8 Mile

"Can I have the next dance?" a guy in his thirties asked.

"Hell no," said Betty. "I'm the only one who gets to dance with him!"

Everyone around us laughed. A few moments later, the guy came back.

"I meant you," he said.

"I'm already dancing with him," said Betty. "And I'm gonna keep doing it until we can't stand up anymore. Then we're gonna switch to the horizontal bop."

I remembered the way Sharon was always going around asking men to dance at the dinners and how pissed and embarrassed I was when she pressed herself against them while on the dance floor.

"It was only a dance, Alan," she always said.

As I stood there swaying to the music, with Betty in my arms, I suddenly felt free. Fuck Sharon, I thought. I no longer cared if she never came back.

"Alan," Betty whispered, "Stop it."

"Stop what?" I asked.

"Stop pressing that thing into my stomach before I ruin this dress," she said.

"You look beautiful in that dress," I said. "I'll buy you another one. Hey... Didn't I pay for that one?"

"Yep," she said.

"Betty how much do you still owe me?" I asked.

"About four thousand dollars," she said. She put her head on my shoulder.

"It should be a lot less than that," I said. "Are you Uhm... Deducting for the ..."

"Sex...?" she smiled. "Of course, it's a package deal, remember."

"How much," I asked. "It seems like I should owe you."

"Alan you do so much for me," she sighed. "I could never cheat you. How much do you think it's worth?"

"Five hundred at least," I said.

"That's ridiculous," she laughed. "I'm an almost fifty-year-old woman, not a Las Vegas call girl. Plus I give you a volume discount."

"So how much?" I asked. "I just want to know how much I'm paying."

"A dollar," she said.

"What," I asked.

"Every time we have sex, I charge you a dollar," she said.

"Betty, what am I gonna do with you?" I asked.

"You could start with that thing you do with your mouth if you really want to know," she smirked.

Christmas was a completely different experience. Betty gave every neighbor on our block a Christmas card and also gave cards to people in the neighborhood that I had never met.

She forced me to go caroling with her and some of the ladies from the block club, but after hearing me sing, they made me the designated driver.

Our own Christmas started out special and ended up in a near tragedy. It was our first argument.

It started out with the two of us exchanging gifts. I got Betty a beautiful diamond necklace and a diamond bracelet to match it. I bought her another dress like the one she wore to the company dance, but in a different color. And I got her an iPhone of her own.

She was so happy she almost cried. Then she started giving me presents. She got me a Mustang Shirt that I loved. She got me a whole assortment of my favorite Turtle Wax Ice products to use to keep the Mustangs looking good. And she got me an orbital polisher, so I could polish my car quicker. She told me it would let me get back to her sooner and spend less time rubbing my car when I could be rubbing her.

She told me that she had one more present for me, but I had to wait until we went to bed to get it.

Okay the argument was my fault. I knew how much all of the presents I'd bought Betty had cost, but I didn't see any charges on my credit card statement online for the ones Betty had bought me.

So I asked her about it. She laughed and told me that she'd paid cash for them. "Betty where'd you get cash?" I asked her.

"I used MY money," she smiled. That was when I lost it. I didn't know whether to cry or scream.

"Betty that money was for you, for emergencies," I said louder than I intended. I felt like absolute shit.

I make a comfortable living. I have money saved and investments. I have a retirement plan and other resources. All Betty had to her name was the money I had given to her. A quick estimate of the cost of the things she'd bought me told me that she'd spent most or all of her money on me.

I left the house. I went out to the garage and worked on my car. I lost track of time. I didn't even realize how late it was until Betty knocked on the door.

She was dressed in her old clothes, and she'd clearly been crying.

She walked over to me and handed me an IOU and turned to go.

Tears sprang to my eyes, and I grabbed her hand instead of the paper.

"Betty, I'm sorry," I said. "Please don't leave." I hugged her to me and refused to let go.

"I don't want to," she said. "I'm sorry too. You've done so much for me, Alan. I just wanted to give you something back." And then we were both hugging each other and swore we would never argue again.

After Christmas, I started dating Betty. I guess it was kind of backwards. Most couples date first and then move in together. But it worked for us.

We had every other Saturday as our date day and night. We tried restaurants and shows and concerts. It really didn't matter, as long as we were together.

