by Laura Leone
"Oh. That's right. You used a street name."
"Mo." He rolled his eyes. "I thought it sounded tough. And being tough mattered a lot back then."
"But after the first year, you didn't think your father was still looking for you?"
"Not really. But I still wasn't going to take the chance of being returned to him. I wasn't even going to let him find out what state I was in." He added, "Anyhow, by the time I'd survived a year on the streets, I knew to be wary of all adults."
"All? Why?"
"Well, apart from the ones who might send a kid back to the home he ran away from, I heard stories from kids who'd run away from foster care, and I didn't want to wind up there, either."
"But I have a friend who's a foster parent, and she and her husband are wonderful—"
"But that wasn't the kind of story I heard from other runaways," he explained. "Because kids with foster parents like your friends don't usually run away to live and die on the street." When she nodded, he continued, "And then there are a lot of adults who prey on homeless kids."
"Such as?"
"Such as perverts and sadists whose tastes and habits I refuse to describe to you, Sara. They and their customers get off on practices which a lot of kids don't survive, and so they need a steady supply of them."
He'd nearly been taken by someone like that his first month on the street. He'd also known a girl who simply disappeared one day; and then her body turned up months later. Ryan had trouble sleeping for a long time after learning the details of what had been done to her. Kids disappeared off the street all the time that way. People talked about it, people wondered. And once in a while someone would survive to tell the tale—or would leave behind a corpse which did the same.
"I can't imagine how you stayed alive," Sara said, still holding his hand. "I can hardly imagine the strength, courage, and brains it took for you to survive."
In fact, he had done things to survive which he'd much rather she didn't try imagine. Things which were best left in the dark shadows of his past.
"How long did you live on the streets?" she asked.
"It was a little over two years. Then I met Catherine."
Sara withdrew her hand. "How?"
"I was..." He thought back. "Picking pockets in the neighborhood where she used to have a condo. I liked working prosperous areas. They were clean and pretty, and they felt safe. Catherine noticed me before long. She could tell I didn't belong there—which made her wonder what I was doing there." After a moment, he added, "I noticed her, too. Very beautiful. Very elegant. Her clothes looked so good, I wanted to eat them. After a while, I started flirting with her whenever I saw her. She always acted like a lady, but I could tell she sort of liked me. Eventually, she started paying me to do odd jobs for her once in a while. Deliver a package or wash her car. Errands like that."
"And then she hired you to have sex with a client?"
"God, no," he said. "I was a scrawny, dirty, foul-mouthed, street boy. I definitely wasn't ripe for her kind of clients."
"Then how did it happen?"
He wondered how to tell her. He wondered if he should tell her at all.
"Ryan?"
He decided to tell her the relevant part. "I got raped and beaten."
"What?" Her hand covered his again.
"Yeah. And it was pretty bad."
"Ryan." She looked horrified.
"I thought I was going to die. I'd never been in so much pain. Catherine had once given me her phone number, when she wanted me to call her about an errand I was doing for her. So I'd memorized it. Probably because I had a terrible crush on her, of course. So I went to the nearest phone—crawling most of the way—and called her collect. She accepted the charges, and..."
He paused as the waitress came over to collect his empty glass and ask if he'd like another drink.
"No, thanks." Apart from Catherine's strict rules about alcohol, seeing what booze did to his father ensured that Ryan always chose to stop at one.
The waitress said to Sara, "Are you still working on yours?"
"Um, yes." Sara looked at her wine as if she hadn't known it was there. To Ryan's surprise, she suddenly picked up her glass and downed half its contents in one long swallow. Then she made a horrible face—which made him smile. That was her way. She could make him smile, even in the middle of this story.
When they were alone again, Sara prompted, "So you phoned Catherine..."
He nodded. "I could hardly talk, and I was very confused—couldn't really tell her where I was. She kept asking me questions, trying to locate me. I passed out in the middle of the call and just lay there in the dark."
"Oh, Jesus." Sara covered her mouth with her hand and kept gazing at him, her eyes sparkling with tears.
"She got one of her boys, a guy called Jason, and they got in her car and came looking for me. It took her until after dawn to find me, but she didn't give up. She just kept looking. For me—a street kid she barely even knew."
"My God, I would think any decent human being would have kept look—"
"That's because you don't know how dangerous it was to spend the night searching that neighborhood. But she knew. And she did it, anyway."
"But—"
"When she finally found me, she and Jason put me in the car. She didn't leave me there to die—"
"How could anyone have left you th—
"—or dump me in some clinic, or drop me off at some emergency room. She didn't call the cops, or social services, or anyone else that I didn't want messing with me." He held Sara's gaze and tried to make her understand. "She took me home and took care of me. She got a doctor to come see me, and she gave him my street name—she wouldn't even let him ask for my real name. She got blood tests done on me, got pain pills and antibiotics for me, cleaned me up, and poured fluids into me. I'd have died if it wasn't for her."
"But—"
"Catherine saved my life, Sara."
"Ryan, you were a kid, and you'd been brutally—"
"I asked her for help, and she gave it. She saved my life. And she took me off the streets forever."
