Chapter 7 – Mariah
My first real night of service at the club hadn’t been much longer than the time I’d spent getting paid to train with Elie, but I was even more sore and tired. When Elie asked me if I wanted to work every night, I told him that I wasn’t going to be able to. I needed a day in between to recuperate, and today was that day.
When I stretched and thought of getting out of bed, my whole body screamed at me for what had been done to it the night before. I was sure that I was unharmed, but that didn’t take away the discomfort of now. Scott hadn’t been anything like I’d imagined, although he was a man that I was going to have to watch. I had a feeling that Scott was going to push for more if I saw him again. Last night had been my first time meeting him, and even then he found it hard to push it only a little.
“Are you coming with us?”
“What time is it?” I looked over at the clock, answering the question for myself. I was becoming a vampire. Half of the day was already gone. I’d slept far later than I was used to, but I had to admit that I’d needed it.
“Yeah, where are we going again?”
Sasha smiled and pulled me from the bed. “It was your idea. You said you wanted to check the place out now that you have a little money in your pocket.”
Her reminder pushed me back to the night before. Scott had not only gotten me off a couple of times, he’d paid me far better than I would have anticipated. There was a set price, but he’d paid ten times that much. I didn’t tell Sasha how much he’d paid me, but I knew that it was a good tip. I didn’t know if I was going to see him again, though, so I wasn’t going to say anything unless he became a regular. I really hoped that he did, because my time with Scott had been some of the most pleasurable in my life.
Scott had set the bar too high. No one else was going to be like him, no one would care as much to please me in the way that he had. I knew that I’d lucked out with him, and if I could keep him, I wouldn’t think that the job at the club was so bad after all. If they could all be like him, I would never want to go anywhere else.
“That’s right. Let me just take a shower and I’ll be ready in a minute.” I’d been looking forward to the tourism idea, but now I was just tired and sore. A hot shower seemed like it would be just the thing that I needed to perk me up.
It was, and about fifteen minutes later I was true to my word and ready to leave. Kimmie and Sasha were dressed in black, and I felt a little out of place in a white dress. It was short and summery. I didn’t see the point in wearing such dreary clothes when we could wear something short because it was nice out. I was still trying to get over how pretty the weather was all of the time. It was almost perfect in New Orleans, almost.
“You sure are in a good mood, Mariah. I thought you were going to be stressed out, but look at you. If I didn’t know any better, I would say that you had a glow about you. I see that the new job is agreeing with you.”
I gave Kimmie a look. I wasn’t sure if she was joking around or not, but I didn’t feel the way I’d thought I would about working at the club. I’d thought that I would feel dirty and wrong, but it actually felt good. Elie had been interesting, but with Scott, I’d been fully pleasured and I knew that I’d pleased him as well. There was something that I got from that. The fact that it was a stranger just made it a little naughtier and made the reward that much better.
“I guess it wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be. I think Sasha was right when she said it will just get better and easier over time.”
“It does, Mariah, but some days I don’t want to go in.”
“Why?”
“Because I really don’t like all of my clients. I’m sure that you’ll have some that you don’t like as well. Most of the people I work with are great and I enjoy my time with them, but others I just don’t mesh with.”
“Then why do you still see them?” I was under the impression that I could turn down anyone I wanted to. If that wasn’t the case, I needed to know now. Elie had made a lot of promises, some of them seemingly too good to be true.
“It’s just not that easy. I want to keep Elie’s clients happy, so I’ll see some that the other girls don’t want to. I’ll still get paid, but those are the days that I would like to stay home, when I have to deal with the rejects. They’re shunned by the other girls for a reason.”
Of course, she probably felt some obligation because she was dating Elie. I wasn’t, so I figured that I wouldn’t have that problem. That fact made it easier to push it out of my mind because I knew that it wasn’t going to happen to me. Sasha did it because she wanted to make Elie happy, but his happiness wasn’t all that important to me.
“I don’t know if I could do it with someone I didn’t want to. Elie said I didn’t have to.”
Sasha’s face changed and she smiled a little to reassure me that she was sure that I wouldn’t have to.
“You’re going to be busy enough that you’ll have to turn some of them down anyway. I can see now that you’re going to be ordered a lot.”
I felt like a Happy Meal all of a sudden, and I wasn’t sure that I liked the feeling. Scott had been someone that I wanted to see again, but I had to prepare for the rest. They weren’t all going to be like him. Scott was special. I didn’t have to be there a long time to realize that.
