Seoul Survivors (3 page)

As Sydney closed the dressing room door her EarRinger vibrated three times. She started; it still shocked her every time Johnny buzzed. And it was beginning to piss her off, too: what the fuck did he think he was doing, bugging her during her shoot?

At least it wasn't a call, just a quick prod to let her know to check her MoPho. How many times had she told him not to use the EarRinger and Gotchas like that? The matching jewelry sets were supposed to be
intimate
—a way for couples and best friends to exchange private messages, not boss each other about. She should stop wearing the twisted hunks of platinum—a twisted hunk, just like
him
, she'd yelled at Johnny once. They'd laughed, but the joke was starting to wear thin.

The MoPho was in her bag, on the chair in front of the make-up mirror. She tossed the pink hanky down on the counter and checked her inbox; maybe he was canceling and she could go to the party.

Fat chance. There was a text, all “baby” and “dollface,” reminding her to meet him at the
kalbi
place and be ready for a big night with the suits—as if he hadn't already told her a hundred times before she left. Plus he'd sent a photo. “Thinking of You.” Which she ought to look at, if only to avoid the hassle of explaining why she couldn't be bothered.

It was his cock.
Again
. A sideways view this time, spurting cum all over a picture in a magazine. She peered closer. It was one of the lipstick ads: her small, glossy face half-covered with a big white blob of Johnny juice.

Sydney recoiled. What the hell was he playing at? Was
this
his way of saying sorry for last night? Or . . . was it some kind of
threat
? The last thing she needed was for a money shot featuring her face to get onto the wrong MoPho. And what if she'd opened it when Jin Sok was around? No, no,
no
! Her stomach flip-flopping, she deleted the photo and stuffed the MoPho back into her bag. She unclasped the EarRinger too, and jammed it in the pocket with the Gotcha Watch she'd taken off earlier, when Jin Sok was deciding which of her own jewelry she could wear. He'd been impressed that she owned such high price-tag bling, but right now she never wanted to wear the devices again. She was going to have to seriously set some
boundaries
with Johnny tonight.

First, unfortunately, she had to take all these gorgeous clothes off. She unhooked the bra and carefully put it back in its box with the foam pump equipment. Unscaffolded, her breasts deflated at least three cup sizes, and the bruises near her armpits Johnny had made last night were exposed. Well, he wasn't going to do
that
again, either. She slipped out of the OhmEgo shorts and draped them over the back of a chair, then examined herself in the full-length mirror by the door.

A gold-plated punk goddess snarled back, clad in thigh-high boots and metallic panties, a hundred spiky braids blazing from her head. Okay, so she could still pinch at least an inch around her waist, and she'd never done a catwalk show. But beside her was a rail of thousand-dollar clothing and a table cluttered with hundred-dollar lotions. Things had changed since she'd got off that plane from Vancouver. She sat down at the make-up table and pulled a bottle of cleanser and a jar of cotton wool balls toward her. As she wiped her forehead a faint frown-line emerged from beneath the layers of gold paint.
Jeez
. Was that a
wrinkle
? Just as she was starting to get somewhere in life, some
dork
was ruining her looks. She scrubbed at her nose and narrowed her eyes. It was definitely time to review the Johnny Sandman situation.

It was hard to believe now, but Johnny had been totally sweet to her once—when they'd met in Vancouver he'd been funny and caring and generous, a snappy dresser from LA who'd taken her to fancy restaurants. And unlike the other agency clients, he'd really made her laugh. Offering GFE, she had to giggle at every client's jokes, and ooze sympathy and compliments all night, but Johnny had seen through that
shtick
right away: he knew he looked great, he'd said, so why didn't they talk about something else—how about her favorite stuff to do on her days off? She'd told him the usual, really: she ate out a lot for work, so she liked to eat Pot Noodles at home and watch DVDs. Or go out shopping and dancing with the girls. He'd started talking about Korea then: the nightlife was insane, he said, and the department stores were twenty stories high—serious shoppers took nap-breaks in capsule hotels on the tenth floor. That had got her giggling. She'd asked him all about Korea then, and the dinner flew by. It was almost like she really
was
having a Girlfriend Experience.

