I wrote this piece for an assignment in my fiction class in 2021 where I could write anything I wanted as long as it met the word requirement. I focused on my love of writing dialogue in this piece and strived to portray odd or unlikely but still completely authentic relationships.
“Maybe he just wants pictures of your feet or something.”
“Ew, what?”
“You don’t even have pictures of yourself on your profile, he must be into something weird.”
She had a point.
“I said I’m a struggling grad student in my bio, maybe he has a passion for higher education,” I countered, but when Marta laughed I did too. I knew that was bullshit. Men don’t download an app looking for sugar babies because they want to help women pursue their love of studying classic literature.
“Ryan.” Marta leaned forward. Her hair was pulled back, but the shorter curls that framed her face had escaped the tie-dye scrunchie that tied the rest up in a bun. A tightly-spiraled black curl fell in front of one of her eyes. “There are other ways to make money.”
“I’m not going back to being a waitress, I’m a 24-year-old woman, I can only handle someone snapping at me to get my attention so many times.”
“This could be dangerous.”
“He just wants to have dinner!”
“How many guys have just wanted to have dinner and ended up—”
“Marta.”
She leaned up against the opposite side of the couch from me, eyebrows furrowed. The gold hoop that pierced her nose glinted in the yellow light of our apartment. Marta was the kind of person who called herself a “mom friend.” She’d ask me how much water I’d had that day, she’d push my door open at five in the morning and tell me to go to sleep, she’d slip those bright orange peanut butter crackers into my hands and tell me not to drink on an empty stomach. Even when I ignored her and vomited red wine all over our pink polka-dotted shower curtain, she cleaned me up. She had a new curtain hung up the next day, this time with a pattern of fist-sized orange cats chasing mice across the fabric. She was a nice kind of “mom friend,” a good friend for me to have.
“He told me he’d give me $10,000 if I just have dinner with him, I could get us an apartment where we could have a full-sized fridge, we wouldn’t have to eat ramen anymore.”
“I like ramen.”
“We’ll get the good kind then!”
Marta had grabbed my hand. Her peach-colored nail polish was chipping.
“Please don’t go,” she said. “I have a bad feeling.”
“You have a bad feeling about $10,000 and a free dinner?”
She frowned. I’d given her the wrong answer, but that’s what she expected.
“Sometimes I feel like you do stuff just to worry me on purpose.”
Sometimes I did.
. . .
Charlie told me to meet him at a booth in the back of an Italian restaurant. The seats were a dark red and cracked fake leather, indented from many years of use. He was late, and this restaurant wasn’t as nice as I was expecting someone willing to throw away $10,000 to choose. Maybe Marta was right, maybe he was a serial killer or something. Or worse, maybe he wanted pictures of my feet.
I didn’t even know what he looked like. He didn’t have any pictures of himself on his profile, but then again neither did I. I downloaded the app out of boredom, and because a girl in my study group told me she gets $300 a week from some old guy who owns a bunch of Taco Bells and just wanted someone to talk to. I figured I could keep someone company for easy extra cash, and it would be fun to see Marta worry over it, but I ended up losing the nerve to put up pictures of myself once it was actually on my phone. I had an odd fear that once my face was on the app, everyone would know I had it. I didn’t think any less of the girl in my study group, but it was different when it was me.
I had filled out the biography section of the profile. I said I was a grad student, I studied literature, my favorite book was Frankenstein. I had forgotten about the app until I got a message from Charlie. He asked me why I liked Frankenstein so much and I told him I really admired Mary Shelley. She practically created the genre of science fiction. She was an early feminist. She lost her virginity on her mother’s grave, I always thought that was gnarly. We talked about Mary Shelley for a while.
Charlie told me I was funny. He made an offer: $10,000, free dinner. Sounded good to me. His profile said he was an accountant and had a picture of a pug instead of a person. It was the most ancient-looking pug I’d ever seen, eyes bugging out and wiry gray hairs poking out around its flattened snout. I thought anyone who could take care of a pug for that long had to be trustworthy. He told me the pug’s name was Fritz, and we could talk about the money at the restaurant.
“Ma’am?”
A hostess had appeared next to me. She had two blonde buns perched on top of her head, and the little hairs that had escaped were stuck to her forehead with sweat.
