This is the third and final chapter of Denny and Gloria's story. Even more than the second part, this one will make a ton more sense if you've read the earlier installments. But to recap: Denny has been one of Gloria's regular customers for twelve years. When he accidentally meets her college-age daughter - who hates that her mother is a prostitute - he is smitten with the younger redhead and asks Gloria to role-play as the daughter. During a role-play session, Gloria's daughter persona, "Brandy," complains that they haven't had a real Thanksgiving dinner since Gloria's husband died. A month or so after this admission, Denny brings the two of them a restaurant-made Thanksgiving feast and is invited in to see the front part of Gloria's house for the first time. Also for the first time, he's properly introduced to Kaylee. The three have dinner together, Gloria gives Denny a completely non-erotic massage, and then she establishes a line that says it's okay for them to make friendly gestures as call-girl and client, but that any sex has to stay on the business side of their relationship. This isn't because Gloria wants to keep Denny at a distance, but because she says she needs his goodness in her professional life to keep her sane, and she doesn't think she can sleep with him on both a personal level and a professional one.
I'd like to thank everybody for reading this far and for all the positive comments. I hope you find the conclusion equally as satisfying as the first two parts!
*****
When the door opened and I saw Kaylee, I had a half-second of happy deja vu that sent me straight back to the first time I'd met her. But after that half-second, the look on her face dropped any pleasure out of my heart like a sink-hole.
"Kaylee ... What's - Jesus, has something happened?"
She nodded, biting her lower lip as if to hold some terrible secret in. Her shoulders trembled under the uncombed mess of her long red hair, and she had her arms wrapped tight around herself.
"Your mom -"
"She was in accident." The girl's voice came out raw and uneven.
Unable to help myself, I took hold of her by the arms - half to comfort her and half to squeeze something out of her that wouldn't be the worst possible news. She closed her eyes for a second, then said, "It's not that bad. Some cracked ribs and her leg's broken in three places. Last night."
The way she sniffled and shuddered every other word confused me, made it hard for my brain to click on what she meant. But ...
Gloria isn't dead or in a coma
. The utter relief of that kept my legs from folding under me and let me find the backbone to approach with whatever had Kaylee in this state.
"Okay, so help me understand. Do you want to go inside to talk?"
She glanced behind her, into the boudoir. Her shoulders nudged upward, then slumped back down. "Sure."
I got her inside, guided her to the loveseat, shut the door. "Take some deep breaths and relax. I'm going to get you something to drink."
Head in her hand, eyes closed, Kaylee nodded. I kept talking on the way to her mother's microfridge and wine stash.
"So if Gloria's going to be all right, then what? Why are you so upset?"
"Dennis, her leg's broken in
three places
. She's not going to be able to work for two or three months." Her head came up off the hand, leaving her fingers tense and hooked. Her voice twisted upward in tone and volume. "We're going to lose everything. The house, the car - I won't be able to go back to school in the fall."
I poured her a big goblet of Gloria's burgundy and carried it back over. "Look, no, they don't foreclose on you after you miss a payment or two, and maybe I could loan you something to help with tuition ..."
The words were out before I could think about them and remember how completely tapped out I was at the moment. But it turned out not to matter. Kaylee's eyes looked into mine, her face distressed by my obvious ignorance.
"You don't get it. We're already two or three months behind on the mortgage from when mom lost a big ... client, last year."
Shit. Harry with the belt.
"She gets a little caught up and then falls back again. And what, are you totally loaded or something? Stanford's
expensive
. Sixty grand a year."
Stanford? Jesus, Gloria said she was smart, but I didn't know she meant
that
smart.
"Okay, well ..."
Fuck, that's five grand
a month
. And there's what, twelve hundred bucks in your account?
My savings had been completely shot that spring when my stepdad went off his antidepressants and decided to burn down the house with him and my mom in it. The fire department got them out, but the insurance called it arson and wouldn't pay, and on top of that they were underwater on their mortgage. I'd had to empty out my IRA and take the penalty to keep them from going homeless. "Are you already maxed out on student loans?"
She shook her head, eyes rolling. "No, no. You just don't ... Mom couldn't risk having her finances looked into by signing me up for loans or financial aid. She makes a crap-ton of money, somebody would start wondering how a massage therapist pulls in twenty grand a month."
I didn't count how many times I blinked before being able to reply. "How ... can she be behind ... if she makes -"
"Fuck, has she not told you this stuff? My dad owned his own company and he did something and got his ass sued off - like, millions of bucks in the hole. And then he went out drinking and drove his car off an embankment. And she'd let him put her on all the paperwork for the company, so she's on the hook for the judgment. Why else would she have ... she really never told you this shit?"
My head shook, dazedly. "She's not big on talking about her - your dad."
