The Business of Lovers

by Eric Jerome Dickey

  Coretta had her hair whipped like she was heading to the Oscars and wore a tight skirt and high heels.

  Coretta gave me the ugliest face she could make and with a ton of disdain said, “I want my things.”

  “Good evening. You lose your home training?”

  “I want my things.”

  “Sure. Wait right there.”

  “I can’t come inside?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Love don’t live here anymore.”

  I went inside and grabbed the box of insignificant things Coretta had left behind. I went back and placed her belongings down at her feet. Mocha Latte, Christiana, and Penny milled around the courtyard checking out the scene, kissing teeth and throwing side-eyes like darts.

  Arms folded and eyes watery, Coretta asked, “Did some of my mail come here too?”

  “Your mail never came here.”

  “My tax guy said he sent my mail here by accident.”

  “Didn’t come to my address.”

  I took in her long legs, her subtle curves. Her hair blew like she’d rented Beyoncé’s wind machine, the same breeze bringing me her sensuous scent. She stood there looking like all the woman any man would ever need.

  She struggled to not lose the plot as she asked, “Why? Why get with her?”

  I calmly asked, “Did marriage scare you? Did I get too serious too fast? What did I do wrong?”

  “Why did you get with her? I asked you a question.”

  “I asked you three.”

  Her nostrils flared. “Why did you let her use you to hurt me? Why did you hurt me?”

  I let a few seconds pass, then told my ex-heartbreak, “Take care of yourself.”

  She stood in front of me shaking, anger and pain in her swollen eyes. Empathy and old love rose. I should have told her the truth to ease her angst, but I didn’t.

  She’d earned it.

  I asked, “Did you cheat on me too? Did you bring men with weak bladders into my home?”

  “Don’t believe shit she said. Don’t you see how she used you to get to me?”

  “Not a good feeling, huh?”

  I owned the truth but fed her lies, same as she had done to me.

  I could’ve told her that I hadn’t slept with Maserati Mama. We’d ended up undressing, sipping wine, and taking selfies. After we took selfies, we talked, cuddled, then drifted off to sleep. When I woke up a few hours later, Maserati Mama was gone, a thank-you note left behind. She sent Coretta two dozen heart-shattering selfies.

  Even if I told Coretta the truth, she wouldn’t believe me. The way we looked in those photos, the smiles, the laughter, I wouldn’t believe me.

  I went inside my place and slammed the door. Coretta stormed away, crying, heels clicking, keys jingling. I frowned out of the window and saw she had left the box where I had placed it on the ground. Penny followed Coretta to her car, made sure she didn’t damage Miss Mini. Coretta pulled away in her luxury Benz. Penny jogged back inside her apartment. Five minutes didn’t pass before Coretta sent me a message, said she loved me. Said Maserati Mama was a mistake. She told me she’d tell me why she left, why what I had asked had scared her. She would tell me why she had run away. She begged to come back. I told her the rent wasn’t free on this side of town, not anymore. I wasn’t the same man I was when I was dealing with her. I’d never be that softhearted sucker again.

  Mocha Latte knocked at my door. She’d showered, put on jeans.

  The out-of-work engineer said, “You’re in a bad mood now.”

  “Yeah. I am.”

  “If her dress had been any shorter, it would’ve been a belt. Those fuck-me pumps were higher than the nosebleed section at the Staples Center. She came here to work some black bitch magic on you, Brick. She wanted that cyclopean cock to take her three levels deep and to wake up living here rent-free again.”

  “She just wanted her stuff.”

  “Bullshit. She left that box of nothing here to have a reason to come back. She popped up like a badass, shit-kicking woman but left like a petulant brat, unable to get what she wanted.”

  Mocha Latte kissed me on my cheek, laughed, then headed into my kitchen, started making blueberry pancakes.

  That woman from Texas knew how to make my hard frown change into a soft smile.

  I said, “She has secrets.”

