Chapter 2 ~ Still SeeDy
Some time during
the night, as Quistis slept in her own bed, snow began to fall heavily. When she
woke at noon, the streets of Timber were covered in a blanket of white. Looking
out the window of her second floor apartment, she shivered and hurried to turn
up the heat and make coffee.
“I’m gonna be wearing my furry underwear tonight for sure!” She yelped as
she pranced into the kitchen in her flannel pajamas.
Getting the coffee going had become so automatic that Quis was sure she could do
it in her sleep, which she often did. Yawning, she filled up the glass carafe
with water and was just about to pour when something on the other side of the
kitchen sink caught her eye. She froze in her tracks and caught her breath.
The carafe slipped from her fingers and hit the counter with a ding.
So it was real! It hadn’t been a dream!
What happened the night before rushed back to her – blindfolded, lying on the
rumpled bed in room 203 of the Railroad Street Hotel, listening to her client
put his clothes back on. Feeling his wetness on her mouth, on her thighs,
wondering what he would do next. She had waited, quiet, until something scratchy
grazed her stomach and made her jump. After that, the door
to the room opened and closed quickly, followed by silence until Carin came in
to untie her. And there on Quisty’s stomach was …
That.
As soon as she came in Tuesday night she put it in a vase – a single red
long-stem rose that he, her mysterious client, draped across her stomach just
before he left the room.
If she had tried hard enough, she could’ve permanently forgotten what had
happened – except for the rose, standing in its vase in her kitchen, its
thorns still intact. It was a beautiful thing – long, elegant, and blood red.
Tied around the stem was a white ribbon with the word Carmani on it.
And now what to do? Destroy it? Tear its velvety petals? Throw them around the
room? For some reason she had treasured it, been in awe of it, the night before.
But now, as long as it lived was was a reminder that she had sold her body to
the highest bidder. And yet the rose was so beautiful – she had never before
seen one so perfect.
“Could I really forget that easily?” She whispered to herself.
Quistis stood for another minute staring at the red rose in its vase and then
went back to making coffee. This time she filled up the carafe and was just
about to pour water into the Krupps when the phone rang and she jumped, spilling
water over the counter.
“Good god, I’m freaked today,“ she hit the Talk button on the phone and
said, “Hello?”
“Hey, girl,” a familiar voice chirped.
Selphie!
“Hey!” Quis said and began her third attempt at coffee, “What up?”
“Where the fuck have you been?”
“Working.”
“Like every day?”
“Well, just about, or I’m sleeping.” Q said, filling up the carafe again,
“Plus, I just don’t live around there anymore, y’know.”
“Yeah, right,” Selphie said, “but you never come to see us, either.”
“I will,” she made a successful pour this time and switched the coffeemaker
on, “or you come to see me first. I’m getting closer to moving to D.C. to
start college. As soon as I have my own place, we’ll have a party.”
“Promise?”
“Yeah,” she said and went over to curl up on the sofa with a blanket.
Selphie was her best girlfriend and Quistis missed her. Today she felt that more
than ever. It really had been a long time since she’d seen any of them, and
when she started out with her plan, she wanted it that way. In particular, she
was hoping to never see Squall and Rinoa again.
“Will you come to Rinoa’s bridal shower on Friday?”
Oh, shit.
“Gee, Sels, I have to work on Friday.”
“Friday during the day?”
Too late. A month before she had told Selphie she worked nights.
“During the day, huh?”
“Yeah. We’re gonna have lunch at noon at the mall. You have to come, Quissy.
She’s marrying Squall on Saturday.”
“Saturday?” Quistis sat bolt upright, “That happened all of a
sudden, didn’t it?”
“Yup. Word is that General Caraway is pushing Squall into it, and even that
he’s paying Squall a ton of money to do it.”
“That’s crazy,” Q whispered and settled down.
So it was really going to happen. Squall would marry Rinoa. Finally, all of the
dreams she had about him would be done with forever. Even though she had pretty
much written off Squall being in her life, Quistis couldn’t help but feel a
terrible sadness coming over her.
“So are you gonna come? Rin doesn’t have that many friends. I think you’re
gonna have to come whether you want to or not.”
That was true. Rinoa didn’t have many friends. Plus, Quistis could shop for
new outfits in D.C. The way she figured it now, she’d have about another month
left as a dancer before she could move to Deiling City and start college. That
meant she would need a few more costumes and a serious supply of panties.
“All right. I’ll be there,” Quistis said. As she went back to the kitchen
to pour a hot cup for herself and warm up, she listened to Selphie talk about
what Irvine had been up to lately, which was more of the same – flirting with
the girls and fucking around on the side. The coffee was good and strong.
