When Merrily jolted awake from strange dreams, her mouth still tasted weird. What day was it? She looked around, dazed. She reached for her phone, peeled a photo of Rick off her arm.
She’d only been asleep a few hours. It was only the afternoon, the smell of bacon still thick in the apartment.
No texts from her mom. Weird. She also hadn’t gotten any hits from her PhotoSocial post about Rick being missing, not even any messages of support. Well, that’s not where she got her support, anyway.
She did have several notifications from ChatX, including one from her new favorite, the gravy train who had rolled in a couple of months ago. This guy was ideal, never bothering her for pics or time, always keeping things clean. He spent freely, could have had anyone. But he’d sit and listen to her bitch about Justyce or her mom for a half hour and then drop a few zeroes in her account. Like therapy that paid her.
The first time he’d contacted her for a chat, she was sure he was a cop or something. But Searcher6 was simply a lonely divorced type. Not smooth, not even that charming. Camera-shy. A message from him, though rare, was always good news for her.
Merrily smoothed her hair and logged in from her phone. His invitation was waiting. A Thursday afternoon? She accepted, and her screen filled with an image of a tranquil stretch of water, a photo Searcher supplied in place of his own live video feed. There was something freeing about broadcasting out to him without having to make eye contact. The avatar for his profile on the site was a photo of a strong jawline resting on a fist, one thumb against his chin. The fine gold hairs on his wrist made her stomach flutter. Probably a daddy complex, but she was allowed her kinks, too.
“Hey, Mer-Maid.” She hadn’t had to teach him to say it right. “How’s your day?”
So far she’d participated in Rick-centric worrying and workplace shame and brought a grown man to his knees for quick cash. All in a day’s work. With any of her other guys, she’d turn it back on them, ask them something about themselves. Like lighting a can of gasoline—she never had to ask twice. Each of her guys wanted some different relationship with her, her body, her life. Searcher’s only requirement seemed to be time, but she was the one who had to fill it.
“Well, today hasn’t been my favorite day ever,” she said.
“Sorry to hear that. Anything you want to talk about?”
“Just family stuff. I won’t bore you. I think I quit my job today.”
“Must not have been much of a job if you’re not sure.”
“I won’t miss much about it. It was getting in the way of more important duties.” She winked into the camera.
“What’s that?”
“What?” She peered into the video image of herself on her screen to spot what he was seeing. Near her shoulder lay one of the drawings from her childhood she’d excavated from her closet. “Oh, only evidence of my early genius.”
“Show me?”
She’d drawn pictures of monsters and ponies, of princesses and dragons. Of little girls with their mothers, but never herself and her mom, exactly. Merrily held up one of the drawings for him. “A family of bears, maybe? Or porcupines? I’m not sure.”
“The genius part is that it could be both.”
“You understand me.”
On her bed lay the scattered pictures, a workbook page with a gold star. She had not been a gold-star kind of kid, even though she tried so hard to please, to will everyone and everything around her to be OK. Best behavior, so that no one could not love her. So that no one else could leave her, she supposed.
Merrily held up a receipt from McDonald’s, the back of which she had decorated with a landscape of . . . cornfields and pigs?
“Lovely,” he said. “And who’s that?”
One of Rick’s photos rested near her elbow. It was the one with his buddies, beer cans in the air. Merrily held it up so he could see. “My stepdad on the right. My former— Well, it’s complicated.”
“He looks happy. Where’s that taken, do you know?”
She turned the image around. Three men, Rick laughing. Green lakeshore, a dock in the background. “No idea. I think this is before he crash-landed into our lives. I wouldn’t even have been born yet.”
“Any more photos?”
“You finally want some show-and-tell from me, and it’s old pictures of the guy my mother used to bone? Your wish.”
She went through the photos one at a time: baby-faced Rick on a date; trim-waisted Rick in a kitchen drinking from a jam jar, a pack of cigarettes rolled into his sleeve, the edges of a black tattoo peeking out. She finally found the image of the two of them together, stuck to the back of another photo.
“This one is called Awkward Father Figure,” she said. In the photograph she’s a nearly bald, nearly infant blob on Rick’s knee, his hands keeping her upright. He’s gazing down at her in a way that is a mix of astonishment and fear. Had he loved her? For the two minutes he’d been in her life, had he thought of her as part of his family?
She saved the best for last: King Richard conquers the Dunes!
Searcher had gone quiet at some point. “Still there?” she said, holding the phone at her best angle. “Anything I can do for you today?”
“You do enough by just being you, Mer-Maid. You always do.”
Enough might not be enough, though. She was out of a day job, and the fact was, he turned her on. Maybe this could be something real, or at least something more lucrative. “I just want to make sure you know that we can change things up at any time. You don’t have to be shy with me or with anything you need. Or want?”
When he answered, she could tell he was smiling. “I’ll keep you posted on what I need or want. Deal?”
“Deal.”
After they said their goodbyes, Merrily put the photo of tiny Rick on her desk, leaned up against a speaker. She went to her ChatX account and watched as a deposit dropped. Quite a good deal, in fact.