chapter 1
fiction
HUFFINGTON
09.23.12
but before he fell asleep she was on him again and said he
didn’t have to do anything at all but just be still and sleepy
and she would complete all the movement.
At the end of the week, on Sunday afternoon, she presented
him with a tidy bill, type-written, accounting for each time,
and labeling where/when it had happened, with a dotted line
and a $25 at the end. The total for that first week was 250
dollars. A small amount compared to the easy near-thousand
of the previous week, but a clear exchange nonetheless. Daniel
paid it into her palm, in cash, counting backwards.
“Sunday’s my day off,” he said, when she started to undo
her bra. “Go do something else, honey, please.” He plopped
in front of the TV with a bowl of rice cereal to watch some
football and Janet gathered herself into the pale blue bathtub and attended to her body quietly in there, moaning softly
under the whir of the bathroom fan; afterward, she paid herself fifty dollars by transferring funds from her savings to her
checking account. That made $300 for the week.
N
OVEMBER 8 SHOT around the corner in a
blink; it was probably the quickest two weeks
of her life. And it was not enough. That much
was clear instantly. She had started, by now, to
see the entire world in terms of currencies. She
considered charging her few friends for their lunches based
on who demanded more time and attention during the
lunch itself, charging strangers a quarter in the supermarket aisle when they did not move their cart in time. Charging for each meal she cooked, including tip. One afternoon,
when her father sailed off into one of his long monologues
on the phone, she actually tape-recorded their conversation
and then took four hours and typed it out as a script, with
his endless speech on the right side of the page and her responses on the left: yes, uh-huh, of course. It was amazing,