Gillian Flynn - The Grownup: A Story by the Author of Gone Girl

Gone Girl

Dark Places

Sharp Objects

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright 2014 by Gillian Flynn

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Crown Publishers, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

www.crownpublishing.com

CROWN is a registered trademark and the Crown colophon is a trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.

This title was originally published in the anthology Rogues, edited by George R. R. Martin and Gardner Dozois, by Bantam Books, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, in 2014.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data is available upon request.

Hardcover ISBN9780804188975

eBook ISBN9780804188982

International Edition ISBN9781101907320

Cover design by Christopher Brand and Curtis Jinkins

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To David and Cen, you sick, sick people.

I DIDNT STOP giving hand jobs because I wasnt good at it. I stopped giving hand jobs because I was the best at it.

For three years, I gave the best hand job in the tristate area. The key is to not overthink it. If you start worrying about technique, if you begin analyzing rhythm and pressure, you lose the essential nature of the act. You have to mentally prepare beforehand, and then you have to stop thinking and trust your body to take over.

Basically, its like a golf swing.

I jacked men off six days a week, eight hours a day, with a break for lunch, and I was always fully booked. I took two weeks of vacation every year, and I never worked holidays, because holiday hand jobs are sad for everyone. So over three years, Im estimating that comes to about 23,546 hand jobs. So dont listen to that bitch Shardelle when she says I quit because I didnt have the talent.

I quit because when you give 23,546 hand jobs over a three-year period, carpal tunnel syndrome is a very real thing.

I came to my occupation honestly. Maybe naturally is the better word. Ive never done much honestly in my life. I was raised in the city by a one-eyed mother (the opening line of my memoir), and she was not a nice lady. She didnt have a drug problem or a drinking problem, but she did have a working problem. She was the laziest bitch I ever met. Twice a week, wed hit the streets downtown and beg. But because my mom hated being upright, she wanted to be strategic about the whole thing. Get as much money in as little time possible, and then go home and eat Zebra Cakes and watch arbitration-based reality court TV on our broken mattress amongst the stains. (Thats what I remember most about my childhood: stains. I couldnt tell you the color of my moms eye, but I could tell you the stain on the shag carpet was a deep, soupy brown, and the stains on the ceiling were burnt orange and the stains on the wall were a vibrant hungover-piss yellow.)

My mom and I would dress the part. She had a pretty, faded cotton dress, threadbare but screaming of decency. She put me in whatever Id grown out of. Wed sit on a bench and target the right people to beg off. Its a fairly simple scheme. First choice is an out-of-town church bus. In-town church people, theyll just send you to the church. Out of town, they usually have to help, especially a one-eyed lady with a sad-faced kid. Second choice is women in sets of two. (Solo women can dart away too quickly; a pack of women is too hard to wrangle.) Third choice is a single woman who has that open look. You know it: The same woman you stop to ask for directions or the time of day, thats the woman we ask for money. Also youngish men with beards or guitars. Dont stop men in suits: That clich is right, theyre all assholes. Also skip the thumb rings. I dont know what it is, but men with thumb rings never help.

The ones we picked? We didnt call them marks, or prey or victims. We called them Tonys, because my dad was named Tony and he could never say no to anyone (although I assume he said no to my mom at least once, when she asked him to stay).

Once you stop a Tony, you can figure out in two seconds which way to beg. Some want it over with fast, like a mugging. You blurt. Weneedmoneyforfoodyouhaveanychange? Some want to luxuriate in your misfortune. Theyll only give you money if you give them something to feel better about, and the sadder your story, the better they feel about helping you, and the more money you get. Im not blaming them. You go to the theater, you want to be entertained.

My mom had grown up on a farm downstate. Her own mother died in childbirth; her daddy grew soy and raised her when he wasnt too exhausted. She came up here for college, but her daddy got cancer, and the farm got sold, and ends stopped meeting, and she had to drop out. She worked as a waitress for three years, but then her little girl came along, and her little girls daddy left, and before you knew itshe was one of them. The needy. She was not proud

You get the idea. That was just the starter story. You can go from there. You can tell real quick if the person wants a scrappy, up-by-the-bootstraps tale: Then I was suddenly an honor-roll student at a distant charter school (I was, but the truth isnt the point here), and Mom just needed gas money to get me there (I actually took three buses on my own). Or if the person wants a damn-the-system story: Then I was immediately afflicted by some rare disease (named after whatever asshole my mom was datingTodd-Tychon Syndrome, Gregory-Fisher Disease), and my health-care woes had left us broke.

My mom was sly but lazy. I was much more ambitious. I had lots of stamina and no pride. By the time I was thirteen, I was outbegging her by hundreds of dollars a day, and by the time I was sixteen, Id left her and the stains and the TVand, yes, high schooland struck out on my own. Id go out each morning and beg for six hours. I knew who to approach and for how long and exactly what to say. I was never ashamed. What I did was purely transactional: You made someone feel good and they gave you money.

So you can see why the whole hand-job thing felt like a natural career progression.

Spiritual Palms (I didnt name the place, dont blame me) was in a tony neighborhood to the west of downtown. Tarot cards and crystal balls up front, illegal soft-core sex work in back. Id answered an ad for a receptionist. It turned out receptionist meant hooker. My boss Viveca is a former receptionist and current bona fide palm reader. (Although Viveca isnt her bona fide name, her bona fide name is Jennifer, but people dont believe Jennifers can tell the future; Jennifers can tell you which cute shoes to buy or what farmers market to visit, but they should keep their hands off other peoples futures.) Viveca employs a few fortune-tellers up front and runs a tidy little room in back. The room in back looks like a doctors office: It has paper towels and disinfectant and an exam table. The girls froofed it up with scarves draped over lamps and potpourri and sequined pillowsall this stuff only girly-girls would possibly care about. I mean, if I were a guy, looking to pay a girl to wank me off, I wouldnt walk in the room and say, My God, I smell hints of fresh strudel and nutmegquick, grab my dick! Id walk in a room and say very little, which is what most of them do.