Quissy sipped at it to keep herself from laughing at Irvine’s attempts to get
out of trouble with Selphie.
“… and so anyway he said ‘she wanted me to fuck her! She begged me!’”
Just then the doorbell rang downstairs, a shrill brrrrringggggggggg
shattering the building’s snowy silence. Quistis yelped and nearly spilled hot
coffee down her pajama top.
“What’s the matter?” Selphie said.
“Oh, it’s the doorbell,” Quistis put down her cup of coffee as the
doorbell rang again. “I gotta go, Sels. I’ll talk to you later, alright?”
“You’d better!” Were Selphie’s final words, cut off as Quis opened the
front door of her apartment and looked down the stairs. The main entrance to the
building was a glass door, through which she could see a strange man standing
holding a long box with a white ribbon around it. He spotted Quistis and she
waved at him, put the phone down, and put on her slippers.
As soon as she unlocked the door and opened it a crack, the man said,
“Quistis Trepe?”
She nodded and he handed her the box. It was long and wrapped in gold paper.
“Have a good day,” he said and went back to his delivery truck. It was white
and had the word Carmani written in gold on the side. Quistis sucked in
her breath. She looked at the ribbon tied around the box. That said Carmani
also.
“Oh my god!” She quickly closed and locked the front door.
She ran up the wooden flight of stairs to her apartment faster than she ever had
before, completely forgetting about being cold. Once inside, she set the gold
box down on her kitchen counter and double-locked the door to her apartment.
“He knows where I live,” she whispered, feeling chilled in a way that had
nothing to do with the cold winter wind that was starting to whip through
Timber. “He knows who I am and he knows where I live!”
She hurriedly untied the ribbon from the box and opened it. When she saw what
was inside, her eyes flew open wide and her mouth dropped open.
Twelve long-stemmed roses, pink, with a small envelope on top of them.
She snatched up the envelope. On the front it said: For
my favorite blonde
She took out the tiny card inside the envelope and read it:
Found you at last
S.
Her fingers trembled slightly now that he admitted it. He found her. But S?
Certainly not Seifer. He would never spend 250,000 gil for an hour and a half
with any girl. She thought about it for a second, looking at the pink
roses. One of the Trepies? Trepie number one? His name was Sasha and he was from
a rich Galbadian family. But he was so shy. This didn’t seem like something he
would do, either.
When the phone rang this time, she didn’t jump at all. She hit Talk and said,
“Selphie?”
Quis wanted to tell her everything that had happened so far, but Selphie
didn’t know what exactly Quis was doing for a job. Quis would have to fill her
in on everything. And maybe telling her over the phone wasn’t such a good
idea. Suddenly Quistis missed having a best friend and was starting to feel sad
when she noticed there was no one on the phone.
“Hello?” She said.
Then she heard it. It sounded like someone laughing very softly.
“Who’s there?” She was just about to hang up when a deep voice said,
“Well, it’s not Selphie!” And he laughed out loud.
That voice!
“Seifer,” she said, looking again at the card that came with the flowers.
“Yeah, you’re right.”
Somehow she could almost hear him smiling over the phone.
“I found you!” He said in a sing-song voice.
“Yeah,” she touched the pink rose petals, amazed at their smell and delicate velvet, “and
you sent me flowers, didn’t you?”
“Of course,” he said, “you like em?”
“What is Carmani?”
“Florist in D.C.”
Well that answered that.
“So …,” she started to say and then thought of thinthing – had he been
her client the night before, too?
“I got something going on in D.C. today. I’ll tell you about it later, but I
wanted to come by and see ya for a bit,” he said.
“Seifer …,” she wanted desperately to hear him say it – was he the
client? She wondered if she could get a straight answer from him.
“Hey, can I come up? It’s freezing out here!”
“Where are you?”
“Look out the window.”
Quistis left the flowers where they were, hopped over to her middle front window
and parted the sheer curtains there. The snow that fell earlier was now whipping
down Center Street. All was quiet except for the shriek of the wind. There was
no movement anywhere as she looked up and down the street. No cars. No one
walking.
And then she saw him.
On the next street corner to the north. At the pay phone. Tall, wearing his
signature long gray coat, getting dusted with snow. When he saw her, he pointed
at himself, his black gloves on.
“Good fucking god,” she whispered.
“Yeah, that’s me,” he said and hung up. With that he ran across the
street, heading for her apartment building. She went downstairs to let him in.
“Hey, babe,” he said and kissed her on the forehead when he saw her. She was
still wearing her pajamas and hadn’t brushed her teeth yet. Her messy hair was
up in a ponytail.
