Stranger (10 page)

Jack went rigid like a slap bracelet. Tension infused his arms, his legs, even his belly. He pushed up on his arms and tossed the hair from his eyes.

“Okay,” he said, not moving. I gave him a moment, after which he said, “Why?”

I shifted a little. “Because I decided I don’t really want to teach you how to fuck. I want to see if you know how to do it already.”

And fuck, that smile again, this time made even brighter by the laugh accompanying it.

My entire body went awash with heat. Jack rolled onto his side, one hand still on my belly.

“You’re sure?”

I got on my side, too, facing him. His hand slid to my hip. I slid my thigh between his.

“I’m sure.”

“Okay.” He paused again, brow furrowed as if he was thinking. “But…I didn’t guess wrong, did I?”

About the fantasy, I understood him to mean, and it pleased me how he’d taken my advice to heart. “No. Definitely not.”

“Good.” He flashed a dimmer version of the thousand-watt grin. His hand slid back between my legs. “So I don’t have to pretend I’ve never done this before?”

“Not today.”

He pressed gently, in just the right spot. “Okay.”

We didn’t say anything for a minute. We didn’t move. Jack’s eyes were the color of an August sky without clouds, but thick black lashes cast shadows in them when he blinked.

He kissed me again, soft and sweet and slow. His fingers moved in small circles on my clit. When I sighed, he smiled.

He knew what he was doing, there was no question of that. He paid attention. He didn’t rush. Was patient, even though it was taking me a long time. And what I liked best was that he didn’t use my slow response as an excuse to trot out every sexual position or act in an attempt to get me off sooner. Jack kissed me and rubbed my clit in small, gentle circles without cease until I finally gripped his arm, my body tense, and whispered, “Now.”

He moved faster, then, to slide on the condom and get between my legs. But slow again when he slid inside me. Slow, too, when he began to move. The few seconds’ reprieve had faded my urgency, though not by much. Our bodies worked and moved together, each push and pull an experiment in timing.

Tension coiled, tighter and tighter. I made a wordless noise. He picked up the pace. My hands slid along the smoothness of his back, to the sharp curve of his shoulder blades and the shallow groove of his spine.

I came, finally, making no sound as my body tightened around him. Jack shuddered and lifted his head to look at me with heavy-lidded eyes. He closed them, hard, face tensing, and thrust once more with a low groan. He rolled off me after a minute.

I looked over at him as he sat on the edge of the bed, facing away. His shoulders had hunched as he took care of the condom. I yawned and stretched, letting the glow wash over me, but after another moment I sat up, too.

I got out of bed and used the bathroom, not hurrying. When I came out, Jack had pulled his jeans back on. Cool currents of air swirled in the room and I thought I smelled the faintest odor of smoke.

“Hey,” Jack said with a small smile.

“Hey.” I smiled, too, and gathered my clothes. I stepped into my panties and hooked my bra, well aware of Jack’s gaze on me, but not turning again to look at him until I sat on the motel’s rickety chair to pull on my socks and boots.

I hadn’t felt awkward until it looked as if he might. I took an envelope from my purse and went to the bed and sat next to him. He looked at the envelope, then at me.

“This is for you.” I pressed it into his hand.

He took it, staring down at the plain white paper. I’d sealed it. He turned it over and over in his fingers.

“It’s a tip.” I hadn’t thought I needed to explain.

His brow furrowed for a second before he looked up at me again. “Okay.”

“Don’t your other ladies give you tips?”

His mouth quirked. “Not like this.”

I raised an eyebrow. “How do they do it?”

He shrugged. “They usually just give me a twenty or something.”

I had no idea how much training Mrs. Smith gave her gentlemen, only that each was an independent contractor. They set their own rates and negotiated their own dates, and gave Mrs.

Smith a cut of the fees for the privilege of providing the scheduling and clients. Both times I’d called the service to arrange for Jack’s company, I’d had to list exactly what I’d wanted for the date with the understanding that anything additional would be taken care of in cash between the two of us. That was the way it worked.

“Huh,” I said. “Well…far be it from me to tell you how to do your job, Jack, but…”

He groaned and fell back on the bed, arms flopping out. “Wrong again?”

