I call Lust first thing. I feel sick, dialing the number, and even sicker when the receptionist puts me through. She used to know who I am, but now there's nothing in her voice at all.
Lust wants to come around on Saturday afternoon, when I'm at work, to pick up some more of her stuff, and that's fine by me; we should have stopped there, but I try to have a different sort of conversation, and she doesn't like it because she's at work, but I persist, and she hangs up on me in tears. And I feel like a jerk, but I couldn't help myself. I never can.
I wonder what she'd say, if she knew how many different women I've had sex with since she left, and that I was already getting uptight about Vivian coming in to Championship today? Lust and I have just had a phone call in which I suggested that she'd fucked up my life and, for the duration of the call, I believed it. But now - and I do this with no trace of bemusement or self-dissatisfaction - I'm worrying about what to wear, and whether I look better stubbly or clean-shaven, and about what I should be doing in my free time today in case she walks in.
Sometimes it seems as if the only way a man can judge his own niceness, his own decency, is by looking st his relationships with women, or rather, with prospective or current sexual partners. It's easy enough to be nice to your mates. You can take them to strip clubs, buy them drinks, ring them up to check they're OK. There are a number of quick and painless methods of turning yourself into a Good Bloke. When it comes to girlfriends though, it's much trickier to be consistently honourable. One moment you're ticking along, cleaning the toilet bowl, and buying her flowers and expressing your feelings and making sure she orgasms during sex and doing all the things that a modern bloke is supposed to do; and the next, you're manipulating and sulking and double-dealing and fibbing and sleeping around and secretly wanking to porn with the rest of them. I can't work it out.
I phone Liz early afternoon. She's nice to me. She says how sorry she is what a good couple she thought we made, that I have done Lust good, given her a center, brought her out of herself, allowed her to have more fun, turned her into a nicer, calmer, more relaxed person, given her an interest in something other than work. Liz tells me that right now she thinks Lust was stupid to leave me as she'd jump me straight away if she had the chance given she knows how much I can help the girl I'm with. She drops a few suggestive hints at me, then tells me she doesn't think much of this Ian guy. We arrange to meet up for a drink sometime next week.
Which fucking Ian guy?!?!?!
Vivian comes into the shop shortly afterward. She's dressed like a pinup girl now, with a white dress with big black spots that comes up over her shoulders and hugs the top of her body tight, but flares right out from just below a purple strap around her bellybutton so it looks as if a constant breeze of air has elevated her dress up just that perfect amount to capture every wandering eye but revealing nothing; and right now has captured my complete sexual and mental attention.
"Nice place," she tells me as she looks through from to lobby to our adult shop. Thankfully we're in a bit of a peak time, so there are a few men who've arrived early hanging around in the lobby.
"Why don't you come with me back to my office and I'll show you some more of the place?"
We walk together down the hall and I gesture to all the rooms we have, then upstairs and back to the front of the shop to this portion of my office. The reason we took this route is less that I wanted to show Vivian the place in person, and more that the upper portion of my office is a lot cleaner and nicer than the lower, and I'm looking to create a good first impression.
I open the door to reveal a modestly large carpeted room, with my desk on an angle in the far left corner to where we stand, a large and comfortable sofa along the right, and the staircase down to my lower office on my immediate left. This is all lit at the moment by the backdrop of my windows, heavily tinted so that I can see out but no street voyeurs can look in. I walk over and sit behind my desk, and as Vivian walks for the sofa I roll back and indicate she can sit on my lap. "I figure it's how we had our last conversation, why change a good thing?"
The other benefit gained from Vivian being seated on my lap, apart from my own sexual gratification, is that from here she can see the tv screens positioned above the sofa, broadcasting a live feed from the cameras installed for safety reasons in each room.
"You'll see down here," I motion towards the lower screens, "our standard rooms; and up here," the top row of screens, "our deluxe parlours."
"Very nice," she tells me, as we sit together watching live amateur porn across two thirds of the televisions. We're seeing everything from straight up missionary (Why? You really go to a brothel for missionary sex?!) to role play (Alice is a student sucking her way out of detention for not doing her bonework.. ah... homework.. and Ebony is dressed threateningly in leather and high heels, hitting her client who's bound to a table with a crop whip. He looks close to jizzing himself from this experience alone.) to watching (Guinevere and Bronte are in a foaming jacuzzi passionately making out and touching each other's bodies all they can while their client watches on, playing with himself a bit while touching them a bit; just thrilled to be allowed to watch two women fuck each other in real life).
"So it's like this every day?" Vivian asks me.
"Most," I tell her truthfully.
"And you have sexy maids cleaning up the public areas, and these professional cleaners in each room after use?"
I can't help but smile. "Not quite. The maids are working girls. A recent uniform and role change that's already increasing revenue."
Vivian nods her head in acknowledgment before turning to look at me.
"So are you going to interview me first, or... how does this work?"
I have to look at her for a moment to properly gather my thoughts. She wasn't just some pretty whore of the streets who wanted to start earning a buck from her lifestyle choice. Well... she was... but she knows how to make guys think they need her more than just being graced with attention all her life.