Seifer looked up the stairs at her open apartment door, “You livin’ with
anyone yet?”
She shook her head no and noticed Seifer’s instant grimace.
He said, “Why the hell not?”
“Never found the right guy,” she answered and closed the building’s front
door against the fluttering snow.
“Well, here I am!” He said with a grandiose sweep of his arms before he
headed up the stairs.
“Wait a minute,” Quistis said behind him, “we tried that already –
remember?”
He went into her apartment, “That was way long ago, honey bun."
By the time she caught up with him, he was looking around her sparse kitchen and
living room and frowning.
“Would you like a cup of coffee?” She said.
“Oh hell no. How ‘bout a beer?”
She still had some left over from when Irvine and Zell helped her move in. As
Seifer sat down heavily on her sofa, she tossed him a cold bottle from the
refrigerator and poured herself another cup of coffee.
“This doesn’t look like the kinda place you’d live,” he said.
“Oh, really?” She sat down in the armchair next to the sofa and pulled a
blanket over herself. Even though she had the heat on, it was still cold in the
lofty warehouse apartment. “So what kind of place do you think I’d be living
in?”
“I dunno,” he looked more closely at her bedroom, “just somewhere with
your number one guy is all.”
“He’s getting married,” Quistis looked away from Seifer and sipped her
coffee.
He made a sound that was like pfafffffff and said, “Still crawling on
your knees after Squall, huh? When are you gonna see that I’m right here?”
She felt slightly irritated at the word crawling and looked up at him,
“Maybe when you apologize for trying to kill me.”
“Ouch!” He settled back into her sofa and took a long drink from his
bottle of beer. His eyes were half-lidded and momentarily unreadable to her,
“If you gimme a chance, I’ll tell you everything that happened. Everything.
Then you’ll see why none of it was my fault.”
“Seifer, nothing is ever your fault.”
“I know that!” He leaned forward, “I’ve been trying to tell you that for
years! And all this time it’s been you, Cid, that lesbian Dr. K, and Squall
the teacher’s pet against me!”
“Sure.”
“Anyway,” he finished off his beer, “I gotta go. I got a job to do for an
old friend of mine, but I should be back here tonight or tomorrow.”
Quistis studied him for a minute while he burped. Same old Seifer. Sexy, and yet
irritating. She wrapped her blanket around her body like a robe and went to
unlock the downstairs door. When she got there, Seifer came up behind and put
his arms around her,
“Kiss me, instructor number fourteen,” he said with a breathy foreign
accent.
“Seifer,” she said wearily, unlatching the door chain and clicking the
deadbolt open, “I’m not 15 anymore.”
“I know that,” he whispered, burying his face in her hair, “and you’re
even sexier now that you’ve lost your innocence.”
She turned and pushed him away from her as much as she could, which wasn’t
very far, “That means you’re going to have to earn my trust again. Got
it?”
With that, he leapt forward and took her in his arms. Q wasn’t surprised at
all. It was exactly the kind of thing he would do. She struggled against him as
he held her tightly. She ended up pinned against the wooden door frame with the
doorknob poking her in the small of her back. Just as she opened her mouth to
tell him to stop, he swooped down and kissed her hard, forcing his tongue in her
mouth. When he was finished, he said,
“Got it,” and opened the door for himself as Quisty stepped out of the way.
She watched him disappear into the blizzard that was beginning to sweep down
Center Street, his gray coat flapping behind him. She didn’t know exactly what
to think. He had always been a mystery to her ~ his motives and reasoning, even
as a child. Was he serious now about wanting a relationship? And had he been her
secret client the night before? Maybe this doing-jobs-for-a-friend thing
was paying off.
“I may never really know,” she whispered to herself as she watched the snow
envelope Seifer completely. After that she found a good book to read and crawled
back in bed with her coffee until it was time to go to work.
* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~“You think we could get some heat in this dump, all the money we bring in
here.”
Quistis shook the wrinkles out of her first outfit of the night, the Galbadian
officer’s uniform, and absently said, “Mm-hmm.”
Sitting at the vanity this night was Jena, the Blue Kitten’s headlining
stripper. She was a tall blonde, nearly 6 feet, with long legs and big fake
boobs. She had long straight hair and was pretty, but she was also mean. And
expensive. Her dances started at 150 gil for one minute and climbed dramatically
from there.
“I outta buy this place and set fire to it,” she said while carefully
putting on a second coat of black eyeliner.
For some odd reason, this made Quistis giggle as she started to undress.
Jena started in on her other eye, “You have a sick sense of humor, you know
that?”
