Story Code: M/f, Oral, Anal, Incest, Prostitution, Exhibitionism, Voyeurism
*****
I was a working wife, not long married. I only worked twelve hours a week packaging cigarette orders at British American Tobacco's factory for local shops and staff purchases. I went into work in the early evenings, after the production staff had finished making cigarettes for the day. Wholesalers took boxes full of cartons of two hundred cigarettes straight off the production lines, for the small, local customers, I took cartons off the conveyor belt before the automatic boxing machine. We made six different lines, from small cigars to super-king filter tipped. My job was to make up small mixed boxes just for distribution in our town. I also made up boxes for staff purchases at discount prices. I didn't earn much but it didn't matter, Paul, my husband, earned good money in the docks...good money while there was a ship being built or refitted but his work was up and down at times.
During the good times Paul spent big, we had good holidays, he bought me presents, jewellery and the like so when the bad times hit, there were no cash reserves and because of my job, we couldn't get much help from the government. We were soon behind with the rent and had to start selling off our possessions, bits of furniture we could live without, old things that had been passed down through the family.
Paul didn't want us to sell my jewellery outright; he wanted us to pawn it. We wouldn't get so much cash for it but, as soon as the next order came in at the ship yard, Paul would be able to redeem it all back and only have to pay twenty percent on top of the loan price...so long as he redeemed it all within a year and a day.
"I've been talking to the lads at the Job Club, Gavin Wilkinson took his old grandmother's wedding and engagement rings in to that place on the High Street, he was offered a fifty quid loan and the redemption value was set at sixty pounds. That guy from Evens Welding Supplies that married your old school friend...no, his name's gone for the moment...anyway, he said that whenever the shipyard is quiet and he has no one to sell welding supplies too, he uses the pawn brokers on the High Street but he always sends his wife in, the shorter her dress, the lower the front is cut the more money they get offered and they get a better redemption value as well."
Page 1
"You should remember his name, his first name is Paul, just like yours and his last name is Evens...as in the Evens of Evens Welding Supplies!"
Paul chuckled, "Oh yes, I really should remember his name...anyway... Gavin Wilkinson got his Megan to take the same two rings in to the pawnshop, she got one hundred pounds and the redemption value was only one hundred and ten pounds. Mind you, he said that Megan won't take anymore things into the pawnshop. She said that she felt uncomfortable having the shop's owner ogling her as he filled out all of the paperwork for the loan."
"So, what are you saying, you want me to take my jewellery into the pawnshop flashing a little flesh at the owner?"
"I think you're going to have to flash more than a little flesh at the old pervert to get the best deal."
"So how am I supposed to dress and act?"
"I thought you could wear that dress I bought you in Costa del Mar, that first holiday we had together! If you still have it that is?"
"I still have it but it'll be too small for me to wear now!"
"But that's the whole point, elicit a little empathy from the old Scrooge, get his sympathy and more money for the gold."
"Empathy and sympathy...sounds more like voyeurism and perversion
I found the thin cotton dress cowering at the back of my wardrobe; it had a plunging neckline and an even more plunging back. When I was younger the dress was all the fashion, deliberately designed for the hot Spanish evenings, designed not to be worn with a bra under it. The top was made of two triangles of pleated Indian cotton that came to a point at my shoulders and met up with a shoestring strap that ran almost down to my bum before widening out to protect my modesty. I wore white bikini brief knickers under the dress and nothing else. I returned to Paul, "Is this really how you want me to dress to go out to the pawnshop in town?"
Page 2
"Absolutely, if the old mingers around here get ten percent more money for flashing a little flesh, you'll get twenty percent more dressed like that!"
I wasn't sure, I wasn't happy but when your husband tells you to dress a certain way and for a reason that wasn't strictly ethical, to try and get extra money from a sad and lonely old man than you were strictly entitled to, well, you just do as you're told! I felt dirty as I left home with the heavy little bag of gold in my handbag. Men stopped in the street to watch me as I walked past, I got shivers running through my body from their attention. A car hooter here, a man wolf-whistled there and slowly I began to accept the adulation, the stares of total strangers and I found my hips swaying a little more as I turned onto the High Street. A car almost ran into the back of a bus because the man driving it was looking so hard at me. When I was younger the dress had been designed as a modest miniskirt, now I was two inches taller and more than a little more filled out, the dress was on the micro-mini scale and that was unusual in the extreme for this current decade!
When I reached the shop I realised that I often looked in the window of that shop but had never realised that it was a pawnbrokers shop, I thought that it was just a regular second hand shop, the first window was full of electronic goods, there was just one chink in the armour that defended the shop from the view of the world outside through that window, one broken door to allow goods to be removed from the window by the shop staff and through that chink I recognised Paul Evens sitting talking to the shop's owner in the darkened shop interior. I walked past the door and for the first time in my life, I looked through the glass of the shop door at the counter opposite, it looked like a cage, like an American gaol with the gap for food and water at the bottom.
I moved on to the second window, that window was mainly jewellery and watches, as I was looking at the gold for sale I heard the door rattle and "You want anything bringing back?" then there was another rattle from the door. I watched Paul Evans running across the road towards the pub opposite. I looked at the time in twelve identical wrist watches, just after noon. I took a deep breath and returned to the shop's door.
Page 3
I pushed on the door handle but nothing happened, the door was locked, I could see the old man standing behind the counter...or rather inside his cage, he looked at me and then he looked at his TV screen, two images, one showing the street to the left of the door and the other to the right, once he was happy that I was all alone at the door he pressed the remote controller and the door lock buzzers indicated that I could open the door.
There was a sign above the door, 'Ruben Cohen Esq. Licensed Pawnbroker' Est. 1939.
As I walked into the shop he did a double take, his eyes opened wider and he turned his back momentarily, it looked like he was adjusting his dress to accommodate...well, let's just say that I'd had the same effect on Ruben Cohen as I'd on men ever since I left home. I walked to his counter and took the little jewellery bag from my handbag, he smiled at me, "I think I've seen that little bag before a few times! Tell me my dear...did your husband tell you to dress like that to try and get more money from me? Did he perhaps tell you to flirt with me a little?"
