“With what?”
“What do you think? You’re not the only one who gets paid to fuck.”
Yeah, but I’m the only one who has the cash long enough to do something useful with it . . . like buy food and pay the bloody rent. Any money Jamie made usually went straight back into the street economy, which in turn kept him out longer and longer, until he got too hungry and desperate to survive another night on his own. “Where’d you get the money, Jay?”
“I fucked a rich man.”
“No, you didn’t,” Zac snapped. “Rich men don’t cruise for toms down Clarence Road.” Though that wasn’t entirely true. Rich men had come cruising through every red-light district Zac had ever known, but they didn’t pay over the going rate, especially when they picked up a junkie like Jamie. “Come on. Spill.”
Jamie stepped around Zac and opened the top pizza box, snagging a cold slice and stuffing half of it in his mouth. “If you must know,” he said when he’d swallowed, “I got myself a new pimp.”
“You did what?”
“You heard.” Jamie held out the box. “Decided I need a proper job, like you.”
Zac took the box and dropped it on the counter. “I don’t have a pimp. I’m not giving some cunt half my money.”
“Yeah, well. If you worked where I work, you might think different. We needed one in King’s Cross, didn’t we?”
“That was different.”
Jamie fixed Zac with a shrewd gaze. “Was it? It’s a fucking ghetto out here too.”
Zac didn’t know much about the red-light district in Norwich—he’d done everything he could to avoid it—but if it was anything like London, Jamie had a point. Working without a pimp in the underbelly of the capital had been dangerous. They’d needed one for protection . . . and drugs.
The penny dropped. “Is that where you’re getting the skag? From this pimp?”
“Need to get it from somewhere, and it’s good stuff, Zac.”
“Don’t.”
“Don’t what? Tell you the fucking truth?”
Zac swallowed the age-old craving. Was it Jamie’s fault it never really went away? That now they were both freshly showered and dressed in trackies, eating cold pizza from a box, they were one and the same? They were both hookers and addicts. Only difference was Zac hadn’t fed his addiction since Jamie had peeled him from the pavement outside a grotty squat and bundled him into the nearest hospital. “What deal have you got with him?”
“Sixty-forty.”
“In his favour?”
“Obviously. He gave me a bonus for signing up, though. Two hundred quid.”
Zac sighed. He’d never come across a pimp who gave money away for fun, and his gut told him whoever Jamie had got involved with was bad news, but there was little he could do about it. Jamie was beautiful and wild, and no one would ever tame him.
“Do you want this or not?” Jamie waved a handful of notes under Zac’s nose.
Zac took them. Seventy-five quid. “Where’s the rest?” Silence. As if Zac had to ask. “Brilliant. So you got a bonus from your pimp and gave it straight back to him for junk?”
“I didn’t bring it inside. It’s in a bush up the road.”
“Nice.”
“Zac.”
“What?”
Jamie stared hard at Zac. Zac sighed again and finally helped himself to a slice of pizza. They had an incarnation of this conversation every time Jamie crawled home, and each time Zac found himself backing down, constrained by hypocrisy. It wasn’t so long ago that he’d have been doing everything Jamie was doing and more. Anything to stay alive . . . or not. Some days it hadn’t seemed to matter.
They finished their pizza in silence. Zac jammed the remaining box in the fridge while Jamie took the empty one outside. As the door closed behind him, Zac wondered if he would sneak away to his stash in the bush, but Jamie let himself back in a few moments later.
