Friendship Found and Lost

I try to relax rather than tense up, lifting my legs to give him easy access to me as each thrust is forcing air from my lungs. It would be easy to grunt like some women tennis players do when they serve but I don't want to encourage him to be any rougher.

"Yes... fuck me, harder." I say. It's not enjoyable but it's how I earn my money.

As we fuck Jim grabs my leg and grazes the heel of one of my shoes on his chest.

So he likes a little pain perhaps? Well that's not unusual; there's often a fine line between pain and pleasure.

I respond by grasping his shoulders and letting my nails dig into his flesh. He's going to be marked by the heels on my shoes so a few extra marks on his back won't matter and it makes me think that he probably was been truthful when he told me earlier that he wasn't in a relationship; or perhaps he is in a relationship and just doesn't care, wanting to precipitate a confrontation.

I imagine the conversation with his other half as we fuck.

'Honey, what are these marks?' He'd snort with laughter. 'Well you're so useless in bed I decided to get some sex and fucked a whore. And she was good.'

Instead though, Jim is licking my ear, saying 'Come on baby, let's both have fun. Fuck me good.'

So I give him some more with my hips and squeeze his cock with my pussy. One thing this job gives is great pelvic floor muscles and I give him a real good squeeze.

Then, almost as quickly as Jim had started to fuck me he stops, mid stroke, looking at me intensely.

"Holy fuck. Alice?.... Alice Willows?.... from Ashville?.... Is that you?"

For a moment I'm dumb struck but then I reply.

"No, I'm Anna from the agency you called."

My response is automatic, putting up the barriers around myself, protecting me from everything that I was.

As far as I'm concerned now, Alice Willows never existed. Girls who give birth to their father's child aren't nice girls, they're dirty, evil.

That's why Alice Willows doesn't exist anymore.

Just Anna.

Jim continued, speaking rapidly.

"You lived at 15 Woodstock Road in a blue house next to mine. We used to run a string between our bedrooms and use cans to talk to each other! You had a dog named Pickles!"

He grabbed my arm, pointing to a small scar by my elbow.

"You got this scar when you crashed your bike into my mailbox!"

I squirm out from beneath him, covering my breasts defensively with my arms, trying desperately not to give any indication that what Jim is saying is true.

"I don't know who you are or who you've been talking to but mister, you've got the wrong lady. Now if you want to finish your fuck you've still got twenty minutes of your $400 left, but if you want to talk about your kindergarten days then I'm out of here and I don't do refunds."

I stoop to collect my dress and bra, heading for the door. If I can get out of the room I'll dress in the stairwell but he gets to the door just as I do, reaching over me with his hand on the door so I can't open it and then he pulls me to him and kisses me before lifting me off my feet and entering me again.

What on earth is he thinking and doing?

I may be an escort and Jim might be paying for me but Jim's entry into me is verging on rape.

Whore, wife, girlfriend or lover, if intercourse isn't consensual then it's rape and that's what Jim is doing to me now.

I wrench my head sideways, breaking the kiss.

"Put me down Jim, you're hurting me... please Jim, if you have any feelings for me, let me go."

I'm crying freely now and just want to be alone so that I can put my past back in the bottle that Jim has pulled the stopper from.

"Please Jim."

He seems to have heard me and pulls out of me, putting me back on my feet and then retreats to one of the arm chairs and sits with his head in his hands so I sit down on the floor with my back against the door.

I suppose I could just open the door and leave but I don't have the energy or the will and feel totally exhausted, both physically and mentally.

I sniff and wipe my nose with the back of my hand and dry my eyes with a corner of my dress, trying to compose myself so that I can say something.

I sniff again.

"Jim, the little girl you knew is gone, Alice is gone and I'm not her and she was never meant to be me."

For a moment I think he's going to say something and I hold my hand up, signalling him to be quiet.

"I don't know how your life is - I hope it's ok and you tell me that you're a successful lawyer and I'm happy for you. But my life is ok too. Yeah sure, it's very different from yours but it's ok and it works for me so please Jim, just let me have my life and I'll let you have yours."

I reach for my pocket book and take out the $400 and manage a smile as I look at him.

