Эйми Бендер - The Color Master

“Did you hear what I said?”

“I’m getting to that,” he said. “You’re just all dressed up, I was trying now to figure out why.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” she said coldly. “I dressed up for you.”

He replaced his coffee in the center of the small white napkin. “Well, you look very nice,” he said. “As usual. But, Janet,” he said, “please, will you tell me why more money, why? If it’s to please me, I am so pleased. You and I had a wonderful time this week, and I will remember it forever.”

“Me too,” she said, nodding. “Forever.”

“But, then, why more money?” he asked, moving his chair closer to her. “Wasn’t it just a game? Don’t you like our sex? Isn’t sex its own reward? What can we do differently?”

He reached out his hand, warm from cupping the mug, and placed it on her collarbone, tracing the line with his finger.

“It’s good,” Janet said briskly, “I like it, I like how you touch me on my back, I like the pace and the kissing, and I like it.” Daniel moved his finger to the dip at the hollow of her throat, but her voice did not shift or relax. “But Daniel,” she continued, “let me make something clear. Maybe you did not know this, but nothing is its own reward for me.” She stared at his face as directly as she could. The words felt like fireballs in her mouth. “I want you to understand that. You don’t have to understand why, just that it’s true.”

“That nothing is its own reward? Really?”

She sat up straighter. “Now, we can of course reduce the fee to make it more financially feasible. Fifty?”

He took his hand off her body and placed it back on the table. “I mean, Janet,” he said, “do you have any idea how hard I am working my ass off to make—”

“Twenty?” she said. “I know you’re working so hard, honey, I know. But it would mean so much to me.” As soon as her voice softened, it began to break apart. “I can hardly explain how much it means to me.”

“Twenty?” he said. “Twenty?” He stuck out his lower lip, thinking. “Twenty? Jesus. I suppose I could do twenty for another week, but I don’t like it. I don’t want to. And is nothing its own reward, Janet? Really? Isn’t love its own reward?”

“Or thirty?” she asked, sorry now that she’d gone so low.

“Twenty, Janet,” said Daniel. “And then come on, now. How much money can you really make in a week off twenty dollars? Do you have something you need to buy and don’t want to tell me about? Do you think you should reconsider going back to work?”

“Twenty-five?” she murmured, tears in her eyes.

He sipped the last of his coffee very slowly, and when her eyes spilled he leaned in to kiss her forehead. “Twenty-five,” he said. “Fine. Until November 1, though, and then we’re back to regular. Okay?”

“November 8?” she asked, brushing dry her cheeks.

“Janet!”

She moved closer and pressed him desperately to her. “Our love is wonderful,” she said. “I know that. I know it’s true.”

His nose pushed into the smoothness of her hair. “We’re each other’s reward,” he offered, but she just dug her head deeper into his shoulder and whispered into the caves of his neck.

“November 8, then,” he said. “And that’s it-it-it.”

“Thank you, Daniel,” she breathed. “You have no idea.”

After they hugged, he went to watch TV. She wrote it all down carefully on the paper: November 8. 25 dollars. 770 currently . As if she would forget.

Starting the next morning, she initiated sex every day. If the week before had been largely his fantasy enacted, now it was all hers. In the shower, in the darkness under all the covers of the bed, at his warehouse among the shoeboxes in his work boots. It felt slightly pathetic to her that she had to do four now to each one before to make the same amount of cash, but she was ravenously hungry for contact all day long, and Daniel, who had grown accustomed—before the previous week—to a steady but slightly lackluster sex life, let her enthusiasm spark his own. He took a lunch with Edward as a break, and only begged fatigue a few times when Janet’s demand was kind of overwhelming, he said, since he’d just gotten home and just this morning in the shower and he needed some food and couldn’t they watch TV tonight?

She laughed with big red smudge-free lips and fed him and let him watch four sitcoms in a row, but before he fell asleep she was on him again and said he didn’t have to do anything at all but just be still and sleepy and she would complete all the movement.

At the end of the week, on Sunday afternoon, she presented him with a tidy bill, typewritten, accounting for each time, and labeling where/when it had happened, with a dotted line and a $25 at the end. The total for that first week was $250. A small amount compared with the easy near-thousand of the previous week, but a clear exchange nonetheless. Daniel paid it into her palm, in cash, counting backwards.

“Sunday’s my day off,” he said when she started to undo her bra. “Go do something else, honey, please.” He plopped in front of the TV with a bowl of rice cereal to watch some football, and Janet gathered herself into the pale-blue bathtub and attended to her body quietly in there, moaning softly under the whir of the bathroom fan; afterward, she paid herself fifty dollars by transferring funds from her savings to her checking account. That made three hundred dollars for the week.

November 8 shot around the corner in a blink; it was probably the quickest two weeks of her life. And it was not enough. That much was clear instantly. She had started, by now, to see the entire world in terms of currencies. She considered charging her few friends for their lunches based on who demanded more time and attention during the lunch itself, charging strangers a quarter in the supermarket aisle when they did not move their cart in time. Charging for each meal she cooked, including tip. One afternoon, when her father sailed off into one of his long monologues on the phone, she actually tape-recorded their conversation and then took four hours and typed it out as a script, with his endless speech on the right side of the page and her responses on the left: yes, uh-huh, of course. It was amazing, to see the contrast. How long were those pageful reports. How little she spoke. How wealthy she would be if she just charged him a dollar a word.

I am twenty-four-hour resentment, said Janet, in her bustier, to the glinting mirror. I am every-cell resentment. I am one hell of a big resentment, she said. The mirror and wall did not answer. They knew very well what she was like by now. But when had it shifted? In high school, she’d walked tall in her own deprivation and had volunteered at the homeless shelter in her free time. She bought her dad charming birthday gifts, and the homeless shelter made her a mobile saying she was wonderful, with each paper letter brightly colored, hanging from the stick. The “N” and “R” fell off in a week, so over her bed, for years, the stick slowly turned, announcing “WODEFUL.” I am grateful, she’d said every day in high school, grateful for the food on my plate and the roof over my head. Grateful for my dad. Grateful I live in a country where we have options. For our beautiful environment, she said on Saturdays, sorting through the sticky plastic bottles at the recycling center.

Now, years later, even washing a single dish irritated her. I do everything around here, she grumbled to herself while moving the sponge over the circle. Even though she knew it wasn’t true. She hadn’t done the dishes in weeks. Daniel changed all the lightbulbs and paid the bills. He rubbed her feet and listened to her complaints. The truth was, she just didn’t want to do anything at all. She did not want to have a job or have children or clean the bathroom or say hello. She only did a dish with happiness just after Daniel had done a dish. She only bought Daniel a present after he’d just bought a present for her, and even then she made sure her present wasn’t quite as good as his.