  Mocha Latte nodded. “Everyone has secrets. It’s their right to have secrets. When those secrets impact you, that’s when it becomes an issue. Some will lie, lie, lie and guard those secrets to their graves.”

  “You had secrets.”

  “Yup. Two engagement rings. But since you know, like you said, it’s no longer a secret.”

  “People find deception exciting. Some people don’t know how to not be cheaters and liars.”

  Mocha Latte nodded. “You just described most if not all of our customers.”

  I replayed my affair with Coretta in my mind. “She said she loved me.”

  “I bet dollars to doughnuts she told Maserati Mama the same bullshit.”

  “Every day.”

  “She’s had months to show up on your porch because she missed you while the sun was sleeping.”

  “She did.”

  “She was here to piss off her girl, not because she loved you. Liars hate getting busted and fall apart like R. Kelly during a Gayle King interview. Your ex wanted to come in and drink wine and undress and get in your bed and take a selfie to send her girl.”

  I went outside, picked up Coretta’s box, carried it around back to the alley, and dropped it in the dumpster. I looked at my phone. All the romantic photos I’d taken with Coretta stared at me. Each image was lie after lie. I deleted all of my photos at once because if I deleted them one by one I’d have to look at each lie one more time.

  When I was on my way back, André passed by on his motorcycle. Joëlle was riding with him, his Apollonia. He had to get to a show at the Bronson Bar on Sunset. When Joëlle was with him, she had eyes for no other man.

  When I was at Frenchie’s ripping out damaged carpet and repairing walls, I had spotted Dwayne’s luggage in her bedroom. That spoke for itself. When everyone was busy, I’d caught Frenchie looking at Dwayne the same way Joëlle looked at André. Despite the ugly seasons, Dwayne and Frenchie had never gotten over each other.

  Everybody had someone who loved them.

  Even my no-good Nigga Daddy had an ingenue who loved his money enough to tolerate him.

  As I headed down the walkway toward my door, Christiana came out of Penny’s apartment dressed in her workout clothes. She read my feelings, knew what I needed, and gave me a hug, rocked side to side with me.

  While she hugged me, Penny came outside in her USC swag, brought her emotions over, and joined in.

  CHAPTER 52

  BRICK

  TWO DAYS LATER, Penny and I worked at a seventy-million-dollar mansion in Holmby Hills. We were in a bedroom twice the size of my apartment, a space that felt like a home nestled inside a home. We performed on a circular king-size bed. We had been hired by an octogenarian couple on their sixtieth wedding anniversary. They wore formal attire, a tuxedo and a sexy gown. The couple sat like a king and queen, champagne in hands. We did as we had been instructed, pretended we were them. We became actors, called each other by their names. The couple watched, held hands, and smiled as I took Penny three levels deep. The clock struck twelve thirty A.M. and we were at the peak stage of sex. Penny cried and moaned for Jesus. The old woman’s phone rang, and she lifted it and took the call. Penny was doggy, and she shook as skin slapped skin, whimpered when I hit her spot, looked back at me with surprise and desperation. The old man enjoyed the sound of skin slapping against skin, enjoyed the magnificence of Penny’s young, fit body. He inhaled like he was ingesting her moans. The old woman’s attention was
on me, her wishful eyes and wistful smile on my toned body. She touched me, put her hand on the rise and fall of my ass. She had the eyes of a teenager and held the phone in her hand, screen glowing, letting whoever was on the other end listen to their diamond anniversary. She wore a huge new rock on her ring finger. When it was done, they stood and applauded, as if they were at the opera. When the curtain was down and Penny stopped singing, when she had recovered from being three levels deep, the old woman turned off her phone. It was a thirty-minute job, but we were paid for two hours. Sixty years married, still in love, still freaky, fucking by proxy.

  * * *

  —

  THE NEXT DAY Mocha Latte left for Bakersfield. It was a two-hour drive north through the Grapevine.

