Awaken (24 page)

I sit up in bed. I have to keep her on the phone.
 

“I really think I’ve made a mistake,” she repeats.

“The only mistake you’ll be making is hanging up,” I quickly say. My words disgust me. I take a deep breath and decide to speak honestly. I’ve never been good at faking it… ever. “Listen. I know this might be something out of the ordinary for you. But you’ve called for a reason. You need something. There’s something missing from your life. Am I right?”

Another long pause.

“I miss being with a man,” she admits. She takes a breath and continues. “I’m lonely. I’ve been lonely for a long time.”

“Most people are,” I tell her.
I know I am.

“I guess that’s good for your business,” she replies, a little sarcastically.

“What do you miss about being with a man?” I ask.

“What do you mean? Like specifics?”

“Yeah,” I reply. “It will help me get a better sense of whether I can help you.”

She takes a moment.

“Let me see… everything,” she says with a sigh. “I miss everything about a man: his hands running over my skin, his breath against my neck, the muscles in his arms, his smell, his masculine energy, and definitely his cock.”

As she talks, I realize how amazing her voice sounds. It’s rich, sensual, layered. It sneaks into you, warms you. As she describes what she likes, I find myself getting surprisingly turned on. It’s her voice: it’s captivating. I wonder what this woman looks like.
 

“Why’d you choose me?” I ask, when she finishes.

She takes another long pause. “Something in your eyes. They lured me in.”

“I’ve never had anyone mention my eyes before,” I confess. “Usually they notice the tattoos. What about my eyes?” I ask, trying to keep the conversation flowing. After all, this lady is getting billed every thirty seconds.

Another long pause. Then she finally speaks, her voice low, like a whisper. “They’re haunted.”

Her words linger in the air.
 

“Haunted?” I repeat.

“Yeah,” she replies.

Suddenly, I’m knocked out of the moment. This doesn’t feel like my standard website call. There’s something more going on here. The emotion in this woman’s voice, the fact she says my eyes are haunted… This isn’t just a hire-a-fuck call.
 

“My eyes are haunted. That’s what you like about them, huh?”

I wait for her response. She finally admits, “When I saw them, I just felt like you might be able to relate to me.”

Now it’s my turn to be quiet. I don’t know how to respond. Who’s this stranger that’s just called me in the middle of the night? First, she says I’m haunted. Then, she thinks she can relate to me. How would she know?

“I hope I haven’t offended you,” she says when I don’t say anything.

“No,” I tell her. “You just caught me off guard. I guess haunted is an accurate description of me these days.”

I hear her sigh. “Me too,” she admits quietly. Then her tone changes, her voice grows stronger. “I think I’m building up the courage to go through with this,” she says. “Can we meet?”
 

I’m still thrown off by our exchange and take a moment to respond. “Yeah, of course. Tonight?”

“Yes. Is that a problem?”

“Not at all,” I say. “I promise; you won’t be disappointed.” I hate saying that line but Shane insists.
 

“Satisfaction guaranteed, huh?” She replies. Damn her voice sounds sexy. It’s sarcastic and feminine but with many layers to it. It’s full bodied like a fine wine.

“Before we meet,” I tell her. “I need to ask you something.”

“Okay,” she replies.

“You’re not a cop, are you?”

She laughs. “No.”

“Good. I just needed to check. Well, now that that is settled, why don’t we discuss some details.”

She says she’s just interested in a quick session. She doesn’t know what she wants, and we decide to figure it out when we meet. When I mention my fee, she doesn’t hesitate and says it won’t be a problem. I ask her where she wants to meet and she says her home. I find that a bit unusual since I meet most of my clients in hotels.
 

“How long will it take you to get here?” she asks.

“Well, you have to tell me where you live first.”

“Duh. Sorry.”

She gives me her address. It’s all the way on the other side of town… in the Hollywood hills, celebrity central. A far cry from my ghetto neighborhood in South LA.
 

“It’s the middle of the night, so not long,” I tell her. “But you know LA. You never know when you’re going to hit traffic.”
 

“Can you leave now?” she asks. Now that she’s made up her mind to go through with it, she doesn’t want to waste any time.
 

“Sure.”

“Great. See you soon.”

She hangs up. I look at my phone, still surprised by the tone of our conversation.
 

Haunted.
 

I stretch my arms and slowly get out of bed. I’m back on the clock.

I step into the tiny bathroom of my shitty studio apartment and wash my face to wake up. As I dry off, I see the picture of Max pinned to the bathroom mirror. He’s smiling back at me. The picture was taken when he was healthy… before the cancer. I kiss my lips and touch his picture.

“Tigers need their rest, son.”
 

I turn off the bathroom light and walk out.
 

Tomorrow will be the nine-month anniversary of his death.

Fortunately, there isn’t much traffic on the 110. So, I can probably make it up to the Hills in forty-five minutes. I roll down the window of my piece-of-shit Corolla and let the night breeze blow in. It’s unusually hot in LA for February.

Fuckin’ climate change.

I listen to some hip-hop to divert my mind. But that doesn’t work. I turn off the radio.
 

As usual, I think about Max.
 

Tomorrow will mark nine months since I buried my son.

It all happened so fast.

After Shane offered to pay Max’s medical bills, I immediately told the doctor to enroll him in the experimental procedure. We flew Max to Denver, Colorado for his treatment – that’s where the premier doctor that dealt with Max’s rare illness worked. Max and I spent two months there. At first, it looked like he was responding well to the treatment. But then suddenly, things took a turn for the worse.
 

I’m still amazed by how tough my son was until the end.
 

