Chapter Text
Eddie knows that he really should work tonight. That had been the entire point of going out to tie one on in the first place. A few whiskeys, an eyeful of a pretty girl for a pleasant image to conjure in the throes of non-passion later, and then he’d hit the bricks. But there’d been no stunners, and he’d only had enough money for a shot and a Pabst Blue Ribbon, which had about as much of an effect on him as a Diet Pepsi.
But Eddie knows that he really should work tonight. Actually, Eddie knows that he really has to work tonight. Because rent is due on Monday. All $150 of his end, and he currently only has… Well, enough for a shot and a PBR. Which has been spent. Worse, Steve already had his half ready after a pretty lush week, which meant Steve felt he had the right to hound Eddie about his share of their shithole shoebox studio.
Eddie missed when the landlord had been a dude. Or that dude specifically, Rami, the one who’d knock off thirty bucks if Eddie occasionally let him suck his dick while he said “oh, daddy, what a fucking mouth, god, that’s good, more, god, you were built for this.” (Rami would knock off fifty, even, if Steve sprawled out on his adjacent twin bed and smoked a cigarette while watching them impassively.)
But now girls were running the world, and some chipper middle-aged chick named Linda was breezing by at exactly 9 AM on the first of each month to pick up their cash.
“In the future, could we try checks instead?” Linda requested on her first month managing. Her smile looked precariously brittle. Could Steve and me take you on a weekly figurative trip to Paris and not have to pay at all, Linda, baby? Eddie thought, but instead shook his head and said “Sorry, this is the best we can do.”
Eddie lived life doing the best he could. He woke up every morning as early as he could, which, because of his working hours, was midday. He ate food. Not good food, but he kept his belly full, and if he couldn’t afford to keep it full for a few days, Steve would help out, and vice versa. He didn’t open up the internal Tupperware sitting behind his intestines that held the multitudinous tragedies, traumas, and unfortunate life events of Eddie Munson. And to pay rent, eat, and keep the Tupperware closed, Eddie had to fuck for money. Which was fine. It was fine. He was good at it. Mostly it didn’t even bother him.
What Eddie could really use tonight is blow. No, well, what he could really use, what he always knew he could really use, hovering in the back of his head since he quit it mid-November 1987, was smack.
He wouldn’t. He was a good boy now. Nearly three years of being a good boy. But even a little, teeny, baby hit would make it so he could wander around the spots he needed to wander around to turn a trick without feeling so goddamn miserable. But he wasn’t allowed . On account of the doing the best he can do. So he’d have to give head to some sweaty, meek, and mean dude in some car in full consciousness. He didn’t even have enough cash to scrounge together to make his way into one of those decadent hotel bars where he could maybe snag some lonely, giddy cougar if he was lucky.
But also? Fuck it. Fuck it! Fuck it. Maybe he could at least get his ass over to a mid-level bar. Maybe his fantasy of finally infiltrating a very wealthy, very beautiful bachelorette party who just always dreamed of running a train on a brown-eyed gigolo would be there, waiting for him, and he’d—
Someone burns rubber up next to where he’s walking. Someone in an absurd fucking car. Eddie’s only a medium-level car guy, and he feels an almost emotional tug over how nice this car is.
And then the window rolls down, and someone leans out. There’s his pretty girl to imagine. Christ, almighty. Strawberry blonde. Big, green eyes. Pretty mouth. Teeny, tiny, teeny. A hot, somewhat-more-appropriately-sized Tinker Bell.
Huh. Maybe he actually drank a shit-ton and passed out at the bar and is currently experiencing something between a dream and a delusion.
“I’m lost!” Tink shouts from her driver’s seat. She says it in a pseudo-wail, almost accusatory, like she knew this would happen. Like Eddie, who has never seen this woman in his life, put too much trust in her to not be lost.
“Okay,” Eddie nods. “Do you—where are you trying to go?”
“The Beverly Wilshire!” the girl chirps back. She reaches to the passenger seat and flashes Eddie a crisp map. “It’s all—I’m all turned around, I’m here alone, I just — Where am I now?”
The Beverly Wilshire. Of course. Of course. Eddie can’t believe this chick’s producer boyfriend, or whoever the fuck, isn’t sitting next to her with his hands down her pants as they speak. She’s probably late for martinis and oysters and quietly nodding along and whatever else a girl like this does.
“Not far. You’re right in the middle of Hollywood right now. And you gotta keep going westward. Sorta. Lemme—”
The woman thrusts the map at him more flamboyantly. “Can you show?”
“Can you show?” Eddie sometimes imagines a little invisible timer ticking above his head. Each minute that passes where he’s not turning tricks means more little arcade game animated coins spilling out of his jacket sleeves. There is not a fucking penny to be made in this little interaction. But Eddie has never been economic when it comes to girls. Unfortunate. But accepted.
Eddie leans his elbows on the open car window (he feels like some of his lady friends with a similar profession while in this position: hooker mode ) and goes to unfold the map. Something about the gesture, and the small amount of direction Eddie is preparing to give, is too much for the woman. She flaps her hands desperately.
“Could you—I’m so sorry. Could you just get in and direct me?”
