S/M FLOWERS

I dropped off Shannon at Marty's door and waited in my car around the corner. When you run an escort service, it's better to stay close to the girls, drive them on calls, make sure everything is cool.

Tonight I'm worried. Marty is into S/M. I told him Shannon was just getting into that, and he said fine. But he usually sees hardcore doms who know how to shake his shit. I called her 50 minutes later and she said he wanted another hour. Great. Going well, I figured. Then an hour later she buzzed me on my cell and said Marty didn't want to pay-up. So now I have to put the squeeze on.

"So what's the problem?" I asked, stepping inside his apartment. Marty, standing barefooted in the living room in sweat pants, no shirt on, a beer in hand, looked grim. "This is bullshit. She can't do nothin' I want," he slurred, weaving about in a drunken stupor.

"A little late for that," I said. "You've been with her for two hours."

"That's cause I was trying to tell her what to do for the first hour," he said, crashing on a couch under a painting of a windmill.

Shannon chimed in. "Well, you seemed to be enjoying yourself."

Marty closed his eyes, threw his head back and stretched his arms out over the back of the couch. Marty looked about 30, long brown hair and in pretty good shape, though he did have a beer gut. In our phone conversations, he frequently talked about how much money he was making, so I had expected more lavish quarters than the sparsely furnished room.

He glared at me, blinked a few times and said, "I got a gun in the bedroom. I could shoot you."

"You're far too sophisticated to do that," I replied. "If you were not satisfied with the arrangement, you should have let Shannon know as soon as she arrived, not two hours later. Two hours, may I remind you, during which Shannon provided you with her time, her company, and I suppose, her strict instruction. You can't go to a restaurant, order a four course meal, finish it and then complain about the fly in the soup and decide not to pay the check." Shannon rolled her eyes and stifled a laugh. She was standing by the cabinet. I stepped over next to her. Marty snickered and stood up, stretching his arms.

"What did you say?" he asked, blurry eyed.

I held out my hand, rubbing my forefinger and thumb together. "Time to pay Marty. We have to get going. The bill is eight hundred bucks." (My escort service is high end—five hundred an hour, but a break on the second hour.)

"I got a gun in the bedroom. I could shoot you."

He grumbled under his breath, approached the cabinet, his head sunk in his chest. "Could you back away a little," he said to both of us, motioning with his hands. We stepped away from the cabinet. He bent down and opened one of the drawers. For a split second, I panicked, thinking he might whip out a gun. But as he opened the drawer I saw a pile of green inside. So did Shannon. The look in her eye said grab it all, but she knows better.

He pulled out a wad of bills, all Jacksons. Approaching Shannon he drew them off one at a time, frequently pausing, holding them back with a twitchy smile, each pause demonstrating his pathetic power over her as he mumbled his dissatisfaction with the night's events.

Shannon picked up a book on S/M he had given her, thanked him for it and put the money in her purse. We both moved toward the door. As I opened it, he said, "Wait a moment,” and stepped forward in front of Shannon.

I noticed he had one hand behind his back. Again, I thought it might be his gun. Instead, I watched as he dropped down on one knee, swung his arm around, held up a bouquet of roses and gazed at her teary eyed.

Shannon placed a motherly hand on his head as he handed her the flowers. "That's very sweet of you, Marty," she said.

We all posed there for a moment, as if waiting for the shutter to snap on a portrait: The pimp, the Whore and the John fallen on his knees.