PRAYERS

     She'd knock on the trailer door around the twenty ninth, a day or two after his Social Security check arrived.  He'd have gone to the bank by then, and have her money in an envelope taped to the refrigerator.
      She'd chat him up a little -- offer a lonely old man a little gossip and small talk -- just shoot the breeze -- tell him a joke she'd heard or read online or rattle off some political bullshit. She knew what he liked, how he thought.
      They thought the same way, really.
      She didn't have to do any of that. She could have just walked in and gotten down to business. That was the arrangement. And he wouldn't have complained. He was dutiful in that regard. He would have done anything she asked, and even tried to anticipate her desires, and would likely have apologized had he gotten it wrong.
      But she liked it this way -- liked to keep it nice and friendly.
        They were neighbors, after all.
        Sometimes, like today, he'd make coffee and they'd sit for a bit, chatting.
      He knew all about her.
      Knew she was broke.
      In debt.
      Unhappily married.
      Childless.
      Miserable.
      Restless.
      She was too fat, she told him. She'd let herself go.
      "I used to be hot," she said.
      He'd let her ramble.
      Her mother was a bitch.
      Her husband was cheating.
      "Too," he said. "He's cheating, too."
      That baffled her for a minute before she understood what he meant.
      "Oh, this ain't cheatin'," she said.
      "No?"
      "No. I get paid for this." Then she laughed. realizing what she'd just confessed. "I'm a whore, ain't I?"
      And he laughed, too.
      "It don't matter," he said. "I like whores. I like you especially."
      "I like you, too," she said.
      "I like paying you," he told her.
      "That's weird," she said. "You're broke as me. But I like it, too, I like being your whore."
      She lightly placed her battered Nike on the dusty toe of his boot, and that movement seemed to spark him. He slid off his chair onto his knees, groaning with the effort, and gently untied the laces and removed her shoes. Her feet were pungent, her white socks damp with sweat and black with dirt. Her compulsion at first had been to make sure she was clean top to bottom before she came to him, but he'd asked her not to. He liked the opposite, and she'd obliged him, skipping her shower and pulling on socks and panties from the day before.
      He was, after all, paying her.
      He should get what he wants.
      "You are," he said, "too beautiful for this world."
      That was part of what she liked. Maybe most of it. The things he said. His little prayers. The litanies he recited as he kissed and massaged her feet.
      "An angel," he'd say. "Perfect."
      "Wonderful."
      "So lovely."
      He'd press his face into her feet and inhale deeply, breathing in the scent of her sweaty sock feet while she watched, fascinated.
      The first time she had flinched, and pulled her feet away.
      “They stink,” she said.
      But he liked it.
      "Heaven," he told her.
      And she'd laughed, but relaxed, and left him to it.
      "Whatever he wants," she thought.
      His bony knees hurt on the hard kitchen floor. She could tell, and she'd offered to bring a pillow from the living room so that he might be more comfortable, but he said no, that he preferred the floor.
      "A little pain," he said. "A little something."
      And he would continue working her feet, squeezing them between kisses, asking if this or that felt good.
      Finally he'd peel her socks off.
      She thought her feet, like every other part of her, were ordinary.
      Ugly, even.
      Fat? Even her feet looked fat to her.
      There was nothing special about them, or about her, but he seemed to think there was. He would cover her bare feet with kisses, licking between her sweaty toes and pressing his face hard against her soles before finally placing them together flat on the floor and stretching out in front of her, a movement that seemed painful to him, to rest his forehead on them.
      "You are everything," he said. "You are all that matters. You light up my world. You are heaven -- God's perfect gift -- his flawless jewel..."
      It was strange, she knew, but his prayers were like an incantation that cast a spell on her.  She could smell her own arousal, and her panties were soaked, and sometimes the crotch of her jeans. This, too, had made her worry.
      "Too much," she'd thought.
      But he called her juices nectar, and he would, as he said, drink her up.
      And , God, she would let him.
      She was ready now to have his mouth between her thighs.