“So do you!” Quis listened to the dull thump of the club music as she began
to remove layer after layer of clothing. The first dancer of the evening was
already out on stage. She was the same age as Quistis and was a short busty
brown-haired girl from Timber. Her name was Lala and Jen didn’t like her.
Quis hurried to put on her blue see-through bra, matching thong and stockings in
the cold room. As soon as she had her outfit on, she would wrap herself in her
thick bathrobe and get warm before her set started. She barely had her micro
mini shorts up her thighs when the dressing room door banged open and Carin
hurried in smoking a cigarette.
“Hey, kid,” she said to Quistis and grabbed her arm.
“Do you think for once,” Jena said from the other side of the room, “you
could enter this room like a lady instead of like a cow barreling toward the
food trough?”
“Sorry, Jen,” Carin said, blowing out smoke. Quis had never heard Carin
apologize to anyone before and it made her stop in mid-pull on her shorts. “C’mere,”
Carin said and pulled her by one arm into the corner of the room. Tonight she
was wearing black pants and a sheer red blouse with a matching strapless bra
underneath. She looked almost classy.
“The guy’s here again,” she whispered and took another drag off of her
smoke.
Quistis smiled and finished dressing, not nervous at all, “Oh, don’t worry,
Carin, I think I know who it is. Is he real tall? Like over 6 feet?”
“I can’t tell you that,” she said, “but he wants something different
tonight.”
“Really? For For the same price?”
“Not for the same price,” Carin said and looked over her shoulder at Jena,
who was dusting her face with powder. “Tonight he’s offering 500,000
gil!”
Jen, hearing the word gil, interjected, “What are you two talking
about?”
“For what?” Quistis said, finishing with her shorts and putting on her short
officer’s jacket.
“Special request,” Carin said to Jena. At the same time she produced a piece
of paper from her pocket and gave it to Quistis. On it were written the words to
a song. Quis looked them over,
“Oh, yeah. I know this song.”
Carin lowered her voice, “He wants you to dance to it, and then afterwards he
wants you to meet him in the hotel again for you-know-what.”
Sure. That sounded like Seifer.
Quistis lowered her voice, too, “500,000, huh?”
Carin nodded and finished her smoke quickly.
“Get the money first,” Quis said to her as she finished with the snaps on
her top.
“Of course.” Carin turned and hurried out the door, barreling again. She slammed it behind her.
“Cow,” Jena said.
Quis put her bathrobe on and went to sit by Jen and listen to her complain about
there not being enough rich men in the world.
At 8 o’clock Carin turned off the stage lights and Mikki took her
place. Wearing her Galbadian army officer’s uniform, she grabbed the pole at
center stage and then crouched down with her legs open on either side of it. She
just hoped her shorts wouldn’t tear before the right moment. That happened
once before and Mikki had to pretend that it was part of her act. Strangely
enough, it was one of her best dances and she had made a ton of gil off of it.
Best not to overdo, however.
The music began with the thump thump thump thump of a drum. As soon as
the guitar started in, Carin turned up the house lights and the men started to
whistle. The song started:
Dead I am
the one, Exterminating son
Slipping through the trees, strangling the breeze
Dead I am the one, watching angels cry
As they slowly turn, conquering the worm
Dig through the ditches,
Burn through the witches
I slam in the back of my
Dragula**
Mikki threw her head back, the long straight hair of her wig swishing down
behind her, and began to hump the pole, rubbing her crotch up and down on it,
her mouth open in ecstasy. After four beats of this, she stood, turned around,
and put her butt up to the pole. She bent over, grabbed her ankles, and humped
the pole with her behind, looking through her legs at all the men in the crowd,
most of whom were screaming and waving gil.
She skipped to the edge of the stage and then back to the front, grabbing the
left pole this time.
Dig
through the ditches,
Burn through the witches
I slam in the back of my
Dragula
Dead I am the pool, spreading from the fool
Weak and want you need, nowhere as you bleed
Dead I am the rat, feast upon the cat
Tender is the fur, dying as you purr
Four men were in front of
her, down below at the edge of the stage, and she took their 20-gil notes. None
of them were Seifer.
Mikki crouched down with her sex up against the pole and humped it while she
cupped and played with her breasts. For the men who had just paid her, she put
her round beauties on either side of the pole and then tore open her Galbadian
officer’s jacket and bra in one motion.
The crowd went wild.
She humped the pole and pretended to lick it while playing with her breasts.
After a few minutes of this and a few more gil, she took off her jacket and bra
and threw them into the crowd.
