When I’m satisfied, Dr Baine asks for our IDs. She copies them on a Xerox machine and gets us to sign contracts agreeing to participate in the study and exempting her from all liability. We start the interview. She asks LeAnn about her experiences as a whore. LeAnn speaks from personal experience. Then Dr Baine asks how she feels about her daughter being a whore. LeAnn smiles at me with pride and squeezes my hand. I squirm, trying not to stare at the money. Finally the doctor takes our DNA samples. I admire her professionalism throughout this process. Nothing in her manner would lead me to believe that, in less than an hour, she and I will be rolling naked in $30,000 cash.
After taking the samples, she excuses my “mother”, who kisses me on the cheek and leaves me and Dr Baine sitting across the desk from each other, the briefcase in between us.
“So, Wanda,” she begins, “you’ve finished the first half. Now tell me what really turns you on.”
“All I want to do,” I say, “is roll in that money.”
“In that case, follow me into the bedroom.” She picks up the briefcase. I follow her into the other room, where she lies down on the king-sized bed. She opens the briefcase and dumps the money on her chest. The loose bills spill onto the bed around her.
“Now come and get me,” she says.
Shaking, I touch the money – freshly minted bills. They slip between my fingers and stick to each other like thick paper. I spread them over her grey business suit and watch them curve over her breasts. She moans, moving slowly under me, like a well-tuned instrument. For the first time, I notice what a babe she is. She takes off her glasses and spreads her long, light-brown hair over the pillow. I reach through the bills, unbutton her jacket, and open it like a shell. The bills slide off onto the bed. I gather them up and smooth them across her grey silk shirt. They slide more easily, and her eyes go wild.
Now we’re sitting up on the bed, taking off our clothes, picking up wads of bills and smoothing them over each other’s skin.
“Show me what you can do,” she says. “Show me how good you are.”
I empty my toy bag at the foot of the bed. I fasten cuffs around her wrists and ankles, chain her to the bed, and blindfold her. I need to make her be still, because everything’s moving too fast. Trembling, I can hardly believe what’s happening to me. It’s like finding a lost dream – one that I lost so long ago that I’d forgotten I missed it.
“Fuck me! Please fuck me!” she pleads. I strap on my harness with a thick black dildo. Spreading greenbacks between us, like lettuce in a sandwich, I lie down on top of her and start fucking her slowly, feeling the bills crumple between us.
“Harder!” she begs, and I pump hard into her, pounding her. We’re sweating, and the money is sticking to our stomachs and chests. She squirts all over my thighs. I pull out. The air is thick with cunt juice, and the money underneath her is sopping wet. I pick up the dripping bills and stick them to her breasts like papier-mâché.
“I’m making a plaster cast – of your whole body.”
She laughs. But I’m not lying. I cover the entire front of her torso in wet bills – then her neck and face. I replace the blindfold with wet money, so that she still can’t see. But the money on her face keeps moving and falling off as she smiles and laughs.
“Be still,” I say.
“I can’t help it.” She breaks out laughing. “It smells like pee!”
“Don’t move. I’m serious!” I wrap a $100 bill around her shoulder. This woman made of money is so perfect. I worship her, kiss her all over – my money goddess, who drinks up our juices with her skin. Slowly I move my hands over her whole body – wishing this could last forever.
Five hours later we kiss goodbye.
“See you tomorrow,” she says. I walk out with a briefcase full of money soaked in cunt juice. It’s heavy, but almost all the bills are still in one piece. I smile, thinking about how I’m going to travel across the country, cashing $100 bills that smell like come and piss. I stop by my room just to pick up the cash I have stowed in my closet and a few things I’ll need on the road. Leaving the rest of my belongings, I sneak out of the brothel and spend the night in LeAnn’s trailer. We stay up late, laughing about the wet money, counting and talking. I fall asleep that night thinking of Maude Baine wrapped in wet money.
I wake up thinking about her and run my hand along the soft, wet groove of my pussy. Over breakfast, I tell LeAnn I’m going to call Dr Baine’s office. She looks at me funny over the scrambled eggs. I dial the number. Her secretary answers.
“Dr Baine left this morning for a conference in Mexico. She’ll be back in a week.”
I hang up and turn to Dolores. “She’s gone for a week. Maybe we don’t have to leave town right away.”
“You crazy girl,” she says. “I say we go, before she finds out I’m not your mom.” After breakfast, we take off across the desert in her RV. We drive all that day and the next. We’re making great time, but I’m still thinking about Maude Baine. I want to see her again, and I can’t shake it. She’s the woman of my dreams and of all that crap I haven’t believed since I was a teenager. I picture myself going back to the brothel and telling her that LeAnn isn’t my real mother -apologizing, begging her to forgive me. Just let me be near you. We can share the money.
It’s all only fantasy, but LeAnn looks at me and shakes her head. “I swear, Wanda. In the ten years I’ve known you, I’ve never seen you like this.”
That second day we pull into a gas station at dusk. LeAnn gets out to fill the tank. She comes back with a newspaper.
“Hey, Wanda. Take a look at this!”
I read the headline: “Renowned Geneticist Embezzles $50,000 in Federal Funds.”
Investigators were searching for Maude Baine, who allegedly fled the country on a plane to Mexico the day before.
I look at LeAnn in shock.
“Looks like we better keep moving,” she says.
Show Time by Julia Peters
I’m in the middle of being a dutiful girlfriend when I finally tell Paul we’ve just got to break up. He nearly drops the figurine he’s holding, a ceramic superhero. I’m helping him pick out presents for his twin cousins in Maine at a movie theme store we’d never go to otherwise.
“I can’t do this any more,” I say. I mean us and the store, but I mostly mean us. All this boyfriend-girlfriend crap we do isn’t any fun. A Midwestern family of eight pushes past us to stand right in front of the escalators and begins a loud, confused debate about whether to go up or down.
“Ann,” he says. “This is a really bad time to start this discussion.” He looks exhausted, his auburn hair and dark eyes both rumpled after a long day. He looks down sadly at the floor and notices a pair of yellow cartoon canary slippers with stupid plush eyes. He squats down next to them and looks up at me. “Are these appropriate for a twelve-year-old?”
“Very. So’s this whole damn store.” I glance around and just see a blur. They’ve rigged up fake vines and cardboard cut-outs swinging on mechanized ropes to push merchandise for a kids’ movie about the jungle. It’s six o’clock and I have to head to my waitressing job in two hours. Twenty-four hour French food. What a mess.
“Hey, I told you it was OK if you didn’t come. I knew you’d get all New Yorker-than-thou. I just, I trust your opinion.”
“I’m sorry. I hate those slippers.”
The mother of the Midwesterners, who has a winged haircut and several plastic shopping bags, directs the rest of them upstairs. I hear her say, “How often do you get to see original animation art?” Her husband and the kids, some of them, I realize, friends of the daughter, happily step on the escalator and glide up to the top floor.