"I don't usually do refunds but, since you're a friend..." I stand and put the money back on the dresser where it was when I arrived.

"Goodbye Jim, be happy." and I turn, open the door and walk out into the corridor.

There is one couple that will have a tale they can dine out on for a long time as the sound of the door closing behind me makes them turn and I leave Jim's room wearing my black high heels and clutching my dress, bra and pocket book to me, not too exposed from the front although pretty dishevelled, but from the back totally naked.

That's the view of me that the couple waiting for the elevator got as I disappeared into the stairwell.

Most people's instinct is to go down the stairs but I went up to the next floor where I dressed, straightened my hair as best I could and then opened the door to the 15th floor, walked to the elevator and pressed the button for the lobby. It's all in people's perceptions and the woman who walked from the elevator to the lobby door was smartly dressed, confident, perhaps going out for a late drink but inside I was a churning mass of emotions and as I unlocked my car and climbed in I started to cry and sob, long wracking sobs that shook my whole body.

What had become of Alice, the happy little girl who played with Jim from next door? Almost without thinking my mind slammed that door shut; too dangerous, too much pain.

I drove home, paid the baby sitter and went to bed but I did one thing before I went to sleep.

I called the hotel.

"Hi, could I leave a message at the desk for Mr Morgan, Mr Jim Morgan staying in room 1423?"

I hoped he hadn't left.

The desk clerk at the hotel is helpful.

"Sure, a message for Mr Jim Morgan in 1423, go ahead."

"Um, would you just say that Anna... I mean Alice called and would Mr Morgan call me?"

I give a cell phone number. It's a second phone that I use only for voicemail and I've already changed the recorded greeting.

"Hi Jim, this is Alice. I'm sorry about last night... I guess it was a big shock for both of us. There are things you don't know about me that you won't like and it's probably best you don't get involved. Leave a message if you want."

I fell asleep almost immediately, totally exhausted but it wasn't a good sleep with too many painful memories forcing their way into my dreams and I didn't get to my phone until later in the day; just because I felt a wreck the world doesn't stop and I had to be up to see my daughter off to school but I called in sick for my day job, phoned my agency and cancelled three appointments and then went back to bed and slept 'til past noon.

When I woke I took a couple of headache tablets and showered and it was only when I was getting some food and coffee that the enormity of what had happened last night hit home and I dialled my voice mail. There was a message from Jim.

"Hi Alice it's Jim. I'm sorry too about last night. You said it best when you called it shocking. There's an understatement. Anyways I'd like to see you again. I don't care if it's in public or private. It can be for coffee or at my office or...." There's a pause before he continues "at a hotel, whatever you want. You have my number now so please call me. Bye."

I listened to Jim's message three times, crying all the time.

It is Jim, I know that but it's been twenty two years since I moved away and a lot has happened in the meantime.

I've changed and it's probable that Jim has too and I was right when I told him on my ansa message that I'm not the little girl he knew any more. But something has changed in me overnight and I feel tired with the struggle to provide for my daughter and tired of being Anna.

I dial his number, hoping that he doesn't pick up; the most I can face right now is to leave a message and the relief when the 'beep' comes to start my message is huge.

"Hi Jim, it's Alice. I don't know that this is a good idea for either of us but I need to tell you some things about me and then you can decide if you still want to know me. I'll meet you tomorrow at the north end of the park by the fountain at 11am and we can walk and talk. Bye."

I was at the park early but stood back from the fountain not knowing for sure if I would go through with the meeting. I figured if I got cold feet about it I could just disappear and maybe Jim would eventually give up on me.

Maybe.

But there was something inside me that told me it was time to face my demons and maybe Jim would hold the mirror for me. After all, all my demons were inside me, in my head.

I heard the bell from the town hall strike the hour, it was now or never, and summoning all my courage I stepped out into the sunlight and walked over to the fountain.

If Jim was here he'd be able to see me. If he wasn't then... well then I just didn't know. Already it would be difficult to become Anna again.

I spotted Jim sitting on a bench and walked over to him.

"Hi."

Jim stood. "Hi."

