Playboy For Hire

2. Quinn

2

QUINN

I was fucked.

And not in a good way.

In point of fact, I haven’t been fucked in a good way in a while. But depressing as that was for my life overall, it wasn’t the problem at the current moment. No, I was holding the current problem in my hands.

I stared at the thick, creamy paper embossed with golden ink in a flowing script. My grandparents had spared no expense on the stationery. It was heavy enough to commit blunt-force trauma, and required three magnets to keep it attached to the fridge.

Julius and Delia Carmichael invite you to join them in celebration of their fiftieth wedding anniversary.

Fifty years. I couldn’t imagine someone wanting to be married to me for that long. I couldn’t imagine someone wanting to marry me, period. Of course, back when my grandparents had gotten married, most gay men were still in the closet, and marriage was barely a pipedream. But still.

My grandparents had gotten married at age twenty-two, right after my grandma finished her teaching degree. I was twenty-seven, and hadn’t gotten anything close to a proposal by now. Granted, it would have helped if I’d dated more than two guys in my entire adult life, and if one of them weren’t now dating my cousin. But I digress…

The point was, Nana and Grandad were throwing a party this Friday night and my presence was expected. My presence…and someone else’s.

It was so stupid. I didn’t know why I’d lied when Nana called me two months ago and asked if I wanted a plus-one for the party. I should have said, ‘ No, Nana, I’m single, just like I have been for ages, and will be for the rest of my life. In fact, I plan on throwing a Fifty Years of Loneliness and Desperation party for myself in a few more decades. ’

But then she’d gone and mentioned Julie, my cousin, who was dating that ‘ nice young man, Brandon, so handsome, and successful ,’ and how if those two were coming together, surely I’d want to bring a guest too, and my dumb mouth had opened and said, ‘ Oh, that would be great, I could bring my boyfriend !”

Like I said: fucked.

I heard Auntie Thea wheel herself into the kitchen behind me. I stuck the invitation back onto her fridge with three different novelty magnets from St. Petersburg, Florida—one of a manatee, another of a palm tree on a beach, and a third of a tall, white lighthouse. I had the same invitation back at my apartment, but mine was shoved into the bottom drawer of my desk under a heavy set of reference books, as if hiding it could make the date approach slower.

“There you are,” Thea scolded playfully. “You came in here to get us more iced tea ten minutes ago. Have you been standing here feeling sorry for yourself all this time?”

My cheeks heated, and I looked at her guiltily. “Not the whole time. I also spent a few minutes daydreaming about changing my name and flying off to Mexico to escape all my problems.”

“Well, you’d best not be thinking about that too hard. Who would be my bridge partner against Violet and Marjie? Those two would be lost without you here to tell them how nice their hair looks.”

I laughed. “You know, you could tell them that too.”

“And break the Lord’s commandment by lying? Mm-mm. Tina’s fingers are way too clumsy to be messing about with people’s hair, and it shows .”

Tina was the hairdresser at Swannvale Lofts, Washington DC’s premiere senior living apartments. It took up an entire city block and included two restaurants, an Olympic-size swimming pool, a gym, game room, movie theater, library, conservatory, and, yes, salon. Thea had bought a unit when the place first opened, but she still insisted on me taking her to her preferred hairdresser in LeDroit Park. Only the gentlest, deftest touch on her hair was acceptable, and that did not include ham-fisted Tina, apparently.

I didn’t mind taking her, just like I didn’t mind visiting her multiple times a week. I was able to walk over from my apartment in Logan Circle, plus I got to use the pool. And honestly, it was kind of fun hanging out with my great-aunt and her friends. At this point, they were the most active part of my social life.

Auntie Thea was my oldest living relative, my paternal grandfather’s older sister. She’d used a wheelchair ever since having polio as a child. But that hadn’t stopped her from having a long, full life, working for the government and traveling whenever she could. She’d slowed down a bit with age, but she could still beat me at chess and quote long passages of Shakespeare from memory.

