Echo

better to observe her targets from.
    She scanned the room, noting the slim prospects. Implementing her new plan required a target; just the right type, the easily manipulated. A dork, hungry to experience what it would be like to have the enthralled attention of the cheerleader that rebuffed him in high school, the homecoming beauty queen he secretly beat off to in the privacy of his stinking adolescent bedroom.
    She shook her head as she evaluated every man in the room. She knew men better than she knew herself. The disgusting predictability of men always revolved around their cocks. If she got an extra dollar for every time, even the most educated, confidant or successful john said to her, with a nod to their cocks , so, how ya like it, she could retire; if I could just stop laughing first . They never understood that a woman judges a man differently. Bright confident smile? Check. Any brains? Check. Can he make me laugh? Check. Does he have a good heart? Check. Does he have any money? Well, can’t have everything. These characteristics made the sex good. Not the size of his cock. A woman only cares about the cock if it doesn’t work. The johns all think, the bigger the cock, the more a woman will like the sex, therefore, by extension, them. The only thing Ginger Mae could say about the occasional large dick she encountered, and she really meant occasional, was that you weren’t touching her with it. She definitely wasn’t into pain. And it sure felt miserable, regardless of how hard she faked it. Want to impress a john? Tell him what a sensational cock he had. He would fall in love. If she realized that when she was eighteen, she would probably own the world by now.
    Well, she knew it now. And she planned on making it pay off in a big way. While she still could dazzle them. The last time she found the perfect john, it lasted five years. She hadn’t found it necessary to see any other johns the whole time. He gave her a luxury apartment, charge accounts, elegant dinners, international vacations. All paid for by him. She thought it would go on forever. And she actually grew fond of him. The fact that she spent all major holidays and most weekends alone mattered little. Just as she got ready to convince him to sign the apartment over to her, she discovered her pregnancy. Foolishly, she misjudged him. Where she assumed it would only make him feel more responsible, financially of course, she forgot how men react when cornered with their own indiscretions.
    He cut off her charge accounts without warning. She found herself locked out of her apartment and her frantic calls to his cell stopped getting an answer. The apartment house concierge hand delivered an envelope containing a tersely worded note with ten thousand dollars enclosed. She burned with the humiliating memory. Two words— Move on.
    And she had, of course. A cheap apartment and back to work, fast, before she started to show. Not that the johns would even care all that much. She worked up until her seventh month. And then Daisy came. She gave birth alone, in her apartment, no one the wiser. She planned to take the baby and leave it at the local firehouse but inexplicably, she changed her mind. She kept the baby, found an Armenian woman from her apartment house to babysit and went back to work four months after the birth. That was over five years ago and to this day, sadly, her little Daisy had yet to utter a single word.
    A clattering at the door to the bar caught her attention. Glancing out the windows, she discovered snow, the flakes backlit by the streetlights like rare mid-summer fireflies. Her attention wandered back to the squat figure at the door. She tapped a slender finger on the varnished tabletop. Hmm , she wondered, let’s size this guy up .
    His head bulged, out of proportion with his body, bandy legs encased in the most ridiculous screaming yellow cowboy boots. He removed a black leather trench coat trimmed in a silver fur of some sort. Even from her distant seat she could see the buttery texture of the coat. She assumed the boots, although tasteless, cost a pretty penny. Then he looked up, spotting her staring. She extended a modest smile, trying valiantly to repress her revulsion as she got a clear look at his face. Oh well, duty calls . And quite possibly, he might be the ticket she longed for.
    His unsophisticated demeanor stood out like a swarm of hornets at a nudist camp; a real rube. They made the easiest targets; especially the