FOUR
~JACE~
“God damn! Nothing should look as good as you look right now,” I said with a smile. Then, working to sit up—working to seem more presentable—and succeeding in tugging the increasingly annoying network of tubes and wires littered across my body, I winced and rolled my eyes. Groaning, I added, “And here I probably look like complete and utter shit.”
Mia’s face twisted in a brief instant of varying micro-expressions. I caught flashes of pity, anger, sadness, and hatred. While there were a few others that I missed, I wasn’t thrilled with the ones I’d seen. I hated having people pity me; I hated seeing Mia angry or sad; and, as for hatred… well, hatred didn’t exist to look good on pretty faces.
Simply put, I hated seeing how hatred was twisting such a gorgeous face.
Not that I was about to tell her so, and I certainly understood. I guessed it was directed either at the entire situation or more specifically on the dead-but-not-dead-enough T-Built. Lord knew I wasn’t done hating T-Built. Hell, I wasn’t done hating just about every beating heart tied to the Carrion Crew. When it came to hatred, I was something of an expert—a connoisseur, if I could be so bold as to think so—and, on many occasions, I’d seen that same twisted snarl on my own mug whenever a reflective surface was available. Granted, I wasn’t nearly as pretty as Mia. Far as I was concerned, nobody was. (Damn, that felt simultaneously glorious and guilt-inducing to think given everything I’d been through.) Needless to say, I knew hatred when I saw it, but that didn’t mean I wanted to see it.
It wasn’t like…
Where the hell was my head?
Growling, I snatched the tubing leading to the morphine drip and yanked it out of my arm, wincing at the exiting needle’s bite and hurrying to hide the growing bead of blood that followed it on its way out.
A small, nervous-sounding bark of worry escaped Mia’s lips, and I caught sight of a bag in her left hand that had been previously angled away from me. Then, hurrying to compose herself, she reangled herself—once again putting the bag out of my sight—and worked a rather convincing mask of apprehension atop a still concerned face.
“I’m pretty sure you’re supposed to leave that in,” she scolded me, taking a bold-yet-awkward step inside. There was a renewed confidence about her that was, admittedly, quite intoxicating to behold, but that bag of hers and her ongoing mission to keep it hidden was clunking up the effect.
That, I thought to myself as I worked to get a glimpse at whatever it was she was trying to conceal, needs to be taken out of the equation.
“Gotta take it out,” I said matter-of-factly. “Otherwise I’m going to have to walk out of here still wearing it in my arm.” I gave her a coy smirk and a playful shrug. “Sort of muddies up the effort of sneaking out if your clanging around with medical equipment all tagged-up in your veins.” Then, nodding towards the bag she’d been working so hard to keep hidden, I asked, “What’s that?”
Another micro-expression, this one showing embarrassment, passed across her stern-yet-concerned face. The blush held, but the embarrassment was gone quickly enough to have me convinced it had never been there. She twisted herself, angling her right hip more in my direction in an ongoing effort to further conceal the bag. It thumped against her thigh, crinkled audibly—earning a flinch from her in the process—and she rolled her eyes.
“They said you could go then?” she asked, ignoring my question and the painfully obvious elephant that she, herself, had carried in with her.
“I said I could go,” I said passively, already beginning to unplug more of the diodes scattered across my chest. “So what’cha got there?” I pressed further, ignoring the whine of a nearby machine as my vitals were suddenly robbed from its scans.
Mia’s eyes drifted to the angered machine, and then they rolled again. She seemed pleased to have something other than the bag to roll her eyes at. I grinned playfully at this, yanking another wire—this one all-but glued to my left temple—and giving her another excuse to roll her eyes. She did, but just as playfully.
Struggling to maintain her “mother said no cookies”-demeanor, she said, “I don’t think it works that way.”
“Probably not,” I admitted, ripping the last batch of wires free from my body—suddenly feeling a lot like Pinocchio ridding himself of all those pesky puppet strings—“but I don’t exactly like playing by the rules.” Still holding my mischievous child grin (it seemed to go well with “mother said no cookies”), I quipped, “Thought you would’ve figured that out by now,” before returning to the matter at hand: “So what’s in the bag?”
Mia rolled her eyes once more, groaned in defeat, and finally succumbed to a smile, which just as quickly turned into a giggle. Shaking her head, she closed the distance between us, planted a kiss on my lips—heaven; pure heaven—and set the bag gently on my lap.