When Nana and Grandad decided to hold their anniversary celebration in DC, out of deference to her age, Auntie Thea had claimed it as a nearly unforgivable insult. ‘ I’ll show them who’s ‘ not as mobile ’ anymore. Julius will be downright immobile if he comes too close. My fists still work just fine, thank you .’

Luckily, my grandad had thought quickly and reminded his sister that they had plenty of old friends in DC still. It was where they’d all grown up, after all, and it still felt like home, even though they’d moved to Florida ten years ago.

“Now finish up with that tea and come join me in the living room. My show’s about to come on.”

It didn’t take long to refill our glasses and add fresh lemon. Auntie Thea had a lot of ‘ shows ’ but tonight’s was Blade of Ages, a Christian weapon-forging show where contestants battled to create weapons from around the world and inscribe biblical messages onto them. She’d moved out of her wheelchair and into her high-backed, blue velvet TV chair. I set our glasses on the TV tray between us, then sat down next to her.

This week, a blacksmith from Idaho was inscribing a battle-axe with a quote from Jeremiah: ‘ For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord. Plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. ’

“That’s what you need,” Auntie Thea said when the show went to commercial break.

“A battle-axe?” I asked.

“Trust in the Lord. You’re spending too much time up here—” she tapped the side of her head, then brought her hand down to tap her heart “—and not enough time down here. God will find you someone when you least expect it. You just have to keep your faith up.”

I sighed. “Auntie Thea, you know I don’t really go to church anymore.”

I didn’t go to church anymore at all, in fact. The pastor at the church I’d grown up in had made his opinions on homosexuality very clear, and thirteen-year-old me had decided I was done with organized religion. My parents understood my decision and loved me no matter what, but Thea had a way of ‘ forgetting ’ what I’d told her about that topic.

“You may be done with God,” she countered, “but that doesn’t mean he’s done with you.”

“Even if there is a god, I think he—or she—or they —has better things to do with their time than send me matches on hookup apps.” I took a sip of my iced tea.

“Sweetheart, the Lord does not care about your penis, he cares about your heart.”

I spluttered tea all over myself. Thea cackled at my discomfort and continued speaking.

“He will be sending matches to those other apps, the dating ones. Which are all you ought to be on anyway,” she said sternly. “A nice boy like you doesn’t need that other kind.”

Easy for her to say. It was a sweet sentiment, but even nice boys like me needed to get railed sometimes. Then again, I hadn’t been having much luck on either kind of app, so maybe God had given up on me after all.

“Well, tell him to get on it, then,” I told her. “It’s been two months, and I still haven’t found someone to take to the party.”

“Then you can take me.” She patted my hand. “I’d be proud to have someone so handsome as my escort.”

I tried not to wince at the way she called me handsome.

“I think they might notice if I brought you instead of a six-foot-three football player with a jaw as square as the Kennedy Center.”

She looked at me aghast. “Do not tell me you told Delia that was who you were dating. You did not go to law school just to make a mistake that silly.”

I laughed helplessly. “No, I didn’t. And I didn’t describe my mythical boyfriend in exact detail either. But still, I told them I’d bring him. And you’re beautiful, Auntie Thea, but you are not a man.”

“I could be,” she said, a little huffily. “People can be whatever they want these days. I bet I would have made a fantastic fake boyfriend, if someone had asked that of me in my younger years.”

I looked at her sideways, trying to figure out if she was being transphobic, expressing a heretofore undiscovered nonbinary identity, or possibly both.

“In any case,” she continued, “this is yet another example of why you should invite Jesus into your heart.”

“Please don’t tell me Jesus should be my boyfriend,” I begged. “I’m pretty sure church doctrine doesn’t encourage having gay thoughts about him.”

“Pssh,” she scoffed. “He wouldn’t be your boyfriend. He would just keep you from getting into these situations. You bore false witness against yourself, and now you’re paying the price.”

She was right about that much, at least.

