A Tale of Two Cities

A Tale of Two Cities

By Chas4455©

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"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair..." Charles Dickens

Chapter 1 - George

It's the middle of February, and it's going to be frickin' cold again tonight.

Clouds are building up from the northwest, it could snow tonight. Could be worse, could be that damn freezing rain again. That was a bad night. I should be able to spend another couple of hours on this corner before it starts to get too cold.

"Excuse me ma'am, could you spare some change for a homeless vet? Thank you, have a blessed day."

Last night I was able to get into the Salvation Army shelter, but I may not make it back there tonight. I'd rather find somewhere I can hunker down out of the wind, and not have to put up with my fellow human beings.

"Excuse me sir, could you spare some change for a homeless vet? Thank you, have a blessed day."

If I'm lucky, maybe I can beg enough change to get a burger from McDonalds, and a pint of cheap hooch. I haven't eaten anything since yesterday, and I haven't had a drink since I finished my last bottle this morning. I'm starting to feel sick, my head hurts, my stomach hurts.

"Excuse me ma'am, could you spare some change for a homeless vet? Thank you, have a blessed day."

These Nikes are about two sizes too big, but with two pairs of socks they are keeping my feet dry if not warm. I'm thankful to the nice ladies that were giving out socks and blankets on the street corner last week. The one pair of socks I had were full of holes. My jeans have some holes in the knees, but they're not too bad. I'm wearing two tee shirts, and a sweat shirt. I don't have a coat, but if I wrap the blanket around me it keeps me warm.

"Excuse me ma'am, could you spare some change for a homeless vet? Thank you, have a blessed day."

Maybe I can catch up with Jeannie later. She has a tent set up in the camp under the overpass on the Interstate. If I share my whiskey with her, she'll let me bunk with her tonight. Sex is off the table, but we will both have some shared body warmth to get through the night. With Jeannie, sex is a commodity for paying customers only.

"Excuse me ma'am, could you spare some change for a homeless vet? Thank you, have a blessed day."

If I'm bunking with Jeannie tonight, I'm going to need another five dollars for a bottle.

And yes, I really am a vet. Before college I spent four years in the Navy, mostly as a radar operator on a guided missile cruiser in the Mediterranean. I finished my degree in Finance at Southern Methodist U.

-----

"Hi, George. Lend me a hand taking down this tent and packing up my stuff, will you?"

"Sure Jeannie, what's up?" I asked as I bent over to start picking up tent stakes.

"I've got us a room for tonight at the Starlight Motel, so we won't have to be sleeping out here in the cold. I'm not leaving my stuff out here overnight; it won't be here in the morning.

"A warm room and a real bed. And a hot shower. It's been almost week since I had a shower and washed my hair. You get some Wild Turkey?"

"You know it babe."

Jeannie did have pretty hair when it was clean, and she would let it down just past her shoulders. It was a golden blonde, and she had the prettiest green eyes. Jeannie is thirty five, stands about 5'2". She is a little skinny now, and has small tits, barely a handful. Her figure would be a little better if she had enough to eat, regular meals every day. Jeannie didn't stand on an intersection begging for change. She would stand on a street corner in front of the Starlight Motel, wearing her only mini-skirt and heels. Mostly she would do blowjobs for $50, but sometimes she would do an hour in the motel for $100 to $200, depending on what the john wanted her to do. The john would pay for the room, and then on those nights Jeannie and I would get to sleep indoors. It would only cost me a pint of Wild Turkey.

You need to know Jeannie is no high school dropout gutter tramp. She has a degree from a prestigious university, that one with the purple lizard or toad or something for a mascot. She belonged to a highly respected sorority where she learned to drink and fuck. Both became her favorite pastimes. She met the man of her dreams, Roberto Martinez, and they were married after graduation. He went to law school, and she got a job teaching high school economics in a west Texas oil town. Five years later, he's finished law school, was offered a job with a big time law firm in Houston, and announced he is divorcing her to marry his girlfriend of the last four years, Cynthia Billings.