Later, at the hotel, Johnny had even tried to make the money part seem romantic. He'd laid the envelope on the dresser, and while she checked the bills, said gruffly, “Do me a favor, babe? Think of this as a present. Buy yourself something nice with it—even if it's just groceries, promise me you'll get them from the best deli in town?” She needed the money for a massive overdue gas bill, but the word “present” was way better than the usual “donation,” which often led straight to stupid jokes about sperm. And the sex had been surprisingly okay. She'd provided her usual package: French Kissing, Hugging, Bare Back Blow Job, Cunnilingus, and Full Service, of course; but rather than lunge at her, slobbering and grabbing, he'd taken his time—and he'd proved to be pretty good at muff-diving.
He hadn't even whined about the condom. Like her laughter at the meal, her orgasms weren't fake. And
he'd
cuddled
her
afterward, too.

In the morning he'd told her he was in town for a month, on a training course, and he'd asked if he could monopolize her attentions for a month? She'd thought yeah, why not? The agency had urged her to agree, and when she'd added up the figures, it was the best offer she'd had in a long time. The extra money meant she could take that modeling course sooner than she'd planned.

It had been a great month, too. Johnny had taken her to the mountains in his rented sports car; he'd bought her lingerie, jewelry, and one day a stupid teddy bear she hadn't wanted to admit how much she liked. The best thing was that she didn't ever have to pretend she was in a good mood. She could bitch about stuff—her boss, the weather, other clients—and he'd just laugh. She'd told him stuff about her family—not
everything
, of course—and one night she'd even confessed that escort work wasn't really her thing: she was saving for the modeling course and once she started getting fashion jobs she'd quit the agency.

He said she was definitely too cute and smart to be working as an escort—and he'd asked her to come back to Korea with him. He'd said that Seoul was dying for blonde models, she wouldn't need a course; he could use his contacts to get her an employment visa, and some starter jobs, no problem. He'd even shown her an email from a friend of his saying sure, bring her into the studio, they could use a blonde in their lipstick campaign.
But hey
, he'd said when she frowned and passed his MoPho back to him,
don't worry
. He wasn't one of those clients who thought the escort was falling in love with him. He just liked her style; that was all. They could have fun, nothing serious, just see what happened. If the worst came to the worst, she'd have some international fashion shoots under her belt.
Just think about it, babe? Promise me that?

Korea was too far away, and her girlfriends had told her not to trust him. She'd said she couldn't leave Canada, but the next night he'd sung that old song, “My Way,” to her. It was his philosophy of life, he'd said. A naked man using a pink dildo as a mic would have made anyone laugh, but as the song went on and he closed his eyes and really got into it, she realized Johnny could actually sing. His deep crooning had reverberated throughout her body as she lay twisted in the Egyptian cotton sheets, the words almost thrumming up her spine.

“
Wow.
That was amazing,” she'd said sleepily when he'd done. “Sort of like a massage.”

“Excuse me?” He'd pounced on the bed and started to tickle her. “Was that a
compliment
from Little Miss Sour-Puss?” She'd squealed and denied it, wriggled in his arms as he enveloped her in a massive bear hug. She'd thought he'd want sex again, but instead he'd murmured, “Aww, baby's tired,” as she drifted off to sleep. “Big bad Johnny's all worn her out.”

The next day over breakfast she'd told Johnny he could pay for her passport and an open return ticket to Seoul, but there were two conditions. First, he would have to pay for her rent and bills until she got enough work to support herself. And second, she wasn't going out with him as an escort. Instead, it would be a
real
girlfriend experience. Like he'd said: just to see what happened.
Absolutely, babe.
he'd agreed, holding her close,
That's exactly what I want too
.

Sydney removed the last of the make-up. Her exposed face looked pale and gaunt in the mirror. She'd been right to trust her gut instincts; she was modeling now, wasn't she? But living with Johnny was starting to exhaust her. Though he'd promised to help her get her own career off the ground, she was spending most of her evenings buttering up his dumb clients when she could be out dancing or shopping or meeting people she actually liked. At home, he was a neat-freak: he was all about his spick-and-span kitchen, toxic household air fresheners, precious hardwood floors, while his obsession with Frank Sinatra was like some kind of aural prison. And then there was the porn.