It was an unmarked paper bag. Fancy, but not emblazoned with any brand name or logo. A pair of woven, cream-colored drawstrings looped up from either end of the widest lengths of the opening, and, peeking out just over the edges—the contents just slightly longer than the bag was tall—was a ruler-straight length of black plastic. It took me a moment to realize that what I was looking at was the outer edge of a frame. Squinting at this, confused, I took this by either corner and began to pull out whatever it was.
“The frame is a cheap piece of shit,” Mia injected before I had it all the way out, “but I figured we could find something nicer to put it in after you got out of here.”
I smiled at that, deciding to add that mission to the day’s plans.
Admittedly, that was not a long list.
I hadn’t decided that I was leaving until the moment I’d seen Mia walk through the door. I mused on that, finding it funny how such a bold and brash decision could be made in such a split-second, spur-of-the-moment instant. In my defense, though, having that woman step into your life was a surefire way to motivate such brashness. It certainly made sense how a face like that—and, yes, a body like that, too—could do well to separate men from their money. I had never been confused about why the Carrion Crew wanted her on the streets as one of their whores, and I couldn’t even be mad about it in the long run. If prostitution was the oldest human occupation, then women like Mia represented the best the business had to offer. A batting of those eyes, a pursing of those lips, and—sweet fucking hell, I’m horny!—a swagger of those hips and, yeah, the male mind was putty. Rendered stupid and desperate, she could get a guy to make a brash, split-second, and spur-of-the-moment decision. Even when she didn’t mean to. On the streets, as an “employee” of the Carrion Crew, that might have translated into getting into a guy’s wallet in exchange for letting him into her pants. Here, in a hospital room, however, it translated to “I’m getting the fuck out of here!”
And, again, in my defense: I was horny.
Then, finishing with the extraction process of the “cheap piece of shit” frame, I felt a great deal of that horniness leave me. Awe sauntered in side-by-side with pure love for this woman to replace it.
“I remembered your story about visiting there,” she said, smiling at what I could only imagine was a look of shock plastered across my face as I took in the familiar sight of a photograph of a scenic, sea-front view of a Roman town I’d gone to during a family vacation as a boy. We’d stumbled across that print during one of our dates, and it suddenly occurred to me that something I’d thought to be so passive and forgettable at the time had motivated her to track it down for me.
If there were any guilty feelings about ditching the hospital to spend the day with her, they were gone in that instant.
“You… you went back to the canal to get this?” I asked, hoping my voice wasn’t breaking as badly as it felt like it was.
Mia shrugged and tried to look casual as she said, “I was in the area.”
I tore my eyes from the photograph—no easy task, I might add—to give her a face. I remembered the ride we’d taken to get there, remembered how great it felt to have her sitting behind me on my chopper as we sped through the winding streets that left the city and wound dizzily towards the small town during its annual Canal Days festival. I hadn’t resented a moment of that ride—hadn’t resented a moment of that entire night, to be fair—but it was no quick trip. And it was most certainly not the sort of place that Mia had just accidently found herself in, no matter how beautiful and fun it might be.
“Oh? And what were you doing in the area?” I challenged.
Smirking, realizing she’d been caught, she said, “Tracking down that photograph.”
I stared at her, feeling myself fall in love with her all over again, and finally reached out to her, pulling her down to kiss her again. This time, I kissed her properly. None of that “glad you didn’t die”-pecking or “hey! Look at you awake and not comatose”-smooching. No, sir. Our lips needed to be properly reacquainted, and you can bet your ass that’s just what I did.
Because Jason Presley handles his business.
And, speaking of which…
Parting from the kiss, I carefully worked Mia’s gift back into its bag and hoisted myself from the hospital bed. I’d caught sight of some fresh clothes earlier, a pair of faded jeans with a tri-folded sheet of paper that read “SO WE DON’T HAVE TO STARE AT THAT BARE ASS OF YOURS, BOSS!” and my leather jacket, still encased in a plastic dry cleaner’s bag with a small gift tag looped around the top. Though it was pink and frilly, this tag’s message—“only a faggot knows how to get death and meth out of leather!”—was anything but fluffy and cute. It was also all the evidence I needed to know that Danny, that tough-as-nails and fruitier-than-a-bag-of-Skittles godsend of a man had managed to pull through. Being one of my best friends and the closest thing I had to a father, it had been enough to make me laugh and cry at the same time upon seeing it.
Meth lab explosion? Multiple gunshot wounds? Burns? Lacerations? Smoke inhalation? Bah! Why should any of that go and spoil his fun, right? I’d thought, practically hearing him say “I ain’t dyin’ on Pride Month, ya dumb motherfucker!” in my mind.