Eddie’s mouth opens and shuts dumbly. Was this woman unwell? “I—you want me… To get in your car. After informing me you’re lost and alone.”
“Yes,” the blonde blinks back up at him without a thought.
“Maybe my friend Richard Ramirez can help you out, too,” Eddie cracks.
She frowns. “Does he live near there?”
“Jesus Christ.” Eddie goes for the door handle and throws himself down into the two-seater’s bucket passenger seat.
“Alright. Start by going straight.”
The woman smiles—no, beams —at him. “Thank you so much. When we get there I can buy you a drink, maybe?”
Eddie shrugs. But of course he’ll accept it.
After Eddie signals the first right, they are quiet for a moment.
“I said no to a driver, to, I don’t know—“ the woman signals the silliness of the decision with a wave of her hand before bringing it down with a soft smack against her own exposed thigh. She’s in a very expensive looking pink houndstooth miniskirt, with a blazer to match. Barbie’s first business meeting. A Very Slutty Jackie O Halloween. Something like that.
“This whole trip is about proving my independence.” The woman says this with no irony. She says it with the pep of a fictional teenager. They have been in the car together for three total minutes.
Eddie’s already this far in. “Proving to who?”
“I work for my dad.”
“Doing what?”
“I’m a paralegal. Are those holes in your jeans on purpose?”
Eddie glances down at his ripped-up jeans. “Fifty-fifty, I’d say. Your dad’s a hotshot lawyer, then?”
“I dunno about hotshot,” Chrissy smiles. By the look of her leather pumps, Eddie thinks his descriptor is appropriate. “I’m just helping out for this year. Then law school. I’m out here for a weekend to be charming with his Los Angeles branch and keep my options open for school and all that.”
Eddie thinks he could ask this girl for her social security number with no preamble and she just might give it to him.
“Law school. Right on.”
“Yah-huh!”
More directions. More quiet. A comment about the traffic here versus New York. Eddie saying he’s never been. More quiet, while Eddie considers that this is the cleanest car he has been in perhaps ever and he tries to stop raking eyes over this chick’s body.
“Babe?” Eddie says.
The woman laughs at the pet name. “What?”
“What’s your name?”
“Oh! Oh my gosh! I didn’t even realize — Christine! I mean, Chrissy, I go by Chrissy. You?”
“You’re about to pass your little hotel, Chrissy.”
Chrissy squeals to another gut-churning stop. Eddie reaches a hand forward to catch himself on the dash. “So,” she says with a casualness that reveals she just drives this badly all the time. “Are you—did I ruin your evening?”
Eddie tilts his head back and forth. “Meh. A couple hours of work, maybe, but it’s alright. Can’t ignore a lady in distress.”
“You work nights?”
“Sometimes.”
“What do you do?”
He should obviously lie. Maybe if it’s a good enough lie he can head upstairs with her for free and—no, that fantasy is ridiculous, even for him. Maybe it’s better to just—
“Do I still get my rum and coke even if you hate the answer?”
Chrissy smiles, like she’s charmed, and extends her hand in a businessman’s shake. “I’ll make it a double, even.”
Eddie answers as he returns the shake, “I, um, offer services, like, ah, favors. To people.” She was a fucking lawyer. That was, like, one step down from a cop. Why was he being so stupid? Just say… Just say… “I offer my time and company.”
Chrissy has a look on her face that is the opposite of blank, like she’s doing rapid mental math.
“World’s oldest profession,” Eddie tries again.
Silence. Sweet, sweet, processing-the-fact-that-you’re-sitting-in-a-car-with-a-male-prostitute silence. It doesn’t matter. It’s not like she can do anything. He thinks. He’s pretty sure. He’s not brushed up on the power of paralegals.
“Oh my God! ” Chrissy gasps, a whisper, but it’s not so horrified and more—Eddie can only think to describe it as excited ? “I’ve never—that is so interesting. Can I—Do you—Can I ask you questions and stuff?”
She glances around the car quickly, as if worried someone is listening.
“If you’re still covering the bar tab.”
Chrissy pshs with a wave of her hand. A hotel valet opens Eddie’s door.
They nearly make it to the double doors of the hotel before Chrissy whirls around with an oh! She looks like some sort of children’s book detective with her hand in the air: Just one more thing…
“What’s your name?”
“Eddie.”
“Eddie,” she repeats back. She drags out his name like she’s tasting it before nodding once.
A doorman has caught up to their approach, and dutifully holds the door. Chrissy flings him a floating hello as she wanders past.
Eddie can’t help the low whistle that comes out of him when he takes in the lobby (or, he probably could help the low whistle, but he can’t be bothered to). Chrissy glances at him only briefly, and he’s about to apologize before he sees the briefest flash of a dimple appear on her face.
Joints like these ones are more Steve’s speed. They could be yours, too, if you bought a nice shirt and cut your hair, comes Steve’s internal monologue of a voice, which Eddie hears more often than he’d like to think. The hotel is pristine and bright. Not fluorescent. It’s bright like heaven, bright like dreamy , and so heavily staffed with trained professionals it's almost off-putting.