“I know.” I hung my head in shame, mostly so she could have the pleasure of reaching out and patting it gently. Normally, I was too tall for her to reach.

“Why don’t you just tell them you broke up?” she asked when she drew her hand away.

Because I don’t want Brandon to win. Because I don’t want him to think I failed to keep another man. Or, worst of all, because I don’t want Brandon to realize I was lying and never had a boyfriend in the first place.

But I couldn’t say that out loud.

“I’m just sick of always being single,” I said instead. “I’m sick of always being known for being single. And I’m really sick of people telling me I’ve been brainwashed into being gay by government chemtrails and that what I actually need is the love of a good woman.”

I had lots of cousins on both sides of my family, and no matter what reunion I turned up at, I was guaranteed to be the only one with no one by his side—a fact my Auntie Marie delighted in pointing out. Of course, Auntie Marie also believed that there were lizard people living inside the moon, so I tried not to take what she said too seriously. But still.

Auntie Thea knew exactly who I was talking about, because she tsked and shook her head. “That Marie had better watch her tongue this time. I’m a God-fearing woman, but I am not afraid to tell her where to get off. Do you know she thinks the baby Jesus was an alien from outer space? The same kind of alien she claims built the pyramids in Egypt?”

“I did not know that, but I am also not surprised.”

“Hmmph. I’ll send her to outer space if she runs her mouth again.” Thea fixed me with a firm look. “But if you’re not going to tell them you broke up, I suppose there’s only one thing for it. You’ll have to hire someone.”

“I—huh?”

I don’t know what I’d been expecting her to say. Join a silent order of monks? Go on a mission trip to Kenya that never ended? Actually change my name and fly to Mexico after all? Any of those would have made more sense coming out of her mouth.

“You mean like…a…a…” I couldn’t even make myself finish the sentence. Whatever word I used—sex worker, prostitute, rent boy—all of them were impossible to say to my great-aunt’s face.

“A gigolo?” She arched an eyebrow.

One point for her. I would never have come up with that word on my own. But still. I gaped at her.

“I don’t know why you’re looking at me like that,” she said. “Just because I’m a godly woman doesn’t mean I don’t know how the world works. I watched all-male fornication on a nude beach in Marseilles in nineteen-sixty-six. I am hardly an innocent—”

“Wait, what?”

“—but in any case, that’s not what I was referring to. You don’t need to pay someone for sexual intercourse, you have your apps for that. What you need is someone to be your date.”

I stared at her, trying to figure out where to start.

“Okay, one, I thought you wanted me to get off the hookup apps. Two, aren’t you also the person who told me I needed to lie less , not more? And three, even if I were going to consider your proposal, which I’m not, because it’s a patently insane thing to suggest, where would I find such a guy in six day’s time?”

She shook her head regretfully. “I always thought it was a shame you didn’t go in for trial law. You’re a very persuasive speaker, you know.”

“Auntie Thea—”

“But not persuasive enough!” She cackled at my confusion. “I’ve got answers to refute all your evidence.”

“My evidence?”

“Your jurisprudence lex loci mens rea habeas corpus ex post facto.”

“Do you even know what any of those words mean, or have you just been watching too much Law and Order?”

“One, you have said yourself that you hardly get any use out of those apps.” She ticked the points off on her fingers. “Two, this isn’t a new lie, merely an extension of an old one. And three, you use a website called Heartthrobs Homunculus.” She paused, tilting her head to the side. “No, that’s not right. Heartbeats Rhinoceros? Oh, I know I have it written down somewhere. Violet told me all about it at lunch yesterday.”

She began searching around on the TV tray, the side table, and the pockets of her wheelchair, while I still tried to make sense of what she’d said.

“Why were you talking about this with Violet?” I asked slowly, a sense of dread building in my gut.

She looked up from her search to grace me with a brilliant smile. “Sweetheart, you are the light of my life. Who else would I talk about at lunch but you? All the ladies are very invested in finding you a man. Why, Lucille even offered to set you up with her granddaughter’s soccer coach, Marcus. Did you know Marcus was gay? I certainly didn’t, but he’s a successful architect too. Only forty-eight.”

