H-548: Cap Isle, Victory Hotel, Private Room
“Yes; all Shifts. We’ll see if that’s fun.”
Raina is silent while she sips her drink, the impassive mask of her face fading and becoming more animated as she studies Lia speculatively.
“More when there’s a what?”
Lia is silent for a while. She lifts the glass and apparently takes another sip of her whiskey before it returns to dangling from her fingers. Her right arm lifts to cross her body, her hand now resting in the crook of her left elbow. Her weight shifts to her left side as she cocks her right hip.
She gazes out at the darkness before she speaks.
“What I do is especially convenient for people with busy lives. I can provide all the perks of a relationship: sex, companionship, intimacy, conversation, even something as simple as a date for an event. Due to the nature of my business, whomever is purchasing my time has the luxury of dictating the terms of how that time is spent, entirely to their own satisfaction.”
There’s another pause as she sips slowly from her glass.
Her tone is quiet and measured and she does not turn away from the window.
“On rare occasions, people decide they want more of that time than the usual arrangements. Something more permanent. They don’t want the hassle of organizing a schedule and running the risk of who they want not being available to them. In those cases an arrangement can be made of a more permanent nature. Someone like myself might agree to a live-in situation where they would be exclusively available to that one person for an agreed upon fee. Naturally that fee would be ongoing and insanely high.”
She sips her drink yet again.
“You understand these arrangements are unusual. They require a lot of negotiation and a very clear understanding of boundaries on both sides. Often they devolve or simply do not work out due to an overstepping on one side or the other.”
A beat.
“It’s difficult to hold onto those clear boundaries over long periods of time, which is why these arrangements are so rare and sometimes end in disaster.”