Page 37 of Puck Me Like You Own Me

11,406

A line.

Then 4,160, with a small check mark beside it, the sort you put beside a paid bill.

I stand in his kitchen with the water going behind the wall and read a piece of paper the size of my palm four times.

He wrote the second number the week he counted the receipts I left on his table. He wrote the third one on Saturday night with his mouth still wet, while I was against his doorframe trying to get my belt done, and he put a check beside it because in his accounting, he’d cleared it.

Four thousand one hundred and sixty dollars, discharged.

He’s folded this into his back pocket every day since. He’s carried it into rooms with me, answered questions about it with nothing.

I take the black notebook out of my bag. The elastic band holds four months of Vera’s instructions, every number I’ve ever run on him. I fold the stub once more and slide it inside the back cover behind the pocket where the elastic sits. The notebook goes into the bag. The wallet goes back in the jacket. The jacket goes back on the chair.

The water shuts off.

Four minutes later he emerges: hair wet, shirt half-buttoned, asking about the Vancouver per diem. I confirm it went through. We go through the week while a stolen receipt sits in my bag.

At eight, the car comes. He puts the jacket on and doesn’t check the pocket.

He knocks on my door at nineteen minutes past midnight.

I don’t have to check who it is. The building has a camera on the street door, plus a screen in the hall. I’ve been watching that screen since the arena parking alert came through a few minutes ago.

He’s still in the suit. No tie. The collar open two buttons and his hair dried wrong from the shower he took in a room with fourteen other men.

“Twenty-eight shots,” I say.

“Twenty-nine.”

“Twenty-nine.” I stand out of the doorway. “Come in.”

My apartment is four rooms in the port district with a window that faces the wrong way. Nothing in it says that anybody lives here. He’s been here once, in February. He slept in a chair with his coat on for six hours and refused everything I offered him.

He walks past me into the dark of the hall and doesn’t stop at the couch.

He goes to the bedroom door, stops with his back to me. He takes off his jacket, puts it on the chair. Then he starts to go down.

His knees buckle before I can think. His hands reach for my belt. He hasn’t spoken since correcting the shot count.

I get my hands under his arms and pull him back up.

He’s six three, heavier than he looks. He doesn’t help, doesn’t fight. I get him upright against the doorframe, hands still locked under his arms, both of us breathing like we’ve run miles.

“No,” I say.

His face doesn’t move. It never does. He looks at me, waiting. For a full second he’s working out what I want instead. Behind that pause are nine years of a man who’s never been given anything without a price on it.

“You don’t have to pay me for anything,” I say. “Not tonight.”

“That’s not what this is.”

I get a hand on his jaw, turn his face back to me. It’s the first time I’ve ever touched him above the shoulders. “Take your clothes off.”

That, he understands.

He gets to the shirt buttons and I stop him.