The Color Master: Stories Read Free

replaced his coffee in the center of the small white napkin. “Well, you look very nice,” he said. “As usual. But, Janet,” he said, “please, will you tell me why more money, why? If it’s to please me, I am so pleased. You and I had a wonderful time this week, and I will remember it forever.”
    “Me too,” she said, nodding. “Forever.”
    “But, then, why more money?” he asked, moving his chair closer to her. “Wasn’t it just a game? Don’t you like our sex? Isn’t sex its own reward? What can we do differently?”
    He reached out his hand, warm from cupping the mug, and placed it on her collarbone, tracing the line with his finger.
    “It’s good,” Janet said briskly, “I like it, I like how you touch me on my back, I like the pace and the kissing, and I like it.” Daniel moved his finger to the dip at the hollow of her throat, but her voice did not shift or relax. “But Daniel,” she continued, “let me make something clear. Maybe you did not know this, but nothing is its own reward for me.” She stared at his face as directly as she could. The words felt like fireballs inher mouth. “I want you to understand that. You don’t have to understand why, just that it’s true.”
    “That nothing is its own reward? Really?”
    She sat up straighter. “Now, we can of course reduce the fee to make it more financially feasible. Fifty?”
    He took his hand off her body and placed it back on the table. “I mean, Janet,” he said, “do you have any idea how hard I am working my ass off to make—”
    “Twenty?” she said. “I know you’re working so hard, honey, I know. But it would mean so much to me.” As soon as her voice softened, it began to break apart. “I can hardly explain how much it means to me.”
    “Twenty?” he said. “Twenty?” He stuck out his lower lip, thinking. “Twenty? Jesus. I suppose I could do twenty for another week, but I don’t like it. I don’t want to. And is nothing its own reward, Janet? Really? Isn’t love its own reward?”
    “Or thirty?” she asked, sorry now that she’d gone so low.
    “Twenty, Janet,” said Daniel. “And then come on, now. How much money can you really make in a week off twenty dollars? Do you have something you need to buy and don’t want to tell me about? Do you think you should reconsider going back to work?”
    “Twenty-five?” she murmured, tears in her eyes.
    He sipped the last of his coffee very slowly, and when her eyes spilled he leaned in to kiss her forehead. “Twenty-five,” he said. “Fine. Until November 1, though, and then we’re back to regular. Okay?”
    “November 8?” she asked, brushing dry her cheeks.
    “Janet!”
    She moved closer and pressed him desperately to her. “Our love is wonderful,” she said. “I know that. I know it’s true.”
    His nose pushed into the smoothness of her hair. “We’reeach other’s reward,” he offered, but she just dug her head deeper into his shoulder and whispered into the caves of his neck.
    “November 8, then,” he said. “And that’s it-it-it.”
    “Thank you, Daniel,” she breathed. “You have no idea.”
    After they hugged, he went to watch TV. She wrote it all down carefully on the paper:
November 8. 25 dollars. 770 currently
. As if she would forget.
    Starting the next morning, she initiated sex every day. If the week before had been largely his fantasy enacted, now it was all hers. In the shower, in the darkness under all the covers of the bed, at his warehouse among the shoeboxes in his work boots. It felt slightly pathetic to her that she had to do four now to each one before to make the same amount of cash, but she was ravenously hungry for contact all day long, and Daniel, who had grown accustomed—before the previous week—to a steady but slightly lackluster sex life, let her enthusiasm spark his own. He took a lunch with Edward as a break, and only begged fatigue a few times when Janet’s demand was kind of overwhelming, he said,