“I didn’t know Marcus existed until four seconds ago. And forty-eight? That’s only five years younger than Dad.”

“Then he and your father would have plenty to talk about, I’m sure.” She tutted. “But I know how you like to do things for yourself, so I told her no, that wouldn’t do, which was when Violet brought up Heart Attack Hotel or whatever this company is named. You know what? I’ll just give her a call, and she can tell you herself.”

“Auntie Thea—”

But it was too late. Thea had already picked her tablet up off the side table and was using it to video call Violet, who lived just a few doors down the hallway.

Not for the first time, I regretted telling Thea anything about my love life. But she was so good at wheedling information out of me with her gentle hand touches, understanding eyes, and empathetic murmurs of ‘ how difficult that must be ,’ all of which masked the curiosity of an alley cat, the confidence of a charging bull, and the nose of a vulture for sniffing out tidbits of information.

Finding out I was the talk of her Ladies Who Lunch group should not have surprised me, but Thea was really on another level when it came to making me feel two steps behind. I hadn’t even told her about my little boyfriend lie directly, but she’d talked to Nana one day about the guest list and found out all about it herself.

And Auntie Thea had the tracking powers of a bloodhound—or perhaps just a more realistic picture of my romantic prospects of late. She knew that I couldn’t have been telling my grandmother the truth. So she’d kept at me, day after day, hammering me with questions about my supposed boyfriend until I’d broken down and told her there was none.

“Violet? Is that you?” Thea asked, squinting at her tablet like she was staring into the sun.

I sighed and reached over, tapping her reading glasses where they stuck out of one of her pockets. She clicked her tongue but put them on.

“Oh, it is you. Wonderful. I wasn’t sure at first. Violet? Violet, are you there? Well, I can see that you’re there, but I can’t hear you. Can you hear me, Violet?”

I looked over and saw Violet, her hair set with big curls, her lips freshly coated in drag-queen magenta, talking back at Thea. No sound was coming from her lips, though.

“Violet? I think you’re muted,” I said. “Can you look for the mute button on your phone and see if you pressed it by accident?”

Violet frowned and pointed at us, then mouthed a sentence that clearly included the words ‘ mute button ’ before jabbing her finger at us again.

“No, your mute button, Violet,” I said. “If you can hear us, but we can’t hear you, then that means that—”

Before I finished speaking, the screen went black.

“Now what happened there?” Thea asked, frowning at the screen like a dissatisfied squirrel. “I didn’t hang up on her, did I? No, I didn’t touch that button. She must have hung up on us by accident. Let me try again.”

She called Violet a second time, then a third, but got no answer.

“Oh, no, do you suppose something’s happened to her?” she asked. “Maybe we should go and see. Hold on while I—”

But before she could move into her wheelchair, the door to her apartment opened and Violet appeared, grinning at us in a cherry-red velour sweatsuit.

“You were muted!” she cried at us, in a voice that only sounded ninety-five percent like a crow scolding you for walking too far into the woods. “You have to learn not to press the mute button, Althea.”

“I did no such thing,” Auntie Thea retorted. “I wasn’t muted, you were.”

“Nonsense.” Violet stalked across the thick cream and blue carpet. “I would never do something like that.” She turned to look at me. “And how is the handsomest man in Washington, DC today? Your aunt didn’t tell me you were coming over. Trying to keep you all to herself again, I see.”

I suppressed a sigh. I really disliked it when Thea and her friends told me how good-looking I supposedly was. I knew they were just trying to make me feel better, but in reality, it just rubbed in how not hot I was. I was skinny, and too tall for my weight. I looked like a coat hanger had untwisted itself and become a person. And I had a big birthmark that covered most of my right cheek.

