Red cloth slips off the Escort's shoulder as she tiptoes through the door. Her silk dress worn like a blanket, wrapped around her body as a towel toga. Her bare feet sink into the glowing cream carpet as she peers into the bedroom. The windows with sills of glimmering gold, crimson wallpaper encrusted with polished rubies in repeated crosses, and a down mattress bursting with feathers. It was a far cry from the crumbling brick orphanage she grew up in, where ivy crept up the foot of her tattered cot.
A lone knife sits on the bedside table. Above the sleeping man, a gun is mounted and a plaque proudly declaring 100-0-0 hangs below. She scoffs while her cherry, plump lips upturn. All this wealth and pride, yet not a single penny for the poor who hunch over in their tents, the children wrapped in cold beached uniforms, those huddled around meager fires. Yet her scorn will be gone when he wakes, and he'll find this red angel: blessed with high cheekbones and ginger hair and a generous chest.
She stands there until he wakes and opens his top drawer with a single finger. A dollar slips over its wooden lip and, the remnants of her grudge melting away, the lady of the night slips into his bed without a hint of apprehension. Tonight, it is the Godfather. Tomorrow it could be that uptight Mayor, and the next night, that introverted Survivor. Money speaks in this town of chaos – the Escort is but all too willing to listen