We stopped at an all-night urgent care facility a couple hours out of town. X-rays confirmed the three broken ribs. Fortunately she did not appear to have any internal organ damage. The doctor taped her ribs and asked her to come back in two weeks for a checkup. Eliza marveled at the fact that I could pay the bill with a credit card.
Our next stop was a small country café for dinner. Her attire was not exactly appropriate for a family-oriented restaurant, but hunger overcame modesty. We were seated in a corner booth out of sight of the other customers. We ate quietly. At that point, I think she still expected to be found by one of Joe-Joe's friends and dragged back to the streets. She was on guard as she gulped down her food. The pain in her ribs didn't help her relax either.
We reached the gate to my estate at ten-thirty. I punched the code into the keypad to open the gate. I stopped inside the gate long enough to be sure it closed before proceeding up the driveway to the house. The code that opened the gate also turned on lights that lined the driveway and the lights on the front of the house. Five minutes after we went inside, the exterior and driveway lights turned off automatically.
The house was a bit ostentatious. It had six bedrooms, six full and three half bathrooms, a den/library, a family room, an indoor lap pool, and my office -- about six thousand square feet in all. Eliza was visibly taken aback when she saw the front. She was totally in awe of the place as I showed her around and told her which bedroom was hers. Every room elicited a "Wow!" from her. The tour ended in the kitchen where I opened a couple of sodas for us.
She opened her purse and took out the hundred dollars I had given her earlier. "I think you have literally saved my life," she said as she handed it to me. "You can do anything you want with me any time you want. No charge."
"Keep it" I said. She looked quizzically at me, then put the money away. "What kind of work have you done in the past?"
She chuckled. "Nothing, absolutely fucking nothing. Streetwalking is all I know. I ran away from home when I was seventeen. Joe-Joe bought me breakfast one morning and put me out on the street the same night. I've been a streetwalker for eight years. You know how much I get to keep out of each hundred-dollar trick? Ten bucks. Ten lousy stinking dollars. Joe-Joe keeps the rest."
"Would you believe me if I told you that you could make as much as five hundred dollars for an hour session? I mean you personally."
"You mean like those snobby courtesans?"
"Exactly."
"I could never be one of them. Who would pay me that much?"
"Lots of men. Women too. It's all a matter of image. Take my car for example. It does the same thing as a compact car. A luxury car and a compact both take people from one place to another. It's a means of transportation, nothing more. The difference is in the image. Call girls, streetwalkers, courtesans all have sex for money. Again the difference is in the image."
"No house would hire me. The minute I open my mouth everyone knows I'm just trash."
"So alter your image."
"How?"
"First, get rid of the gum. There's a trash can under the sink." Eliza spit the wad of gum into the can. "Okay, now go upstairs and bathe. Remember what the doctor said about keeping the bandages dry."
Obediently she climbed the stairs and went to her assigned room. I went to my room and showered. I returned to the living room to read a magazine while waiting for her. Half an hour later I heard the washing machine start. Eliza came into the living room completely naked. Her shoulder length auburn hair was still slightly damp. "I'm washing my clothes," she said. "Is that okay?"
"That's perfect," I replied. "Tomorrow we'll go shopping and get you a new wardrobe."