Now, working my way across the room on still-shaky legs, I found myself glad for the generous offers for a whole new set of reasons. Knowing Danny was alive and well—and still catty as hell—was nice and all, but I was pretty sure that the clothes I’d been brought in wearing, all scorched and likely reeking of smoke and poisonous fumes, were long-gone. While nothing—goddam NOTHING!—was about to keep me from leaving that place with Mia, I was equally sure that a man escorting a pretty woman down the street with his butt crack hanging out from behind a hospital johnny was a good way to get dragged to a different sort of hospital, one with a snugly-fitted “hug myself” jacket, a drool bib, and a private room with walls made out of pillows.
Not that I probably wasn’t overdue for a psych eval…
But I’d definitely have to be crazy to stick around there any longer when I could be out and about with—
“You’re really doing this?” Mia said with a startled giggle.
“Damn right!” I told her, tearing off the johnny and beginning to reach for the pants gifted to me by some random (and soon to be handsomely rewarded) member of the Crows. “And nothing in the world’s gonna stop—”
“Mister Presley!”
I spun at the stunned and outraged call of my name and spotted the nurse from before glaring back at me from the doorway. The room fell into an awkward silence—enough to let the lazy THWAP of my whipped-about penis slapping against my inner thigh resound in three sets of ears—and I became aggressively aware of a number of incriminating facts:
I was out of bed.
I was naked.
And, likely most damning in this medical professional’s eyes, I had tampered with a great many pieces of equipment in order to accomplish those first two feats.
With no small amount of bitter resentment, it occurred to me that any one of those machines I’d just unplugged myself from could have alerted her to what was either my attempted escape or my untimely demise.
Standing there—red-handed as a boy with his hand in the cookie jar and naked as the day I was born—I decided that dying wouldn’t be such an awful thing at that moment.
“I… uh,” I stammered, glancing longingly towards my increasingly glorious-looking pair of gifted pants. “I don’t suppose a ‘sweet titty-fucking Christ’ would fix this, would it?”
****
“‘Sweet titty-fucking Christ’?” Mia repeated to me for likely the hundredth time in just as many minutes. She’d gotten as much of a laugh out of it as the nurse had the first time around—or maybe she’d been laughing at me being caught stark-naked in my escape attempt, my “guilty cock-slap,” as she’d put it, or just the overall impact of the absolutely mortifying scene—and had yet to let me live it down.
“You’re going to owe me a titjob every time you throw that back at me, you brat!” I scolded, but an ear-splitting grin abandoned my effort to come off stern.
“Like I’d have a problem with that,” she taunted, slipping fluidly into a playful, skipping side-step to shake her chest at me for a moment before saying, “And I wouldn’t even charge you the twenty bucks for it, either!”
“Twenty bucks?” I asked, raising an eyebrow as she fell back into a casual stroll beside me. We both ignored the stunned glances of a few passersby who’d happened to overhear the exchange. “Isn’t that sort of underselling it? I mean, a chance to slap one’s prick between those perfect, creamy orbs has got to be worth, I don’t know, a hundred dollars! Fifty, at least!”
Mia shrugged a shoulder and looked away, her face twisted like she’d bitten into something sour. “Don’t blame me,” she defended, suddenly sounding upset despite her obvious efforts to keep the joke alive, “it wasn’t like I ever set the prices.”
I curled my lip in an understanding smirk and put my arm around her shoulders. “Well, your previous employers clearly didn’t know what a quality product they had. Rest assured, a titjob from you should earn no less than a crisp Franklin.”
She rolled her eyes at that but still offered me a reassured smirk. “You’re such a charmer. So you telling me I should put myself back on the market, this time as a high-class whore? Maybe advertise as an escort to athletes and politicians.”
“Ew!” I gave a shutter and shook my head, mock-retching. “Politicians? Not sure I could share a bed with somebody who’s slept with that sort of scum.”
Mia folded her arms across her chest and gave me a look. “But I’m free to whore myself out to athletes, huh?” she said in a dangerously challenging voice.
I shrugged, feeling up to a dangerous challenge. “I guess there’s a few sports stars I wouldn’t mind taking sloppy seconds to,” I admitted. “Provided you got me an autograph, too. Ooh!” I clapped victoriously, “You could get them to sign your tits before giving me one of those hundred-dollar titjobs! Then I’d have an autograph on my—”
“Jerk!” Mia snarled, driving a surprise punch into my shoulder and effectively numbing my arm in the process.
