Nobody's Baby but Mine(14)
“You don’t say.”
“Condemning a person solely on the basis of ethnicity, religion, or even that person’s professional activities is illogical.”
“Is that so? What about murderers?”
“Murderers aren’t, strictly speaking, a cohesive group, so it’s hardly the same thing.” She knew that engaging him in a debate probably wasn’t the best method of turning him on, but she was a much better debater than seducer, and she couldn’t resist driving her point home. “America was founded on principles of ethnic diversity and religious freedom, yet blind prejudice has caused most of the evils in our society. Don’t you find that ironic?”
“Are you trying to tell me it’s my patriotic duty as a loyal son of Uncle Sam to show you the cracks in my bedroom ceiling?”
She started to smile until she saw by his expression that he was serious. In the face of such blessed brainlessness, her unborn child’s IQ took another welcome tumble downward.
For a moment, she weighed the morality of deliberately manipulating someone so dull-witted, not to mention deficient in humor, but her need for the services of his warrior’s body won out over her principles. “Yes, I suppose in a way it is.”
He upended his tumbler. “All right, Rosebud. I guess I’m drunk enough to give you a chance before I throw you out. G’wan and show me what you got.”
“I beg your pardon.”
“Let’s see the goods.”
“The goods?”
“Your body. Your bag of tricks. How long you been a hooker, anyway?”
“It’s— Uh . . . Actually, you’re my first client.”
“Your first client?”
“Please don’t let that alarm you. I’ve been very well trained.”
His face tightened and she remembered his distaste for prostitutes, a fact that made this particular charade all the more difficult to carry off. When she’d pointed this out, Jodie had brushed it aside by saying that his teammates were going to get him drunk, and he wouldn’t be as particular. But although Jane could see that he was imbibing, he didn’t look very drunk.
Once again, she would have to lie. Maybe it was the pills, but she seemed to be getting a better grip on the whole process. It was simply a matter of inventing a new reality, embellishing it with a few pertinent details, and doing her best to retain eye contact throughout the process. “You’re probably from the old school, Mr. Bonner, that still believes women in my profession can only get their training in one way, but that’s not true any longer. I, for example, am not promiscuous.”
His glass stalled in midair. “You’re a hooker.”
“True. But I think I mentioned that you’re my first client. Up until now I’ve only been intimate with one man. My late husband. I happen to be a widow. A very young widow.”
He didn’t look as if he were buying any of this, so she began to embellish. “My husband’s death left me in terrible debt, and I needed something that paid better than minimum wage. Unfortunately, with no marketable skills, I didn’t have many choices. Then I remembered that my husband had always complimented me on the intimate aspects of our marriage. But please don’t think that just because I’ve only had one partner, I’m not highly qualified.”
“Maybe I’m missin’ something, but I don’t rightly see how somebody who claims to have had—What’d you say? One partner?—can be well trained.”
He had a point. Her brain clicked away. “I was referring to the instructional videotapes my agency has all its new employees watch.”
“They train you by watching videos?” His eyes narrowed, reminding her of a hunter looking down a gun sight. “Now, ain’t that interesting.”
She felt a little surge of pleasure as her child lost another few points on the Iowa Test of Basic Skills. Even a computer couldn’t have picked a more perfect match.
“They’re not ordinary videos. Nothing you’d want an impressionable child to see. But the old methods of on-the-job training aren’t practical in our current era of safe sex, at least not for the more discriminating agencies.”
“Agencies? Are you talking about whorehouses?”
Each time she heard that repellent word it stung a bit more. “The politically correct term is ‘pleasure agency.’ ” She paused. Her head felt as if it were floating off her shoulders. “Just as prostitutes are better referred to as sexual pleasure providers or SPPs.”
“SPPs? You sure are a reg’lar encyclopedia.”
It was curious, but his accent seemed to be growing thicker by the minute. It must be the liquor. Thank goodness he was too dull-witted to realize how outlandish this conversation had become. “We have slide shows and guest lecturers who discuss their various specialties with us.”