Love For Rent Read Free Page A

17-year-old get a job driving a two-ton delivery van? Will someone explain that?”
    Melanie, on the couch next to Michael, shot to her feet. “How can a 28-year-old woman give a guy a blow job at work? Answer me that!”
    “Hah!” Michael exclaimed. “And in the nude? And then, when she hears a security guard approaching, jumps in the van—still nude—which her new fuck buddy drives to the park, where Junie proceeds to bonk him!”
    “You fucked him in the park? In the nude? In the back of the van?”
    “You had to be there.”
    “Oh, god, Junie.” Melanie collapsed on the couch.
    “Look at these newspapers,” Michael said, spreading his arms. “It even made page three of the fucking New York Times.” He threw his head back.
    “So what happened?”
    “I had to bail my wife out of jail.”
    To Junie: “What about your job?”
    “What job?” Michael said. Junie lowered her face to her hands and began to sob.
    “Junie is no longer a professional,” Michael said in a flat tone. “She was fired. No severance. No vacation, because we used that up. No health insurance. No doctorate, which was only a year away, because of, you know, moral turpitude. And no reputation. Or, to be exact, no kind of reputation that would allow you to, say, earn a living.”
    “I’m sorry, Melanie.” Junie’s voice was muffled by her hands.
    “You’re sorry? Sorry ? You selfish, evil, self-indulgent, evil…” Melanie sputtered.
    She rummaged in the pile and picked up another newspaper. “’Library chief offers expanded services’?” She looked up, bewildered. The grainy picture below the headline showed a woman on her knees between the legs of a man in a dark uniform. She was nude. A black bar hid her buttocks.
    “The university’s student newspaper is having a field day,” Michael said to the ceiling. “They even got the fucking photo.”
    Melanie looked up. “Do you have a lawyer?”
    “Yes,” Michael responded. His phone buzzed and he read a text message. “Hold on. Here’s a faint glimmer of good news. Turns out that the guy is twenty-one—just barely—and had lied to the cops about his age. So it looks like the most serious charge will be dropped. But , it’s a little late. The damage is done.”
    “What are we going to do?”
    “Sleep in your car? Because in two weeks, all our money will be gone.”

    At six-foot-three, two hundred and thirty pounds, dressed in an Armani suit and custom loafers, Gordon dominated the living room. Sitting in an easy chair next to Junie, he looked around. “You are one of the glummest assemblages of white motherfuckers I’ve ever had the misfortune to be with,” he said.
    “Thanks for that uplifting greeting,” Junie muttered. “You could’ve just texted your condolences.”
    “Woman, I wouldn’t have come over here if all I was going to say is I’m sorry for your pathetic asses.”
    “Okay, then why are you here?” Michael asked, bristling. The men despised each other—one, the formerly caged and cuckolded husband, the other the prodigiously endowed lover (and tenured university professor) who had been Junie’s fuck buddy since she was in high school.
    “Not to give you any advice, asshole,” Gordon spat. “You people ever hear the phrase, when life gives you lemons, make lemonade?”
    Junie rolled her eyes. Melanie, seated next to Michael on the couch, shifted uncomfortably.
    “I guess I gotta spell it out for you,” Gordon said, more to himself than the other three people in the living room. “Junie, what is the most important thing in your life? Outside of sleeping and eating?”
    She didn’t answer.
    “It’s sex. You are the most sexual person I’ve ever met. Even when you’re doing other shit, Dewey Decimal System shit, you’re always thinking about sex. Wanting sex. Planning sex. Doing sex.”
    “Not in the last few days.”
    Gordon made a sour face. “Okay, I really got to spell it out for you. Here’s another question, and I guarantee