Catherine never actually suggested Ryan live with her permanently. But, after more than two years in the streets, he suddenly had enough to eat, a clean bed in a room of his own, and a safe home with someone he trusted. So he had no intention of leaving until she told him to; and she never did.
"She took care of me," he said. "Maybe, at first, she thought I could be like a son to her. Or maybe, for a little while, she wanted to do something charitable. I don't know. Maybe she just cared what happened to me."
"Or maybe she'd noticed, even under the dirt, how good-looking and charming you were, even at that age," Sara said, "and she realized you could become a profitable employee in her business."
"I don't know," he repeated. "But I don't think so, Sara. In those days, I didn't remotely resemble anyone's idea of an expensive date."
"I can imagine what she saw in you back then, even if you can't."
He decided to move on rather than argue about it. "When I was all healed, Catherine started, uh, renovating me. I wanted to be whatever she wanted me to be, so I tried hard to please her. Jason started taking me to the gym to build up my body, and Catherine started teaching me how to talk, how to dress, how to act like I belonged in an expensive restaurant or at the theatre. She gave me books and magazines to read, because women like her don't enjoy talking to someone who's ignorant. I'd been a working class schoolboy, then a grubby, sly street kid. She started training me to be..." He shrugged. "Someone who doesn't seem at all out of place with wealthy women."
"What else..." Sara paused, as if about to change her mind, but then said with resolve, "What else did she train you to do?"
"I think you know the answer to that," he said quietly.
"So what did she do?" Sara's tone revealed her distaste. "Just hop into bed with the underage kid in her house and relieve you of your virginity?"
"I hadn't been a virgin for almost two ye
ars, Sara."
"Oh. I guess there were girls living on the street, too."
"Yes," he said.
"So you already had some experience."
"And I was completely infatuated with Catherine. Sexually obsessed. I was also young enough that, uh, my hormones were always eager for exercise."
Despite that, he had never made a move towards her, and maybe he never would have. He knew from having stolen a peek at her driver's license that she was nearly twenty years older than he. She had an air of cool, firm authority that didn't readily invite audacity. And she could kick him out of her home and send him back into the streets the moment he irritated or offended her. So he just fantasized about her. A lot.
She knew it, of course. In retrospect, he realized that she had encouraged his infatuation and deliberately teased his sexual appetite for her.
"But I was living with her for almost a year before we finally had sex."
He'd realized fairly soon after moving in with Catherine exactly what kind of business she was running out of her elegant condo. The world had changed him too much since childhood for Ryan—whom Catherine now called Kevin—to be shocked by this; he was just shocked to discover, living here, how much some people would pay for a fuck.
He also knew that Catherine didn't fuck for money herself, she just procured. Very successfully.
Not that she was celibate. Ryan knew that she slept with Jason sometimes. There was also an older man who came to the house every once in a while. Catherine wouldn't even tell Ryan who he was; she just told Ryan to clear out whenever the guy came around. He smelled like The Man, so Ryan was happy to disappear on those occasions. Jason once told Ryan the guy was "an important friend" who helped Catherine out sometimes. In exchange, she treated him like a lover when he came calling.
Then one night, while Ryan was lying on the couch in the living room with a book, Catherine came into the room dressed in elegant lounge clothes, sat down to talk to him, and... slowly, artfully seduced him.
"The main event was over in less than a minute," Ryan recalled wryly, staring at Sara's half-empty glass. "I wasn't a virgin, but I had an awful lot to learn."
"And she taught you," Sara said in a brittle voice.
"Yes."
Over the next few months, during which time he turned eighteen, he and Catherine lived as lovers. Sexual pleasure took on dimensions and qualities he had never previously dreamed of as a scared kid seeking a moment of human warmth in his occasional, desperate couplings with girls on the street. Catherine taught him to make love, to indulge the senses, to drown in pleasure... and then she taught him to control his own needs in favor of ensuring the sex was sensational for a woman. She also instructed him in a thousand details of intimacy related to sex, molding him into her image of an ideal lover.
"One for whom she can charge high prices," Sara said.
"Yes."
"Did you know that's what you were being prepared for?"
"I'm not sure," he said vaguely.
"You didn't wonder? You didn't ask?"
"I wasn't going to do anything to rock the boat. Turning eighteen only meant no one could ever send me back to my father again. Legally, I was free. In reality, though, I was the same helpless, ignorant, homeless kid I'd been the night Catherine had scraped my bloody carcass off the ground and taken me home."
"When did you find out what she intended to do with you?"
"Around the time she started sleeping with another of the escorts."
"That must have hurt."
In fact, it hurt him so much that, for once, he talked back, created a scene, and made melodramatic threats. He was stunned at Catherine's firm assertion, in response to his wounded fury, that she couldn't keep devoting all her time to him anymore. The business was growing, she was bringing in some new escorts to keep up with the demand, and she was buying a bigger place in which to live and work. She had done so much for Kevin already, didn't he appreciate it? Was this jealousy and possessiveness how he repaid her generosity and kindness to him?
"Oh, good grief," Sara said.