It wasn't going to be easy, being with him, and as he stood I turned and started to walk. Thankfully he kept a respectful distance between us and walking in the dappled sunlight of the park with Jim it could have been any day from our childhood but that was all long ago. We walked side by side, not close, just walking and talking.

I told him what I thought he needed to know for now, how after my family and I had moved away my mother had got ill and died when I was just eighteen. My father was devastated by the loss and it seemed just natural that I would stay at home and look after him, running the house, doing the chores.

"We'd were in a small town and I got pregnant - don't ask how or who - and I didn't want to give him any more grief so I moved out before people started talking, settled here with my daughter and started working.

Jim interrupted me.

"But who, how, I mean why? Didn't you get any help from the father? And why working..." He said the word as if it was dirty. "Why not a regular job?"

Now I had to lie.

"It doesn't matter who the father was and in any case, he wasn't in a position to help." I wasn't going to tell Jim that I'd got pregnant by my father and that he was the father of my daughter, certainly not now although I realised that if we were going to start over I'd have to tell him the whole story eventually but he'd annoyed me by the way he'd said 'working'. We walked in silence while I considered how to reply.

"From the way you said it I gather you don't approve of me working." I used the same tone that Jim had used. "But you seemed quite happy with the arrangement when you were fucking Anna in your hotel bedroom."

This stopped Jim in his tracks, literally. He stood looking suitably embarrassed.

"I didn't mean it like that I..." He realised there was no taking back what he'd said. "I'm sorry I shouldn't have said that."

I gave him a sad look, shaking my head.

"No you shouldn't have said that and thank you for apologising but you have to realise that women like Anna have lives just like everyone else; they have homes, children, pets. They shop for food, go to the movies, sometimes fall in love and marry but like everyone else they have to work and for me I'm independent, work when it suits me and earn enough money to give my daughter a good life and save for her college and I doubt that Anna was your first time with a working girl?"

Jim looked at his shoes like a child that's been told off.

"No, you... I mean Anna wasn't the first."

It was warm in the sun and we stopped at a snack stand where Jim bought a couple of bottles of water.

I swigged from the bottle of water that Jim had bought.

"So you see Jim, I haven't had the kind of life that you've had but I'm not unhappy, for the most part my work is fine but I guess that's the same for most people and I don't owe anything to anybody."

Jim stopped walking and stood, apparently thinking before replying.

"I think you are still the bright, loving and beautiful girl that I once knew who did what she needed to do. I thought that going through law school was tough, but it was nothing compared to what you must have gone through, and I admire you for that."

He paused before continuing.

"The only two questions I have right now are will you be my friend again and what can I do to help you?"

I thought hard about how Jim had reacted to what I had told him before replying.

Much of what he'd said to me was really nothing more than platitudes and for a moment I felt bad about feeling that but the life I'd chosen for myself had taught me to stare life in the face, full on, and in that stare there just wasn't any room for platitudes.

I could of course just carry on as Anna; after all it pays well, I get to choose when I work and to a degree who I work with. I'm independent, answerable to no one and have a cheerful, intelligent daughter who's doing well in school and is popular with her school friends.

But I know that as my daughter grows up it will become increasingly difficult to lead the double life I do at the moment.

What I really needed was for Jim to drop the lawyer front, offering to help, to solve my problems.

I wanted to hear what the Jim I remembered from childhood would say, how that Jim would react.

At last I was ready to reply.

"You haven't asked me about my daughter."

"I figured you would tell me about her when you were ready. I didn't want to pry." He looked away for a moment and then turned to face me.

"Why didn't you ever call me? Even though you used to beat me up as kids, I was always looking out for you. I was the first one there when that big storm blew down your tree fort trying to fix it. I was the one who carried you into my mom when you crashed your bike into our mailbox."

"Yes I know that your situation was a bit bigger than all of that kids' stuff, but the point is that I was always there for you. Always have and always will. When I played football in college, sometimes we played in front of 50,000 people and were on national TV. But I can only imagine that the eyes of a small town focused on you could have been even more intense than that. I'm not saying anything would have changed or would be different, but at least you would have had someone there for you. I'd have been there for you Alice, I'd have been there for you."

