Secrets of a Shoe Addict (16 page)

Tiffany was seriously disconcerted by his transition between awkward geek named Peter from Kensington, to Asshole Derek from Potomac, but as long as he was paying the exorbitant fee to talk to her, she was going to try to keep the conversation going.

“All of them?”

“All of them.”

The old chain collar they’d used on Rover—yes, Tiffany’s family had actually had a dog named Rover, in part because it was so rare—was
hanging on the wall opposite her, so she took a few stealthy steps toward it, took it off the hook, and then set it down on the concrete floor, link by link. “There goes my necklace.”
Clink clink clink.
“And my bracelet.” Then, as an afterthought that felt like brilliance, “Do you want me to take off my nipple ring?”

The idea of having a nipple ring struck Tiffany as so incredibly stupid that it was funny for her to play the role of the kind of girl who would have one. Or more.

Presumably of the expensive variety.

“Is it like Janet Jackson’s?”

Tiffany remembered Janet Jackson’s Super Bowl wardrobe malfunction, but she couldn’t remember the nipple ring. Not that it mattered. She’d never have to prove it. “It’s exactly the same,” she said, shrugging to herself.

“Can I touch it?”

“Of course.” Then, in case that wasn’t inviting enough, “I want you to.”

“Man,” he breathed. “It’s cold. Does that cold metal turn you on?”

“Yes.” Why not? “Does it turn
you
on?”

There were a couple of grunts and moans, and Tiffany had her answer.

“I gotta go,” he said. “Thanks.”

He clicked off, apparently unwilling to spend one dime more than necessary once he was finished.

She couldn’t blame him, really. You wouldn’t pay a housekeeper extra to stick around and talk about the Washington Redskins. Why bother with niceties?

The call had lasted approximately four minutes. It was still more than ten bucks. Way better money than she’d make working retail.

And it had been easy.

When Sandra had first mentioned the idea, Tiffany had had visions of really perverted talk, graphic descriptions, and porn movie sound effects. The whole idea had been pretty daunting.

But this had been no sweat. She could do a hundred of these calls without ever feeling too funny about it.

First Sandra and now Tiffany—was it something that ran in the family? She was adopted, so she and Sandra weren’t actually
blood
relatives, but maybe there was some sort of subversive messaging in the old mystery series books they read as kids. Maybe Nancy Drew had a hot life after midnight.

Who knew?

All Tiffany knew was that maybe she’d be able to pay off her Finola Pims debt
and
get herself a little convertible before too long.

“Put me in a diaper and make it
real tight
.”

Abbey, who was on her third call as Brandee, groaned inwardly. Three calls in a row, and all three of them oddballs. Number one had wanted her to bark like a dog to the tune of the national anthem. Number two begged her to speak only pig latin—which she found she was surprisingly good at. Now number three had requested a bare-bottom spanking and then a diaper.

This was
not
the kind of phone sex she was accustomed to.

Well, actually, she wasn’t accustomed to
any
phone sex anymore.

But that was changing rapidly. With Brian asleep in bed after a long day, and Parker asleep in bed after a long bath, Abbey had gone outside to the detached garage and was sitting in the car in the dark, taking calls.

There was something almost meditative about it, sitting quietly in the car. And she needed that peace after the day she’d endured. It helped her collect herself. Until the phone rang, that was. Then it was just all carnival.

“How’s this?” she asked, reclining the seat and looking out the window at the collection of rakes and shovels Brian had hanging neatly on the wall in order of size and function. “Tight enough?”

Her caller let out a squall that was probably supposed to be his imitation of a baby, but it sounded more like a balloon losing air. “Spank me again. I’ve been so bad!”

God, she hoped this guy didn’t have kids. Given his poor imitation of a baby, and his insufficient understanding of how a diaper works (
tight?
they didn’t get that tight without the tape pulling off), she was pretty sure he didn’t. In fact, she was prepared to go out on a limb and say the guy was completely unattached.

“Now put me in one of those outfits with the feet,” her caller said.

“Pajamas?”

“Yeah, yeah. Footsie pajamas. Made of cotton. With a
really hot
zipper. Like, they just came out of the dryer.”

And so it went. She diapered him. She dressed him. She undressed him when the zipper was too hot. She worked on potty-training him. She decided this was the year to take out her raspberry bushes and grow some heirloom tomatoes. (The tomato cages in the corner of the garage reminded her of that—she’d bought them last year but never got around to using them.)

And she accumulated four solid hours’ worth of billable minutes.

In the end, it wasn’t what she’d call
easy
—she’d never dreamed there were so many whack jobs out there just waiting for the chance to share their depraved fantasies with a stranger.

But it was a good thing there were, because she needed the money.

So she turned off her phone and put it in the glove compartment of her car, figuring this was the perfect place to do business. No one could sneak up on her and surprise her, and if Brian or Parker did head out this way looking for her, she’d see them long before they saw her.

It wasn’t exactly an executive’s corner office in Manhattan, but it suited her needs just perfectly.