A week later, Jeannie is in her apartment, trying to drown her troubles with Jose Cuervo when five senior class boys show up to have a party. She's already drunk, hasn't been laid in months, and has done gangbangs in college before, so what the hell. She proceeds to strip and took them all on. The next day she sobered up, cleaned up, and found out the story about the slutty teacher was all over the small west Texas town. One of the boys was the mayor's son, one was a preacher's son, and another was the quarterback of the football team, so obviously it was all Jeannie's fault. She was given 24 hours to leave town.

That was five years ago, and she has been on the street ever since.

It's been a couple of years since I've come to know Jeannie. I've earned her trust as a friend she can depend on. I've never tried to force her into doing anything against her will. On the occasions that she has been sick, with the flu or whatever, I've taken care of her and nursed her back to health, and she has done the same for me. We share what we have with each other.

Five years ago I was a stockbroker. I guess you could say I was rich, certainly well off. Stocks were up and I was making some good trades. I was making a lot of rich people even richer. I had a degree in finance from Southern Methodist University, a beautiful wife I adored, a big house in Prestonwood, and drove an AMG Mercedes. We belonged to an expensive country club, I played golf every Saturday, and I had season tickets to the Cowboys, Rangers, Stars and Mavericks. I didn't go to that many games, but they were good perks to share with my clients.

Gloria had a BMW that she drove to go shopping, or to the spa, or to have her nails done. She went to the gym twice a week, and tennis lessons at the country club. She would meet with her girlfriends for lunch, and then they would go to Neiman's, or the Galleria or Northpark. Mostly, she felt it was her responsibility to spend the money I made.

Then, the market went south, and I started losing money. Gloria met me at the door with her suitcases packed, told me she was leaving me, and that I would be hearing from her attorney. I stood there in the door and watched her drive away.

An hour later, I heard from her attorney alright. I answered the door to find a middle-aged man in a wrinkled suit standing there.

"Mr. George Watson?"

When I answered affirmatively, he handed me a manila envelope, and said, "You've been served." And then he turned and left.

Six months later, I had no house, no wife, no car, no job and no money.

-----

I helped Jeannie carry her tent, her quilts and blankets, and all the rest of her camp to the Starlight in her "truck", a shopping cart liberated from Walmart. We moved all her stuff, including the shopping cart, into the room for safe keeping. Personally, all I had was what I was wearing.

Jeannie announced she was going to shower first, so I sat down to wait, knowing this was going to take a while. She went into the bathroom and shut the door. I could hear the water running, getting hot and steamy in the little bathroom. I know we'd both been so cold for so long, that just to get warm was like a dream come true.

While I was waiting, I turned on the TV and watched the local news. It was all about who got shot, what apartment complex burned, what politician was arrested. Then they ran a piece about a local attorney announcing he was running for the state legislature. I really didn't care until I saw the woman standing next to him, holding his arm possessively. It was Gloria.

Well, ain't that a kick in the balls? She's moving up in the world, and I'm homeless.

Did that make me wake up and fill me with resolve to pull myself up and make something of myself?

Can't say that it did.

Did I feel a hole in my heart, and a longing for the woman I loved?

Nah, not that either.

Did I find it sort of amusing?

Yeah, maybe. She's his burden now.

That was when Jeannie came out of the bathroom, and I lost all interest in the TV. She had shampooed and dried her honey gold hair, and had it pulled back in a ponytail. She had a towel wrapped around her and tucked in at the top.

I don't know how women do that.

She was barefoot, and the towel exposed her legs from just below her crotch. If she sat down or bent over in front of me, I knew I'd get a wide open peek at heaven.

Jeannie pulled out a bottle of Fire Engine Red nail polish and prepared to touch up the polish on her toes. I decided I had better get in the shower before I totally embarrassed myself. Even after five years on the street, she is still a good looking woman.

While I was in the shower, trying to get clean as well as warm, Jeannie decided to do some laundry. She gathered up my clothes, what there were of them, a few of her things, and put them in the sink to soak. She used some of the motel shampoo for soap. After my shower, she hung everything over the shower curtain rod to dry.