I’m fairly light-skinned, so it’s pretty much the first thing you see when you meet me. Kind of hard to hide something the size and shape of Australia that takes up one side of your face. And the more that people like Violet told me I was handsome, the more it reminded me that I wasn’t.

“I’m doing alright,” I said. “How are you today, Violet?”

“You know he comes over every Saturday,” Thea scoffed. “It’s your own fault if you can’t remember what day of the week it is.”

“Oh, I’m not that far gone yet,” Violet said, coming to a stop directly in front of the TV. “And you’ll go before I do, I’ll put money on it.”

“If I go before you do, I won’t remember taking that bet,” Thea replied tartly. “Now move over, you’re blocking my view.”

“I’m not going to move until you tell me why you called. I was about to take a nap, you know. It had better be important.”

“Ungrateful, she is.” Auntie Thea turned to look at me. “Do you see how she treats me? Accuses me of hiding you from her, then when I generously invite her over to see you, she yells at me for interrupting her nap.”

“You didn’t invite me over, I invited myself.”

“As usual.” Thea tossed her head. “I know I shouldn’t expect an old dog to learn new tricks, but really, you would think after eighty-three years on God’s green earth, you would have learned some manners. I was going to ask you a question, but I’m not sure you even deserve our attention.”

“As if you’re not a month shy of your eighty-fourth birthday yourself. And you watch who you’re calling a dog or I won’t help you at all. Now what was your question?”

You could be forgiven for thinking Thea and Violet only tolerated each other’s company due to forced proximity at Swannvale, but in fact, the two had been best friends since they began work in the same secretarial pool some sixty years ago. That was Auntie Thea for you. Sweet as sugar to strangers, she only really let her viper’s tongue fly with those she loved—and those who could give as good as they got.

“Quinn here has agreed to your suggestion,” she said, gesturing at me. “So now we just need the name of that company.”

Violet’s face went from suspicious to delighted in an instant. “He did, did he? Well, we always knew he was a smart boy.” She looked over at me. “You won’t regret it. My granddaughter swears her boss used them to find a date for the company holiday party. She says they were very discreet. Let’s see that tablet, Althea. I can look them up myself.”

“I can do it if you’ll just tell me the name, you busybody.”

“You’ll just forget it again before you pull up the keypad. I’ll do it.”

“You type like a sloth with sleeping sickness. I’ll do it.”

“I type one hundred ten words a minute, I’ll have you know.”

“Slowing down in your old age, I see. I type one hundred fifteen.”

“Can we all just take a breath for a second,” I said. Well, shouted. I hadn’t meant for it to come out that loudly, but when Thea and Violet got going, they became unstoppable very quickly. “I haven’t agreed to anything. I still don’t even know what we’re talking about.”

“There’s no need to raise your voice,” Thea said. “Of course you’ve agreed. You’ve said no to all your other options, so this is what remains.”

“And we’re talking about Heartbreakers Anonymous.” Violet gave me a prim little sniff. “Though I certainly hope you display better manners when you meet your consultant. I thought you were more mature.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “Really, I am. But this is all coming at me a little fast. I’m still confused. What is this company? Why would I need a consultant? How does any of this actually help me?”

“Heartbreakers Anonymous,” Violet repeated. She wrested the tablet out of Thea’s hands and swiped it on, her fingers flying across the surface. “They provide relationship consultants to meet a variety of needs. It’s all very above board. Perfectly legal, but very hush-hush.”

“A relationship consultant?” I said, completely lost.

“They provide dates to people who need them,” Thea said. “Dates, cover stories, the works. According to Violet here, anyway. And that’s exactly what you need, isn’t it? A date for Friday who’s willing to pretend to be your boyfriend of the past five months. Isn’t that how long you told Delia you’d been together?”

“Here, see for yourself.”

Violet thrust the tablet at me. I took it wordlessly. The company’s logo flashed across the screen, then resolved into a webpage that announced itself as ‘Professional and Discreet. How can we be of service? ’ A drop-down menu offered one-night engagements, long-term arrangements, and special situations.