Eddie is so lulled by the Beverly Wilshire’s paradisical design that he hardly recalls the process of walking into the hotel bar and sitting in the plush armchair (an armchair in a bar, like they were in the fucking sitting room of their manor) across from Chrissy. Drinks are there in a flash—double rum and Coke as promised for Eddie, a vodka soda with a splash of lime for
Chrissy—along with a bowl of salted nuts. Eddie takes a big, scrappy handful of the snack with no self-consciousness. If he’s going to get side-eyed, it’s gonna be for the mullet and jeans, not the table manners of a basset hound.
Chrissy observes the space with a blank comfort, an easy, owl-like rotating of her head. Eddie senses these are the spaces that she’s used to. The fresh flowers springing out of the tiny vase on the dark wood of their table likely strikes her as the norm. Eddie figures things are meant to look this nice, be this nice, in her eyes. Eddie doesn’t hate her for it, he doesn’t think. She’s smiling at him quite sweetly as she takes him in. “I don’t want to be impolite,” Chrissy says.
“Good idea,” he smiles back.
Chrissy cartoonishly slumps downward into her chair, like she’s melting at the hips, like he’s killing her by acting coy. “I’ve never—it’s so—” Chrissy throws her hands up desperately. “I wanna know how it works!”
“I’m an open book,” Eddie scooches down in his chair and lets his legs splay out. The low table between them is small, really designed only to hold their two glasses, the flowers, and the tiny ramekin holding their cashews. When he clunks his boots out, they nearly touch Chrissy’s chair across from him. She glances down at his encroachment with a shy smile.
“Alright, what do you do?”
“I already said,” Eddie smiles, leading his drink’s swizzle stick up to his lips. “You gonna pull a vice squad badge out of that skirt, ma’am? Need me to speak into the mic?”
Chrissy laughs, and it’s gorgeous. Hiccupy and real and startled.
“No! No, I mean, I know what you do, but, I mean, how? Like, you come up to me and you—” Chrissy gestures with a flat palm for Eddie to take it away.
She’s so… Cute . Even about this. It’s odd. It’s charming. “Hm, alright,” Eddie appraises her. “First of all, I would never come up to you.”
Chrissy’s brow furrows like this is offensive and not a relief. “Am I doing something wrong?”
“You’re young. And a woman. And you’re hot. So three for three on not needing some paid male company.”
“That’s not…” Chrissy shakes her head and sits upright. She’s frowning, carefully selecting her words. “What if,” Chrissy starts, “there was some cute young woman who just wanted you so bad. And because of this—because of these silly rules and stereotypes, I mean, you never knew! What if you’ve been missing strong financial opportunities?”
“You should be my pimp.”
“Do you have one?”
Eddie shakes his head. “I was teasing.”
“Oh.” Chrissy nods and reaches for her drink. “OK. Sorry, continue.”
Eddie breathes in, but Chrissy stops him.“Wait! You said—I lose a point because I’m a woman ?”
Eddie raises an eyebrow. “Christine. I imagine you are a cultured girl. I imagine, even if you’ve never met someone with my job, you can picture our number one clientele.”
Chrissy tilts her head. Her eyes widen, and then she tries to make them not widen, so eventually she’s squinting at him like she forgot her glasses.
“Boys,” Chrissy says, with a ruminative blink.
Boys. It evokes images of handsome young men with white teeth and clean bodies in well-fitting jeans. Not… Eddie’s usual clientele. Or ever clientele.
Eddie nods in spite of the descriptor discrepancy. “Boys,” he agrees.
Chrissy takes a long sip of her drink in an attempt, Eddie assumes, to casually process this information.
“And how do you—do you prefer—Sorry. I’m—this is new territory for me.”
“You’re doing great.”
“Can you finish that drink so I can buy you another one? Please? I feel… Creepy.”
“Let’s absolve you, shall we?” Eddie abandons the straw for the glass lip of his rum and Coke and shoots back the drink. Some of the smaller pebbled ice catches in his throat.
Chrissy flags the bartender—a woman in a pristine white shirt and bowtie. “I think we need shots,” she says to Eddie. She sounds a little shell-shocked.
“If you insist,” Eddie grins.
Eddie takes matters into his own hands and skillfully punts the conversation toward Chrissy and her life. She has an apartment and a cat. She likes that she only has to see her dad during work hours and her mom on weekends because they are “a bit much”. She is only really here to make her family sweat it out—she’d never move somewhere so far away, especially to a place with no seasons (a statement only ever made by a person who’s never had to spend a night outside). She bites her lower lip a lot, and when she laughs or chews a single peanut at a time, she covers her mouth. Eddie hates this gesture because for a moment he can’t see her slightly crooked front teeth, which are both unfathomable on her rich girl face and insanely hot. Did she know that? Did she avoid braces? Was she not actually rich?
After finishing a story about having to once go all the way across Manhattan twice in one work day with very important, scary divorce papers for an important, scary man, Chrissy sits upright, as if she’s suddenly come into herself. Eddie can tell she’s been getting into her cups by the way she’s been gesturing more. And her cheeks have gone from pink to a shade closer to red—with a flush to match on her collarbones.
“What the heck?”
What the heck. Jesus God. She was a Girl Scout.
“What?”
“We—when did we start talking about me?”
“Dunno what you’re talking about. I’m having fun.”
Chrissy purses her lips. “Are you wooing me?”
“Wooing you?”