“H-hey! Ow!” I whined, rubbing my sore shoulder and pouting. “That actually hurt!”
“Good!” she chastised, making another fist and moving like she was going to hit me again.
“NO, MOMMY! DON’T BEAT ME AGAIN!” I play-wailed, earning the startled glances of a few other pedestrians. “I’LL BE GOOD! I PROMISE!”
“Oh my…” Mia gasped, looked around at the fresh attention we were getting, and broke out into nervous cackles. “Will you shut up! Jeez, you’re gonna get us arrested or something!”
“Nah,” I said, waving off the suggestion. “That would never happen.”
“Why?” Mia asked, “Because you can just pay them off like you did that woman back at the hospital?”
I smirked at that, remembering cutting a check for the nurse with enough zeroes on it to convince her that she hadn’t been fast enough to catch me before my escape. Though I knew the hospital would track me down soon enough for ducking out, I also knew that my bank account and my connections would smooth over the process when that time came.
“Technically I’ve been paying off the cops for a few years now. Before that it was my brother, and before that it was my dad. Though I won’t go so far as to claim that I’m untouchable in the eyes of the law, if a cop shows up in response to a call from any of these folks”—I nodded out towards the other pedestrians, who’d already lost interest and had gone back to their business—“they’ll probably just roll their eyes, say ‘hi,’ and then be on their way.”
“Probably?” Mia asked, honing in on that one conditional word.
I shrugged again. “A new guy might not recognize me, bring us in, and then get a bunch of guff at the station for wasting everyone’s time for not knowing who I was.”
“Oh…” Mia said after a moment of consideration. “So they really don’t mind you being, you know, a crime lord and all.”
I feigned injury at that, grasping at my chest and feeling the leather of my jacket rub against my bare skin underneath. “Crime lord? You injure me, madam! I’m more like… hmm, like Robin Hood, I suppose.”
Mia giggled and said, “Oh? So you rob from the rich to give to the poor, huh?”
“You know that’s not the—” I groaned and shook my head. “Look, the cops know that what we do keeps the real bad shit—the sort of shit that the Carrion Crew is trying to stir up—from running rampant. Hell, you know what we’re working on with Candy and our organized prostitution ring,” I pointed out. “No more dangerous sex trafficking, no more abusive pimps, no more risky nights on the streets. Sure, it’s still illegal, but it’s not like—”
“Jace,” Mia cut me off, giving me one her patented smirks.
“Yeah?” I asked, breathing hard in my interrupted, post-self-defense rant.
She hooked her arm around mine and leaned against me as we continued to walk. “I was teasing you,” she said with a purr as she nuzzled my still-aching shoulder. “I know you’re the good-bad guys.”
“Oh… right,” I said, more than a little embarrassed.
A short silence stretched on then. Our walk continued, and though I appreciated it for what it was I found myself wishing I had my chopper. There was no denying that the liberating sensation of sailing through traffic on a roaring motorcycle was leagues and legends beyond that of meandering about on a sidewalk among countless others. Truth be told, it made me feel a bit like a bit of livestock; made me feel like I was being watched, herded. This, however, I knew to be a product of paranoia.
I was, after all, a bit crazy…
Wasn’t I?
“So what would you do if I decided to be a high-class whore?” Mia suddenly asked.
An older woman with a small, knockoff handbag—one that I personally recognized as something the Crows had put into circulation to challenge a price hike in the name brand it was counterfeiting—gasped as she overheard the question, nearly dropping the bag, and scuttled away as though the whore-bug were contagious.
Not that I could exactly blame her. The question had caught me off guard, as well.
“I… uh, what?” I stammered, trying to wrap my mind around what she was asking. “I don’t think… I mean, I guess I can’t really stop you if that’s what you want, but… but… wait, no! You don’t want to be a whore again… do you?”
Mia purred again, giving my shoulder another nuzzle, and then shook her head. “No, not really. Not unless I’d be your whore; your private whore.”
“So… like, I take you to nice places, buy you nice things, and basically just show you a nice life, and in exchange I get to have nasty sex with you?”
“Pretty much,” she said with a nod. “Yeah.”
I considered this for a moment and then laughed. “And how would that be different from being a girlfriend?” I asked.
“Jerk!” she repeated, and, with this repetition, she served up another dose of shoulder-numbing fury.
I yelped, laughed, and scooped her back into me with my now-throbbing arm.