* * * * * *

Betty

The hardest thing for us to see in ourselves is change. One bright morning, near the end of April, I came face to face with the fact that I had indeed changed. I'd changed so much, in fact, that I seemed like a different person.

On that morning, I was driving down Eight Mile. I was on the "good," side of the road. There was a Meijer store right on Eight Mile, but on the "bad," side. I wanted to go there because the weather was getting warm, and I needed some shorts to wear for working in the yard.

Our house had a beautiful back yard, but Alan had ignored it for the last couple of years while he moped over that useless bitch he used to be married to.

I searched the Internet to find exactly the right combination of flowers and plants for the yard. My job would be to plant them. Alan would be getting the hot tub back in business, and I had a couple of other jobs for him.

I had used a computer program on the Lowe's website to design the yard I wanted. Alan and Sharon hadn't really done anything with the yard other than put in the hot tub. But I intended to entertain in our yard.

I didn't really like the look of a deck for our yard. They looked too prepared or too nautical for me. I wanted the yard to look like a small intimate clearing in the middle of a jungle. I wanted a stone patio of antiqued paving stones with a pathway of the same stones leading to the tub and a small pond.

I wanted plants and climbers all around the privacy fence that marked the perimeter of the yard. Alan and I were doing all of the work together. I loved being with him. Even though it had only been six months, nothing in my life before he entered it mattered.

So knowing that he loved staring at my ass while I worked motivated me to go buy some shorts to give him even more to look at.

I spotted her out of the corner of my eye. I pulled the car over to the parking lot that she was walking by and called her.

"Jerri," I yelled. She turned and looked at me. She turned her neck a couple of times, and I wondered if the drugs had gotten to her. As I continued to get closer to her, I realized that she didn't recognize me.

It made no sense. Eight months prior the two of us had huddled together in the chill of a late fall night. We'd hugged each other for warmth and talked the whole night through.

"Who are ya, lady," she asked warily.

"Jerri, it's me...Betty," I said. She looked me over and then broke out in a smile.

"B-b-betty... you look so different. You look like one a them high class suburban bitches. You're driving a car!" she exclaimed.

"Yeah," I said. "It's too heavy to carry. And it takes too long to push it. Driving it is just easier!" She didn't seem to get my joke.

But then I remembered that nothing seemed to be funny to me when I was on the street either. Life seemed to be so much darker and so much more serious. The border between life and death seemed to teeter on the razor-sharp edge of a bad decision.

She kept looking around the entire time that we spoke. I remembered that too. You never knew when trouble could sneak up to bite you on the ass.

"How did you do it?" she asked. "Is this some new hustle? Are you selling drugs or just finally selling some of that ass?"

"Kind of..." I smiled.

"Kind of what," she asked suspiciously.

"I'm kind of selling my ass," I laughed.

"I always told you that you'd be good at that," she gushed. "I was right wasn't I? I told you time and time again that you just had to get past all of that bullshit in your head. It's just pussy, Betty. It's not like you're gonna run out of it.

But you always acted like opening your legs for a few dollars was gonna kill you." She smiled and showed me a mouthful of rotten teeth that horrified me.

"So how many guys you gotta fuck in a day?" she asked. "What's your quota? Who's your pimp? Can you get me in?"

"Uhm..." I began.

"Can I get a car and a bunch of fancy clothes too?" she asked.

"Jerri... It's not what you think," I managed to slide in.

"Please don't tell me you're working for one of them black guys that wants you to fuck twenty guys a day!" she hissed. "Betty, I can't do that. My uterus would fall out on the sidewalk!"

"Jerri, I..." I began again.

"Betty, why the fuck are you smiling like that?" she asked. "Are you working for the Po-Pos? Are you wearing a wire and trying to get me to criminate myself?" She looked around in every direction and then back at me.

"Jerri, calm down," I told her. "Why don't we go to that restaurant over there. I'll buy you lunch, and we can talk about it?"

"Are you out of your fucking mind?" she asked. "You know there's no way I'm getting caught with my ass on that side of Eight Mile. Even though we're white, them suburban cops don't give a fuck. Bein' homeless is just as bad as bein' black. I ain't goin' over there. Besides... The real freaks live in the suburbs. Everybody knows that. They just do their shit and then go into the city to dump the bodies.