Since all of my clothes were wet, I came out of the bathroom with a towel around my waist. I tried to duplicate the towel tuck like Jeannie had done, but I kept having to make adjustments to keep the towel in place. I brushed my wet hair back in place and let it dry. I hadn't had a haircut in so long, I was starting to look like one of the Beatles, if the Beatles were living on the street. I used a disposable razor furnished by the motel to remove the week-old stubble from my face.

Jeannie ordered a pizza, her treat, and we split the pint bottle of Wild Turkey. We were feeling pretty good by now, warm, clean, full stomachs, and a slight buzz from the whiskey.

Jeannie was sitting next to me on the bed, and with her eyes half closed, she leaned over to kiss me. Our kisses became more heated and passionate, and towels fell to the floor. I reached for her breast, and she reached for my cock.

-----

The commotion in the parking lot woke me about 3 am. I was in a soft bed with warm blankets, entangled with a soft, warm, extremely naked female body. I had a soft breast in my hand, and a warm ass nestled against my cock, so you can see why I was in no hurry to get up. After the third loud banging on the door, I decided it might be prudent to see what was going on.

I looked out the window past the curtains, and the parking lot was filled with black and white police cars with flashing red and blue lights. I opened the door and saw a policeman standing there.

"Sir, please stay inside your room until you are notified otherwise. There has been an incident we are investigating. Thank you for your cooperation."

An hour later, they were gone, everything was quiet, and we went back to sleep.

In the morning, I woke up with the sunrise. When you are living on the street, you don't sleep late. I disentangled myself from Jeannie and hit the head.

After I dressed, I went to the motel office to see if they had a copy of the morning paper. I liked to keep up with the financial reports, just out of habit. I asked the desk clerk, who happened to be the manager, about the incident last night.

"Yeah, it seems that Michael, the night clerk, was messing around with one of the local working girls when her pimp walks in and shoots both of them. The cops did catch up with Jerome. He tried to shoot it out, but I guess there won't be a need for a trial."

I knew about Michael Johnson. He had been the night clerk at the Starlight for several years. He had a room here and always had a different lady staying with him. He had one particular girl, Kim, who I understand had some children. I heard they found her in one of the rooms one morning, dead from an overdose of sleeping pills. It was never determined where the pills came from.

I knew about Jerome too. He was a badass, a kid that grew up in the hood and had spent most of his life in one penal institution or another. Besides running a stable of five or six working girls, he was also a well-known drug dealer in the area. Jerome wouldn't be missed.

Even his grandma didn't like him much.

"Coffee?" he asked, and then poured me a cup from the coffee pot behind him.

"I feel sorry for Maria, she was a real sweet girl, you know. She was a regular here and deserved a better life. She was trying to support her grandmother, and two kids at home.

"Michael was a horn dog and got what he probably deserved, but now I've got to hire a new night clerk."

"Oh yeah? What's it pay? I might be interested in a job?"

"Its $400 a week, six nights a week, plus a room in the motel if you need it." I feel like he knew I was living on the street.

"When can I start?"

"Right now. I'll stay here long enough to get you started, then I'm going home to get some sleep. The daytime clerk will be here in about an hour, and she can show you what else you need to know. What room are you in now? You want to keep that room?"

"Yeah, I'm in room 186, with my girlfriend. It's okay she stays here too?"

"Sure, you're with Jeannie? She can stay here with you as long as she ain't turning tricks. If she does, she'll have to get her own room. I'm not furnishing free rooms for hookers, no offense. If I do it for her, there are twenty others around here that will want the same consideration."

"Okay, let me go explain to Jeannie what's going on, and I'll be right back."

And that's what I did. I brought Jeannie a cup of coffee and a complimentary cinnamon roll from the lobby, told her about Maria, and about my new job.

Jeannie was upset when I told her about Maria. They had been friends, like sisters.

-----

A week later.

"George, you got paid today, didn't you?"

"Sure did, almost $300 after taxes. You charging me for sex tonight?"

"No, sugar. You know you get everything on the house now. I'm thinking maybe we need to go shopping, improve your image as a working hotel executive."