I miss him so much. He was such a good kid. He didn’t deserve to go through what he did. My heart bleeds every time I think of him. It’s a pain – an emotion – I can’t put into words.
 

Suddenly, I stop thinking about Max when – to my right – about a mile ahead, I notice a car pulled over on the highway. Instantly, the muscles in my neck tense. I grip the steering wheel for dear life. My heart races.
 

Here we go again.
 

My fight or flight responses kick into high alert. Is that car a decoy? Could it contain an explosive device – just like the car in Iraq that blew up my Humvee and killed two of my men. I was lucky; I escaped with only a few bruises.
 

A cold sweat pours down my face, as I get closer to the car parked on the shoulder. My instinct is to find an alternate route, a way out. My eyes swiftly scan the rearview mirror, then the side mirrors. I’m blocked by another car to my left. I can’t stop, or swerve into another lane.
 

I’m getting closer.

I imagine the car exploding.

I ease off the accelerator, wanting to avoid passing the car altogether. The car behind me honks me out of my daze.

I have no way out of this. I have to drive past this car.

It’s getting closer.

I grip the steering wheel so tight that I’m afraid it might snap off.

I’m about to pass it.

I tightly shut my eyes and wait for the explosion.

Suddenly, the car to my left honks. I open my eyes wide.

Shit! I’m about to hit the car!
 

I swerve back into my lane. I quickly look in my rear view mirror. The car on the shoulder is now a safe distance away. It looks like it had a flat tire.

I try reminding myself I’m not in Iraq or Afghanistan. I’m in LA. But my body can’t tell the difference. It’s on high alert now and I feel a sense of rage flood through me. I bang my steering wheel with frustration. Fuck this PTSD.

I take several deep breaths but it does nothing to calm me.

I’m so angry. Angry at a million different things all at once. I’m angry at the war and what it did to me. I’m angry at God for putting my son through so much pain and then robbing him of his life at such a young age.
 

I was the one who went to war. I should be the dead one, not my little boy.
 

I’m angry at life itself and how unfair it can be to some.
 

Then, a sense of guilt overwhelms me.
 

My anger slowly turns to regret.

I was a terrible father.

I should have spent more time with Max when he was alive.
 

Monique got pregnant right before I was shipped out on my first tour of Iraq. We were never a couple. We just had sex after a party one night and she got pregnant.

I was in the Middle East when Max was born. And when I came home between tours, I wasn’t very involved in either one of their lives. Honestly, I was a bit of a zombie. Acclimating to civilian life was really difficult for me. That’s why I always went back to the Middle East. That all changed when I realized Monique was in really bad shape because of her drug habit. When I saw my son being raised in that environment, I realized I needed to do something. I finally took on my responsibilities as a father and put my combat days behind me. Max moved in with me. Monique disappeared. I still don’t know where she went. I hope she’s alive and hasn’t died from drug abuse.
 

Max and I had a few happy years together, just the two of us. I channeled my PTSD anger issues into MMA fighting. But when the traveling became too much, I decided to open my own gym to spend more time with Max. Everything felt like it was finally falling into place.

I was finding joy in being a father.

Then Max got sick.
 

When I buried my son, my life fell apart. I lost everything.
 

Max’s medical bills amounted to several hundred thousand dollars. Shane paid every one of them, on one condition: He owned me until the debt was repaid.

He owns my gym, and I have to fight in underground matches he promotes. He keeps all the earnings; I don’t see a dime. But that’s not where it ends.
 

He also owns my body.

Shane pimps me out through his website.
 
Apparently, there’s a huge demand among rich LA women for former military men who are built like me. So, when I’m not training for the next fight, I’m on the clock fucking.

I’m a whore. And Shane is my pimp.

This was the deal I made with him in exchange for paying Max’s medical bills. To Shane, this is purely a business transaction. He needs to make back the money he loaned me. And the only thing I have of value is my gym and my body. In his view, this isn’t personal. It’s just business.

I don’t know how much more of this I can take though. I’ve grown so numb to people, my surroundings…
 

I’ve come close to killing myself on more than one occasion. I keep a handgun in the drawer of my nightstand. On two separate nights, I’ve placed the muzzle of that gun in my mouth and tried to pull the trigger. But both times, the realization that I’d be letting my son, Max, down stopped me from going through with it. I believe Max is in heaven looking down at me. And I know he’d be really disappointed in his father if he quit on life.
 

But I’ll be honest, it’s getting harder for me to justify living in such a senseless world. What do I have to live for, anyway? I still have Layla, but I avoid seeing her and her family as much as possible. I just feel like my sad presence brings everyone down. I see the sadness in their eyes when I show up to their house and it reminds me of everything I’ve lost.

I force myself to stop thinking about all this as I take the next exit off the freeway. I’m about to meet a client. I have to get in the mood to fuck. As I weave my beat up Corolla through the curvy Hollywood hills, I glance at the mansions lining the street. So this is how the other half live – in a world where money is never a concern, and the future is always bright from inside your hilltop mansion. Must be nice.
 

The GPS tells me I’ve arrived at the address. I park my car.

I still don’t know if I can go through with this tonight. I’m in such a sad, miserable state. But if I don’t, I’ll have to provide Shane an explanation. I don’t feel like dealing with that either. I take a deep breath and get out of my car.

 
A full moon is shining in the night sky, casting shadows on the ground. I look at the modern mansion before me, overlooking LA. I make my way toward the gate. A red Volkswagen bug is parked down the street. It calls my attention because I can see the silhouette of someone inside the car. Looks like a guy with a beard. But it’s dark, so I’m not sure.