Me too, Velvet thought, and tried not to think about Paolo too much. She’d never done Paolo; she wasn’t really in shape to be creative, either. But she’d fake it.

Like Ming always said: business was always a pleasure for somebody.

Paolo propped himself up with pillows on the king-sized bed of the guest room, and stared straight over her head while she went down on him. Her headache continued to throb, a steady backbeat rhythm. After three or four minutes of industrious licking and sucking, Velvet heard a click and looked up to see Paolo holding the TV remote. Behind her, canned laughter swelled out of the set.

Gilligan’s Island, she thought as she went back to work. That’s the difference between paying customers and freebies.

Paolo poured himself a glass of Johnny Walker Black Label from a bottle next to him on the night-stand. He drained it in slow controlled gulps, never looking at her. Except for the fact that he still had a rock-hard boner, she might not have even been there. She tried moaning louder, until his heavy face collapsed into a frown and she realized she was interfering with the TV. She felt like an X-rated mime.

The oily taste of the condom (plain peach-colored, nothing fancy for Paolo) reminded her unpleasantly of the time she’d sucked a balloon into her windpipe at the age of six. She shut her eyes and tried not to think about suffocating, but then she started thinking about burning, and the smell of smoke, and had a bad few seconds of panic while her mouth kept on mindlessly doing its lonely job.

Right about the time she was considering biting Paolo’s dick just to remind him she was there, he came. She only knew that because the reservoir tip of the condom filled up. She performed an obligatory moaning orgasm, mostly to keep in practice. He craned to look over her shoulder and turned the volume up.

She had performed solo before, but usually the guy was across the room, not in her mouth. It all seemed pretty damn disheartening. Still, she reminded herself as she sat up—it could have been worse. Burt—

The thought occurred to her (oh, bad timing for her still-rolling stomach) that Burt could have done his flaming marshmallow impersonation while she’d had his dick in her mouth. Suddenly, Paolo looked like a bargain. She peeled the condom off and wrapped it deftly in a tissue before tossing it—a three-pointer—into the corner wastebasket.

Paolo was completely engrossed in the program. She sat for a few minutes watching with him. Gilligan picked coconuts. The Professor talked about building a generator. The Skipper complained.

“Maryanne or Ginger?” she asked. It took a second for Paolo to distract himself from the intense drama on the screen enough to notice she’d spoken.

“What?”

“If you were on the island, would you go for Mary-anne or Ginger?”