  She was going to spend time with her family, touch base with people she’d grown up with. I could tell she needed to get away from us. She came back south within a week. Her attitude was different when she returned. She said she was ready to quit California and move back to Texas. Down south her money could buy a lot more. She needed to get out of this life, said she wanted to date, find a man, get married, maybe have babies.

  Mocha Latte packed up the little she owned, told us all an emotional good-bye. She didn’t want a going-away party. She hopped in her Jeep at three in the morning and started that fifteen-hundred-mile journey straight out on I-10.

  A month later, she sent me pictures of her with cows, pigs, and chickens. She took a selfie as she drove a tractor, smiling up a storm. She was in Malakoff, back in church, and looking for a job. Her text said she was going to Waveland for a weekend. She was going to do as she had promised. Eat at Dunk’s. Get doughnuts at King’s. Get drunk at Rum Kitchen. Get crayfish. Maybe she’d walk out on the pier holding hands with someone she liked, then wake up and help some of the local Mississippians repair the hurricane damage to their homes. It was time for her to fall in love. Real love. The kind that was really scary. Make beautiful babies. Pretend this part of her life never was.

  CHAPTER 53

  BRICK

  LIFE BECAME DAYS and nights of feasts at extravagant restaurants, followed by drinks in VIP lounges, then back to a hotel room. Most of the women were between thirty-five and fifty-five. They were wealthy. Some celebrated financial and political successes, some celebrated divorces, all with me as their treat. Some were dealing with disappointments and needed me to take them away. Some suffered from midlife crises.

  I was chauffeured to events and showed off to other women who had their own baby-faced rentals on their arms. Many of these women had husbands and, after leasing a boyfriend for the night, slipped back into being wives, mommies, or grannies. Sometimes, we headed straight to the room: knocked boots and bounced in under thirty minutes. A few times I left so fast it felt like it had never happened. Sometimes they told me to give them that black dick, to fuck their pussies with my big black dick, and all they saw was my black dick, as if my cock were my soul. It disturbed me being treated like Mocha Latte said she was treated on more than one of her dates. The nights I gave the BFE, I got the most respect. It wasn’t like real-world dating where you discriminated by race, age, or body size. Regardless of age or size, I pretended every woman was my ideal. They, too, pretended I was their ideal man.

  I took away dull days and lonely nights for my clients, but no one took away mine.

  An Australian woman paid to watch me swim naked in her pool, watched me as she sipped a martini. She fed me chef-prepared food, paid three grand for me to spend the night. We never had sex. Funny how that felt like rejection. She paid me to swim, walk around naked, and be her eye candy, then cuddle with her all night.

  Dr. Maureen Asuryasparsh, the freckle-faced Muslim physician from Yale, booked me on Fridays.

  The Birthday Girl became a regular as well. She preferred Saturday mornings.

  Every Monday, I saw Dr. Allison Émilie Chappelle. I was at her home from midnight to when Siri sounded again at 11:59 P.M. Christiana knew not to book me on Mondays but didn’t know why. Gigolos get lonely too. On those days, not one red cent changed hands. She’d put money on the end table, but I never picked it up. I was in love with her, and it wasn’t the kind of love I’d had with Coretta, which was a foolish love, a pointless love.

  Each woman knowingly or unknowingly taught me something.

  * * *

  —

  ONE RAINY FRIDAY afternoon, as sweat dried, Maureen faced me, her fingers in my hair, smiling.

  I asked her why she cheated on her husband, why she was unhappy and needed me once a week.

  She said, “In my home, over time I hated a room. My basement. I went into that room for years, and over time it was no longer aesthetically pleasing me. Not all at once. One day I didn’t like this about the room. The next week I didn’t like that about the room. Nothing was wrong with it. I’d seen those same walls, walls that I’d chosen to paint teal, had seen that same Italian furniture, expensive furniture I’d selected and insisted on having, had seen it so many times over the years that my once special room lost its appeal. It wasn’t ugly. I needed something different. Familiarity breeds contempt. I had to create drama, create an illusion of it being somehow new. My husband was that basement. Nothing is wrong with him. I needed something different. I needed to redecorate my life. That is my issue.”