“Well, I don’t know about all of that, Sasha, but thank you for hooking me up with the job. I needed it, even though I was being a prude about it.”
She said it was no problem, but I could tell that she liked the thank you. Sasha had done a lot for me since I got to New Orleans, not to mention everything before that when we all lived in Coloma. She was a good friend that I was lucky to have, and she’d really saved my ass with this job.
“I’ve missed this, all of us together. Has anyone heard from Kallie?”
Kimmie told me that she hadn’t, but she’d left a couple of messages with her parents for when they heard from her.
“I hear she’s dating some guy and ran off with him to Arizona. You know how she is. I’m sure she’ll show up sooner or later with a whole lot of stories to tell us.”
Sasha and Kimmie agreed, but I still wished that I could see her too. Having us all together made her absence a little more felt. I missed Kallie as much as I’d missed Sasha, and I hoped that she could find her way down here soon. It was time for all of the gang to get back together, even for just a little while for old time’s sake.
I pushed the thoughts of Kallie and Scott from my head. Today was what there was to think about, and after last night I needed a good day. Spending the day with friends, seeing all that New Orleans had to offer, sounded like the kind of day to make it all go away for a while. I would have tomorrow to worry about everything; today I just needed to pretend that I wasn’t working where I was and the money in my pocket wasn’t payment for letting some man beat on me.
***
The next day, Elie called me around noon and told me to be in for five. He didn’t say much about whom or what I was going to be doing, but I had my hopes about who I wanted it to be. I wanted more than anything for it to be Scott. I was ready for some more of his kind of play. I didn’t know if it would be him, but there was the hope that he would be my next client. Maybe he would like me so much that he wouldn’t want me to be with anyone else and would pay for me all of the time.
That wasn’t reality, but it was sure nice to think about as I got ready for another night in the club. I stuck to the white, light dress that Elie had picked out for me. He’d told me that I would have to get my own soon, but if the client requested something particular, he was apt to get it for them to make sure that it was just what they wanted. Apparently he had a shopper who did those kinds of things for him. Her job sounded a lot better than mine right now.
When I finally got to work, it was strange to be there in the daytime. It looked different than it did at night. The building seemed older than before now that I could see all of the cracks in the paint. There were no bright lights to keep my eyes away from what kind of a place it was. Even from the outside, it wasn’t a place that I would have wanted to go to a week ago. Things change, though, and I tried to look past all of that as I went through the blackout doors to my new life.
The inside was as dark as always and it wasn’t any different than I remembered. I don’t know why, but that was a comfort for me, one that I had to hang on to. I was still nervous about who I was going to be working with today. I was going to have to talk to Elie about the amount of information I was given. If I was given more on the front end, I would be able to prepare myself better, especially as I got to know clients. Then I would know what they wanted me to wear, and then I would be able to mentally prepare myself more than I could now.
But Elie wasn’t around long enough to talk before the client was there and I was told to go wait in the 8th back room. I wasn’t tied down this time, and I was going to take that as a good sign. Scott had said something about not liking the work already done for him.
I waited for a little while. It may have been only a couple of minutes, but it felt like it was forever. I wanted to see Scott again so badly, but it wasn’t Scott who walked through the door.
“You look disappointed to see me, Mariah.”
It was disconcerting to realize that he knew everything about me, but I didn’t know anything about him. “I’m not disappointed, sir. It’s our first time meeting. How could I be?”
He chuckled a little, but I wasn’t getting the same kind of vibe off of him that I’d gotten off of Scott. The fear that I felt was not going away after meeting his gaze. There was certainly no skip of my heart when our eyes locked, not a good one anyway.
The man in front of me was rather attractive. He was a little younger than Scott, it seemed like, but somehow he looked like he’d been around longer. I was sure that he didn’t take care of himself in the same way. His long brown hair was a little unkempt and his dark black eyes twinkled as he came near me. None of that was the problem. It was the malicious smile that I saw on his face that bothered me the most. Something was off about this man, and I could feel it deep in my bones.
“It’s good to meet you, Mariah. I’ve waited several days for a taste of you, and I don’t think that I’m going to be disappointed. My name is Travis, and I have a feeling that we’re going to see a lot more of each other.”
“Yes, sir.” What else could I say?