He turned and started walking.

Jim's outburst caught me by surprise and I realised that, just like me, he too had been bottling up a whole load of emotions.

As he turned and started to walk away I yelled after him.

"Her name is Jamie, I named her after you."

Jim stopped in his tracks and turned. I could see his eyes filling with tears.

"You named her after me? But why, I mean why didn't you say?"

He retraced his steps and put his arms around me, hugging me tight to him and I hugged him back and it was like all the years had rolled away and we're both kids again, there for each other without any cares in the world.

I couldn't help myself and started to cry sobbing into his shoulder.

"I couldn't tell you Jim, couldn't tell anyone. There's still a lot you don't know." I stepped back from him, looking at him.

"I've always loved you Jim, always... still do." and suddenly I was smiling and laughing with the relief.

"Will you build us a tree house again so we can be in it together? You, me and Jamie? Will you?"

Jim nods and kisses me, gently, tenderly.

"Yes of course I will, big enough for the three of us. Let's have dinner together, can we? Just Jim and Alice. I'd like that very much."

I noticed that, 'the three of us' and I smiled at him.

"Yes, dinner tonight. I'd like that too."

I made two phone calls later that afternoon, one to my baby sitter and one to my agency. I needed my baby sitter because I was going out on a date with Jim and the call to my agency was to tell them not to take any bookings for me for the next couple of days.

I took a bath scented with bubbles and looked through my wardrobe.

Each dress held the same memory because each dress had served the same purpose, Anna and her clients; but even so there was one dress that was now different to any of the others, the black dress that I'd worn when I went to Jim's room at his hotel.

I slipped it on over my bra and panties, smoothing it across my belly and half turning to look how it fitted across my butt.

Just perfect.

Then with black high heels, matching pocket book and red lipstick I was ready for Jim and I hoped he was ready for me.

I heard his car pull up outside my apartment and went out to meet him.

Jim was sweet as he opened the car door for me. The car smelt of new expensive leather and it mingled with his aftershave in a manly sort of way.

I felt quite nervous as I'd never done this before with Jim. We'd had sleepovers and outings as kids but never a date, a real grown-up date. I glanced at him and guessed he was nervous too and without thinking reached over and covered his hand with mine as he used the gearshift.

He glanced at me and smiled.

"You know, I almost kissed you once. Remember when we were like nine and we slept in the tree house that night and it started to thunder and lightning? You were scared and I put my arm around you and told you it was going to be OK. I almost leaned in and kissed you then because that's what I thought I was supposed to do."

I gave Jim's hand a squeeze hoping perhaps tonight he'd kiss me as Alice and not as Anna.

He hadn't told me where we were going, said he wanted to surprise me, but as we pulled into the curb and the valet parking service guy opened the doors for us I knew it was somewhere special. I was hungry and realised I'd hardly eaten a thing in the last forty-eight hours so I was looking forward to our meal together. What would happen after that I just didn't know but I hoped the evening wouldn't just finish with the meal.

My dress had risen up my thighs as I turned in my seat to get out of the car and I noticed Jim taking a look but he recovered in a very gentlemanly way as I smoothed the hem down.

"To steal a line from a song 'My darling, you look wonderful tonight' and since this is our first real date, we should do this right shouldn't we?" he said offering his hand to help me out of the car.

I took his hand and surprised him by kissing him lightly on the lips.

"They say that lightning never strikes twice. Do you believe that?" wiping my lipstick from his lips with my thumb. "Better look our best huh? I said smiling at him.

It all felt so natural, so easy with Jim but inside me, in a deeper place, there was the nagging concern that this couldn't last, that somehow my past, either with my father or as Anna, would catch up with me. What would Jim say if one of my former clients recognized me? The idea horrified me and I could imagine the scene.

'Hi Anna, how are you?' and he would wink and nod knowingly at Jim 'Enjoy your evening buddy'.

How would Jim react to that?

I knew that at some stage I would have to tell him everything, all the sordid details of what happened with my father, of my life as Anna, how many men there had been and what I'd done with them. His lawyer's mind wouldn't let that go and anything left unsaid would eventually prove corrosive.