Tom worked in the city, too, and he went to the same gym that we did. Allison and he had a few classes in college together and had struck up a friendship then. She invited him to our sorority parties and he came, sometimes with a girl, sometimes with a few friends from his job, had a few drinks, and disappeared politely. It’s my suspicion that Allison and he hooked up sometime in our senior year. Allison denies it, but I always thought she had a crush on him.
But Tom was Tom. He wasn’t bad looking. He wasn’t handsome like Bobby was but he didn’t look bad. He didn’t slouch, he had dark hair and he was in good shape. And he was usually pretty quiet. At some point after his graduation he had ended up working for a major law firm (or so I heard). He did well for himself, and that was why we never had any compunctions against him taking us out for smoothies after the gym.
If that seems unlike the picture of Tom I’ve painted before, it is. The smoothies were Allison’s idea, and Tom seemed to like to listen to her talk about theatre. Again, I thought it was because there was a crush going on, either one way or both ways. But I honestly think Tom just liked listening to us talk. He was 25 or 26 at this point and he was always busy. He worked seven days a week, and at strange hours. We all usually ended up at the gym at the same time and afterwards we’d walk across the street.
It was almost June, almost a year since I’d graduated college, and one fairly ordinary day when Tom made his “indecent proposal,” as Allison called it. I wasn’t listening to the first part, idly sipping at my raspberry smoothie and thinking about the last time I’d seen Bobby – then thinking about the last time I’d talked to Bobby, which was last night, and the argument we’d had. I didn’t remember what it was about, only that I was feeling pissy and vindictive.
Suddenly Allison covered her mouth and made a deep, histrionic gasp. I turned from her to Tom. “What?” I said.
“You don’t think that’s sick?”
I had completely spaced out. I glanced at Tom. His expression hadn’t changed. He seemed as reserved and measured as always. I looked back at Allison. She was flushed. “What?” I said again.
Tom cleared his throat. “Allison is reacting to an idea of mine, one she finds distasteful.”
For the third time I said, “What?”
Tom studied me. Our social interactions up till this point had been a handful of small talk at parties and this past month or two of half hour smoothie chats. I watched him trace my forehead and nose and stop at my eyes. “I work a lot,” he said. “I don’t have time for a girlfriend. But every time I get to the gym I see women everywhere.”
“Women are everywhere,” I agreed.
He smiled. “True, but in the gym there is a particular kind of woman, a woman, or a girl, who’s in shape, someone who’s taken care of themselves.” He sighed. “Just beautiful girls, really.”
Allison made another disgusted sound and he seemed to enjoy it. He continued, “I have a lot of respect for hard work. I was thinking how much dedication it takes to get that way-”
“It does,” I said.
“Well you’re an excellent example, Catherine. It’s why I seldom have anything to say to you. You’ve sculpted yourself, inside and out maybe. What would someone like you have to say to someone like me?”
I rolled my eyes. He still watched me intently. “It occurs to me that while I don’t have the time to find a girlfriend, I would love to be able to pay a girl, someone who’s taken care of themselves, to be with, on a weekly basis.”
“What?” I said, for the fourth time in as many minutes.
He raised his hands in a semblance of embarrassment, but I knew he wasn’t. He was doing it to be polite. “It was just a thought, one I’m sure many men before me have had.”
Allison pulled her hands away from her mouth. “You want a harem.”
“I should be so lucky,” he said. “But no, actually, it’s very different.”
Allison rolled her eyes. “Whatever, Tom.”
It looked like he had more to say but he could see Allison was upset, so he didn’t say anything, just sat back in the booth and stirred his drink idly. I didn’t really think much of it. It seemed like a pretty average fantasy of a lot of men. Wasn’t that basically prostitution? Yet he’d said it wasn’t like that. I was still stewing about Bobby so I didn’t pursue it either.
* * *
A week later, Allison and I were leaving the gym and wiping our foreheads with our towels. Instinctually, I headed for the crosswalk and Allison steered me over to her car.
“We’re not getting smoothies?”
Allison bit her lip. “Um, no, let’s get going.”
“Is something wrong?”
As we approached her car she gave me an exasperated smile, and then laughed. “You’re not going to believe this.”
“What?”
“Do you remember what Tom was talking about last week, his prostitute plan?”
“Yes.”
She gave me a knowing look.
My eyes widened. “You’re doing it?”
