I had no idea what to do next. In the absence of inspiration, my eyes, stuffed nearly to bursting with dejection, grazed adrift over the worthless stuff scattered throughout my room. Judith broke the silence just as my mood hit its nadir. “We’ll figure something out, Andy.”
“Yeah.” With her encouragement, I renewed my efforts and asked myself whether we had found and covered every lead we could. After the better part of an hour of retracing and re-retracing our steps forwards to our future trip to Adams and in reverse all the way back to the moment we met Geraldine; and doing so with rapidly increasing frustration, I rewound past the moment I became a P.I. and arrived at the true inception of our case, the Public Information Unit hoot—and then I had an epiphany. “Judith.”
“Hm?”
“We checked the department’s social media for info, but we didn’t do a search for posts from the public mentioning our missing man.”
“Dude!” She whipped out her phone and started tapping away; I followed her lead, opened Hootr, and immediately came upon results—thousands of them, too many to comb through. “There’s a lot here, Andy… but it’s all people wondering the same thing, where he went. No info.”
I nodded. “Yeah…” Spurred by impatience, I rewound to Wednesday’s hoots. “Wait. I found the first one. Quote: ‘No meeting and no Brookvale. Today’s gone from bad to worse.’”
“‘Meeting’!” she exclaimed with a smile. “That’s the one word we wanted to hear most. Who posted it?”
“@FluffyFresh.”
“What’s in their bio?”
“‘Erica, he/they, pan. Bodypos. My body, my choice. Fighting the patriarchy since 2012.’”
“What are ‘body paws’? I know everything about being a furry and I’ve never heard of those.”
“Short for ‘body positive’.”
“Ah, but I know what that is. Did FluffyFresh say anything else interesting?”
“Yes. They added, ‘Fascists rounded us up for trespassing when we were minding our own business. #CashBailIsClassism’”
“Five-oh made a mass arrest, so the meeting was canceled. Maybe that wasn’t a coincidence… When did they post that?”
“Wednesday afternoon, 2:25.”
“Send them a message. We need to know more about this meeting.”
I felt a tiny bit threatened that she was the one issuing orders, but I decided to make light of my own insecurity with a healthy chuckle and a sarcastic “Good idea, boss.” I sent them a direct message asking for the name of the meeting’s sponsoring organization and the reason for its cancellation. “Done.”
“Now we wait.”
After 5 seconds of waiting, I pointed out, “I really hope we get a response, but… witnesses don’t always play along. This person might not respond. They’ll probably just react to a rando sliding into their DMs by blocking me on sight, without reading my message.”
“Even if they give us silence, now we know there were people in the area that morning, going to the same meeting Alex was supposed to be at, and at least one person knew he was attending. Response or no response, we’re going with your plan: visiting Adams and interviewing every one of its carnal entrepreneurs.”
“‘Carnal entrepreneurs’. That’s an interesting job title. If you ever did somehow convince me to try prost—sex work, that’s how I would identify.”
She beamed. “Thank you, and you’re welcome.”
“Let’s skim for more intel.” We scrolled through screen after screen of search results for ‘Brookvale’, but after combing through several hundred posts I concluded that there was nothing else to be found there. “I think we’ve exhausted Hootr. How’s your Headblog search going?”
“Helluva lotta nuttin’. Somebody started a Search for Alex page asking for tips, but it’s been flooded with so many thoughts and prayers that I don’t know if there are any actual tips to point us in the right direction. I also tried to check HiBall, but all of the chatter is just mutual aid stuff. I’m afraid Fluffy is our only online lead.”
“This sucks. I thought the Internet would have more to offer than two vague hoots and an army of thoughtful headless chickens. I guess we’ll just have to hope one of the folks on Adams saw something.”
“I sent a few texts to the escort agencies I’ve worked with in the past, but it’s been… a while since I was active, so some of them might not remember who I was.”
“It’s still worth a try. Okay, it’s 3:20. You said streetwalkers don’t start till 7 on Saturdays. We have 4 hours to burn.”
“We could pass the time with a little sex.”
((S-E-X sex. I’d be hearing her groans, too, not just mine.)) My heart rate spiked and my crotch jubilantly chanted, (((Fuck her fuck her fuck her fuck her fuck her!))) “Are you… saying… that—that you’re ready?”
She nodded. “Since I laid eyes on you in that dress… almost. All you need to do now is tell me your favorite movie and I’ll rip your bodice asunder and conquer your flesh.”
Oh, God, yes,
please tear my only dress to shreds
and ravish me,
then bite my soul and chew it up
and spit it out!
