Money Makers
I turned to find Crystal, her top back on, walking back toward the dressing rooms with two leopard-print bras and their matching thongs. I didn’t bother to interfere, thinking it would be a good idea to bring her a couple of our “nighttime” camisoles to try on over her bras. Once I settled on a few inviting styles, I walked back to the dressing rooms and knocked cautiously on Crystal’s door for round two.
“Are you doing okay, Crystal?” I asked, peeking through the cracks of the door. “Yes!” she responded with excitement, opening the door to show me what she had quickly put together.
“Oh… okay,” were the only words that came out of my mouth, slowly and carefully.
“I was just putting the thongs on,” she added with a smile.
“O….kay,” I repeated again, grabbing the doorknob quickly to close the door, startled by a soft silk against my fingers, and a black tattooed paw neighboring her heart-shaped pubic hair. My body suddenly deadened as I stood in wonder, keeping my eyes above her waist, fighting the images of her pubic region flashing over and over in my head like a red-light special.
“Ta-da!” she opened her arms after pulling up one of the leopard-print thongs and placing them low around her hips. “What do you think?”
“Well… the bra is a little small,” I replied, reaching in to read a 38 DD on the size tag, still wondering why her underwear was hanging on the doorknob instead of sandwiched between her buttocks.
“But it looks good, doesn’t it?”
I hung her bras and polyester camisoles on a hook and set the thongs on the chair against the wall. Then I pushed her closer to the mirror with my hands, quietly reminding myself that I had a job to do. And if it meant grabbing, lifting, pushing, and stuffing Crystal’s boobs into various bras while she entertained me with profanity then that’s what I had to do. I stood behind her and reached my hands around her broad shoulders, accidentally stepping on one of her gold pumps with my boot.
“You see all this breast tissue, Crystal?” I asked, tapping on her breasts. “That’s supposed to be inside the cups.”
“Baby,” she almost cut me off, staring at me gravely, but with a hidden smile. “Think about what escort services do and put the puzzle together. I need cleavage!”
My body went numb. And it wasn’t because she had candidly divulged her occupation as a woman who engaged in sexual acts for payment, but because of her indestructible poise. It was—who Crystal was. And maybe it was all part of the amazement I felt in such a short period of time, because in an almost unsettling way, I marveled at Crystal’s existence. Unlike the majority of women I saw topless on a daily basis, Crystal shamelessly flaunted each piece of lingerie wedged deep into her skin. And she did it with a rare coolness.
“I… see,” I stood catching flies, still trying to get my thoughts—and twenty questions under control. I mustered up the audacity to ignore the part about professionalism and asked her how long she had been at it.
“A long time,” she deliberated quietly, her lips moving in thought. “It’s a tough world out there, Baby. It’s a tough world.”
Crystal reached for the other leopard-print thong she set on the chair next to the Hanky Pankys. “You think I should try on the large?” she asked, looking in the mirror.
“I think you do whatever you’re comfortable in,” I replied, trying to find the side of the thong buried deep into her hip. “And so you know, you have to have your own pair of underwear on before you can try on a pair of ours.”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” she quickly pulled off her thongs. “I’m going to buy them, I swear. But before you go, let me try this red one on you brought me.”
It was all so fast. I couldn’t help but stare below her waistline again while she put her own thong back on. I crunched my eyebrows together and moved in closer to examine the black panther clawing its way down her abdomen. I assumed, presumptuously, that her mob of marmalade-colored stretch marks, posing as her panther’s choppers, came from where mine came from—too many late night Twinkies.
“How do you get your pubic hair in the shape of a heart?” I asked, fastening the red pushup, not at all concerned with appropriateness anymore.
“Oh, the Promised Land?” she asked rhetorically, bending over to scoop her boobs into the cups. “With care! And I have a lady in Studio City if you’re interested.”
“Oh, no, no, thanks,” I stuttered, still staring at its flawless shape, thinking about the lucky woman who got to mow through such questionably desirable territory.
Sucking in her stomach, Crystal stood quiet, examining her body and all of its roundness. I watched her eyes move about her waist and down to her thighs, taking a step forward and then a step back. I looked into her brown eyes and thought about her job. I shamefully imagined her on her knees, lost and misused, while some worthless sleaze bag sat with his gold rings indelicately knotted in what was left of her blonde strings. I imagined her charbroiled teeth clenched below some man’s waist, moving to the silence with mastered precision—and then out the door with a mouthful of rent. I wondered if she was generous and mindful of their needs—and I wondered about her ever feeling irresolute and broken-down, suddenly plagued with fear and loneliness, yet determined to survive in a world I had only read about.
“I kind of like this one,” she said, modeling the red pushup. She stood in front of the mirror for a couple of seconds, filling the silence with the faint popping of her gum. “These girls are big, huh?” she laughed, jiggling her breasts.
She turned contemplative and serious as she moved her eyes around the edges of her chest. “My boobs always enter the room before I do.”
It was quiet. I bent over and picked up one of the sets I brought her, as well as the rest of the bras she carelessly threw on the floor between changes.
“Leopard it is,” she unhooked the red pushup, disregarding my recommendations for bras that fit. “Time for some Hanky Panky,” she jokingly purred.
I laughed, enjoying her sarcasm. I shimmied behind her to grab one last bra, making unavoidable eye contact with the various dimples on her behind, imagining small craters on the moon. I wondered if I would ever see her again, and if she did come back to the lingerie department would she want me to help her. I felt territorial all of a sudden, like she was my customer and I was the only one who could work with her. And I knew, as she examined her body in the mirror again, that if one of the other bra fitters happened to assist in helping her find bras, I would’ve felt rejected in some way. There was an undeclared understanding between us, a burgeoning camaraderie that challenged familiarity—and I liked it.
“My tits!” she yelled out of the blue, suddenly pointing at the small map of stretch marks covering both sides of her breasts like fault lines. “They look like tiger tits!”