"Huh. Well, nobody could blame her for
that
."
Standing there watching her as she took a big gulp of wine, I tried to figure out what I could do. Her eyes searched my face as if some tiny chance of a miracle might be hidden there, but she obviously didn't find it.
"Look," I said at last. "Why don't we go see her?"
Talking to Gloria can make anything better.
Kaylee, though, stopped her miracle-search and squeezed her red-rimmed eyes tight. Then she made a fist of her free hand, pressed it against her forehead, and reopened her eyes looking as grim and hollow as I've ever seen anyone.
"No," she said, lowering the fist. "There's only one way to fix this, and that's for you to show me how she does it."
"Show you ..."
"How to fuck a guy for money."
For a second, I literally thought I was about to pass out.
"Oh my god, Kaylee, no. No, I couldn't possibly - and
you
can't - your mom would never forgive me for doing it or herself for putting you in that position. I can totally give you my four-fifty and maybe some more, however much that will help, but I won't let you have sex with me for it."
Completely unmoved, she said, "Four-fifty times however many times a month is still nothing, Dennis. I mean, unless you're over here every other night at four-fifty a pop, which I assume you're not ... are you?"
"Uh, four-fifty is for the whole month."
Now it was her turn to blink. "Holy crap. She really does like you, doesn't she? Dennis, she gets three or four hundred a
session
from most of her clients. I've been going through her accounting files all day trying to figure out how fucked we are, and
that's
the kind of money I need if I'm going to make the house payment and the car and insurance and my tuition bill. Four-fifty? Jesus, she lets you have it for cheap. How many times does that get you?"
My face felt like she'd rubbed chili oil on it. "Look, I don't think that really matters ..."
"It does if you're going to understand what I'm up against. God, Dennis, are you like the most naive guy in the universe?"
"You don't have to be mean."
Her mouth shut and she stared at her wineglass, now half-empty. "No. I guess you're right, I don't." Then she looked back up at me. "But I
do
have to convince as many of Mom's clients as I can to let me stand in for her, or it's all gone. Everything she's been on her back opening her legs to keep hold of for the last thirteen years."
"Please don't be crude about your mother."
I could see her having to bite her tongue. But she did it, and after she did, her face softened a little. "Wow. You've really got it bad for her, don't you?"
"I'd do anything for her," I said without hesitation. "And if you take me to the hospital and let me see her and she says your plan really is the only way, and she wants me to help you, I will. But without talking to her, I don't want to hear another damn thing about it."
Watching her think, seeing the wheels turn behind those flaring blue eyes, I wondered whether I'd successfully called her bluff - or if there was a bluff to be called.
She finished thinking, threw back the last of the wine, and stood up.
"Okay, then. Let's go."
* * *
Neither of us talked on the drive to the hospital. In the silence, I became acutely aware of her stunning body, just turned twenty a few months earlier.
Christ, how many times has Gloria pretended to be this girl for me, and now there's the real thing sitting right there, and I'm hoping she tells me to keep my hands off it.
Kaylee stood a good four inches taller than Gloria, slimmer through the hips ... about the same bust size. Her mother had the sexiness of a stripper wrapped up in a MILF-housewife package, but Kaylee could have been a super-model, with a magazine-cover face, unbelievably straight, rich, blood-red hair, and a body that, dressed in shorts and a t-shirt, screamed to be poured into a string bikini for an all-day photoshoot somewhere sandy and tropical.
She wasn't someone very many men would turn down.
God, I hope Gloria says she's got a rainy-day fund squirreled away somewhere.
* * *
They had the head of her bed raised, and she lay back against a pillow there, eyes closed, when I entered the room. At the receiving desk, they'd told us we had to go in one at a time, and Kaylee let me go first.
The bulk of a full-length cast made her right leg a larger bulge beneath the sheet than her left. Band-aids tracked their way up her left arm, and another one covered a cut on her forehead, smack in the middle of a huge bruise. Both her eyes had been blackened, and clearly no one had given her a brush or comb since she was admitted; her scarlet hair splayed wildly across the pillow around her head. An IV stand dripped fluid through a tube into her right arm.
She was so beautiful.
As I stepped closer, her eyelids cracked open, and a slow, happy smile lifted the edges of her mouth up. "Denny ..."
"Hi."
She tried to sit up a little, flinched in pain, dropped back against the pillow.
"Sorry," she gasped, then relaxed into a few deep breaths. Somehow the smile hadn't left her face. "Not in the best shape to make our appointment, I guess."
"It will keep."
Her hand lifted an inch or two off the blanket. I reached down and took hold of it.
"Kind of expected you to show up last night. Or on your lunch hour today."
"If I'd known, I would have gotten here before the ambulance dropped you off."
As if it took some effort to work through my words, her brows knitted and relaxed and knitted again.