All guys watched porn, of course. Most of the agency clients had wanted her to do stuff just like the girls in the films on the hotel pay-per-view channel. The channel was softcore—one reason the agency recommended that hotel—so the requests were just goofy stuff really: sticking her tits out in a certain way, or putting her hair up in bunches. If they got weirder than that, she'd remind the client she only offered GFE, minus anal; other agency girls did PornStar. But Johnny hadn't turned on the TV in Vancouver. He'd turned her on instead.

Once they'd settled in to Seoul though, he'd started wanting to watch the satellite TV on the ceiling screen over the bed. The stuff he chose was pretty ordinary to begin with: women with big hair and drag queen nails, or Korean girls playing with each other. She could take it or leave it, really, but he always asked her what she liked, so she said the girls together were pretty, and she didn't mind big hair if the cocks were big too.

Then last week he'd taken a couple of DVDs out of a drawer. He'd said he used to watch them on his own all the time, wishing there was a girl he could share them with, so they'd put one on. It was different than the others. The light was grainy, the sex rough, right from the start, and quickly moved from hair-yanking and fake rape into dungeon-style bondage. When Sydney had said the film wasn't working for her, they'd tried the next one. It was worse: garishly lit to highlight every pimple, and there was a gun in the first scene. She'd made him stop it too.

“The girls look frightened, Johnny,” she'd said.

“Ah c'mon.” He'd sounded annoyed. “They're
acting,
babe.”

“Well,
doh
. But I don't
like
it. And the men are butt-ugly.”

Then he'd got all patronizing about it. “That's the whole point,” he'd lectured. “This kind of film's about flirting with danger, breaking taboos. I thought you were a risk-taker, Sydney.”

He was being such a dickhead. She hadn't felt like explaining why she didn't like violent porn. “The
girls
aren't ugly!” she'd retorted. And they weren't. Their bums had a few spots, and they weren't wearing a ton of make-up, but their faces and bodies were standard fare. The men, though, were barrel-bellied and ham-fisted, with squashed-up, greedy faces—probably just like the losers who bought deviant porn. You were supposed to feel sorry for them, but if they stopped watching that shit and learned how to hold a conversation they'd get a girlfriend, for sure. Women married ugly guys all the time.

Johnny was pissed off, she could tell, but he had put the films back in the drawer, so she'd tried to make it up to him with an extra deep-throat BJ. That had done the “trick,” LOL.

The next night she was in a playful mood so she'd told him that since she had
tried
to watch the DVDs, he had to
try
watching the fashion channel with her. Johnny thought that was insane, of course, but the ramp shows all had good soundtracks—techno-trance, Bolly-bhang, power ballads—and he could look at her if he wanted to see a naked girl, couldn't he? He'd done it, though eventually he'd fucked her so hard she had to stop watching. It had been a battle, and even though she'd sort of won, she'd known the war wasn't over.

That had been proven yesterday. She'd been so excited about the OhmEgo shoot, babbling away about it on the street, until out of nowhere he'd shouted at her to
just shut up about the fucking job, will you?
He'd totally exploded. It had been almost frightening, seeing his face get all red like that, but she'd stared him down until he'd
stomped off to the Caddy instead of shopping with her like he'd promised. When she'd got home, he was drinking whiskey. And when they got into bed, for the first time since they met, he couldn't get it up.

She'd asked if he wanted to watch the porn channel, but he'd growled “You don't like porn.” Then he'd punished her breasts, grabbing and squeezing them hard with one hand, with the other trying to force his flaccid cock inside her.
Why did guys do that?
She'd told him to stop and pulled away and curled up on the other side of the bed, swallowing back the tears. After a few minutes he'd started to snore.

In the morning he'd hugged her and touched the bruises gently and said, “Did I do that, baby? Oh, Johnny's sorry.” He sounded like he meant it—but sorry didn't matter, did it? These tits were her
job
. They couldn't
ever
be black and blue.