God, but I loved this woman!
“But you really wouldn’t care, would you?” she asked then, glancing up at me. “You didn’t mind before—back when I was still working for the Carrion Crew—and… and I don’t feel like you’d mind now.”
I shrugged my opposite shoulder, taking more care to not nudge her away than to nurse the ache in my other arm. “Why should I care? It’s like I said before: prostitution is a job—a service—not a relationship. You selling a blowjob or some casual sex isn’t really much different in my eyes than a baker selling a loaf of bread or a fancy cake.”
“You know that not everyone would agree with that perspective,” she countered.
I gave another one-armed shrug. “And they’re welcome to feel what they want. I won’t even say that they’re wrong. There’s obviously some differences, but the bulk of those differences are superficial.”
Mia cocked her head and asked, “How do you mean?”
“They put emphasis on sex as being strictly this or strictly that. It’s either an emotional act for them, and so it must always be an emotional act, or it’s a matter of ownership—‘I fucked this, so it is therefore mine!’” I paused, shook my head, and sighed. “I didn’t have a problem with you—or, more specifically, with your job—because I didn’t get the impression that you loved any of the guys who were buying from you. If I thought that any one of those guys was getting a bit of this”—I reached out with my opposite hand to tap lightly at her temple—“or any of this”—I moved down to repeat the action over her chest, just above her heart—“then, yeah, I’d feel pretty jealous, but… well, did you feel anything for any of those guys?”
“Hell no!” Mia spat with absolute disgust. “I can’t even remember what a single one of them looked like!” She paused, thought, and then sighed, “Well, actually, there was this one… but he was a kid—I don’t even think he was… oh god, Jace, he was just a kid!—and his dad used me as some sort of… like some rite of passage or a damn birthday present or something. Except he insisted on watching and telling this poor boy everything he was doing wrong and… and…” she scoffed and shook her head, “Funny thing was, Jace, that kid—still too young to even buy his own cigarettes—was better than any other John I’d worked on.”
“Sounds like the kid had a real asshole for a dad,” I offered with a sympathetic sigh. “But it also sounds like he lucked out.”
“Lucked out? How?” Mia asked, curious.
I gave her a little smile. “That his loser father wound up buying you for him instead of somebody who likely wouldn’t have remembered him; somebody who likely wouldn’t have thought anything of all of that. Sure, it sounds like it was a real shitty situation for everyone involved—save for the dad, but who gives a fuck about him?—but it could’ve been a lot shittier, I suppose.”
I saw Mia blush at that and she smiled, a rosy glow taking to her cheeks. “I did give him some of the money back when it was all over,” she confessed. “I told him that, all things considered, he’d been the best I’d had in a long time and then I snuck forty bucks into his pocket when his dad wasn’t looking; told him to show a girl he liked a good time.”
I nearly stopped at that, but the pace we’d set and the pedestrian traffic around me wouldn’t allow it. Instead, I just stared at Mia for a long moment, astonished.
“What?” she finally asked, beginning to look nervous. “Was that wrong? Should I not have—”
“You’re amazing,” I told her. “You’re, like, the single greatest person I’ve ever known. I mean, do you realize what that must have meant to that kid? After all that crazy shit, to have a prostitute—someone who he likely believed thought nothing of him—say something like that and… shit, Mia, do you realize the sort of street-cred you probably gave him—the sort of confidence you probably instilled in him—by doing something like that?”
She giggled and shook her head. “I wasn’t lying to him when I said it,” she explained.
“All the better for him,” I said.
She regarded me for a long moment, smirking in disbelief. “And none of that bothers you. Not even a twinge of jealous?”
“Did you fall in love with the kid?” I asked.
“And if I did?” she challenged.
I smirked back at her. “Then I’d have to say that you were a pedophile and, as that’s the sort of thing the Crows work to keep off the streets, I’d have to use my connections to have you arrested.”
“Then I guess it’s in my best interests to not admit to anything so self-incriminating,” she playfully recited, once more nuzzling against my arm.
I marveled at how such a simple gesture seemed to take away all the ache from her previous punches. “Guess so,” I said.
“All things considered,” she went on, staring out in the direction we were walking, “I think I’d be happier if I never had to do anything like that ever again.”
“You mean being a prostitute?” I clarified.
Mia nodded, suddenly clinging tighter to my arm as if I was a single life preserver in an endless sea; as if I was the only thing keeping her from having to go back to that life. With no small amount of disgust and a fresh wave of hatred for the dead-but-not-dead-enough T-Built, I realized that was likely exactly how she felt.
