Monica first appeared momentarily in
Entertaining at Large Chapter XV
and then had a starring role in the next one. That's how this all started. Be worth reading if you want to be fully in the picture, but I hope this story will stand alone. I also set myself the test of trying to make these tales shorter than the
Entertaining at Large
marathons. I'd be interested to know what readers think as well as any other comments. Suggestions and support are always appreciated.
'Regulars. Repeat customers, that's what you need, ducks. Help you plan for a bit of financial security if you get what I mean. Or splash out on something big, like a new car or an exotic holiday. Make a change from Bridlington. You deserve it.'
It was Michael, the barman at The Royal, who put the idea in my head. We had become friends over the few months I'd been working the Hideaway Bar. Friendly, anyway. He remained as laconic and detached as when I had first met him. But on slow nights, and there were more than a few of those, we had begun to talk.
He made me laugh. I've never met anyone who was so misanthropic. He didn't have a good word to say about anyone. He'd usually start our conversations with a litany of complaints against the customers he'd met since we last talked. Sometimes that would take the whole night. Management got the same dismissive treatment. On a couple of occasions he opened up a little to tell me the disaster stories which were his two failed marriages. He didn't have a good word to say about his children either. They only came to see him, it seemed, when they needed money.
I played a game with myself, trying to find someone, anyone, he would not be scathing about. So far, Muhammad Ali was the only one I'd found. The monarch and her 'parasitic hangers on' as he described her loving family, every politician, sporting personalities, journalists and other stars of TV and film, charity workers in famine areas, religious leaders and anyone else the media might be touting as a role model all got short shrift.
'They're only in it for themselves. It's either cash or glory for the whole bunch of them. At least you're honest. Money up front, let the buggers shag you and then you're off. You should run for parliament and get your own back.'
I smiled at him and raised my glass in a silent toast. Despite his world view, I liked him. He did a good job of referring punters to me. I never had any trouble with the guys I fucked after Michael had decided they were worthy of my attention. I'd bought a second mobile so that he could text me If there was someone in who wanted a quick lay and was willing to pay for it. Sometimes I'd just get the single word 'dead' and knew I needn't bother. On a few of those nights I went to the bar anyway, just to see him and chat. I'd invented fictitious evening classes to explain why I was leaving the house in the evenings and wanted to keep up that fiction as well. Not that my husband was particularly concerned at my absences.
I enjoyed teasing Michael too. About his diet, his lack of exercise, his health. I bought him little presents occasionally. Like the pair of cuff links I'd found in a junk show with garish 1950s pin ups on them. He always dismissed my concerns and turned his nose up at my gifts. But I'd caught him eating a salad after one little chat. And while he sneered at the cuff links, thereafter he always wore them when he was working.
'Pisses off the catering manager. There's nothing in the company handbook about cuff links.'
It was the only time I heard him laugh.
We had a running flirt which both of us enjoyed. When I'd finished with a client, I'd always pop back to the bar and put a twenty on the counter.
'Cash or blow job? Come on, you must be due a break. Let's nip out the back and I'll suck you off. Improve your view of the evening no end.'
He'd been working on his smile. When we'd first encountered each other he had a grin which could turn milk. You could metaphorically hear the creaking of muscles, atrophied through years of redundancy, fighting to work. Now it was almost cute as he looked into my straight face and pretended to consider the proposition. Then I'd look down and the note would have disappeared from beneath my index finger without me noticing. I told him once he should take up sleight-of-hand magic tricks.
'Help you pick up girls. And you need all the help you can get.'
I'd caught him a few weeks later retrieving a fifty pence piece from behind the ear of a laughing customer. Now, there was always a pack of cards on the end of the bar resting on a well-thumbed paperback whose cover claimed it would turn anyone into a card sharp in thirty days.
I was almost touched that he was worried about my cash flow. Michael assumed that because I was 'on the game', as it were, there was some deep personal or financial tragedy in my life. I never disabused him of his conclusion. He'd brought it up after I plumped back on a bar stool after a brief sojourn upstairs in one of the well-appointed rooms with a Coventry businessman in town to arrange deliveries of light engineering products.
'You missed a bit.'
Michael nodded towards my chest. I looked down and noticed a small globule of white goo sparkling in the bar lights as it nestled in the cleft at the top of my cleavage. I scooped at it with my finger and tentatively tested it with the tip of my tongue. I grimaced.
'Lube. Another tit man.'
Michael shrugged and kept look out while I rubbed the residue into my skin. When you have 35DD breasts, you get a lot of attention. The guy upstairs now congratulating himself in the shower had been typical of a lot of my punters. I'd approached him at Michael's suggestion about an hour earlier. He had bought me a drink and I had listened attentively as he described the reasons for his presence in our town whilst keeping his eyes focussed on my cleavage. He only dragged them away when I drained my glass and crossed my legs so that my cocktail dress rode up giving him a glimpse of the top of my sheer, black stockings and the suspenders holding them in place.
'We could take this discussion upstairs, if you like? Or maybe you're interested in other things too?'