Though—I don’t know if I can repeat
my first performance of last night;
it could have simply been a fluke.
Perhaps you may be attempting
to boost my confidence when you
tell me that I’m a natural—
I know what you have planned for me,
you only tell me nice things so
I won’t feel bad about myself;
you’re kind and more experienced
than me. Oh, God, I suck at sex.
I just can’t do it well enough for you.
In summary, depression kicked in out of nowhere, as it often did, I broke down, and I bailed. “I—need to do my laundry.”
“That’s right! Very responsible of you to put chores before sex; that takes a lot of discipline. 4 hours is plenty of time for a couple loads. Let’s get to it.”
She yanked me along to my closet and grabbed a shirt—then paused, held it up to her face, breathed deep through her nose and exhaled with… what sounded like approval. “Strange…”
“You don’t have to make a big deal about how smelly they are.”
“No, I just—I’m sorry, for some reason I couldn’t help myself—it actually smells… kinda good.”
“Oh. Still, that was… kinda weird.”
“Yes, it was, I realize that, but—I got just a little whiff of something—and I really needed to smell it. My sense of smell’s been kinda fucked up for a while, so it’s kinda weird that this new scent caught my attention. It must be very strong for me to be able to notice it.” I cringed. “What deodorant do you wear?” She sniffed it again. Very deeply, and very loudly, with the kind of whispered sigh one lets out after a satisfying swallow of a delicious, bubbly, cold beverage.
On one level her insistence on sniffing my smelly clothes disturbed me, but on another it was… satisfying. And in light of her admission that she liked my sweaty smell, the satisfaction was, to my bewilderment, more intense than the discomfort—and yet I felt obligated to entertain the discomfort. “Old Spice.”
“Oh. It doesn’t smell like Old Spice, so I don’t think it’s your deodorant. Oh well, let’s just call it an unsolved mystery.” She started piling clothes into my baskets, inhaling deeply the scent sticking to each garment—dwelling a little longer on my underwear—before tossing it in, then helped me carry them to the conveniently empty laundry room and start the wash on 3 machines at once.
“You know, Andrea… there’s nobody else in here.”
“Yes. And I prefer it that way.”
“We could make out.”
I swallowed. ((God, yes.)) That response alone would have been perfectly fine, but I went ahead and let my low self-esteem throw in some bullshit. ((I may suck at kissing, but me being bad at kissing is nowhere near as unpleasant for you as me being bad at sex.)) Fortunately, the bullshit wasn’t bad enough to completely dissuade me. “I suppose… we… could.”
“Or you could sit on the washing machine while I play with your tits and suck on your nipples.”
((Christ, yes, but—it sounds foolish.)) “You—co—uld—but—what if—someone came in while we were—were…?”
“Then we get caught. And depending on what kind of person they are, we might gain an audience member.”
“I don’t want to get caught. Or have someone watching me and judging my… skills, or the noises I make.”
{My stage partner is seated comfortably in an armless chair, his right side facing the audience. “Ladies and Gentlemen, please welcome to the stage: Andrea Bachman, Queen of Cocksuckers!” The crowd claps and cheers.
{I enter stage left and bow, then ask my adoring fans, “Have all of you had the pleasure of meeting my dear friend Quincy Queef?”
{“Yes!”
{“Really? How well do you know him?”
{“Intimately!”
{“Then show him some love!” They do so, applauding him and calling out his name. I tease them, “Are you ready, my little perverts?” More cheers. “Then let’s get this show on the road!” My partner lifts his legs and I yank off his breakaway pants. The crowd goes wild. I slowly peel his ruby-sequined speedos down and off his legs, then swing them in circles over my head and sling them to the audience like little King David, inspiring a greedy frenzy over the shiny underwear. I kneel between his legs and lower my head—}
“I figured you weren’t ready for public stuff yet…” I snapped out of my newest fantasy. “I was just curious about how close you were to opening up to the possibility. Don’t worry your pretty little curls about it, it’ll happen in due time.”
I exhaled relief. “(Okay-thank-God.)”
She winked, then grabbed me by the plunging neckline of my dress. “So what would you say to a simple make out sesh?”
I couldn’t say ‘no’ to this woman while every organ inside me was screaming, ((Acceptable risk!)) “(Oh—okay.)” My heart pounded in my chest, driven one percent by fear, the rest by a need to become one with her.
She grinned as she deftly picked me up and plopped me down on one of the washing machines, then launched herself onto the one next to it. She pulled me in close, causing me to blush, and brought me in with coffee and—