Chapter
      
10
  

S
o how long have you been a ventriloquist?” Sandra asked Louis Feller (aka McCarthy2 on Match.com) as she steered her Toyota away from Clyde’s of Georgetown. She was just filling the silence during the ten to fifteen minutes it would take her to drive him to the Metro at Tenley Circle, but she had already given up hope of good conversation.

The blind date had, so far, lasted an hour and ten minutes but had felt like years. She’d asked herself all night, Was forty-five minutes long enough for her to politely cut out? An hour? At an hour and ten, she’d decided she’d given him plenty of time.

“I’m not a ventriloquist,” Arlon said, in Louis’s grating falsetto. It was like nails on a chalkboard at this point. “
He’s
the one with his hand up my ass.”

That was a new twist on what had already been a tedious act. Now Arlon/Louis was getting foul. Nice.

Before tonight, Sandra had not imagined she would ever think about whether the ventriloquist or the dummy was more annoying. Then Louis had spent the entire dinner having Arlon tell Sandra the long and painful story of his life.

Arlon’s, not Louis’s.

She knew that Arlon had been “born” in Brooklyn twelve years ago, and that he’d traveled to D.C. by train and had gotten lost at the 20016 post office for three weeks until finally someone had found the box under a bunch of mail that was being kept on hold. By the time he was presented to his new owner, his head was loose and Louis had to interview numerous craftsmen before finding someone he trusted to safely repair the doll.

The “surgery” had, apparently, been painful.

His hair hadn’t originally been black, but he and Louis decided it would look better in contrast with his light brown molded plastic porkpie hat.

Plus, it covered the occasional imaginary gray hair.

Arlon had an interest in girls with good posture and warm hands. He did not like to vacation near water, though he had a fantasy about “getting it on” in the sand because it reminded him of sawdust. It was an image that was not only disgusting on several levels, but also highly disturbing. Something about the dummy wanting to do that in sawdust—even if it were possible—was uncomfortably akin to a person wanting to do it on piles of human flesh.

Yes, it had been a long night. So long that Sandra was actually contemplating the implications of a ventriloquist dummy wanting to have sex on the beach.

Arlon didn’t reveal much about Louis, though Sandra could safely
guess Louis had an interest in girls who had an interest in his stupid ventriloquist act.

It was hard to imagine who that would be.

So much for Loreen’s grandiose ideas of what Sandra’s romantic life must be like.

As they drove on the cracked pavement of the street, Sandra figured she had nothing to lose by goosing Louis for information, if only so she could give a full accounting of this night to the Phone Sex Group later. “Louis, this has been really funny. Especially that thing you did at dinner when you asked the waiter for a glass of water? That was comedy gold.” She cringed, remembering, and automatically put a hand to the place on her shirt that was still wet. “But can we put Arlon in the backseat for a while and get to know each other on a more, um,
real
basis?”

Granted, Sandra had not had a lot of—okay, any—boyfriends in her life; nevertheless, she had never anticipated having to ask a date to put his imaginary self in the backseat so she could talk to the real thing.

But her Match.com profile hadn’t exactly gotten a lot of visitors, so she was reluctant to dismiss a date out of hand before she was beyond sure things wouldn’t work.

Maybe Louis was a great guy whose one glaring fault was that he didn’t know when a joke should end.

Maybe that was something he could learn.

Maybe then he’d be perfect for Sandra.

“What are you saying?” Arlon asked, his hinged jaw flapping and clapping. “You don’t like me?”

Then again, maybe not.

She glanced at Louis. “Yes, of course I like the puppet. I think
you’re enormously talented,” and until now she’d thought he was kind of cute, with his dark eyes and light, curly hair, “but you’ve been doing Arlon all night long now and I’d like to get to know Louis.”

“The nuns were mean to him in school,” Arlon said.

“What?” She couldn’t help but look into the puppet’s flat, lifeless eyes. Consciously, she shifted her gaze back where it should be, to Louis. “What is he—? What are you talking about? Nuns were mean to you?”

“No, they were fine.” Louis tightened his lips into a flat line—much like Arlon’s, actually—and looked out the window.

For a moment, Sandra remained hanging between interest in the fact that Louis himself was finally talking, and apprehension at the fact that he was disagreeing with something he’d just said.

“O . . . kay. Well, Arlon just said—” She stopped. She was
not
going to start quoting Arlon and making this into an argument between her, her blind date, and a puppet. “That is,
you
just said the nuns were not so nice to you in school.”

“Arlon said that.” Louis gave an exasperated sigh. “He’s such a fucking liar.”

Harsh words for a puppet that he, himself, was animating.

Where had she gone wrong? Was it obvious on his profile that the guy was a whack job? Had she missed it because she was so eager to like him when he wrote? Her last date—no, her last fifteen dates, all of them with Mike Lemmington—had been gay, so she had to give a more than fair shot to anyone else who came along. “Okay, Louis? Seriously, drop the act.”