So, Jeannie and I went shopping at Goodwill and got me some clothes to wear to work. It wouldn't be appropriate for the night manager to look like he just came off the street. I got a haircut and started shaving every day. I was starting to look like the old me.

-----

I had been working the night desk at the Starlight now for about three weeks. Jeannie and I had pretty much set up housekeeping in Room 186. Since we had a roof over our head, rent free, and my income was good enough to keep us fed, Jeannie decided she didn't need to work the streets anymore. Well, she did have a few regulars that she would still see from time to time, but she was trying to push them off to some of her friends. A 'date' with one of her johns would become a three-way with one of her friends, and then Jeannie would find an excuse to slip out.

"George, you remember Gertie? She was living with Billy Ray? They were working the intersection up on Commerce?"

Gertie was a mother figure to the girls on the street. She was about 5'6" and 250 pounds. She had once had beautiful long brown hair that was now mostly gray, worn in a long braid down her back. She had a face that mirrored the rough life she had experienced. Although she was pushing sixty, she looked closer to eighty. She had no family that anyone knew of. It was just her and Billy Ray, looking out for each other.

"Sure, Babe. What about her? Is she okay?"

"Well, Billy Ray got picked up yesterday and is going to jail, maybe for a long time. The police think he looks a lot like the video of a convenience store robbery last month. Gertie has nothing and nowhere to go. Do you think it would be okay if I gave her all my camp stuff?"

Without saying so, Jeannie was saying she was cutting the cord to her life for the last five years, and committing to stay with me, for better or worse. I intended to make sure our lives were going to be better. A month ago I had only myself to take care of. Now I was committed to taking care of Jeannie as well.

I took Jeannie in my arms and pulled her to me. Holding her, I told her softly, "Yes, babe, I think that would be a great thing to do." Jeannie clung to me tightly, and I could feel her softly sobbing into my shoulder.

I also learned that while Jeannie was working, she could make from $100 to $250 a day, though she didn't work every day, and she didn't spend it. She lived in a tent under an overpass, so she had no expenses. She put all that money, at least most of it, in the bank. She wouldn't tell me how much she had, but it must be a pretty big chunk.

There was a computer on the desk in the lobby. It was there to help our guests book reservations or confirm their reservations at their next destination. We could look up flight times to see if their flights were delayed. Of course, the 'guests' I dealt with at night didn't have any use for that information.

I had a lot of free time at night. Everything pretty much stops after 2 o'clock. Then I would have about four hours on my own until the day clerk took over. I think Michael, the last night manager, just used the computer to look up porn sites. I spent a lot of time the first night just cleaning up the history, some viruses, and lot of junk files and downloaded videos.

In the last five years, my only access to the internet had been on public use computers at the library. Now that I had a computer that I had sole use of, at least at night, I started looking up some trading sites and resources. I was able to start following the markets more closely. I set up some dummy trading accounts, and I was especially interested in the money markets. That is where you buy and sell currency as their values fluctuate against one another. I was doing pretty well, but it was all on paper, like playing in the fantasy football league. I didn't have any money to get started. It's like going to Vegas to watch people make bets, but you can't place any bets for yourself.

I showed Jeannie how I could make her money grow faster than leaving it sitting in the bank. I think I got her interest (pun intended). She gave me $1000 to get started. Two weeks later, I had increased her investment by twelve percent. That was a lot more than the best interest rate she could get from the bank. Then she gave me $10,000 to invest. Now I was able to really get started as a serious day trader.

Jeannie also talked the other girls working in the neighborhood to come up with another $10,000. They pooled their money and started an investment club. They all trusted Jeannie with their money. In the beginning, they each invested $1000. We started with ten girls. As they started showing a profit, other girls wanted in as well.

-----

I was worried that some of the girls had boyfriends, also known as pimps, that might resent their girls becoming financially independent from them. My worries came to fruition the night Big John walked in.

"George, my man. We need to talk. My girl, Lucy, says she been giving her money to you instead of giving it to me. Before I bust her ass for stealing from me, I just want to see if that's true."