“It seems there’s been a mistake,” she said, already bracing herself for the possibility that I was the fit-throwing, snapping kind of customer, “This table was reserved for someone else.”
“Oh,” I was already moving to stand up before she could apologize, “No problem, I can move.”
It was then that I noticed a woman behind her. She didn’t look like the kind of person who would demand a particular, and already occupied, booth when there were others available. She seemed to sense that I had this thought as she immediately looked at me. Her eyes were an odd shape, perfectly round, the outside corners were tilted downwards.
“I’m really sorry,” she said, “It’s just, I’m meeting someone here.”
“Don’t even worry about it,” I assured her, but she carried on. Her voice was quick and light, not like I expected from how she looked. She was older than me, maybe in her forties, and she was dressed like she was going somewhere nicer than this place with the cracked seats and the fake flowers on the table.
“This is just the booth I always sit at, and they usually know that and recognize my name but I made the reservation under a different name so Ryan wouldn’t be confused—”
“Ryan?”
“Oh, sorry, the person I’m meeting.”
“I’m Ryan.”
The hostess was shifting back and forth awkwardly, she had other things to do.
“Do you still need a new table?” asked the hostess offered, probably hoping we’d answer quickly and simply so she could leave.
“Are you Charlie?”
The woman looked over at the waitress.
“No, I don’t think we need a new table. Thank you.”
Charlie didn’t look at me, she just sat down in the booth, so I did the same. I noticed that her face was bright red. It made the purple-ish lipstick she was wearing stand out even more. The dark color made her mouth look small, like a doll’s.
“You set your profile settings to say you were a man,” I told her, “Or at least you didn’t change them. If you’re the one looking for a sugar baby it makes you a man looking for women automatically. Kinda sexist actually. Didn’t you notice there weren’t any men?”
“I just thought you were the only one, but that is sexist,” she agreed. She laughed the kind of laugh that people have when they don’t think something is funny but they need a way to fill silence.
“I thought maybe you’d look like him,” Charlie said.
“Him?”
“My son died.”
A waitress had come to our table and was setting down blue plastic cups filled with water. When Charlie spoke, she fled to another table, a deep conversation was not a welcome addition to a late shift.
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be, the money was his college fund. I wanted to find another student to give it to.”
“Wow, grad school finally feels worth it.”
Charlie laughed, more sincere this time.
“How does your husband feel about this?”
“He’s dead too. Same accident.”
I shifted, causing the seat to creak beneath me. The table rattled, sitting on uneven black and white checkered tile. Charlie watched me. Her hair was cut evenly at her chin, it was straight and dark and incredibly neat. Her makeup was carefully done, her clothes had been ironed. She didn’t seem like someone who’d lost everything and was willing to give away more.
“When—”
“We don’t have to talk about that,” her voice was measured now, nothing like the nervous speed she spoke with before. She’d rehearsed this part. “You want the money, right?”
“I kind of feel like an asshole for saying yes.”
Charlie’s purple-tinted lips spread into a smile, her hair shifted and revealed hidden strands of gray.
“You’re not an asshole, everyone on that app wanted money, that’s why I didn’t say up front how much I was offering,” Charlie said, “I wanted someone who’d let me talk to them, so I could figure out if they were the right person. You were the only one willing to keep talking without an initial offer for money.”
“I wanted to know the pug’s name, it’s Fritz after the character from the original Frankenstein film, right?”
Charlie raised her eyebrows and nodded, impressed.
“My son would’ve liked you.”
I started to tear the corners off the paper napkin in my lap, balling them up and flicking balls of paper onto the floor.
“I feel like I’m taking a test, but I don’t know what I’m being graded on,” I said.
“Why did you come here?”
Charlie leaned forward and folded her hands on the table in front of her. She was still wearing her wedding ring.
“I need the money, for rent and for school.”
“That’s it? There are other ways to make money.”
That’s what Marta said too. I could picture her in front of me, the way her bottom lip poked out when she was disappointed in something I’d done. She never yelled at me, just gave me that look. I always felt bad for letting her down, but I kept doing it. She’d hold my hand if I felt bad enough to cry.
“Marta,” I blurted out, “I came here because of Marta.”
“Who?”
“My roommate, I think I’m in love with her.”
Charlie nodded, taking a sip of her water.
“Now we’re getting somewhere.”
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