I laughed and rubbed his denim-clad thigh. “It’s not wrong if it works for you.”

He looked up at me through the fall of his hair. “This job didn’t come with an employee manual, okay?”

“I guess not.”

He groaned again, then sat up and tried to put the envelope back in my hand. “You don’t have to give me this.”

“Yes, I do!”

Laughing, we tussled for a minute until the envelope landed on the floor. We both looked at it. I nudged it with my toe.

“Don’t you even want to know how much is in there?” I asked.

Jack shook his head. Then nodded. Then shook it. We laughed again. He was still half-naked and the warmth of his shoulder against mine felt good. I kissed it, tasting the clean salt flavor of sex-earned sweat, and got up. I picked up the envelope and put it in my pocket.

“Stand up.”

He did, obedient.

“Okay,” I said. “You read my file.”

He grinned. “Yes.”

“What sorts of things do I like to do, Jack?”

He thought for a spare second. “Movies. Dancing.”

“What else?”

“You like to play games?” he said, less certain. “Role-play. Like what I tried to do with you tonight.”

“Yes. I like to play games. So we’re going to play the game right now, and it’s called making a date.”

Jack raised both brows. “Okay.”

“I’m calling you.” I demonstrated. “Hello, is this Jack?”

“Yes.”

“Jack, I’d like to see you for a date. I’d like to go to the movies and then dinner.”

“Okay.”

We were both trying hard not to laugh. “And if things work out, I’d like to spend some time with you after the date.”

“Okay!” Jack gave me a thumbs-up. “Awesome.”

“Don’t say awesome,” I said.

“Why not?”

“Well…it doesn’t sound professional.”

“Right. Okay. Um…very well, miss, I think I can accommodate you.”

We laughed again. “That’s better. Okay. So, how should I compensate you for your company?”

“Gee, Grace,” said Jack. “Nobody’s ever said it that way before.”

“Just go with it.”

“Okay. Um…two hundred dollars.”

“And what about the additional time?”

Jack scuffed the carpet with his foot. “All the other times it was more up front. You know.

Meet them somewhere and screw. That was it.”

“Huh.” I looked him over. “So you don’t ask for more?”

“Nope.” The smile. “I just consider it a bonus.”

Now I really started laughing, hard. “Jack!”

“What?” He shrugged. “What can I say? I’m twenty-four, I like girls.”

I was all at once very fond of Jack. “It shows.”

He laughed, too, and ran a hand through his hair again. “You want to know something?”

“Sure.”

“I thought this would be easier.”

I chuckled. “I’m sure you did.”

He looked at me. “I’m not a total loser, Grace. I do know how to take a woman out on a date.”

“I’m sure you do. You’re very cute.”

He made a little face. “It’s just that this is different. I want to do a good job, you know?”

I nodded. “I know you do. And, Jack…you’re not doing a bad job. Really.”

Thumbs-up. “Awesome.”

I kissed his shoulder again, then patted it. I pulled the envelope from my pocket and handed it to him. “This is for you. Don’t look at it now. That’s tacky.”

He gave me a scornful look. “I know that.”

“And next time, negotiate ahead of time,” I told him as I headed for the door. “Get the money for additional time in advance. Excuse yourself to go to the bathroom to count it so you’re not getting scammed.”

He turned the envelope over and over in his hands. “Won’t they think it’s rude?”

“The ones who do this a lot will expect it. The ones who are new won’t know any different. Watch out for yourself, Jack. Even women can be pricks.”

He nodded. “Sure. Okay. Next time.”

His voice stopped me at the door. “Grace?”

I turned. “Hmm?”

“Will there be a next time?”

I gave him a thumbs-up. Jack smiled.

Awesome.

T
he call came as soon as I got home, patched through to my cell from the answering service. I returned the message at once.

“Hi. Miss Frawley. It’s my dad. He’s gone.” I heard Dan Stewart swallow hard as if against tears. “I’m sorry to call after hours, but the message said to call at any time, and we need to make arrangements.”

I never fail to be touched and amazed at the courtesy of those who have just lost someone they love. It’s easy to be rude when you’re being slain by grief. Dan Stewart wasn’t rude. In fact, he was bending over himself to be polite.

