Bored! Board (dull as a)! Hyper-bored! Mega-bored!
I was bored. Two weeks, now, and no interesting clients. Oh, we've had clients. I can't really blame Sly. He's kept me busy, okay, but they've all been so very
ordinary
. No balloon rides, no witches' covens, just a string of plain-vanilla ordinary guys looking for a thrill in their ordinary lives, getting from me something they couldn't get from their wives. Ptah! No thrills.
Okay, sure, some of the clients were sweet, and the sex was passable, even quite good on one occasion, but still,
ordinary
. That's not what keeps me going in this business.
Yeah, I sell sex. Well, part-time, anyway. I'm really quite good at it, and I enjoy the work. But hell, even my day job in the law firm had been boring of late. I was getting stale and downright bitchy, and that's not good for business (
either
business).
Sly, he's my partner and my agent, didn't help with his oh so sympathetic "Christ, put a sock in it, Princess. You're fuckin' spoiled." Big help, that was. Really improved my mood.
I mean, of course I was still doing my job; I
am
a professional, after all. The clients never sensed my boredom, and they all left smiling and satisfied that they'd gotten their money's worth and then some. Hey, like I said, I'm good at what I do. But that's not the point.
I guess the problem with living an adventurous life is that you become addicted to the adrenaline rush and really miss the excitement when it's not there.
Finally, in desperation, I decided to do something I'd long ago promised Sly I wouldn't do, not since we partnered up: go out on my own. Sly's a tough product of the streets while I was raised in an upper-class family in Connecticut, so he's convinced that I'd be a danger to myself if I dabbled in his world without him there to protect me.
As he so graciously put it, "Princess, you don't know jack shit about the real world. That's my world. I know it and you don't. Let me take care of that end before you get hurt."
Last time he warned me, I told him that I was a for Christ's sake grown-up woman and could take care of myself. He smiled nastily and said, "Oh? Ain't you the same 'grown-up woman' who took off with a sketchy guy you'd never met for a wild night in the Village? In fact, I seem to recall you were the one egging your pals on."
That pretty much shut me up. That wild night with Sly and his buddies had resulted in him blackmailing me into servicing him and his buddies to pay him off. Of course, on the plus side, that eventually led to us both discovering my talent and me becoming a part-time professional and enjoying what I do and even partnering up with him, but hey, it could have turned out a lot differently, I suppose.
Anyway, except for one night before we officially became partners, I've heeded his advice and let him find and vet our clients. It's been a good arrangement. He really does care about me, and I know that it's out of respect, not just because I'm a good source of income for him. And true to his word, he has kept me safe. And, intentionally or not, he's managed to find interesting clients, at least until the last couple of weeks, anyway.
This night, however, I had had it. I needed something, anything, to shake off the boredom.
To hell with it. I gave in to temptation. I rummaged around in my stuff for what I call my 'safari' outfit. This was the outfit I had bought long ago for going out hunting on my own: a short black leather skirt with a little slit on the right side, black nylons with lacy elastic tops, a well-fitted button-front blouse and some very uncomfortable high heels. It was all still there and conjured up pleasant memories of that night. I hadn't needed it since, though.
I took a cab downtown. I found the same bar I'd used that night. The bartender must have recognized me and remembered the very generous tip I'd left him, because he smiled when I came in, and as soon as I perched myself decorously on a bar stool, unasked he served me a ginger ale with food coloring in it. I felt like a veteran. I smiled, remembering how nervous I had been that night. God, that was a while ago! A lot of water over
that
dam!
Well, clearly I hadn't lost my touch. In an hour I'd had three proposals. I was being picky.