33

“Meet me near the big fish tank near the entrance,” Spaceship Steve texted. Kara needed a night off, and I needed some fast cash so she set up an appointment for me with one of her regulars, a professional gambler who was on a winning streak at Commerce Casino. She said his energy was tapped into another realm—so much so that when she jerked him off, she felt transported to a Sheryl Crow concert, so he became Spaceship Steve. I had nothing against Sheryl Crow, so I agreed.

Besides, Mom had called.

“I didn’t sleep at all last night, but I don’t want to go to the hospital again,” she said.

“You’re okay, mom. You just had a bad night.” She was just being dramatic.

There was the casino, blinking its gaudy eyes, right off the freeway.

“You need to come say goodbye,” she said. I heard her blow her nose.

“Mom, you’ll feel fine later. Take a nap.”

“When can you get here?” she asked. I pulled into the dark parking garage.

“Soon, Mom.” She was sick again. The cancer was back.

Stupid. I clocked my outfit. I forgot that Kara had instructed me to dress down. She said that when hooking, you should dress like a celebrity going to the gym on her day off: ripped jeans and a hoodie. Converse tennis shoes. A loose ponytail. I looked like a hooker meeting a trick in a sexy black slip dress that showed my lace, rhinestone bra and fishnets. Seriously stupid, I thought, walking towards the sliding glass doors. Icy wind from the air conditioner hit my bare arms. I wandered around aimlessly. The casino was packed with Asian men. I wondered what card game they were playing. Just when I was about to pivot back out the door, I spotted the huge aquarium full of striped fish, swimming lazily.

A big white guy with a red baseball cap tapped away on his blackberry. He looked up. “Steve?” I asked quietly. He nodded and hugged me like an old friend.

“Let’s walk this way,” he said and led me to an elevator. We got off on the fourth floor and walked down a burgundy hallway to his tiny room, with two small twin beds. “How’d you do tonight?”

“Pretty good,” he said.

“Do you stay here a lot?” I asked, removing my slip quickly.

“When I come to town,” he said. “Two hundred, right?” He handed me the bills. He was a doughy, freckled man with red hair. I walked over to him and pressed my boobs and belly against him. “Oh, I want an actual massage, too, if that’s okay.”

“Of course,” I said. Shit. Spaceship Steve is going to take the whole hour, I thought.

“Do you always win?” I asked him.

“Sometimes,” he said. I pulled off the cheap Aztec comforter and motioned for him to lie down on the sheets.

I took out my fourteen-dollar almond oil and poured a generous amount on his pimply back. Steve was already naked and on his stomach. My hands moved down to his chubby calves and slowly up his inner thighs. He had a smattering of pimples across his upper back. I needed him to hurry.

Mom’s fevers were back. Cancer markers, T-cell counts, DNR, DNI, chemo, radiation, infection, five abdominal surgeries, PEG-tube, remission, metastasis, septicemia, organ failure, hospice care, and morphine drip. It all starts again.

I had to get to Mom and take her to her chemo then hold the bucket so she could puke. Get her a warm washcloth for her face when she cried. Give my step-dad Chris a break. Bile Duct Cancer loves Gallbladder Cancer loves Pancreatic Cancer. Mom loved horses. They bucked her off. She got back up.

“How’s that feel?” I asked with my fingers lingering on his wet balls, slick from the oil. He turned over, cock like a kickstand. I grabbed it. He removed my hand.

“Slow down.” I needed him to hurry. I needed Mom to be okay.

“I’ll go slow,” I said. “Promise.”

My happiest moments with Mom were spent in a moldy old library when I was eight or nine. “You ready to go?” she hollered from the kitchen and I ran upstairs with my orange corduroy book bag. At the library, we took our time looking at books and flipping through the dusty pages. I grabbed all the Judy Blume and Beverly Cleary books I could carry and lugged them all up to the counter, plopped them down. “Are you really going to read all those?” she asked with a disbelieving look. Her arms were crossed in front of her chest.

“Mmmhm,” I said.

“You have to carry them all yourself.” Her gray eyes twinkled. She was playing mad. I piled the ones that didn’t fit in my bag into my arms like logs, carried them to her seventy-four forest-green Volvo, and tossed them onto the backseat. I didn’t know then what words and stories would mean to me. I had no idea they would grow long alien arms and wrap around me and show me the sky and the galaxy and beyond. Books would change my stripes and make me cry and sink into my skull. Books excited me. They were a way out of my crummy small town, and they were something I shared with Mom. We took our time in the library.

My hand was on Steve’s cock, jerking him off. “Slower,” he said. He placed my hands on his ass. I let my fingers linger there and massaged his balls again, annoyed. The room was stuffy and dark and had a view of long tall buildings; a room where secrets happened.

After the first round of chemo, Mom tried eating a steak and had to return to the hospital. Her body couldn’t break down meat anymore. She had a fever, another infection. She had to use the feeding tube again. I had to get back to her. I needed this Sheryl Crow concert to end.

I poured more oil on Steve’s cock and tightened my grip. “Are you ready to go?” I asked him and made him come hard, exploding all over his pudgy stomach. I put on my slinky black lace dress and walked out of the Casino into the hot, dry air. I couldn’t remember where I’d parked my car. I wandered in the garage for fifteen minutes, dazed. Just like Mom had in Vegas, years before.

On the drive back to my apartment, I pretended what happened didn’t really happen at all. I shoved some clothes into a suitcase and stared at it.

Before she got sick again, Mom had said, “Go get that degree, honey.” She insisted I go to grad school, which felt like an unlikely luxury, one that I didn’t deserve. The other students had families and jobs and were already authors and teachers. I felt like I was from another planet—thirty-seven years old and no great achievements or jobs skills. To pick up books again and write full time seemed extravagant. Maybe if I got my Master’s, Mom would live longer. She’d be able to drink a toast with her neighbor, Charlene. She’d say, “My daughter got her Master’s,” and in my small way, I would give her something to be proud of. Even though I knew an MFA degree wouldn’t guarantee a career or make me more employable, it would make me an unusually articulate sex worker. And that was something.