Ask any of the hookers... Most of their Johns come from the suburbs."

"Jerri, I live in the suburbs," I said. She looked at me suspiciously. "Jerry, I used to see things the way that you do. But I was wrong. Eight Mile isn't the Berlin Wall; it's just another street."

Her look told me that I was out of my fucking mind.

"Okay, Meijer is on your side of Eight Mile. Let's go there. They have that little cafeteria inside. We'll eat there."

Her suspicions seemed to allow that. She nodded her head very tentatively. I opened the passenger door to the Escape, and she got in.

As soon as I got in, I noticed her smell. It made me love Alan even more. No wonder he made me shower as soon as we met. Luckily, it was spring and it was warm. I lowered the windows and decided to have the car washed inside and out on my way home.

"This car is brand new," Jerry screamed.

"We've had it for about six months now," I said. As we drove I told Jerri about everything I'd gone through since I last saw her.

"You're a dummy," she declared. "You're not getting anything out of it. You should be making that guy pay you in cash. He gets his house taken care of; his meals cooked, and he gets to fuck you as much as he wants whenever he wants. Then when you're not pretty anymore, he dumps you, throws your ass back on the street and just picks up a younger, hotter version of you."

"I know," I told her. "I always keep my backpack ready to go."

"Why not just leave?" she asked.

"Duh," I said! "I get to live in a beautiful house; I get all the food I want; he'll buy me anything I ask for, and I have a safe place to sleep."

I left out the fact that I was so crazily in love with Alan that being away from him would hurt me. But she didn't need to know that.

We went inside the store and ate in the cafeteria. The store's security people constantly watched us.

It made me really angry. The people in the store treated Jerri and me completely differently.

They were very polite to me and also to her when she was with me. But if she was on her own, they questioned her every movement.

I went into a dressing room to try on some shorts and tops and came out to find two security people talking to Jerri.

As soon as I went over to ask what the problem was they politely excused themselves and left.

After that, we left. I didn't want to spend any of Alan's money in a place like that.

I told Jerri that I wanted to go to some other stores, but she declined to accompany me.

"I'm glad you found something, Betty," she said. "And I really hope it works out for you. But some of us still have to find our way out. Come and find me sometime. I'm always on Eight Mile."

She turned and started walking down the road. I went back to the car. There were lingering traces of Jerri's BO there so I lowered the windows to let the car air out.

Just as I was about to drive away, I spotted trouble. Jerri was being manhandled by the same two creeps who had chased me across Eight Mile. I drove down the street and pulled up nearly onto the sidewalk.

"Leave her alone asshole," I yelled.

"Look lady, this ain't none of your ..." Began one of the thugs.

"Betty, help me," screamed Jerri.

At the sound of my name, the two thugs who hadn't recognized me either, turn to look at me. They saw the face and scanned every inch of it trying to match my features with the grimy; dirt covered face they remembered.

That was as far as they got before a police car chirped its siren and two burly cops got out. The two men immediately let go of Jerri and turned to leave but the cops weren't having it.

"Those two assholes were bothering my friend," I said.

"Let's see some IDs," said the cop.

I reached into my pocket and pulled out my wallet. Everyone else looked stupidly at the cops.

"Uh Ma'am," said one of the cops. "I don't need to see your ID, I know who you are. I've been to your house. You're the new block club lady, right?"

I smiled and nodded. "Are you vouching for that lady," the other cop asked.

"Yes," I said.

"I ain't got no ID," said one of the men.

"That makes you a vagrant," said the other cop. He put the cuffs on the man.

"But I ain't done nothing," yelled the homeless bully.

"Yeah you have," said the cop. "Vagrancy is subject to a hundred-dollar fine or thirty days in jail. You should have stayed on your side of Eight Mile."

Jerri was laughing and shaking her butt as the two men were loaded into a police car.

"Ma'am, I know what you were trying to do," said one of the cops as Jerri walked off down Eight Mile.

"We saw you take her shopping, and that is really nice... really noble .. It's Christian as hell, but you're wasting your time. Those people won't change. They're not like us."

"Why not," I asked.