She gasped and reached out to pinch me. “Oh my God, no! I can’t believe that’s the first thing you thought.” She unlocked the car and we got in. I threw my towel and shoes inside and eagerly sat beside her. “He did ask me though,” she said.
“Really?”
She started the car and explained what had happened as she backed out. “He totally had it all mapped out. Yesterday he called me and I think he just wanted to hang out – which we don’t really do but I was free so…” She swiveled the steering wheel and moved slowly out of the lot. I thought then that she must have been disappointed. She hid it well. “Anyway, he brings it up again and I got mad and I said, like, why are you talking about this and he says, is it something you could do? And I just said no! Who would do that?”
She shook her head. “Then he tells me, this is how it would work – like I even asked – and he says one hour a week or every two weeks, for $250 an hour or $500 an hour, depending on if it was one week or two. Either way, the girl makes $1000 a month.”
I swallowed. On the one hand, that was strange that he’d put so much thought into it. On the other, that was definitely a plan. Tom had the money, we knew that much, but it was still a lot. It was a lot.
“He mentions some more about how he’d have some special things he’d like to do, but the girl would always have the chance to say no or back out and she’d always be paid up front and I finally just tell him to stop and I say, Why are you telling me this?” She glanced at me with wide eyes. “He says, because I was wondering if you’d want to.” She shook her head again. “God, how sick is that?”
“He was probably just joking with you.”
“I don’t think so,” she said. “Maybe. He’d do that. Don’t you think that’s sick?”
“Sure,” I said.
She eyed me in the rearview mirror. “I can’t believe you’re not more weirded out.”
“It’s totally weird,” I said.
“You wouldn’t do that, would you?”
“Of course not.”
The deeper thing, what I wouldn’t tell her, what wriggled within me and set my mind to work was this: I thought it was a sexy idea. For someone else, I thought. For some girl who didn’t mind risking herself, or her body, to some enigmatic stranger. Five hundred dollars. For nothing but sex. It was prostitution but it didn’t seem like prostitution to me. It was sexy, and I bet Allison thought it was a sexy idea too. But the problem was that I knew about it and it was Tom doing the asking. Tom wasn’t a stranger to her. They were friends – or at least they were before this incident. I wondered if that would change now. Knowing what little I did know of Tom, he’d probably just shrug off the “no” and come to her tomorrow with a smile and a fresh start. Allison wasn’t like that.
But I wasn’t Tom’s friend. And I needed to either get out of my parents’ house or fix my car. No, I thought, I wasn’t leaving Chicago for a while, so the car was unnecessary. But my own place, that was something I could work for.
To have a down payment in a month, rent in the next. I could save from the lousy reception job and… I realized suddenly that I was already calculating, which meant, more or less, that I was willing to do it.
Could I do that to Bobby? Could I do it to myself? Sex twice a month? Or four times, at the most?
It didn’t have to involve Bobby. If anything Allison made it sound like Tom wanted to keep it as business like as possible. And I could do that. But wouldn’t it bother me, sleeping (okay, fucking) another man behind his back? Yet no matter how many times I turned it over in my mind, I couldn’t feel bad about it. Maybe I still loved Bobby, maybe I didn’t. But this was for my future.
And I’m not going to lie, it was sexy. I squirmed in the seat of Allison’s car. My juices had started to flow between my legs. I hadn’t had sex in five months and hadn’t felt like I’d wanted to for at least that long. But I needed to get out of my yoga pants and into the shower as soon as Allison dropped me off. And even after I’d showered, even after I’d gotten rid of the sweat and washed my hair and wrapped myself up and gotten into bed, it was still hot down there. Five hundred dollars.
* * *
Allison didn’t mention Tom that week, so I didn’t mention Tom that week. And I didn’t see him the week after that. But the next Saturday, the one day I went to work out without Allison holding me back, I saw him. He was running on a treadmill. So I grabbed one in front of him and started to run too.
Thinking about this now I wonder if I was putting myself on display for him, getting him to think about what I looked like under the tight clothes, watching my ass as it jiggled back and forth, watching my tits bounce inside my sports bra when he thought I wasn’t looking. I knew I had this effect because Bobby told me once when he came to pick me up at the gym that every guy behind me was looking. Gross, I said. I wonder if Tom was looking?
After twenty minutes Tom left the treadmill and worked over in the free weights. I watched him. Then I got off the tread and worked my thighs on the expander, worked my gluts on the ball, did some basic leg toning. Nearly an hour had gone by when he packed up his bag, said goodbye to some friends and walked out. I packed my stuff and followed him.