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“I’ll be here when you’re ready.”
“I’m ready.”
“Wow, that was fast.”
“But you have to promise not to jump out of the car while it’s moving.”
“You have my word,” I said.
“You asked for it,” she said. “So here it is. I’m from New Jersey.”
I jokingly grasped my heart. “Oh, God,” I said. “It hurts. Can I take back what I said about not jumping out of the car?”
“Absolutely not,” she said. “I already have to dish out a hundred and forty bucks for a parking ticket. Imagine what it will cost to scrape your carcass off the road and have it towed back to Manhattan. In case you haven’t noticed yet, I’m kind of cash-strapped.”
I’d noticed. It was kind of hard to miss.
Which raised an interesting question. How much did she charge for her services? I’d noticed earlier how attractive she was. But now that she was smiling and laughing, she was more than attractive. She was pretty. As in really, really pretty. I could proudly say that I never paid a woman for sex, so I didn’t actually know the going rate for a high-end escort, but surely a woman like Clara—pretty, well-endowed in the chest area, and seemingly drug-free—could easily make thousands of dollars a night. Seriously. Hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. So why would she choose to be a common streetwalker?
“Can I ask you something personal?” I said.
She looked a little worried. “Yes?”
“And tell me if it’s none of my business. But I’m just curious—what exactly made you choose your particular career path?”
She shrugged. “I didn’t. It chose me.”
“How do you mean?”
“I don’t think I had a choice in the matter. It had always just been a hobby,” she said. “Or not a hobby. More of a... I can’t think of the word.”
“A passion?”
“Yeah,” she said. “A passion. But until I was eighteen, I never did anything about it. It was always just something I watched from the windows.”
“You watched from the windows?” I said. Maybe her neighbors in Jersey were perverts who left their curtains open on purpose.
“Or when I was walking through the woods,” she continued. “Or even just in the park, looking up into the trees and admiring from afar. It was all just so beautiful, you know? I couldn’t get enough of it.”
This wasn’t making much sense. But then again, New Jerseyans were known for creepier things than fucking in the treetops. I knew. I’d been to their annual food truck festival at the Meadowlands.
“Wow,” I said. “I wouldn’t have guessed. Windows. Parks. Trees.”
“The Jersey Shore was always my favorite, though,” she continued. “I’d just bring a lawn chair and watch for hours. I think I learned more at the beach than anywhere else. I’ve probably taken over a thousand pictures. And I have a bunch of videos on my YouTube channel. It’s called Clara’s Wildlife. You should check it out. You might learn a thing or two.”
Okay, now I was insulted. “I’m thirty years old,” I said. “Believe it or not, I already know a thing or two. I actually think of myself as kind of an expert on the subject.”
Her face lit up. “Oh my God. Really?”
I shrugged, suddenly bashful. “Really,” I said. “Or so I choose to believe. But I guess all men choose to believe that.”
“Are you kidding me?” she said. “You’re the only man I’ve met who’s even interested.”
“Areyoukiddingme?”I said. “If there’s one thing every man on earth is interested in, it’s your area of expertise. You of all people should know that.”
“No,” she said. “It’s the exact opposite. Most men think it’s the most ridiculous thing in the world. I must have heard the words ‘stop wasting your life’ and ‘get a real job’ about a hundred times.”
I didn’t reply. Despite the fact that I couldn’t wait to get home and check out some of the videos on Clara’s Wild Life, I agreed with the hundred or so men who told her she was wasting her life. She was clearly smart enough to succeed in a reputable career field. She could pursue her passion on the side. Why did she need to do it for a living?
