+J.M.J.+

TITLE: Gigolo Turf Wars

AUTHOR: "Matrix Refugee"

RATING: R (Sexual themes)

ARCHIVE: Yes

FEEDBACK: Please, please, please, please!!!

DISCLAIMER: DreamWorks holds Joe's license, I just borrow 'um once in a while.

Chapter Two

I had two more clients that night, and one of them just wanted me to kept her company while she settled into sleep, which I found a little odd, but I hid my puzzlement as I always hide not wholly appropriate emotions. It wasn't as easy a task as it sounds: she snored something awful.

At least I didn't have to limp past Neve this time, as I headed home. She was eating noodles from a paper cup as I passed her spot, which gave me an idea for the next round.

"Lo fa, ne-ko shi-ma, de va-ja blade runner," I said, trying to sound like Edward James Olmos.

She glared up at me. "Oh, not THAT awful thing. Dammit, Jay, that's one I can't play: Vangelis doestn't transfer well onto guitar."

"Then I guess I've won," I said. Something good happened tonight.

"Don't look so smug."

"I oughta, night's finally brightening for me now that it's over."

"What, the weird guy again?"

"Yep. Say, you wouldn't happen to know him."

"What does he look like?"

"Tall, green eyes, black hair except he just bleached it blond.

"Off hand, no."

"Talks with a British accent? Carries himself like a dancer?"

"Dances when he walks?"

"Not to my knowledge."

"Why, he giving you turf problems?"

"Yeah, this weird newbie just breezed in tonight, walked off with a would have been client of mine."

"Too bad." She looked me up and down. "If I could afford you, I might. How much?"

"Two hundred, but I can negotiate."

"Nah, I'm lucky if I see two dollars."

I thought I'd prime the pump; I dropped five dollars in her guitar case.

"Thanks, Jay."

I shrugged. "Hey, we're all in this together."

@--`--

Business as usual kept me hopping every night for a week or so after that…until the next dead night. I had only two customers between seven and midnight. It was about time for the weird guy to show up.

Then, luckily, one of my regulars called, a girl who gives decent tips, an artist named Cecilia, who lives down in the Village.

My only problem there was that she lives in a railroaded apartment, you know, one of those really crummy places where you can't get any privacy because you have to walk through everyone else's room to get to where you're going. And there's always someone walking through to get to the remote shared bathroom at the head of the hallway, just when things are starting to really heat up. I always get a little self-conscious about going up to her place, but she really can't afford a better room, so she says. One time this old lady walked in and started preaching this sermon about company keeping, just as I dropped my trousers. Try keeping a straight face in that situation! Thankfully, the old lady was blind as a post, or else we'd really have heard some histrionics. Then there's the geezer who's always lugging the case of beer through, who always yells, "Hey, get a room!" at us; he thinks it's the craziest line in the world. It used to be.

Perhaps the reason why Cecilia gives good tips is to compensate the lack of privacy, but that hardly matters to me. The tip does.

But she does demand perfection. She noticed something, a spot of mud on my forehead, so she sent me back to wash up: "No dirty hustling allowed!" she told me.

"I thought you said you liked it dirty!" I shot back.

I got held up when I finally reached the bathroom. The pregnant Filipino lady in the third room from the bathroom was having evening sickness, I so I had to wait for her to be finished coughing up her insides and for Bob the wallboard hanger, her child's father (their marital status is unclear), to help her back to their room. And then he starts trying to chat with me: "Hiya, Jay, you callin' on Celia again?" etc. At least it beats the way he used to greet me when he found out what my line of work is: "Hey, Jay. How's tricks?" You just don't say that to a whore, male or female. You just don't.

I finally got back ten minutes later and found a third person in the room. Not the old lady. Not the geezer with the case of beer, not the divorced woman on her floor who's always asking for me, but whom I KNOW couldn't afford me without being paid by someone else (I've done divorced women before, but this one looks like major trouble: she looks as if she lives off her alimony, and has three guys who each have to work two jobs to support her and their offspring. And they call me a gigolo.)

Nope, HE's on the bed next to Cecilia, right where I was just ten minutes before, Mr. Tall-Dark-Green-Eyed-Thing (his hair was black again), not a hair out of place, his whole person spit-and-polished, talking her up with that smooth mellow voice of his (mine's a little raspy).

That did it. Now I was mad.

I ran to the bed, breaking several land speed records in the process. I slugged the weird guy in the shoulder. He looked up at me, curious, but not irritated. Any other guy would be scowling at me.

"What brings you here, manikin?" he asked, humorously, as if trying to disarm me.

