Femme Fatale and other stories

take my little finger—”
    “Shut up.” His voice was so loud that it broke through the dreamy demeanor of the counter girl, who started and exchanged a worried look with Heloise. A moment ago, Heloise had been pitying her, and now the girl was concerned about Heloise. That was how quickly things could change. “Look, this is the option. I get free rides for life or I make sure that everyone knows what you are. Everyone. Including your cute little boy.”
    He was shrewd, bringing Scott into the conversation. Scott was her soft spot, her only vulnerability. Before she got pregnant, when she was the only person she had to care for, she had done a pretty shitty job of it. But Scott had changed all that, even before he was a flesh-and-blood reality. She would do anything to protect Scott, anything. Ask Brad for a favor, if need be, although she hated leaning on Brad.
    She might even go to Scott’s father, not that he had any idea he was Scott’s father, and she was never going to inform him of that fact. But she didn’t like asking him for favors under any circumstances. Scott’s father thought he was in her debt. She needed to maintain the equilibrium afforded by that lie.
    “I can’t afford to work for free.”
    “It won’t be every week. And I understand I won’t have bumping rights over the paying customers. I’m just saying that we’ll go on as before, once or twice a month, but I don’t pay for it anymore. It will be like dating, without all the boring socializing. What do the kids call it? A booty call.”
    “I have to think about this,” she said.
    “No you don’t. See you next Wednesday.”
    He hadn’t even offered to pay for her chai or buy her a muffin.
    S HE CALLED B RAD FIRST , but the moment she saw him, waiting in the old luncheonette on Eastern Avenue, she realized it had been a mistake. Brad had taken an oath to serve and protect, but the oath had been for those who obeyed the laws, not those who lived in flagrant disregard of them. He had already done more for her than she had any right to expect. He owed her nothing.
    Still, it was hard for a woman, any woman, not to exploit a man’s enduring love, not to go back to that well and see if you could still draw on it. Brad knew her and he loved her. Well, he thought he knew her and he loved the person he thought he knew. Close enough.
    “You look great,” he said, and she knew he wasn’t being polite. Brad preferred daytime Heloise to the nighttime version, always had.
    “Thanks.”
    “Why did you want to see me?”
    I need advice on how to get a shameless, grasping parasite out of my life.
But she didn’t want to plunge right in. It was crass.
    “It’s been too long.”
    He placed his hands over hers, held them on the cool Formica tabletop, indifferent to the coffee he had ordered. The coffee here was awful, had always been awful. She was not one to romanticize these old diners. Starbucks was taking over the world by offering a superior product, changing people’s perceptions about what they deserved and what they could afford. In her private daydreams, she would like to be the Starbucks of sex-for-hire, delivering guaranteed quality to business travelers everywhere. No, she wouldn’t call it Starfucks, although she had seen that joke on the Internet. For one thing, it would sound like one of those celebrity impersonator services. Besides, it wasn’t elegant. She wanted to take a word or reference that had no meaning in the culture and make it come to mean good, no-strings, quid pro quo sex. Like … “zephyr.” Only not “zephyr,” because it denoted quickness, and she wanted to market sex as a spa service for men, a day or night of pampering with a long list of services and options. So not “zephyr,” but a word like it, one that sounded cool and elegant but whose real meaning was virtually unknown and therefore malleable in the public imagination. Amazon.com was another good example. Or eBay. Familiar yet new.
    But that fantasy seemed more out of reach than ever. Now she would settle for keeping the life she already had.
    “Seriously, Heloise. What’s up?”
    “I missed you,” she said lamely, yet not inaccurately. She missed Brad’s adoration, which never seemed to dim. For a long time she had expected him to marry someone else, to pursue the average family he claimed he wanted to have with her. But now that they were both pushing forty with a very short stick, she was beginning to think that Brad liked