“I’m—you’re–is this like Karate Kid? I was being taught your ways without even knowing?”
“I haven’t seen Karate Kid but that doesn’t sound quite right.”
“You haven’t seen Karate Kid ? Were you alive in 1982?”
“I guess, yeah. I don’t watch much. More of a reader.” Eddie has been and will always be poor. TVs were never a given, but an occasional treat that would have to be sold when the time came for drugs, bail, or, now that he was clean, rent. And even then, they were usually just background noise for fucking or snorting. Something to stare at blankly when you were slack-jawed and out of your mind.
“I love movies,” Chrissy returns.
“Did I say I didn’t watch much? What I meant to say was that I love movies,” Eddie showily corrects, sitting up and leaning forward, chin resting on fists.
“That was a more obvious pivot.”
“When I’m subtle you feel duped,” Eddie reminds her.
“So you were using your little tricks on me!” Chrissy points a playful and not-that-accusatory finger at him.
Eddie lets his arms cross and leans back in the chair once again. “Well, I’m also an incorrigible flirt. So. It could be either or.”
Chrissy tucks some of her hair behind her ear. “Can you tell me what the weirdest thing you ever did was?”
“Nothing’s too weird. I have an open mind.”
Chrissy narrows her eyes once again, a yeah, right of an expression.
“That’s what I tell prospective clients,” Eddie stage whispers, hand up to his mouth.
Chrissy teeters forward, excited to be in on the joke. “Who, me?” she points to herself.
Eddie winks.
“Do more,” she copies his stage-whisper.
Eddie dips his fingers into his shot glass and tugs out the squeezed lime, placing it between his teeth and digging into it with an incisor. It tastes acidic and a little bit like the dregs of the tequila it was marinating in.
Chrissy notes the move. “Do you want another?”
“I actually was thinking we could get out of here,” Eddie murmurs.
Chrissy tilts her head, like a puppy taking in cues. “Yeah?”
Eddie reaches forward and rests a hand on her knee. The sheerest pantyhose, so sheer he didn’t even notice it on her leg before—sits between his palm and her skin.
“I can show you a really good time,” Eddie says, keeping his expression soft, smiling, easily able to opt out of at any point.
Chrissy stares down at where his hand rests on her leg. He’s just about to pull away when she grabs his hand with both of hers. She doesn’t move him anywhere, just strokes her thumbs along his wrist.
“And you can be discreet?” Her gaze flits between his both of eyes, like she wants to catch the moment where he knows she’s teasing along with him.
Eddie nods. “I can be whatever you need me to be, sweetheart. Don’t you wanna just relax and have fun for once? Know for certain that it can all be about you for a couple of hours?”
Chrissy pouts. It’s getting a little obnoxious. How sexy she is. “Just a couple of hours?”
Eddie shrugs. “Or longer. But I am hourly.”
“How much?”
Eddie laughs. “ Now you’re gettin’ it! That was almost as rude and direct as a street pick-up!”
Chrissy lets go of his hand to hide her face in her palms. “I was just pretending!” she shouts, and he can tell she’s red-faced all the way up to her forehead. After a few beats of hiding, she peeks between her fingers. “Not asking for me, but how much is it, really?”
“Not answering unless you’re saying it is for you,” Eddie volleys back.
Chrissy drops her hands and flops in her seat like a little ragdoll again, this time letting out a long-suffering ugghhh.
“OK. OK. Fine.” Chrissy abruptly sits up ramrod straight and stares him dead in the eyes. There’s suddenly no hint that it’s killing her to do this. It’s like she’s thrown all the sheepishness and shyness she was just wriggling under out of some imagined internal window. “Sir, I’m very interested in your services,” Chrissy puts on the voice of a cartoonish professional. “How much is your hourly rate?”
Eddie does not have a hard and fast rate. For obvious reasons. Sitting in a place like here, with someone in expensive clothes like Chrissy (a major, major rarity) means he would say a much higher number than, say, sitting at a dive bar with some slimy closeted middle-aged trick.
Eddie wonders how shrewd Chrissy is, but ultimately figures she’s more booksmart than street(walker, ha ha) smart. “Hundred dollars an hour.”
He likes that her mouth falls open.
“For real?”
It’s not like anything’s gonna happen, anyways. “For real.”
Chrissy hums. “So, I’m here for a week. What would that look like?”
“Am I, like, just hanging out in your room, or—”
Chrissy shakes her head. “Nah-uh. Coming to my social functions, holding my purse,” she looks him over with a wry grin, “making sure you’re sitting up straighter than you are right now… The whole nine yards.”
Eddie makes his lips do that horsie-vibration as he exhales. “All that? That’d cost a lot.”
“Let’s say that I have a lot,” Chrissy says.
“Five grand.”
“ Five ?”
“That’s a steal in my books.”
“How much do you usually make a night?” Chrissy asks.
“Are you suddenly haggling with me? I thought you were just thrilled by my presence. I thought this would be easy for you.”
“You cost four drinks so far. Different snack bracket.”
“ Snack bracket. How old is the usual crowd you’re hanging out with?”
“I can do two grand.” Chrissy says it fast, and Eddie wonders if she’s trying to say it before she stops herself.
“Four.”