Catherine moved into the townhouse in Cow Hollow and let Ryan continue living in the condo. One of her other boys was usually living in the other bedroom. Catherine started setting up dates between Ryan and some of her girls.
"Why?" Sara asked.
"So I'd get used to a variety of women. And she wanted some of them to, uh, teach me skills that I have no intention of describing to you."
At Catherine's request, Jason also got involved in Ryan's education, giving him tips on maintaining an erection when he was tired or bored, teaching him how to groom and take care of himself, advising him in detail about condoms and other products.
"Condoms..." Sara clearly struggled for a moment with what she wanted to ask. "Ever since you told me what you do, I've wondered, um..."
"Safe sex. Every time. No exceptions," he said succinctly. "Ever since Catherine took me in. No client has ever asked me to forego it, but I'm supposed to refuse if they do—even if that means losing their business. Catherine has no intention of being ruined by a massive lawsuit because one of her escorts gives someone an infection or a disease, let alone a fatal one."
"So you're not... I don't have to worry that you'll get sick?" she asked tactfully.
He shook his head. "And I get a blood test every month." He added in a bland voice, "Company policy. No exceptions."
Sara nodded and closed her eyes. After a long moment, she said, "So you had all this preparation—"
"Also three meals a day," he said quietly, "a lot of nice clothes, and a very nice place to live. And Catherine was paying for all of it."
Sara put her hands on her head as if it were throbbing.
"When she turned me out... er, put me to work... It was okay, Sara. Really. Not awful or a nightmare, or anything like that." He wanted to be honest about this with her. "I didn't mind it. In fact, compared to where I'd been in life, I usually liked it. The only thing that really hurt me was that Catherine and I weren't lovers anymore." After a moment, he added, "Well, not exclusively, I mean. We still had sex sometimes. But I knew she slept with other boys, and it bothered me for a long time."
"Boys?" she said scathingly, her head bowed and her hands still pressed against her forehead.
"Men," he amended. "In the life, prostitutes are called things like 'working girl' and 'rent boy.' Catherine's other boys were all five, ten, even fifteen years older than I was when I started out. I was the only... youngster."
"And women just pay for a boy's—a man's—company?" She sounded dazed. "Why? Why would someone do that?"
"To get exactly what they want." After a moment, he added, "And some people just like to feel they're buying something that other people can't afford."
"It just seems so weird for a woman to do that."
"Male clients are a lot more common," he admitted.
She lowered her hands and lifted her head to meet his gaze. The question in her candid face was obvious.
So he said, "When I was young, Catherine would send me to these private parties with a few other escorts. We were supposed to be whatever the guests wanted us to be." The first time he'd attended one of those parties, Ryan had paired off with a young woman who described herself to him as an up-and-coming rock musician, and they'd fucked their brains out. Hot, energetic sex in a luxurious place, and he got paid for it. It sure beat eating out of dumpsters. "At the second or third party I went to..." He shrugged. "A man wanted me. That wasn't unusual. Especially when I was younger."
Sara kept staring at him, clearly upset. "You... You..."
He hesitated before saying, "I was polite, as I'd been taught, but I refused. The client—who ran these parties—complained to Catherine. I told her I wouldn't do it. I didn't care that most of the other boys did—"
"They do?"
"Not all of them, but a lot of them. Even if they're straight. It's just business, Sara."
"Oh, my God." She put her head back in her hands.<
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"Because men buy it—sex—a whole lot more often than women do."
"That's what I thought. I didn't know any women bought it."
"Anyhow, Catherine and I argued about it—"
"She argued with you about it? She tried to make you—"
"But because of what had happened to me in the street the night she took me in..." He shrugged again. "She agreed, in the end. And she never deliberately put me in that position again."
"Gosh, what a Good Samaritan."
"Or a good Sumerian," he muttered.
"Sumerian?" She lifted her head and blinked at him.
He waved a hand. "This kid said that this morning. I keep thinking about him."
She studied him for a moment. "You identify with this kid, don't you?"
"I was this kid. Only a little smarter and more streetwise." He frowned. "And if I could barely survive for the two years I was on the street, what chance has he got?"
"Then why don't you help him?"
He met her eyes, and he was stunned to see her looking at him as if she thought he, of all people, could help that kid.
When he didn't reply, Sara said, "Despite all your touching gratitude to Catherine—"
"Sara, that's—"
"—the one plan I won't go along with is getting this kid involved with her, too."
"Jesus, Sara! What do you think I am?" he snapped. "I'm not going to drag a kid into..." He remembered they were in a public place and lowered his voice. "I am not dragging a kid—or anyone else—into prostitution. This is the hand I got dealt, and I've had to play it. I'm not sitting here recommending it to you as a way of life—"
"I know that." She tried to put her hand over his again, but he withdrew it and glared at her.
"—let alone as something I'd lure a kid into—"
"Ryan, I'm sorry."
"—or as a great solution to a runaway's problems!"
"I didn't mean—"
"Yes, you did, Sara."
She sighed. "Maybe I did. I don't know. I'm sorry."
"I'm a whore," he said tightly, "but I'm not a sleazy bastard—"
"I know that."
"—and I don't prey on kids."
"I'm sorry."