"Your secret is out. You might as well start talking."
"Where do you want me to start?"
"Is Jill your real name?"
"Yes, I'm Jill Stewart. I have two brothers. My parents live in Idaho. They're not dead like I told you. I have a business degree. My birthday was last week."
"I wanted to get you a birthday present."
"Why?"
"You were my girlfriend."
"Were? Not anymore?"
I hesitated. "I don't know. I need to think. I came to tell you my customer will be coming back to see you again tomorrow."
"Won't he give you an order without seeing me again?"
"He has given me an order already. A very good one. He's adding to it tomorrow morning before he leaves town."
"You said he wants to see me again. How do you know he saw me tonight?"
"I was watching behind your mirror. He was the one with the oversized dick. He was very impressed by you."
She smiled faintly. "He was pretty nice. I'm glad I could help you get the sale. Thank you for bringing him to me, and for sending him back. Will he be paying this time?"
"No, put it on my account. My company will cover it. This is all just a business to you, isn't it?"
"Yes. Like I said, it's my job, nothing else."
"Just a job." I shook my head. "I'd better be going."
I went to the door and opened it. "Ed," she called after me as I started through the doorway. I stopped without turning around. With tears in her voice, she said, "See you in church?"
The above occurred on a Wednesday. I took care of the order and the add-on the next morning. Half the conversation concerned his going back to fuck Jill again.
I couldn't sort out my feelings. I hated his overbearing arrogance. I hated him for fucking my girlfriend. I hated myself for approving the expenditure of the company's money so he could fuck her. If I had been buying him any other woman, I wouldn't have cared. If it had been any other woman, she could have a boyfriend. He might not have known what she was doing. Or he might have known and not be bothered by it. I had slept with prostitutes before in that brothel. Had their boyfriends watched me with them? If so, what were their feelings? How could I find out? Who could I talk to? A priest? 'Excuse me, Father. I just found out my girlfriend is a prostitute. How do I deal with it?' Maybe I could start a support group for boyfriends of hookers. Maybe I should just mind my own business. Maybe...hell, there were too many maybes.
Thursday evening I started to go see her. Then I remembered I would have to pay to see her because she would be working. Forget that idea. I went back inside and threw myself on the bed. I tried to think the matter through rationally, but every time I came up with an answer to a small part of the problem, I found at least two objections. What was the problem other than my own sense of morality? Did loving her make me her owner? Did love give me control over her life?
I thought about my reaction when I watched her with him. The moment I visualized Jill fucking him, I got an erection. I had seen other couples in the brothel, and I had been aroused, so watching sex wasn't a problem. I had climaxed in the viewing rooms before. It was a natural reaction to an erotic situation. She was definitely erotic. A man would have to be dead to not want her.
Jill was right about how I would have reacted if she had told me up front what her job was. I would have dumped her on the spot. Yet on our second Sunday together, she said she loved me, and I told her I loved her. I knew I had been sincere. In the months since, she had never given me any reason to doubt her love for me. Since I learned she was fucking other men several times a day, I had been doubting her. Her terror when I discovered her occupation showed she knew I would be insecure. She was absolutely right.
The irony of the matter was that I had provided her a customer. I had procured a john for her. I hadn't known that was what I had done Wednesday night, but I certainly knew it Thursday. I had told her I would be paying for the guy's time with her. Did that make me a pimp, or a pervert? A pimp sells women to men for sex. Since I wasn't selling her, I wasn't a pimp. I paid my girlfriend to fuck my customer. The money was filtered through the madam, so I wasn't paying Jill directly.
Watching the two of them -- that was perverted. I don't know why, but most people don't think watching porno movies is perverted. Watching them had been sorta like seeing a porno flick, except it was live. Was seeing sex live perverted, but not recorded? It was live when it was recorded. I couldn't deny I had been turned on. Carla had remarked about the mess I made on the glass. Certainly I wasn't the only voyeur in town. There were four viewing rooms in that house. There was no reason for that many for only one person, especially one who only came in three or four times a year. Don't get me wrong. I loved watching sex. It was much cheaper to rent a porno video than to go to Carla's house. I had an almost unlimited expense account, but I couldn't use it for my own pleasure. If I wanted to watch, or get laid there, I had to have a major customer with me. Many times I had wanted to find a way to do more watching without being a peeping tom. I had that as much on my mind as I had Jill.
Then the answer came to me. It was so obvious. What I had to do was very simple.