Mating Theory

Chapter Two

Chapter Two

Ashleigh

I get to the old sugar factory by the time the sun breaks.

Sugar should be sweet, but everything smells burnt here. Bitter and dark. Apparently the way you made sugar was to cook it to death. The window creaks as I pull myself through the bent frame and broken boards, the glass long gone.

Opening my hands, I drop to the floor. Dust rises in a burnt cloud. I climb the wooden steps, carefully avoiding the weak spots, until I reach the top floor. Buildings crowd from every angle. Sometimes it feels like they’re leaning toward me. I like to be high enough to see the sky.

This whole area used to be farmland. The sugar cane and corn were grown in fields around us, worked by prison labor after the civil war. The city ate through the agriculture land the way rust eats metal, leaving the factory an empty husk.

It’s the place I call home.

Sugar’s waiting for me at the top. She winds around my ankles, meowing so I know she’s mad about how long I’ve been gone. “I haven’t been on vacation,” I tell her. “I’ve been working.”

An aggrieved meow doesn’t accept that excuse.

“Don’t fuss. I brought you dinner.” I pull a can of cat food out of my bag and turn it over on the floor in the dark spot where I usually feed her.

The irony is that she’s better equipped to survive than I am. She catches rats and birds with startling regularity. They show up on my feet while I’m sleeping, which is gross and a little bit sweet. There’s something very wrong when I envy a cat. Her food just wanders around, the slightest bit slower than her. She doesn’t have to smile at strange men and get on her knees.

Then I fall on my worn pile of blankets. There’s my small pile of treasure—books I stole from the library. Emily Dickinson and Robert Frost. A little Whitman for when I’m feeling intense. There’s a small selection of clothes I’ve gotten from the thrift shop FREE bin.

I pull out my feast. Two-day-old hot dogs are the real prize of the day. I set one aside and eat the other in three bites. I’m slower working on a dented can of expired chili. It doesn’t smell much different from Sugar’s food. She licks the last bits from the floor with dainty care and then goes to work cleaning her mottled white-and-beige fur.

Creaks from the stairs make her scamper away. I straighten, holding my plastic fork like a weapon until spiky blue hair peeks over the ledge.

Ky has this lanky walk that makes him look carefree, even though I know better. He’s younger than me, but he’s been on the streets longer. He taught me what to charge, how to protect myself. Most of all he taught me how to please the men.

“Something smells good,” he says, slinging one leg over one of the old desk chairs. It creaks beneath his weight, even though he’s skinny as a string bean.

I hand over the hot dog without getting up. “Saved one for you.”

He eats half in a single bite. And then the other half. His mouth is still full of dry sausage when he mumbles, “Some guys would pay money just to watch me do that.”

My cheeks flame. “I didn’t expect you back so soon.”

“Mr. Monopoly’s hostile takeover had some kind of urgent problem.” Some rich guy takes Ky to his penthouse for days at a time. He’s only been gone one night.

“How much did you get?”

He gives me a cheeky grin. “One thousand.”

“Holy shit.”

“Yeah, someone was feeling generous. He probably bought and sold Boardwalk since I saw him last.” A slight frown. “He looked tired though.”

My chest constricts. “Don’t.”

“I’m not getting attached. Don’t worry. Just making sure the money train stays running. Besides, this will keep us flush in cat food for—what? Two weeks. You don’t have to work.”

“Don’t say that.”

“What? We have the money. So what’s the point in being miserable.”

“I’m not taking your money. I’ll hold my own weight.”

An eye roll. “It’s not like I suffered through it. Mr. Monopoly even sucks d**k. Imagine that. I seriously doubt any of the assholes who take you into the alleyway are willing to return the favor. Don’t let pride keep you hungry.”

Don’t let pride keep you hungry. That’s something he’s said to me before.

Ky helped me so much. He’s the one who told me to stay near the Den. Other pimps and criminals don’t poach on Damon Scott’s turf. And he doesn’t take a cut from the whores on his street corner. That makes it a prime piece of real estate.

“I’m not going to be hungry. I’m going to work. Like you.”

He doesn’t say anything, but the doubt is clear on his handsome face. He found me huddling in basement stairs after my very first john, shaking from shock and horror and pain. I don’t think I would have survived the night without him. Since then I’ve been unable to do it again. I really would let pride make me starve. My life isn’t worth so much, after all.

Ky is only a couple years younger than me, but he’s wiser by centuries. He studies me with soft brown eyes. “It’s not always like that. You pick them like I taught you.”

Rich. Horny. Those are the primary things he looks for. What you never want, he says, is someone who looks bored. Uninterested. That’s someone who’s gonna have to hurt you to get off, he says. “I’m going to. Tomorrow night, I’m going out. I already decided.”

He reaches into his back pocket. A handful of hundreds lands on the blankets in front of me. “Go out. Don’t go out. I don’t f*****g care.”

I stare at the money with my stomach roiling. God, it would be so easy to let him take care of me. But I can’t fool myself. He works for that money exactly as hard as I would have to. Maybe more. It’s not right to let him do it for me.

Rich. Horny. Like the guy I found on the roof two weeks ago. Except he hadn’t wanted me. He’d given me money. Like Ky. Pity money. I nudge the money off my blankets with my toes. If I get any closer, I’ll probably snatch it up. “Tomorrow.”