“Three.”
Three thousand dollars. Three thousand dollars. Almost two years of rent. Or years of groceries. Or thousands of beers. Or a billion cigarettes. Even as a joke it wriggles something desperate and wanting in his heart.
Chrissy thrusts her hand forward. Eddie claps his hand into hers. They shake for about three too many pumps of their arms, like they’re uncertain about letting go.
“Are we joking around?” The question slides out of him, as if verbalized it before thinking it. Eddie can’t believe he is, for once, the first person to break the bit.
“I dunno!” Chrissy laughs. “But I’ll give you the five bucks I’d give the bellhop to bring my suitcase up?”
“I’m not one to turn down five bucks.”
“I sensed this about you,” Chrissy coos, a little mean and a little sassy but mostly fun and Eddie wonders if he’s about to have sex with a very pretty girl for free tonight.
—
An older couple dressed to the nines, with the husband looking like he’s the fucking Monopoly man, stand next to Chrissy and Eddie as they all wait for the elevator. The elevator doors slide open. The elevator has a loveseat in it.
“The elevator has a loveseat in it,” Eddie says.
Chrissy nods, like yeah, very observant.
The lobby boy—meek and pimply, which is fine, as Eddie is friends with plenty of the meek and pimply—sort of flinches at Eddie’s appearance. This is a bit much, in Eddie’s opinion, as Eddie doesn’t have horns literally growing out of his head (yet! But one day his Neuromancer body modification dreams may come true!).
The older woman shakes her head quickly at the lobby boy, rejecting the ride up. Presumably because of Eddie. This pisses him off. Even though it’s like, no shit they're scared of him—by this spot’s standards, he looks like he should have a mangy dog, a harmonica, and a bindle. But their distaste pisses him off anyways. Impulse control issues is the phrase of Eddie’s life: written on his report cards ‘til he dropped out, spoken by the local sheriff, the judge who tossed him in foster care, the uncle who helped get him out, and now about once a week by Steve. Before Eddie can really think about it, he throws his dirty Doc Marten (any of you bitches in here ever heard of a thrift store?) onto the mirrored wall of the elevator, swinging it past Chrissy’s body so she’s boxed in. He leans in to tie his shoe, leaving a little smear on the pristine mirrored reflection before him, and tries his best not to smile at the peripheral image of the older couples’ dismayed faces. Chrissy’s expression is much easier to see. Or hear, because she lets out a little sighed oh gosh as the doors close.
Oh gosh. Oh gosh. He’s going up to a room on the—Fourteenth floor? Like the top one? Hello?—with a chick who says oh gosh.
Chrissy walks with easy purpose out of the elevator and into the hall, but not before sending another airy little thank you! to the lobby boy.
The first thing Eddie notices is the lack of doors along the hotel floor. Eddie is used to motels as the norm and Best Westerns when people are feeling splashy. Rooms in those places are a matter of as many as fucking possible in one hallway. Up here there are maybe eight doors total, all spread out.
“That one’s really crazy,” Chrissy points down the hall to a set of double doors. “It’s the Presidential Suite, and my dad said one time he met a client there, from his West Coast branch, and—”
“A client in a hotel room?” Eddie quips. “Your dad and I have similar jobs, it seems.”
Chrissy shoots Eddie a look as she stops in front of one of the large white doors. “Watch it,” she chides, but it’s gentle. “He said the room was, like, huge. Like an apartment.”
Eddie pictures a balding but handsome dude who talks to Chrissy like, oh, my darling, I just want you to be comfortable. If Chrissy’s hot, does she get her looks from her dad? In another timeline, does Eddie help Chrissy’s unseen father get to the Beverly Wilshire and end up in his room? Is this the most disgusting train of thought he’s ever pursued in his life? Perhaps!
“And your room is…?”
“Just normal,” Chrissy shrugs, slotting the cardboard key into the opening. A light flashes green.
Chrissy opens the door to reveal a room that is not at all normal. When Eddie opens his eyes at his own place every morning, he looks directly at his stove if he looks forward, and directly at Steve’s twin bed if he’s on his side. His sink is outside his bathroom, which houses a toilet and a shower that sometimes spits brown. That is the whole space.
This hotel room opens onto a living room . There’s a balcony beyond that, and a bathroom to their right that would fit two of Eddie’s. Eddie has less of a grasp on what’s going on with every moment that passes, and the feeling of disorientation reminds him to lock in on the golden rule of prostitution, the one that transcends gender, stature, and monetary amount offered: Where are the closest exits?
This girl was obviously here on daddy’s money. A paralegal made more than Eddie by probably a lot, sure, but not enough for you to be in one of the suites of the Beverly Wilshire and maybe paying a male escort three grand for a laugh. Her dad must’ve been rich to a disturbing degree. Old money on top of new money. Rich to the extent that his daughter’s big independent “work trip” was mainly to shop around at fancy schools and have dinner with established law men who would be charmed by her, just so her dad could hear about it from them next time they met at their own obscenely fancy dinner. Which made Eddie wonder, logistically, what Chrissy’d say to dear old daddy when they mentioned the boy she was with. But not his problem. Not his problem.