Dig
through the ditches,
Burn through the witches
I slam in the back of my
Dragula
Do it baby, Do it baby
Do it baby, Do it baby
Burn like an animal
Mikki skipped to the back of
the stage again in only her shorts, thigh-high stockings, and boots. When she
turned and danced her way back to the front, she had her palms over her breasts,
her fingers hiding her pink nipples. This time she danced over to the pole on
the left side of the stage. She jumped and grasped the pole fairly high, then
swung her legs around it. She leaned back and hooked one foot tightly around the
upper part of the pole. Quickly, so that it seemed effortless, she let go of the
pole and let herself hang upside down.
Dead I am
the life, dig into the skin
Knuckle crack the bone, 21 to win
Dead I am the dog, hound of hell you cry
Devil on your back, I can never die
Dig through the ditches,
Burn through the witches
I slam in the back of my
Dragula
With one arm she covered her
breasts. Her free hand quickly undid the snaps of her micro mini shorts and then
plunged inside to play with her sex.
The crowd went wild a second time.
She toyed with her sex for a few minutes and played with her nipples a little
before flipping herself backward off of the pole and landing on her feet. Six
men were at the front of the stage waving 50-gil notes at her. Mikki got close
enough to the men to let them slip the bills inside of her thigh-high stockings.
When she had their money, she skipped backward a little while pretending to undo
her shorts.
Do it
baby, Do it baby
Do it baby, Do it baby
But her shorts had a secret.
They were tear-aways that were held together at the seams by velcro strips. When
she had the men’s attention, she yanked hard on the waistband and her shorts
came off completely in one pull, exposing her see-through blue panties and a
patch of trimmed blonde fur. She threw the shorts out into the crowd.
So many of the men were screaming and yelling that Quistis couldn’t hear what
they were saying. It didn’t matter. Even their money didn’t matter now.
She danced in one spot for a few beats and then tore off her thong and threw
that into the crowd also. For her first time as a dancer she was totally exposed
for everyone to see. Quis thought about it for a minute and was surprised at how
much she didn’t care.
As the music died down, she skipped away from center stage and then dropped to
her knees. She threw her head back and got on all fours. The song ended with
Mikki’s ass to the crowd, her knees apart, completely exposing her sex for all to see. Just before Carin turned the lights out, Quistis / Mikki looked back at
the crowd, her ass up in the air.
Quistis hurried backstage with her bathrobe around her mostly naked body. Jen
was standing at the stage door in a nurse’s outfit and said,
“Damn, woman! You wanna get us closed down?”
Quisty suspected that the whole town of Timber probably wanted the Blue Kitten
closed down, but she didn’t say anything. She merely slipped by Jena and into
the dressing room, which was empty. There she began taking all of the gil notes
out of her stockings as the dance music started up again.
Jena’s turn.
Carin entered the room as Quis was taking off her wig, “You will never believe
how much gil you made tonight!” Another cigarette between her fingers.
“Keep it,” Quistis said absently, looking over her ruined makeup in the
vanity’s cracked mirror. She hadn’t found a makeup yet that would stand up
to sweat and hot lights.
Now that didn’t matter anymore, either.
* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~Going to the hotel this time was easier. Quistis walked quickly and confidently
through the cold and dreary night to the Railroad Street Hotel. She walked
alone, holding her winter coat close around her nude body. The only thing she
had on underneath was a necklace, red thigh-high stockings, and her black boots,
as the client requested.
She also walked alone because she told Carin she could go by herself. After all,
Quis knew who the client was and she trusted him not to do anything too
freaky. Which was half true.
As she breezed through the hotel’s front door, she hoped that tonight her
mystery client would reveal his identity to her.
And And hand over the 500,000 gil. Because after this job it was Goodbye Blue
Kitten! Goodbye red wig, goodbye Jena. Hello Deiling City!
At the door to room 203, Quistis stopped for a minute and took a deep breath.
put put her hand on the doorknob.
Everything will be okay.
And yet something inside told her to run run run!
She took another deep breath.
Silly!
Turned the doorknob, went into the room, and closed the door.
The room was dark. For a moment, Quistis couldn’t see anything but a
square of light far away. She blinked her eyes to adjust and realized that the
lights in the room had been turned off but the bathroom light was on. The
bathroom door was open; the room quiet. Quis was beginning to wonder if her
client was late when the silence was broken by the sound of footsteps crossing
the room quickly behind her. Before she could react, he reached around her with
one arm and pinned her.
“Hey!” Quistis struggled against him. Instinctively, she grabbed onto the
mystery man’s arm with both hands and pulled. Before she could scream for
help, Quistis felt a sharp jab in her hand.
“Calm down,” a whispery voice said.
At that moment bright white flowers exploded in front of her eyes. She felt her
legs go weak, and then she knew nothing.
** Dragula, Rob Zombie