NOTE: This is the sixth part of the Ballad of Emily Jeffers, a seemingly naive and clueless woman for whom sex comes naturally, and sexual manipulation by others is her entire life. It's a story, and as such all characters are fictitious. Even so, those fictitious characters are all 18 years old and older. It helps if you read all the previous chapters first.
The next mornin' Andi was up and makin' breakfast. It was the coffee and bacon woke me up. And a stiff neck from sleepin' all up against the arm of the sofa. We didn't talk too much. She had to go down and start breakfast at Owens soon. We ate and each had a second cup of coffee and went down to the kitchen in behind the bar.
I helped her get stuff started and soon it was six-thirty and staff was arrivin' and I helped set out the chairs and fill the ketchup bottles and salt and pepper and generally do whatever needed doin'. I didn't know if I was helpin' or hinderin'.
Owens was always a popular breakfast place, but under Andi's ownership it was even more packed than years back and everyone thought the world of her. You could tell just how they looked at her and talked to her and how some gave me the evil eye 'cause word was gettin' round I was the guy left her and broke her heart all those years ago. They was mostly the younger ones who never knew me back then.
I stuck around until Jack came in for lunch. I sat with him and had a burger and fries while he downed the grilled cheese with bacon slipped in there with the cheese. That had been one of my favorites and it got me bein' all nostalgic and wonderin' what ever happened to Old Mister Harper, Pastor Brown, Chief Wallace. Doc Egerton.
"Harper ran a few more whores after you left," Jack recalled. "That Janet Henderson slut turned out to be real popular and they did breed her some after you took off. I recall you might of rode her a few times your ownself."
I did recall. Mrs. Henderson was prime meat and Doc had got her all worked up and ready for action in that third bedroom, just down from Mrs. Eaton. Turns out Harper's ticker gave out as he rode one of his newer whores a few years back.
Pastor Brown was in a nursin' home, mind just about gone, but his hands all over the female staff. Accordin' to rumors, some of the church women visit him regular and suck him off once or twice a week. Staff say it helps keep him calm. He's just down the hall from Mr. Stephensen, the janitor who is still of sound mind and if another rumor's right, still sportin' a massive nine-inch cock popular with some of the nurses there.Chief Wallace went on to the state police and had some desk job investigatin' vice crimes.
Apparently Doc got caught fuckin' his female patients and not only was his license yanked, he faced criminal charges and ended up doin' a couple years easy time. But he's back doin' the same thing in Haler City under the guise of a holistic medicine practitioner. He made sure his 'vitamin' therapies for all his whores was kept up through some of his doctor friends.
"He worked up a bunch of new whores," Jack said. "Most from Johnsons Hollow 'cause that's where all the prime cunt comes from."
I asked about Millie Tanner and Jack hesitated.
"That's a strange one, Law," he said. "She done turned into a fulltime whore right about when you left. Young Matt ran her goin' on must a been 10 years right out of your old apartment. Made lots of money off her different holes. But business slowed down the last year or so and then one day she was just gone."
Jack ate a few of my fries, contemplatin' I guess, and I asked him if anybody knew what happened to her.
"Neither Matt nor John would say anything," Jack said. "No missin' person report was filed. But Ms. Jeffers heard from bein' whored out in Haler City herself for a while that Mrs. Tanner might of got picked up by a crew from out of that big city where that Jones girl ended up."
"So you mean maybe Matt sold his mother to them Black cocks up there," I asked. "They like used up whores to play with 'til they're all wore out?"
Jack nodded.
"MIllie wasn't much to fuck towards the end," Jack confided. "I have to confess I fucked her a lot over the years, and by the time she disappeared she was loose, her tits were all sagged, her ass had no shape, and though she tried, she was really just an embarrassment."
We were both silent for a moment, me thinkin' of the stunningly gorgeous woman I'd fucked so often. But then Jack explained that no woman can survive bein' fucked three or four thousand times a year.
"Millie was put through her paces, Law," Jack said. "Matt was a good kid, but his father pushed him to run her hard. She was doin' ten or fifteen a day. Just before she disappeared, Matt tried runnin' her as a street whore over in Haler City. That was the final three, four months. Of course them street whores get almost nothin' and have to turn all kinds of tricks to make any money at all."
Ms. Jeffers heard a van from the city paid a flat fee for three of the Haler City street whores and then picked them right up off the sidewalk and drove away.
"Matt seemed to have a pit of extra cash about then," Jack said. "And every time anybody'd ask about Millie he'd get all tense and awkward and say he didn't know anything about it."
I figured Mrs. Tanner would be about fifty-five by then. I'd known a couple whores who were still active at that age. But from the way Jack described her, I didn't expect she was doin' anything, 'cept maybe pushin' up daisies. Same as April Jones I expected. Of course I coulda been wrong.
I drove around town and over to False Creek in the afternoon, seein' the little motel was still there and wonderin' how many times Ms. Jeffers got fucked in Room 10. Hundreds for sure. Maybe even some after I'd gone. It had a cafe and I stopped in for a coffee, wonderin' if it was still the same management.
The woman behind the registration counter might have been there fifteen years ago. I couldn't recall. So I just had my coffee and we had some idle chit-chat, her bein' friendly enough even though I was from out of town.
I dropped into the women's clothin' store Millie Tanner used to work at. It had all the latest fashions but nobody I knew was workin' there. I picked up a nice scarf for Andi with the intention of givin' it to her later on. And I drove to Haller City and checked out that adult book store. Nobody I knew there, but a similar gaggle of women kneelin' in the glory holes suckin' on cocks to make grocery and rent money while their kids were at school and their husbands at work.
That evenin' I pulled up a chair at Owens and Andi brought me down a plate of food without me even askin'. Clubhouse and fries. "I know you done liked the club sandwich," she said. "People grow older but they don't change much."
She was right, of course. People just grow into themselves. They don't change. They just become more like who they always were. They become more obvious about who they are, maybe 'cause time's gettin' short.
