“Sure.”
He was dressed in khakis and a pink button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled back, and he tugged at the collar uncomfortably as he took a seat. He seemed like more of a T-shirt and jeans kind of guy, but he’d dressed up to meet me.
“So, tell me a bit about you, Seth,” I said, before taking a sip of iced coffee.
He totally started rambling, probably because he was nervous. “Okay. Well, I’m twenty-five, and I moved here from St. Louis in January. I have a job delivering pizza in the evenings, and during the day I help take care of an elderly gentleman named George. He’s my brother’s best friend’s grandfather. The three of us moved to the city together. Not George, he already lived here. I mean, my brother and his best friend Eden and I moved here. George is getting up in years and needs a bit of help, so Eden wanted to come and take care of him. Eden is a cop and works long hours, and my brother’s always working, too. He’s a health care assistant and goes to nursing school. That just leaves me and George during the day. We all live in his house, and—um, that’s probably more than you wanted to know, right?”
I liked this kid. He seemed so sweet, naïve, and sincere that it was hard to believe we were in the same line of work. I asked, “When did you start working as a prostitute?”
He turned pink again and glanced at the other people on the patio to see if they’d overheard. No one was paying any attention to us. “Three months ago. I was at a club, and this guy offered me two hundred bucks to fuck me. I would have done it for free, you know? So, I said yes, and I had fun and made a lot of money. Do you know how long it takes to make two hundred bucks delivering pizza?
“Anyway, ever since then, I’ve been going back to this same club on the weekends and making some serious cash. But I got to thinking maybe there’s a better way to do this. That’s when I looked online and found a few websites. Yours was my favorite. It was so classy! I bet you can charge anything you want, and people will pay it. So, I guess my question is, how do I get from where I am to where you are?”
“I’m not sure how to answer that,” I said. “I’ve been doing this eight years, and it took me a long time to build this into a business with a solid client base.”
“Do they all find you through the website?”
“Most do, but some come to me through referrals.”
He blinked and asked, “How does that work?”
“An existing client tells a friend about me, and then that person becomes a client.”
Seth looked surprised. “They actually tell other people they’re sleeping with a prostitute?”
“Some clients prefer to keep it private. But not everyone thinks visiting a sex worker has to be a dirty little secret.”
“I guess that’d be pretty ideal. Then you’d know the men weren’t cops or anything, because someone you already knew referred them.”
“Exactly.” He chewed his lower lip for a few moments, and I said, “You know, the fact that one of your roommates is a police officer definitely makes things more complicated. I don’t have to remind you that prostitution is illegal.”
Seth’s shoulders slumped. “I’m obviously hiding it from Eden. He’d be so disappointed in me. He’s the most amazing man I know. He’s kind, and honorable, and decent, and if he ever found out what I’ve been doing, I’d die. I’d have to, like, move out of the country, change my name, and live in disgrace. It would be so awful.”
I watched him for a few moments before asking, “Does Eden know you’re in love with him?”
Seth had been staring at the tabletop, and his blue eyes darted to meet my gaze as he blurted, “How did you know?”
“Lucky guess. Just so you know, this job makes it pretty tough to have a relationship with anyone, let alone a cop.”
I was instantly sorry I said that, because Seth looked devastated. “No worries there. He’s straight, and even if he wasn’t, he’d never want me. He’s known me since I was ten, and I’ll never be anything to him besides his best friend’s kid brother.”
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have brought it up.”
“It’s okay. You didn’t know.” After a pause, he tried to get the conversation back on track by asking, “Anyway, with your job do you ever have, like, two clients who try to hire you on the same night? Because I was thinking maybe you could refer the one you didn’t want to me. I’d obviously give you a cut of the profits.”