Now honestly. If there's one thing that really gets me in a lather, that really ties my shirt in a knot (I can't say shorts, I don't wear 'em.), it's being called something like "manikin". I don't need words longer than me said to my face to describe my height or lack thereof, especially by guys who are taller than me.

I lunged at the interloper and log rolled him over Cecilia, off the bed, onto the floor. Thankfully, I ended up on top. I grabbed him by the throat and tried to throttle him, but he held my wrists in a vise-like grip. I had to let go or have my circulation cut off.

"Jay, let him alone! I didn't think you were coming back after you took so long," Cecilia cried. "I'm sorry."

The stranger sat up, pushing me aside. He started out of the room, paused, turned at the doorway and said to her, "Forgive me, I did not know you already had a lover."

I jumped up. "Better start running, because I'm after you!" I roared.

He turned on his heel and fled. I mean, this bugger took off like the devil was after him. Come to think of it, it probably looked like the devil was after him. I wish I could have seen it from the outside, like on film or in a mirror. It must have looked hysterical to everyone whose apartments we ran through, this tall British pretty boy getting chased by this ugly, disheveled guy a foot shorter than him. I only got glimpses of consternation and fright on faces of the housewives and their husbands as we sped through.

I'm short, but I have long legs for my height, so I caught up to my rival before he reached the stairs. I cornered him on the landing, grabbing him by the shirt collar.

"Where in hell did you come from?!" I demanded.

He glanced away, past me to the floor, thinking.

"I came from Pennsylvania," he said at length.

"Well, go back there, punk, this is MY turf!" My Albany accent cracked through at that point, so "Thiss iz my tu[h]rf" came out like "Thissiz my teyrf!"

"You need not speak so irately; had I known the lady in question was previously engaged, I would not have tried to approach her."

"Never mind! You took two potential customers away from me, and now you just about stole another out from under me!"

I backed him toward the stairs; he took each step with a graceful ease, as if it were a dance, as if he'd been dancing all his life and he could turn the merest step into a mini-ballet.

He stepped down onto the second step, which brought his face almost level with mine. He took my snarling with utter calm. A slight smile played about his mouth—just the right width for his narrow face, mine's a little too wide for my rat-thin features.

"Had you been more vigilant, I would not have had the opportunity to interlope."

"That gave you no right to butt in!" I snapped, taking another step down, backing him down the stairs.

"'Gather ye roses while ye may'. You did not keep so a good watch over the roses entrusted to your care."

"You think you could do a better job, country boy?" He might have been an immigrant, even with that accent. "You think you could?" His calm smugness really got to me; I'm not violent, but I thought I'd show him what I'm made of. He might be taller and better looking than me, but I might just have the harder fists and the bigger balls.

I slapped the side of his face. His eyes went totally blank for a second, before taking on a "Why'd you do that?" look.

"THAT'S for the blonde that rainy night." I backed him down another step. I slapped him again. "THAT'S for the redhead." Another step down, another slap. "THAT'S for almost getting Cecilia!" Another step, another slap. "And if there's any other women you've swiped from me, take THIS"—step, slap! —"And THIS"—step, slap! —"And THIS!"—Step, slap!—"And THIS!!!"

His hand flew up; his long fingers wrapped themselves around my wrist, holding my hand away so I couldn't strike him again. As he stepped back from me, the front of his open-collared shirt bagged open slightly and I looked down inside. I expected to see the shadows of a set of pecs a lot better looking than mine.

If he had 'em, I didn't notice. Instead, I could hardly help noticing an edge of green against his skin. I tugged his shirtfront down slightly.

Some kind of green glow-in-the-dark plastic strip was glued to his skin just under his left collarbone. At first I wondered, now what kind of weird fashion is this coming over the pond? No, wait: it wasn't glued ONTO his skin, but INTO his skin. It looked like some kind of ID tag with a barcode of some sort printed on it.

"What the hell is that tag-thing stuck on your skin?" I asked.

"That is my operating license," he replied, matter of factly.

My hand lost some of its lock on his collar. "Well, uh, w-what exactly are you?"

"A Generation-Five lover robot," he replied.

My hand on his shirt went absolutely limp. I let him go; the robot's hand released its grip. He really wasn't a HE, I realized. He was an IT.

"Sorry, my mistake," I mumbled, not sure what else to say.

He—it—glanced over my shoulder with an odd little smile. "Perhaps it would be in your best interest if you returned to your inamorata, lest another take your place in your absence," it—he—said.

"Yeah, uh, right, thanks." I shuffled away from him—it—and went back to Cecilia's room.

My heart wasn't in what we were up to after that, but two and a half years of getting it on in the weirdest places and with every kind of woman imaginable have made me a master of the fine art of faking it.

