His Sugar Baby

Feeling like I earned it, I order down for a steak and fries from the Ritz Carlton room service I have access to in my building. While I wait for my dinner, I log onto the sugar daddy site. Despite there being new women on the site, none of them appeal in the slightest. It isn’t until I’m halfway through dinner and on page twenty two that she finally appears.

Out of a sea of blondes she’s only the fourth woman to have dark hair. Her hair isn’t just dark, it’s the color of a raven’s wing, long and silky running over her very impressive breasts. They could be fake. I really hope they aren’t, they fit her body in a way that screams real. Her body is a feast of curves. Unable to keep my eyes from roaming over her picture again and again, committing every inch to memory my hands clench at the idea of holding them.

        Her face is an oval of perfection. I’m sure she’s not wearing any makeup, her clear pale skin doesn’t need it. Wide grey eyes below full black brows give her a look of intelligence I hope I’m not projecting out of desire. She has high cheekbones, no makeup is needed to highlight them. A small pert nose is over a wide full mouth ripe for kissing. Her half smile reminds me of the Mona Lisa, brimming with secrets. I want to know every one of them.

        In the other profile pictures, many of the women are wearing sexy lingerie like something out of a catalog. She is wearing what some women might sleep in, a black stretch camisole and silky black pants. Her breasts, full and high under the camisole, make my cock ache. Against her pale skin, what she is wearing is enticingly erotic.

        Clicking into her profile, I barely glance at her stats, five foot six, and thirty years old. She looks younger by at least five years, though. Her profile is short and to the point and makes me smile as I hit save on the page.

My favorite color is clear, I enjoy long walks on the beach and think mean people suck. Seriously, though. I know I’m supposed to be old enough to know what I want to do with my life, but I haven’t figured it out yet. I’ve been a sugar baby before, yes it really was just until I got my degree. I got my degree and thought I’d left all this behind. I was wrong.

After five years in the day job world, using the degree everyone told me would make my life better, I figured out I hated accounting. While I try to figure out where to go from here I’m looking for a sugar daddy to maintain my living expenses. For me, the most important basis of an arrangement is respect.

        I bring up another page on my second screen then begin what I love doing the most, digging into the web to find out everything I can on Anne Thomas. I’m sure it’s the illegality of it that usually gives me the rush of adrenaline, now it’s the idea of digging into who Anne is behind her profile. I’ve found what I want, I want Anne. Now I need to know everything about her to get her.

The surface search is interesting as much for what I don’t find as what I do. She doesn’t have a single social network account, no accounts for pictures of her lunch or selfies with duck face, no tweets about mean people, no Facebook account, not even a professional account like Linkedin. Hell, even Alice has a Facebook account. I had to help her set it up so she could get updates on her grandkids. Anne Thomas gets points for that alone. While my company maintains a Facebook page, I don’t have one.

Only an hour in I’m able to confirm her honesty about her degree in accounting and two jobs for different accounting firms in Boston. She hasn’t worked, though, in almost four months. There’s an attempt for unemployment she was denied. I’m curious about her move to Chicago from Boston.

Then I find it. She had been a hooker, an actual hooker, for at least a year from what I can tell. The tax form listed the company as a modeling agency, only the modeling agency was a front for an escort service. For a long time all I can think about is how many men she’s fucked, and how she had fucked them.

I look back at the profile of Anne Thomas. With a click, it disappears. I’m up, restless. I’m pissed at Anne for being so damned appealing then taking it all away by being something different than what I had expected, what I want her to be.

The view from the window of my office has always been my favorite in my whole condo. Right now, I don’t see it. All I see is Anne’s profile picture. Every word of her profile runs across the back of my eyelids like the code I write.

Fuck, I want to punch something. I want to turn back time and have never seen the tax form. I wish I never crawled through the internet to figure out what the modeling agency really did. I can’t change what I’ve seen, so, I either go back to Anne, or I move on to another woman.

Back at my desk I pull up the website again and click past Anne’s profile. I slowly go through profiles, one after another, none of them appeal. I close the website again. It’s still there on my other screen, the tax document of who she was and now, very technically, is again.

Fuck. I search until I find it. Tabatha Marks is the madam of what appears to be one of the top five escort companies in not just Las Vegas but in the entire country. The clients had to be vetted, not just any man or woman was allowed in off the street. Every mention of it comes with accolades of how well it’s run and how the women are the best the men have had from an agency. Jaw clenched, I punch in the number for Tabatha Marks.

She picks up on the second ring. “This is Tabatha. How can I help you?”

“Tabatha, I hope you can. My name is Grant Dexter. I want some information on a woman who used to work for you, Anne Thomas.”

        There are a few minutes of silence, then I hear the tapping of her computer keys. She’s looking me up. Her response isn’t quite what I thought it would be. “Mr. Dexter, there are many Anne Thomas’ in this world. What makes you think she worked for me?”

        “I know she did. I’m looking at a tax document that says she did. I’m considering a sugar baby arrangement with her. I want to know more about her.”

        “Like what? Know more about her in what way?” Her voice is filled with boredom, as if I’m bothering her.

        Maybe it’s what pushes me to release the anger and frustration that’s been boiling since I saw it. “Like what turned her into a hooker willing to fuck some random guy for a couple of hundred dollars an hour.”

        She’s quiet for so long I think she’s hung up on me. “It must be nice in that high-rise million dollar condo, looking down at the world. I bet it was even nicer growing up in a world where you can make a million dollars at only sixteen. You had the option of M.I.T. or some other ivy league college you could pay for. Not everyone has those options.

“Anne grew up in a world where she was told she wasn’t worth anything more than being an obedient little wife, pushing out baby after baby while she served her husband and god. When you look down from your windows do you see the people on the street. Have you ever seen the people who had to actually sleep on the street? Some people only have the option of selling their body or going hungry. Have you ever gone hungry, Mr. Dexter?”

        Now she hangs up on me, which is good because I have no response. Her words humble me in a way I’ve never been before, and I deserve. They also make me dig deeper into Anne. Except I hit a wall. It takes a while to figure out why. Anne changed her name when she went to work for Tabatha. Before then her name was Faith Anne Snyder. What I find hits me harder than I expect, than I want it to.