physically attracted to the Eastern European women he'd been meeting through Russian dating websites, they were so desperate for money, always having some sort of emergency within hours of meeting them. It was uncanny how many of them “Just received a letter in the mail saying that I'll lose my house/apartment if I don't catch up within 48 hours.”
He knew he was being played, but still believed they couldn't all be gold diggers. The ones he'd met in person seemed to have lovely souls, they were just tortured by the horrible living conditions in Russia. And it didn't represent materialism or bad character values to focus so much attention on being beautiful, it's just how girls were raised there. Surely there was a woman in Russia who was willing to fall in love with this hairy, balding old man from Seattle. In the meantime, this Portland girl seemed like a refreshing diversion. He had to remind himself that she was just a diversion, since she didn’t seem to be looking for marriage.
She will change her mind when she meets me.
Chapter 7
Kelsey checked her phone discreetly to refresh her memory of his profile photo. It was taken by an old car and she hoped it wasn't an old photo, that car was from the 80's and if this picture was 20 years old he might be geriatric.
She didn't want to seem too tech-savvy. He’d once mentioned the “Seattle tech crowd” disdainfully, so she wondered if he had a contempt for technology, and being glued to the phone didn't seem like it would be attractive.
She opened to the last 1/3 of a book she’d pulled off of her shelf before she left, in order to seem smarter and less tech-addicted. It was Metaphors We Live By, by George Lakoff; a nonfiction analysis of language that was required reading in one of the pointless college courses she'd taken over the years. Pointless, she felt, because she'd never finished her degree even after “going back” four times.
Still, this book was one of her favorites. It was deep-thinking and many people hadn't heard of it. Even though she hadn't picked it up in over 6 years, she pretended to be deeply engrossed in the last 2/3s of the book, and tried very hard not to sip at the one cup of coffee she knew she could afford that day. She’d chosen the book because she was familiar with it, so she could discuss it well enough to explain it to someone who hadn’t read it and debate the specifics with anyone who had.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him walk in the door. He looked better than his photo, but was still at least 20 years older. He had a full-enough head of hair and a muscular body type. She pretended to be engrossed in the book as he ordered coffee. Tea? What kind of person orders tea at a coffee shop? She was instantly suspicious, but reminded herself that her own mother was a tea-drinker, too. They can’t all be bossy and self-centered.
He was nice enough, and he had a charming laugh. The conversation went really well, his life seemed fascinating. He was friends with his ex-wife, he had traveled all over the world, and had friends and business associates in countries she’d never heard of. He had a son the same age as her oldesrdaughter and sounded like an active and involved father. That was attractive. He was witty, he was compassionate and sympathetic. So far, so good.
He asked about her work and about her marriage. Work was easy; “I teach preschool. My kids are all graduating this year, so we're preparing them for kindergarten. Most of them can read already, we've been using a program that they really enjoy, and since I worked as a writer for so many years, we've written a few story books of our own together and have had them printed. It's a fun job, but it doesn't pay much. I don't see much room for promotion in the company, but I can transfer to Portland and make more money as soon as I can afford to move, it’s already approved.”
Shit
Dammit.
She cringed inside of her head while he figured out that she wasn't working in Portland. If he realized that she actually lived 3 1/2 hours away, he probably wouldn't want to be involved. Why would he want to drive so far to see her or expect her to drive over 3 hours away to see him? Ugh- they all said they wanted someone who lived nearby, they were adamant. She learned really early on that none of them wanted a long-distance arrangement. She was so angry with herself for ruining the first meeting.
“So you're working outside of Portland?” Technically, that was true. She was working outside of Portland. Can I get away with lying? She didn't even try.
“Actually, right now I'm living and working in Bend, but I'm here this weekend house hunting because I put in for a transfer so I could be closer to my friends and family. That's why I'm on the website. I'm so afraid I'm not going to be able to make it and I keep wanting to spend ‘social time’ with someone other than the ladies at work, but I can't rationalize spending time away from work when money is so tight in order to do it.”
“Well, teaching preschool can't be an option for more than 8 hours a day, right?” He was confused.
“I'm also a writer. I write corporate blog posts, company newsletters, business plans, brochures, marketing materials, and any other gig I can get in order to make ends meet. I'm literally working 7 days a week from 5am until midnight unless I absolutely need a break of some kind. And I can't afford to take the ki
nd of break I need after 2 years of this.” She raised her eyebrows so he'd know she meant sex, trying to reel the conversation back to something she knew he'd be interested in.
Charles smiled, he knew exactly what she meant, and he was excited to meet a woman who didn’t have sexual hang-ups. His last wife was only interested in sex once or twice a month. The idea of being with someone who wanted more sex was compelling, he’d never experienced that. His second wife had a high libido but she also had dark sexual fantasies that made him uncomfortable. “So, how long have you been divorced?”
Ouch- another sting. Technically, the divorce wasn't final yet. She couldn't afford an attorney. “We separated 4 months ago. I had to file a restraining order and have the police remove him from the house. I'm waiting to get the divorce papers back from the attorney.” So now he knew that she was still technically married. She hoped that the next 6 meetings didn't bomb this much. “I can’t really leave Bend until the custody arrangement is official.”