  “Why do we become so goddamn restless?”

  “We become emotionally overwhelmed, or emotionally underwhelmed, and need a catharsis.”

  “I’m your catharsis. This is how you deal with the stress that comes from the choices you’ve made.”

  “You’re my therapy. This keeps me sane.” She nodded. “I’m restless. Many people are restless.”

  I kissed her lips, mounted her, took her three levels deep, came hard, then rested at her side.

  She asked, “Why do you do this?”

  “Because it’s safe here. You know the cost. It can’t trick you, not like a normal relationship.”

  “You left love.”

  “Love abandoned me. I waited for it to return like a fool waiting on Godot. I moved on. I left love.”

  “If you leave love, don’t stay gone so long you can never find your way back.”

  * * *

  —

  THEN I WAS with Dr. Allison Émilie Chappelle. My standing Monday appointment. The day I looked forward to. We’d laughed and played chess for hours, then took to her bed for two hours, lights dimmed, music playing low.

  She sounded bothered. “You brought me flowers. You brought me two dozen red roses two weeks in a row.”

  “Was that too much?”

  “Brick.”

  “Yeah.”

  She sighed. “Brick, I heard what you said our first time together. I wasn’t sleeping. I heard when you said you wanted to be with me, when you said you loved me, and I didn’t know what to think.”

  “Did you?”

  “You said you could love me, and you needed to love somebody. Someone as amazing as me. You said you adored me. You said that if I gave you one chance, you’d never cheat, and if we broke up it wouldn’t be over infidelity. I heard you, and every word you said resonated and has stayed with me since that first day I was with you.”

  “Sounds about right.”

  “My mind is like that. I remember every word. It shocked me. It shook me.”

  “Then you know a woman like you is my dream woman.”

  “A woman like me?”

  “You’re amazing.”

  She clacked her teeth together. “I’m in a wheelchair. I am part of the halt, the poor, and the maimed. Brick, I am disabled. I am handicapped probably for the rest of my life. I am one of those spoken of in Luke 14:21.”

  “I’m emotionally handicapped.”

  “You look fine to me.”

  “So do you.”

  “Your damage is underneath. My damage is on the surfac
e.”

  “Is that a deal breaker?”

  She nodded. “What good do we do each other?”

  “We lean against each other, prop each other up.”

  “I can’t stand up.”

  “Then I’ll sit down.”

  She became analytical, serious. “How can you promise any woman fidelity?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’re a prostitute.”

  “I’m a man, not an occupation.”

  “Have you had other women, other clients, since you met me?”

  “I have.”

  “And they pay you for your services.”

  “You feel as if I cheat on you?”

  She took a breath. “Brick, you’re a male prostitute.”

  “I have a master’s degree.”

  “You sell yourself to countless women.”

  “Is that all you see when you look at me?”

  “You’re a male whore, which is redundant. I am scarred from my ex. He was a cheater. I’m sorry.”

  “I can stop being an escort. I can stop today. I can stop right now.”

  “I’d never trust you.”

  “I’d earn your trust.”

  “This . . . once a week . . . Mondays are all we can ever be.”

  I held her. “If I had met you before I started doing this?”

  “But you didn’t. That’s like asking what if we’d met before my accident. Would I be interested in you in this way if I could still run like the wind? When a woman can walk, when she can run, her options are different, her reality is different. The options for a woman who is blind aren’t the same as the options for a woman who can see. I am reminded of that every day.”

  “The world gives perfection a pass on many levels.”

  She took a breath. “You sling dick, Brick. You’re a professional dick slinger.”

  “I don’t charge you.”

  “I am willing to resume paying at any moment.”