When he thought of her now, it was her smile that came to mind through the thickening boozy haze.
A certain special smile he had never seen…
Merry put down her glass, the wine hardly touched.
She gazed coolly at the man across the table from her, intrigued in spite of herself. “Something better than money, you say.”
The night hadn’t begun all that well. In fact, it’d been shaping up as a real 4D: Dead, Dull, Disappointing, and ending in Deficit.
She’d been sitting at her usual table in Randy’s Rest, gloomily nursing a cheap algae-based white wine and wondering if there was really any point in sticking around when this juan had pushed through the bead-curtained doorway.
He wasn’t a regular, she knew that at first glance. So she looked the fresh meat over.
He was middle-aged, nearly bald. Well dressed in loose gray pants, crisp white open-neck shirt that was either real silk or a damn good fake, gray gloves, black-cotton and leatherite jacket, black-suede boots. No jewelry except a silver pin on his broad chest. Tasteful and understated. Not some rowdy dusty rock-jock or smirking tourist out for a thrill.
He’d done what most of the new sticks did, standing there just inside the door and checking out the available talent—getting checked out himself at the very same time, the credit scanner in each girl’s head humming over him and reading his paying potential down to the decicredit. This went on during the momentary pause while they waited to see if he got this dumbjohn look of surprise on his face and stumbled back out, having drunkenly mistaken Randy’s for Billy’s Club next door, where the doe-eyed boys posed and preened in their satin loincloths and tight leather jeans.
These tests passed, there was a lacy rustle as the other girls went into display mode, making sure their charms were shown off to their best advantage.
Merry hadn’t even bothered to sit up straight to show off the merchandise, or put her try me look on her face. Habit told her she should, but the disgruntled voice of cynicism said Why bother?
It was a slow Tuesday night in the Rest, with a dozen idle girls besides herself vying for the attention of this one customer. Much as she hated to admit it, she knew she was well past the first-choice category, and maybe even the second or third. Randy let her keep working there more for old times’ sake than for the money she brought in. But he was a practical man. Now her table was way in the back, where the light wasn’t too good, and the sour smell that at times wafted from the head just a couple meters away sometimes seemed like a foretaste of her next step down the ladder.
Oh, the men who came into Randy’s would take her if all the other girls were busy, and not a one of them wasn’t shown at least as good a time as the other talent could give them. Maybe even better, because she didn’t try to coast by on looks alone. Besides, if you could get them to become one of your regulars, that meant that you didn’t have to hustle so hard. A stable of regulars was credit in the bank, and maybe even a ticket out of the Life. She had a couple, but the poor bastards were almost always as stony broke as she was.
It had been hard enough before, on the downhill side of thirty and competing with girls almost half her age. And now?
There was no way she could hope to compete with those perfect young faces.
Yet this coddy hadn’t given any of the other girls a second look. The moment he had seen her his face had gone all funny for a moment.
But not with that What the fuck happened to you? look she’d seen so many times in the past months. It was more like he’d seen a ghost, or stumbled across the last thing he had ever expected to find here. Like maybe his wife, his mother, his sister, or a long-lost lover.
After a moment he got a handle on himself, smiled at her uncertainly, and headed straight for her table.
She did sit up straight then, her translucent red skin-suit tightening around her. A smile went onto her face, part habit, part screw you to the pouts appearing on the other girls’ flawless faces as they saw the trade choosing her over them.
Watching him come closer, she thought about how every so often Fate gave you something besides the finger. This might just be one of those nights. She sure as hell was due for one.
Too many of the juans just waltzed right over to your table and plunked themselves down like they owned it and you, figuring that what they had in their pockets plus what they had in their pants made them irresistible.
They were half-right, anyway.
But this one had politely asked if he could join her, and thanked her when she said yes. He’d ordered a triple whiskey neat from the waitbot, another wine for her, then come right to the point. He wanted to purchase her services for the night.
All-nighters were rarer for her than they used to be, and though she was tempted to shave her price to guarantee he took her, some ornery remnant of her pride made her quote the standard fee set by her union.
Besides, she could haggle if he said that was too much.
The juan’s face was broad and craggy, with big dark pouches under eyes of a clear cool gray. It was the face of someone who’d lost a lot of weight sometime in the past, and maybe a lot of other things, too. A widower’s face, drawn and dispossessed. But there was humor there, too. He’d given her this puckish smile, and then hit her with this “something better than money” stroke.
“What’s better than money?” Merry figured that maybe he wanted to barter. No problem there, Randy could help her convert almost anything into cash. For a cut, of course, but at least he was honest. More or less.
His smile turned wry. “Lots of things. Trust, for instance. Choice is another.” He peered slantwise at her, probably seeing the look that had crept onto her face at this line of patter.
“I know you don’t know me well enough to trust me,” he continued. Most juans said something like that, she’d have laughed in their faces. But there was something about him and the way he said it that made her take his words seriously.
“You seem nice enough,” she admitted, “but so does my landlord until I come up short when the rent comes due.”
After six years of turning tricks Merry’s internal radar was tuned to within a couple microns of dead center, and she wasn’t getting any rip-artist readings. That was the only thing keeping her from telling him to go try his line on one of the other girls.
He chuckled. “Point well taken. I’ll tell you what. I’ll get us the best room this establishment has to offer, something to eat and drink from room service—”
“The price of a suite gets you a snack tray, and there’s a free bar in the room,” Merry put in. “Drugs and benders are extra.” She could have told him the number of tiles in the ceilings of the bedrooms as well, having had plenty of chance to count them. A hundred in the suites and 144 in the singles.
Another chuckle, and a nod of his balding head. “I love the room already. I’ll also preauthorize a one-KISC charge to be paid to you tomorrow morning. If you still want it.”
He said the number as if it didn’t mean anything to him, like it was the number of tiles in a protel ceiling, and it caught her so off guard she had to make sure she’d heard right.
“You said one KISC?” Hoping she’d heard right.
He grinned at her in obvious amusement. “That’s what I said.”
Merry found it hard to imagine not wanting the thousand International Standard Credits. It was twenty times the price she had quoted him, the union rate for five full days of an A-list girl’s services. Even after Randy skimmed his 10 percent off the top she’d still have over four months’ rent on her cubby.