Chrissy is already in the bathroom, apparently washing her hands (because of the… filth of the luxury elevator? Is that how rich people are?). Eddie drops Chrissy’s suitcase by the front and makes his way into the common area of the space. The Los Angeles skyline peers at him from behind the glass balcony door, and Eddie stumbles toward its visage as he always does. He is, tragically, cornily, painfully, a sucker for Los Angeles from a vantage point.
Chrissy approaches from the bathroom just as Eddie presses his forehead against the glass of the door. She stands next to him, close enough that their arms almost touch. Eddie gets the sense that this girl is less Ramona Quimby precocious and more, like, brave and existentially curious. In a real way. He has no solid evidence for this sense. But it’s there, emanating off of her. Or maybe it was just her vague curiosity, a wealthy girl naively prodding about what it’s like to be in the shit as someone who had never been in the shit before. Maybe those traits looked exactly the same. And yet, and yet, Eddie had no desire to fuck with her. Or even pretend to fuck with her.
Eddie wonders what Chrissy’s thinking as she gazes outward at Los Angeles’ glittery evening smog. The sight so moves Eddie on the rare occasion that he gets to see it from a higher junction that it makes him feel stupid. It looks like a city worth living in. It looks like how it’s supposed to feel, like if you got up on the balcony’s ledge and launched yourself out at it, the city would catch you in its thick atmospheric layer and settle you down somewhere warm and special. Somewhere everyone else who was warm and special recognized your warm and specialness. Somewhere where alcohol got you drunk in a nice way, and sex was with someone you found delicious. This was not, actually, how anywhere worked. Not even, or maybe especially not, Los Angeles.
“I was thinking,” Chrissy’s voice is soft, almost apologetic about breaking the silence, but maybe Eddie’s projecting, “about our deal.”
Eddie can’t believe he’s about to say this. “Y’know, Chrissy, three grand is a lot. I don’t—do you have that? To spend?”
“Most definitely,” Chrissy hums. She inexplicably sounds close to sad. “What am I called?”
“What?” Eddie pulls himself away from the Los Angeles skyline. Up close, in the slightly less dreamy light of the hotel overhead, Chrissy looks a little tired. Crumbs of mascara fleck along her cheekbone. But her eyes—trained as Eddie’s just were outward at the city—move with the clarity of someone endlessly aware.
“If I, like, hire you,” Chrissy clarifies. “What’s your name for me? In your profession?”
Eddie inhales and hmms in understanding. He rocks back on his heels. “A john, or a client, or a trick. Usually.”
“Mm. Well, I don’t know if you can tell this about me, but I can be a little—fastidious.”
Eddie gasps in pretend surprise. “Is that right?”
“And I have a mean competitive streak. I was thinking that this is a really good opportunity for me to be the best.”
“At?”
“Best trick you’ve ever turned. Ruin all the other ones. Just blow them away with my verve, respect, discretion, reasonableness, kindness…”
“Ready to pick up an award for this week? World’s sweetest john?”
“If you’ll let me?” Chrissy frames her face with her hands and blinks up at him all rapidly, and it’s a joke but she actually looks like a Disney forest creature.
“I’ll be stringent with my judgment.”
“That’ll make my success even sweeter!” she croons.
“Then OK,” Eddie sighs, like he’s letting her get away with something. His heart is pounding in his throat. He doesn’t want to think about how this is some sort of put-on, or how there’s no way this ends with him actually making that money. He knows it’s impossible. But he just puts that in the Tupperware.
Chrissy claps her hands once in delight before whirling around and leaping on the couch. Her arm extends to grab for the hotel phone. She moves with a fluidity that pendulums between ballerina grace and newly walking puppy.
As Eddie tries and fails to process what seems to be actually happening to him — that, at the very least, he’s going to sit there and watch this chick’s little butt wriggle around on a plush white couch for a couple of days, he considers that he’s perhaps been smacked upside the head with a tire iron and is currently wasting away at North Hollywood Medical Center.
“Hi? Room service? Could you send up some champagne, please?” Chrissy nods along to the voice droning on the other end, to show the person who cannot see her that she is listening attentively. “Strawberries sound great, yeah, those, too. Thank you!”
Each time Chrissy uses her little manners, they sound like the most earnest sentiments in the world.
Chrissy clicks the phone down and rolls onto her back. “How’s that? Good first start? Or same old?”
“Don’t you have work in the morning?”
Chrissy sits up on her elbows and positions her face into a pretend-panicked gape. “Oh no! Did I accidentally hire a nanny?”
“I’m not sure what you thought you hired. Did I forget to tell you that the great part about this is I’m a sure thing?”
This is maybe the first time he’s brought up the two of them fucking so tangibly, but it feels like time. Something about the way this is all going down with a certain vagueness is actually starting to give Eddie the creeps. If she turns around in twenty minutes slightly more sobered up and says “What the fuck am I doing? Get the fuck out”? If he wakes up tomorrow morning and she’s on the phone with her dad, sniffling some kind of “Oh, Daddy, I made a huge mistake and there’s a big man in here asking for lots of money”?
Eddie would feel better with the whole thing … Consummated. But Chrissy seems appalled by the fact he’s brought up that he’s here for sex.
“Oh, I don’t—” Chrissy waves her hands, a sort of old-timey, birdlike fluttering, before hauling herself up and away from the couch, toward the open French doors of the bedroom.
