She sits down on the couch next to me and pats my knee, saying, “So, what’s it like being a streetwalker? Does it pay well?”
Chapter Three
The Five-Letter Word
Grace
“It was your doctor?” Margaret asks in a loud voice.
“Be cool, Mags, damn,” I respond. “Yeah, it was my doctor. Nothing happened. If anything, I’d say he was more freaked out by the situation than I was.”
“So, you two didn’t end up, you know…”
“Did I permit him to storm the gates of my Bastille?” I ask.
“I have no idea what that means, but the way you ask makes me think I want to say yes,” she answers.
“No,” I tell her. “We just talked for a while.”
“Are you going to see him again?”
“Yeah,” I scoff, “I’ve got an appointment at his office this Thursday.”
“You’re not keeping him as your doctor,” she protests.
“Why not?” I ask. “Neither of us planned for what happened, and what he does in his personal time is really none of my business.”
“Oh my God,” she gasps, “you like him!”
“Will you stop?” I ask. “What the hell are we, teenagers?”
“Isn’t he married?”
“How would you know if he was?”
“I wouldn’t,” she says, “but it stands to reason that a handsome doctor would have to be married.”
“It’s not like when we were younger,” I tell her. “Doctors aren’t the pinnacle of the quest for dick anymore.”
“You talk like a sailor, you know that?”
“Have you ever heard a sailor talk?” I return.
“No,” she answers.
“Trust me, they don’t talk like that,” I tell her. “Besides, doctors get paid shit nowadays with all the malpractice insurance and all that shit. If you’re looking for someone in the medical field, go with someone who works for a drug company or an insurance company. Sure, they’re generally scum, but they’re the ones with all the money and power.”
“My father works for a drug company,” Mags says, missing the point.
“Whatever. But yeah, thanks for setting me up with the one male escort that not only didn’t, but never, would turn my one into a zero.”
“If that’s some new kind of dirty talk,” she says, “you’re really going to have to let me borrow the dictionary because I don’t have a clue-”
“Never mind,” I interrupt. “So, John’s really staying on?”
Along with being my friend, Mags is also my secretary. She likes to be called a personal assistant, but the way her face goes that shade of you-bastard-pink every time I use the “s” word, I find it difficult to refer to her as anything else.
“Yeah,” she says. “At least, until we know how the new fall lineup’s going to pan out.”