“It’s not a problem at all. It’s what I’m here for. Where did your father pass away?”

“At the hospital. My mom was with him. I wasn’t here, I was at home.”

I recognized the tone of shock. The need to explain. It’s my job to be smart for those whom grief has made temporarily stupid. I helped him through the order of things and made arrangements to meet the family first thing in the morning.

Since I was already home, I called Jared to have him pick up the body from the hospital while I stayed to let in the
chevra kadisha.
They’d be responsible for preparing the deceased for burial according to Jewish law, and their tasks included washing, praying over and dressing the body. At least one would stay to watch over the body, another Jewish custom.

An hour later Jared had come and gone and Syd Kadushin was knocking at the back door.

He shook my hand and offered me a peppermint the way he always did, but when I let him into the dark hall, he was all business. He went right away to the embalming room.

The door locked automatically behind me as I watched the last arriving member go downstairs. The security precaution always made me feel better. Frawley and Sons had never had a problem with vandalism, though at Halloween we sometimes had more than our share of ring and runs at the door. Still, knowing that the downstairs would be locked up after the
chevra
kadisha
left made me feel better about being so far away from the front door in my third-floor apartment.

I took the narrow back stairs that had once been for the servants. The large front staircase leading to the second floor was for clients and traffic to the offices upstairs. The back stairs led all the way to the third floor.

My parents had lived here with Craig and Hannah until just before I was born. Then, the third floor had been a series of rooms connecting to a narrow hallway down the center of the attic. Sloping ceilings had made some of the bedrooms small and cramped, and the kitchen was a galley-style space inadequate for a growing family, according to my mom. It had stayed empty for years after my parents moved out.

The summer of my internship, before Ben and I had ended in disaster, he’d worked in construction. With the help of our friends, a bunch of pizzas and some beer, we’d spent a few weeks remodeling. We’d knocked out the walls, creating an open space for the living and dining areas. The sloping ceilings toward the back of the house didn’t matter with a bedroom large enough for a king-size bed and a love seat, and the bathroom had been expanded, too.

Unfortunately, summer had ended, along with my relationship with Ben…and so had the remodeling.

The apartment was nice, but unfinished, and every time I thought about buying new appliances to replace the harvest-gold relics from the 1970s, or replacing moldings, I remembered all those things cost money better spent on improvements to the rest of the home or the business of my social life. It was a matter of priorities.

Despite its lack of luxury, the apartment was mine. If I wanted to have friends over, I had plenty of room for them, if not enough chairs. And it was quiet, of course. Nobody below me making noise, not even the whisper of voices floating up through the heating vents.

Lots of people are superstitious about places where the dead rest. I know a lot of my friends are creeped out by the fact that at any time I might have corpses in my basement.

Inevitably when new acquaintances discover my profession, I’m asked about “weird” things happening, or if I’ve ever been scared to live above the dead.

What nobody thinks about is that people don’t die in a funeral home. By the time they come to me, the circumstances of their passing have already occurred. All I get is the mortal remains. Nothing left of the soul, if there exists such a thing. There’s no reason for a spirit to haunt a funeral home, or a cemetery, for that matter, because by the time the body reaches those places, whatever happened to the soul is already done.

Not that you can convince most people of that. The dead, who can do nothing, cause no harm, who don’t breathe or eat or sleep, don’t shit or screw, freak people right the fuck out.

After my date with Jack I was tired enough to take a long, hot shower. I deep conditioned my hair and shaved every stray, offensive hair I could. I loofahed, moisturized and steam-cleaned my pores and when I was done, I put on my favorite flannel sleep pants and my soft, faded Dead Milkmen T-shirt and curled up on my sofa with the TV remote, the latest doorstop-size novel I was reading and a pot of tea. I was by myself.

Dammit, I liked it that way.

Didn’t I?

I clicked off the TV and went to the bathroom. Too much tea. I pondered my eyebrows in the mirror, decided they could use a tweeze and spent ten minutes wincing and sneezing as I plucked.

It was too late to call any of my friends. I was still alone. Nobody to answer to, that was me. That was an advantage to having a real boyfriend, but then again, that had its own price, and one more steep than what Jack charged to make me happy.