The Porn Identity

Chapter 4

         Sunday was beautifully gray and lazy. Not too many people came in. Unfortunate, but expected considering Burenville U was in the middle of the summer semester and the campus and dorms were mostly empty. Taste Teas could typically stay afloat with the money coming in from my regulars anyway, so I wasn't sweating it—I just adjusted the inventory and carried on.

       Sundays in the summer were low-key the best Sundays anyway. There were so few people in I could play whatever I wanted on the sound system without resistance from my usual early adulthood customers or my increasingly ungrateful staff. So, like the world's worst DJ, I'd played five Sam Cooke songs in a row, and no one complained because they'd rather hear current Top 40s, gangster rap from the 90s, or trap music—whatever that was.

       And so, that morning I stood badly two-stepping behind the counter while flipping pages through the Burenville Daily as Sam crooned about good times over the sound system.

       I was reading the umpteenth article about local mustachioed billionaire Shaun Khan's latest scam to buy the old shipyard and turn it into a mall or amphitheater or some shit when I heard stomping coming from upstairs.

       "Evie!" Johnny's boots bounced on wood as he ran down the stairs. "I got a commission!"

       "Really? That's fantastic!" I placed my magazine on the counter and clapped my hands in excitement. "What is it?"

       He walked over and slung his backpack into a barstool. "Some lady wants me to paint a picture of her dead dog!"

       My nose scrunched up at the image. "He, uh...he's alive in the picture, right?"

       He sighed and rolled his eyes. "No, she wants a picture of the damn dog lying flat in the road with the tire marks and everything like Wile E. Coyote."

       "Well, that's morbid." I shrugged. "Gig's a gig, I guess."

       "Evie, please. Conan the Pomeranian died of cancer."

       I snickered. "Well, now its extra morbid."

       He ran his hands through his black hair and released both his excitement and his trepidation on a long sigh. "This is the first commission I've taken in five years."

       Johnny used to be a small-time artist in New York city five years ago. He'd quit after his girlfriend tragically passed to grift from town to town doing odd jobs to support himself. Eventually he'd landed on my doorstep and decided for some reason to stay—at least for a while.

       If he was comfortable enough to start painting again, then this was a huge breakthrough.

       "Congrats. Really."

       He looked at me and smiled. "This is all thanks to you, you know."

       "I know." I crossed my arms over my chest all pretentious-like. "That's why I accept nothing less than thirty percent for my art pimp fee—"

       "Agent. And thirty percent is too high."

       "—And no less than three acknowledgments of my greatness a day. Acts of worship is my love language."

       He laughed. "I can give you a sincere thank you and take you out for dinner."

       My silence rippled through the room so completely I'm pretty sure the one other guy in here looked up from his coffee to see how I'd react. I smiled; not too wide though. "I'll take the thanks but pass on dinner."

       He raised a puzzled eyebrow. "You sure? You love eating. Especially if it's free."

       "Yeah! You did all the real work. I don't need to be compensated." I tried my best to let him down easy. We were...friends, true, but Manny wouldn't appreciate me having dinner alone with another man.