I clicked on ‘ one-night engagements ’ and was taken to a screen that explained that Heartbreakers Anonymous provided an array of possible relationship consultants who could fit any need you might have for a night where a plus-one was required. My eyebrows shot up at the price.

“One thousand dollars?” I said, my voice coming out an octave higher than usual.

Violet nodded judiciously. “Worth every penny, my granddaughter says.”

“And what else are you spending money on?” Auntie Thea put in. “Might as well put it to good use.”

“Keep scrolling,” Violet said. “Take a look at their consultants. They’re all very good-looking. Even the young ladies, I might add. Very tasteful.”

The profiles for each consultant were tasteful, I had to admit. Each one gave a short description of their age, interests, and personality, alongside artfully cropped pictures that gave an idea of what the consultant looked like without ever showing you their face. Every single one of the guys seemed hot.

But I couldn’t actually be considering this. This was crazy. This was a thing an actual crazy person would do, and I was not crazy.

Right?

I wasn’t crazy…but I was dumb enough to lie about having a long-term boyfriend, to promise to bring him to a family function, and to refuse to back down or say we’d broken up. Short of moving to Mexico, maybe this was my best bet.

I looked back at Auntie Thea and Violet. “I can’t actually do this, can I?”

“What’s stopping you?” Thea asked.

“Um, common sense? Dignity? My bank account?”

“Now is hardly the time to develop self-esteem, Quinn,” Thea said, peering at me over the top of her glasses.

“Ouch.”

“And if you’re worried about the money, I’ll cover it. It’s money that would come to you anyway when I die. Let me pay for it now and see it go to good use.”

“Go on, give two old ladies a thrill,” Violet said.

“I’ll thank you not to call me old.” Thea sent a severe glance over her shoulder at Violet.

“And I’ll remind you that no matter how long we live, you’ll always be nine months older than I am.” Violet grinned broadly back at her, then took the tablet away from me. “Here, let me fill out the request.”

“I can do—” I began, but her fingers were already moving at incredible speed across the tablet.

“Any requests for a particular consultant?” she asked. “Or should I just say whoever’s available?”

“Better go with that,” Thea said. “He can’t be too picky when it’s this short notice.”

It was like I wasn’t even in the room. Thea took the tablet from Violet to enter her credit card number and my contact information, then handed it back. Violet extended the tablet in my direction for approval, but didn’t give me time for more than a cursory glance before saying, “Good. And…sent!”

She looked up and smiled triumphantly. Thea’s eyes danced as she smiled too. What had they just done? What had I just done?

A moment later, my phone buzzed. I pulled it out to see I’d gotten a text.

UNKNOWN NUMBER: Thank you for your interest in our services. Your request has been received. You will be contacted once your order is confirmed.

I could have been ordering Chinese food, for all the information the text gave. But they had said they were discreet.

“Who did they match you with?” Violet asked, her gaze downright feral. “Was it Amir? I thought he was the best looking of them all.”

“You couldn’t even see what any of them looked like,” Auntie Thea protested.

“I didn’t need to,” Violet said with a shrug. “I can just tell.”

“No one yet,” I said slowly. “But I guess I’ll find out soon?”

“Well, good. That’s settled, at least.” Thea nodded as though justice had been done. “Onto more important matters, now. You need to help me decide what to wear to this party. I’ve been going through my closet and have pulled out some of my old favorites.”

“Why not just buy something new?” Violet said. “No one wants to see those moth-eaten old rags of yours.”

“They are not moth-eaten. I keep the oldest ones in a cedar chest,” Thea snapped.

“Wait, wait, wait,” I said. “I’m not ready to move on to talking about dresses just yet. I still want to know how your granddaughter found out about this company,” I told Violet. Then I looked at Thea. “And I still have some follow-up questions about that nude beach in Marseilles.”

Auntie Thea grinned wickedly. “I don’t dare tell you. You might keel over with shock, and that would really put a damper on the party this Friday. You’ll just have to use your imagination…”