Pulling her against me and planting a kiss atop her head, I whispered, “Then you never will. Not ever again.”
She purred again at that, satisfied by my words, and gave my shoulder another nuzzle.
“So…” she drawled, letting out a soft giggle after a lengthy silence. “Sweet titty-fucking Christ, huh?”
****
I hadn’t been planning to break free from my disinfectant-scented prison. I didn’t have anything planned and, with not even an undershirt or a pair of socks to separate me from my mean, biker leather, I wasn’t exactly dressed to impress. That said, I had at least one immediate mission in mind—that of tracking down a suitable frame for Mia’s present—and enough crazy in the old skull-tank to turn that into something.
And, fortunately for me, I still had my wallet, and money always spoke louder than anything else.
With this in mind, I managed to slip free from Mia’s side while the photograph was being fitted inside it’s new, far nicer sterling silver frame—the clerk making a face at why we’d be so eager to put down good money on what likely only appeared to be a thrift store piece of stock photography—and made a private call. None the wiser, Mia smiled as I came back, our new and improved piece of wall-art repackaged in an equally new shopping bag, this one emblazoned with the custom framing shop’s insignia, and we went through the final stages of paying for the purchase. This process I stalled as best I could, making a clumsy show of not being able to find the right bank card—“Was it this one that had the… no, no! This is… wait, that’s not right, either. I know this one’s overdrawn… bastards. So that must mean…”—until I was satisfied I’d nearly eaten up the bulk of ten minutes. Then, with Mia blushing with confused embarrassment and the clerk looking like they were ready to call the cops on me, I finally produced the card I declared to be “THE RIGHT ONE!” and hurried things right along.
My effort, clumsy and awkward as it was, had not been in vain.
As we made our way out of the store, there was a bone-white stretch limo waiting for us. A good-looking young man in a spiffy suit stood, waiting, beside an already-open door with a freshly printed sign that beckoned “MIA & JACE.” Seeing this, Mia gasped and broke out into startled giggles, glancing back at me and realizing that I’d set all this up and finally throwing her arms around me and planting a kiss squarely on my lips.
It occurred to me that a great deal of effort had been put forth by the limo company to get one of their nicest cars, driven by one of their nicest drivers, and stocked with a chilled bottle of the nicest champagne they could get on the road and in front of the store we were occupying in what was likely record time. All of that effort on their end, and all I’d done was read off a credit card number and promise an obscene amount of extra money if they could get there in no more than ten minutes. And here I was getting all the smooches for all of their trouble.
Ah well, I’d try to remember to hate myself later. Maybe while I was burying my face between Mia’s thighs and enjoying a meal that was outright divine compared to the hospital food I’d otherwise be having.
Did I mention that I was horny?
Nearly burning to death had a way of getting a guy hot, I guessed.
But first…
“And where are we going on this fine evening, sir?” the driver asked, offering a slight bow and motioning for us to climb aboard the proverbial chariot he had waiting for us.
“Not a clue,” I admitted, smiling at him as I let Mia slide into the back seat and discover the refreshments I had waiting. “Don’t suppose you’ve got any suggestions?”
“That all depends on what you fancy, sir,” the driver said, trying (and failing) not to follow Mia with his eyes as she climbed in.
I couldn’t help but grin at that. In his shoes, I’d have stolen a glance, as well. “Right now, I fancy showing that girl the night of her life.”
“Well…” he drawled, seeming to genuinely ponder the question. “I know that the theater’s doing a show tonight. Been seeing posters all around the city for it. I think they’re showing ‘Phantom of the Opera’ this month.”
Smirking at the suggestion, I leaned my head through the open door, peeking in at Mia as she continued to fan her head to-and-fro, awestruck by the limo’s interior. “How’s ‘Phantom of the Opera’ sound? Then maybe a surf-and-turf dinner?”
Her face was answer enough.
“Looks like we got a winner there, buddy,” I said to the driver, straightening long enough to retrieve a few hefty bills from my wallet and tuck them into his breast pocket. “And thanks again.”
The driver regarded his “tip” with a slack jaw and a pair of gaping eyes before offering me a beaming smile and a vigorous nod that had me feeling dizzy for him. “No, sir. Thank you!”
Then, waiting until I’d taken my place in the backseat with Mia before closing the door, the newly ecstatic young man circled the limo—double-time—took his place behind the wheel, and escorted us off onto our first night together since we’d nearly burned to death in her old apartment.