Eddie hears the click of her suitcase. He’s miscalculated. He can feel the phantom of Steve smacking him on the back of the head. Nice work, lover boy. Your job is to show her a nice time. So do that.
Eddie does his best to not rush but saunter (every john in the history of time, even this tiny little thing, smells desperation, and it’s only hot to a particularly sadistic five percent of clients) to the bedroom’s door frame. He leans against it with folded arms. Cool as a fucking cucumber . He tries to keep his most sacred prostitutional mantras in mind. We can do whatever you want. We can do whatever you want. Where’s my money, honey? We can do whatever you want.
“I was just teasing,” Eddie offers as he watches Chrissy unpack with off-putting precision; a GirlBot on a Saturday morning cartoon.
Chrissy turns to look at him, and she really, really looks at him. He can see her studying his eyes, his throat, all the way down his chest and waist. She’s not checking him out. She’s… He’s not sure what she’s doing. “I—” Chrissy teeters toward some sort of confession. Someone knocks on the door.
A muffled cry from the door: “Room service!”
Chrissy puts on her Professional Smile too early, proffering it flatly to Eddie instead of the man behind the door. “Coming!”
Eddie gets the sense just about everything about her—maybe, disturbingly enough, even her charming curiosity towards him—is prepared and practiced. She’s a performer. Which doesn’t help with the small stirring of dread that’s beginning to occur.
Can he not just enjoy a few nice days? Can something good not happen to him for once? He tries rolling the idea around in his head for a moment, but the issue here is that famously nothing good ever happens to Eddie Munson, and the other high-heeled leather shoe on this girl looks like it could drop pretty fucking hard.
Eddie stays positioned staring into the bedroom as he listens to more earnest thank yous from the world’s politest rich bitch, the thud of the heavy hotel door, and Chrissy trotting by where Eddie is standing in the French doors. He turns to see her settling two champagne flutes on the living room table.
Eddie gives his head two literal, physical shakes before walking into the sitting room with her. Game time. He wished he had a second to call one of his lady of the night pals who have been in swanky spots like this one for advice. What would Carol—who had once scored a first class ticket, a week in New York, and five grand based on a good hair blowout and a charming laugh—do?
“So Chrissy,” Eddie meanders into the room. “When I’m doing all the purse holding, schmoozing, and so on. Am I a boyfriend? A cousin?”
Chrissy is using the tongs from the ice bucket to painstakingly place a strawberry into each champagne flute. His question seems to not have even registered. Eddie watches her pour champagne into each with a slight tilt of the glass to reduce the foam. Eddie wonders what this woman is bad at.
Chrissy gently shoves a glass toward Eddie, and then gestures for the couch. She waits for him to settle before sitting next to him—a gap still there, but just barely. She tilts her glass toward his and they clink them gently.
“Are you feeling pampered?” Chrissy smiles.
“I’m swooning,” he deadpans.
“You’ll just be Eddie, also,” Chrissy answers his preceding question. “It’s not anyone’s business.”
“OK, sure. Just Eddie. I can improv if needed.”
“You are a steal of a deal,” Chrissy teases.
—
Eddie isn’t sure how many episodes of The Brady Bunch they had watched on the hotel’s little TV. Too many, almost certainly. But Eddie would have felt that way after about half an episode. Sometime throughout the marathon, he’d ended up sprawled on the floor. His poor little orphan Annie body was not accustomed to being on such plush sofa cushions. For the last two episodes Eddie focused on trying to get all of the meat possible off of each strawberry, down to nibbling the tiny pink bits remaining along the green leaves.
Eddie turns his head to ask Chrissy about maybe, possibly, turning the channel to something less soul-crushingly unrelatable to him. Her eyes meet his immediately. She’s been watching him.
“Hi,” Eddie says. His voice comes out low, and he realizes it’s maybe been hours since he’s spoken.
“Hi,” Chrissy smiles. “I was just—”
“You’re allowed to look,” Eddie assures. “I’m not shy.”
Chrissy folds her arms protectively inward, hands clasped to elbows. “I am, a little,” she murmurs.
Eddie rolls from his back onto all fours and bridges the gap between the two of them in a stalking motion, before resting on his knees at her feet. Chrissy’s face is contemplative as she studies him in the now dark of the hotel room.
Finally, finally, finally, there’s a crackle of something in the air, apparent in one singular hitch of Chrissy’s breath. Maybe this will all be fine. Maybe this is the same as the rest of them, just in a slightly different flavor.
“Oh my goodness,” Chrissy leans forward, so that their faces are close. Not close enough to touch. Never close enough to touch, Eddie notices. A barrier up always.
Her voice is only a sweet whisper. “Your lips are all red.” She smiles, almost privately, as she inspects them.
Eddie runs his tongue along his bottom lip as his eyes fall to her own mouth. His hand is lifting before he can think about it. Chrissy does not flinch as his fingers, soft, gentle, and slow, come to touch her bottom lip. “Yours are such a pretty pink,” he murmurs back.
Eddie removes his touch slowly. Chrissy’s hand immediately replaces his own, tracing her bottom lip. She does not stop looking at him. “If you come sleep in the bed…Can we just sleep?”