"They're changed by their... uhm situation," he said. "They become desperate. Their survival instincts kick in. It makes them... Feral. They do things that civilized people could never understand. But don't worry Ma'am that's where I come in. I stand between you... And them. It's... My job...

I observe... I confront... I detain ... I arrest... I read them chapter and verse. Serve and protect. Saving you all from the worst... scum of the universe."

He actually saluted after he finished his soliloquy. He looked around as if he was expecting applause or something. Even his partner shook his head as if he too knew the guy was a sandwich or two short of a picnic.

As they got into their squad car and drove away, I was angrier than I'd ever been. The second cop, the one who talked about "those people," and made that ridiculous speech, hadn't recognized me either.

He was the one who'd stopped me and I'd told him I was walking over to Kroger. He was the cop who'd chased me directly into Alan's bed.

I thought more and more about it and got angrier. By the time I got home I was so angry that I started crying. Alan called to ask me if I wanted to go out of town that weekend.

I was so upset that I was crying in the phone. Alan understood that I was upset and said that he'd talk to me later.

Less than twenty minutes later, I heard a powerful rumble coming up the driveway. Before my brain reminded me that Alan had driven his Mustang that morning, he had his arms around me and was telling me that whatever the problem was, it would be alright.

Alan always knew exactly what to do to make me feel better.

"Okay, Honey, we need to talk about whatever it is that's got you upset," he said.

He scooped me up in those arms and took me over to the sofa. We lay there cuddled up and he wiped away my tears while I told him about my day.

"Oh Honey, I'm sorry," he said. And from the look on his face, I could tell he meant it. He might not have really given two dead flies about homeless people, but he was concerned about me. It really made me feel better to see that my pain affected him.

And he didn't just brush it off. He continued to ask me questions about it. It made me think that he was trying to help me get a better handle on the situation.

"The way I see it, this is a combo platter," he said. "This is a multiple issue situation."

"Huh?" I asked. Truthfully, lying there on our sofa with his arms around me had me close to heaven.

"There are multiple problems," he said. "First off, you're worried about your friend... I think you said her name is Jerri... Right?" I nodded, and my eyes went up.

"The second problem is the homeless in general and the way people see them and treat them. A completely different issue is those two bastards who abused you some time back and were trying to do something to your friend. And lastly, you're pissed at those cops."

I was floored. Alan... It was crazy. Whenever I got together with the ladies from the block club, all they talked about was how their husbands ignored them or never listened to them.

I had been thinking about how Jerri had reminded me that to Alan, I was only live-in pussy. Our entire arrangement was financial, and truthfully it wasn't even that. He didn't actually pay me anything. And truthfully, just as Jerri had said, Alan could throw me out and replace me any time he felt like it.

However, it really seemed to me that he cared.

"Alan," I said. "You want...?"

"He squeezed me tighter and said, "Betty; I always want you, but not now. Wait... I have an idea. At work when we have a problem or a new project to start, we have a brainstorming session and throw out ideas."

"Okay...?" I said. I had no idea where he was going.

"Go get dressed up," he said. "We're gonna brainstorm."

I went up to our room and showered. I came out of the shower and showed him two dresses. A really nice green dress that Alan said brought out my eyes and a very tight red dress that fitted my slight curves like a second skin.

"Oh, Hell no!" he said. "You're not wearing the red one outside of this house. I don't want to have to fight every guy there, only to have you go home with some younger, richer, better looking guy."

I smiled and stuck my tongue out at him. He was such a dummy. He had to know that I would never leave him for any reason on earth. But I played the game.

"Alan I owe you far too much money to be able to leave you," I said. "But someday, we may have to renegotiate."

He took me to a really nice restaurant. It wasn't a fancy place, but it was nice. It was called Texas Roadhouse, and he loved their steaks. While I stared across the table at him. We discussed my issues and my day. My steak was probably the best one I'd ever eaten.

"Betty, looking at your four issues means we need separate solutions for all of them. Some of them are easier than others. And some of them we can't solve alone.

The guys who hurt you is the easiest one. We don't have to do anything. Our city has that stupid vagrancy law. They're gonna do ninety days in the county jail. After that they won't risk coming back here. If they get caught a second time it's six months.