@--`--

I started shaking all over afterwards, once I was safely headed back to the Agency.

I'm no Luddite by any stretch of the imagination, or I don't think of myself as being one. My father is the CEO of one of the largest techcorps in the country, which specializes in smart houses, smart garments and universal wireless Internet connections amongst many other things, so it's not like I'm not familiar with a lot of the technological advances of the past twenty years. I was just never keen on robotics; even small household things the Roomba, the Frisbee robot vacuum cleaner, my mother had made me terribly nervous, to the point that I'd break out in a sweat. I don't even know why. It's probably something psychological, but I couldn't tell you why. I was tempted to ask one of my regulars who happens to be a psychologist to analyze this quirk of mine and give me a rational explanation for it (If I could ever get her to put down that damn stopwatch she uses to time orgasms. God, that creeps me out.).

But I knew part of the reason why I started trembling after I discovered my rival was a robot. It's that universal fear of being replaced by someone—or in this case something—else better than you. It's not like it hasn't happened before. I've had otherwise die-hard regulars stop coming around for me because they'd found someone better looking than me. But a machine, albeit an artificially intelligent one? That makes my hair stand on end.

I told myself there's less cause for alarm than I thought: there'll probably always be women who prefer flesh over plastic. Just because cars were invented, doesn't mean no one keeps horses any longer. There'll always be an oldest profession and plenty of demand for labor for it, so long as people still have bodies and hormones.

@--`--

I deposited the few fees I'd collected with Damien, the secretary/receptionist/bookkeeper and went up to meet up with Shotsie in his room up in the rafters before I went home.

I found him curled up on his bed with a book; he'd made his three thousand odd and he'd earned the rest he deserved.

"Hey, what was in that cigarette you gave me when I got here?" I demanded, dead earnest.

"Only the finest Z-grade tobacco," he replied with a straight face. "Why?"

I told him about the robot who came to call. He listened patiently, open-minded. He knows I don't drink and I'm not in this racket to pay for my addiction. No, I'm trying to make my addiction pay for itself and then some.

"Weird," he said. "Y' know, I think I heard they've had these things over in Europe and Asia for a while, but I didn't know they'd made a male one."

"Yeah, well, it can't do what we can any better, can it?"

He wagged his head. "Maybe no, maybe yes."

"If anyone could build something like that, it wouldn't be any better than a dildo with legs and a brain."

"Thing is it might not be able to do on better than us, but it might be able to turn more tricks in a day than we could. Doesn't need to sleep, doesn't need to eat, doesn't tire, doesn't have to stop and take a leak. Let's see…mmm, say our robo-rent boy costs around thirty thousand dollars. He's easily worth three hundred a poke, if not more. He could probably pick up twenty tricks a day, so…twenty times three hundred…"

"You sound like that gangsta math test the teachers in L.A. made up some years back." Urban legends are another of my hobbies.

He ignored me, tracing invisible numbers on his fingers. "That would bring him six thousand a night. So he might need only five nights like that to pay for himself."

"Whose side are you on, McCoy?" I snarled. "Figures. Just because I need the cash, to live on, I get the worst kind of rival: one who doesn't have to eat."

"He's probably a demo model they're field testing. Besides, that little tag thing on his chest might turn off a LOT of women. You might have nothing to worry about, Jack."

"MIGHT have nothing to worry about. I'll believe it when I see that beggar GONE."

"Hot damn, I bet a guy like that would be really easy to clobber," Shotsie said, that delighted battle smolder coming into his eyes. "Say the word, little man, and I'll get Jules and Dorian on the look out for him. If the silicon hustler wants to mix it up, we'll show him how we do it in New Yawk."

I gulped. Somehow, I didn't like the idea of Jules and Dorian getting in on this. This thing didn't seem capable of defending itself or fighting back. I didn't want to think about those two sick minds getting mixed up in this. I'd seen them do some pretty nasty things to our rivals…with broken glass bottles.

@--`--

"Hey, Jay, is that a ghost you're impersonating?" Neve asked as I tried to pass by her unnoticed. She started playing the main theme from "Vertigo".

"Huh? No, why?"

"You're face is as white as your shirt."

I told her about my awful night. I waited for her to come up and sniff at my breath, but she didn't.

"Y' know, I heard some talk about some robotics company over in London was shipping a lover model this way. They've had 'em all over Europe for years now. Part of me has always wondered what something like that would be like."

"Dammit, I'm surrounded by anti-sex worker activists!" I groaned aloud.

"Hey, I meant it in theory, bro."

I breathed a mock sigh of relief, my hand laid delicately over my chest. "Be still my beating heart—of flesh."

But I went home with the beginning of an idea…