Eddie says: “Baby, you’re offering me paid time off.” Eddie thinks: I would really fucking like to make you come. But fine.
Chrissy stands and makes it so Eddie, still kneeling, has to look up at her. She reaches down and runs a hand along his cheek. He feels warm. “I’m sorry if you don’t usually get treated nice,” Chrissy says. “You seem so sweet.”
Eddie feels a white heat in the pit of his stomach. Shit like that pisses him off. What the fuck does someone like her know? Where does she get off pretending to worry about people like him? Why is she insistent on making him comfortable ? “Yeah,” Eddie says. It comes out flat.
Chrissy removes her hand and a brief snap of concern passes her features, but then she just gently steps around him. Eddie hears her begin to pick up the clutter of the living room. He doesn’t feel like turning his head to watch her.
“My dad’s gonna think I was throwing myself a little party when he gets this hotel bill,” she’s trying to sound light. “Might think I’m falling for a life of debauchery out West.”
Dear old daddy had come up yet again. “You trying to show him who’s boss with all this?” Eddie blurts, still stinging from her woe-is-you concern. “Finally on your last nerve with the old man?”
Chrissy doesn’t stop clearing the table. Her voice comes out pleasant, but dull. “No, I love him. He’s just dying.”
Eddie screws his eyes up tight. Fuck. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s alright,” Chrissy returns. “Nothing to be done.”
“Is it—Does he—”
“I’m not going to talk about it anymore, Eddie. Please.”
“Of course,” Eddie nods, and he gets up so he can face her. He’s here to make it a good time. “Whatever you want.”
“Could you tug the sheets out from the bottom of the bed while I brush my teeth?” Chrissy is still fussing over the room service tray, still not looking at him.
Eddie bows like a butler. “It would be an honor.”
She doesn’t give him much—a laughing exhale through her nose—but it’s something.
When she’s done what must be half an hour of pre-bed primping, Chrissy comes out from the bathroom and crosses her arms. She taps her upper lip, signaling thought. “Hm. No PJs, I assume.”
Chrissy is in these silky champagne toned shorts with a button-up short sleeve to match. Eddie wonders how many months of his rent they’d cost.
“Not even if I packed a suitcase would there have been… PJs.” Had Eddie ever said the term “PJs”? He’s never sat before a fire with a snoozing hound on Christmas day, so he assumes there has been no occasion to.
“Okay, well, we’ll figure that out tomorrow.”
Chrissy walks past him and slides into the bedside closest to the window.
Eddie considers tucking himself in fully clothed. Chrissy seems to read his mind.
“I’ve slept next to boys before, y’know. T-shirt and boxers is just fine.”
“What if I sleep bad in a t-shirt?”
“This is my fantasy!” Chrissy corrects with a lilt in her voice. “I want someone in a t-shirt!”
Eddie chuckles and starts undoing his belt. He doesn’t point out to his seemingly skittish first time client that he can see how closely she’s watching.
“Tell me a bit more about this fantasy, exactly,” Eddie says as he shimmies off his pants. “Is it just the thrill of paying someone for company? Or we’re taking the escort title very literally? Like I’m walking you around? Or we just need a bedwarmer?”
Chrissy pinches the top sheet between her fingers as she snuggles downward in bed. “Can you close the blinds before you get in bed?”
As Eddie passes her side of the bed, Chrissy grabs his forearm. “Eddie?” She might have the clearest, brightest eyes he’s ever seen in his life.
“Uh-huh?”
“I just don’t know yet, is all. What my fantasy is. Minus sweeping you off your feet for a week.”
Something tight inside of Eddie uncoils. He can tell she means it. He can, at least just for tonight, relax a little. Once the blinds are shut, Eddie throws himself onto his side of the bed. He lolls onto his side, propping himself up on his elbow. He waggles his eyebrows. “Well, consider me swept.”
Chrissy laughs. Eddie isn’t sure if she means it.
“Are you cuddly?” Eddie ventures.
“I’m…” Chrissy looks up at the ceiling thoughtfully. “I’m open to experimentation on that front.”
Eddie nods and shoves the covers on his side down so he can wriggle underneath. Chrissy appraises him before sitting up slightly. “You can put your arm under? Maybe?”
Eddie extends his elbow, so that when Chrissy lays back down her shoulders drape over the crook of his arm. She hums thoughtfully.
She rolls toward him, and she’s once again studying him, and Eddie feels shy, which is totally foreign to him as a feeling. He forces himself to hold her gaze.
“I’m sorry for telling you about my dad,” Chrissy says. “Would have been more appropriate for, like, our shared cigarette after sex.”
“You don’t have to apologize. I like to listen.” If they were still getting meta, Eddie would confess that this was one of his most utilized lines.
Chrissy’s pretty teeth dig softly into her bottom lip. “I’ll see you in the morning?”
Eddie nods.
Chrissy squeezes her eyes shut too tight, as if bracing, and then rushes forward, an arm suddenly tight around Eddie’s torso, her face pressed into his chest.
Eddie doesn’t laugh or even acknowledge the move. He senses this is very serious business for this girl. He brings his hand up to cradle the back of her head, and falls into sleep far too deep for someone on the job.