An Offer you Can't Refuse

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

“Ed, Mandy,” Danny shouted at the top of his voice. “Emma,” he looked around, so many faces all different colours and hues, but none of them his three new friends. He’d only stopped for a second to take in the lights at Piccadilly Circus, he’d seen his friends cross the road but by the time he’d managed to get through the buses and the taxis, they’d vanished into thin air. Why were there still so many people around? Llantwit Major never got this busy ever; at eleven pm you’d be lucky if you even saw one car trundling along, but tonight in London, it was busier than Barry at rush hour. “Ed,’ he yelled again, but his voice was drowned out by a street performer who was shouting over the chugging engines and bleating horns that in turn were drowning out Bobby McFerrin’s Don’t Worry Be Happy that was pumping out of a takeaway pizza booth. Ed had mentioned the pub he was taking them to, but Danny couldn’t remember the name and anyway it was gone last orders, it’d probably be closed by now. Danny turned on his heels and headed to the underground station. He’d just go home and catch up with them in the morning and hope that Ed hadn’t got off with Mandy in the meantime.

“Hey, kid you look lost.” A man in an immaculate three-piece suit was smiling at Danny.

“I’ve lost my friends, so I’m going home,” Danny said.

“Do you want to earn some money, young man?”

“No, you’re alright mate, I just want to go home.”

“What all the way back to Wales?”

“No, to my student halls in Islington.”

“Ah, you’re a student? What if I told you, you could make £200 this evening? £200, that’s going to buy you a lot of pints.”

“What would I have to do?”

“You like ladies?”

Danny nodded.

“Wanna have sex with an older woman?”

Danny looked around, were his mates winding him up?

“All you’ve got to do is have sex with a woman, and you’ll get two hundred quid.”

“You’re joking,” Danny went to push past the man, but the man stood his ground.

“Does it look like I’m joking?” The man took out a bundle of notes out of his top pocket and started peeling them off. “One night of passion, no one needs to know, and this,” the man held the money out to Danny, “is yours.”

“Not interested,” Danny said.

“Okay, two fifty,” the man added some more notes to the wad he was holding.
Danny looked at the money, that was almost his whole grant and all he had to do was to fuck someone. Sex and money, Danny’s two favourite things.

“Okay,” he said.

“Good, come with me,” the man stepped into the road and hailed one of the taxis and held a door open for Danny.

They chugged through the London streets, Yazz, The Only Way is Up, was on the radio.

“Where are we going?” Danny said.

“Don’t worry,” the man replied, offering Danny a cigarette. “By the way, you don’t mention this to anyone, okay?”

Danny shook his head. He felt sick. Why on earth had he said yes? Was he be driven somewhere so the man could kill him, or worse bugger him? If there really was a woman, what if she was old, or ugly, or fat? What if came too quickly? He looked out of the window, he’d never been to this part of London before. He wondered if he could back jump out of the car. But every time the taxi stopped at lights the little red light came on to say the door was locked. They turned left and right and left again and then pulled up outside a posh looking hotel.

The man leant forward and handed a ten pound note to the driver.  “Keep the change, mate, ” he said. “This way,” he led Danny into the hotel. He nodded at the concierge and headed up the stairs. He knocked on door 110.  

“Come,” a female voice said.

“In you go,” the man pushed Danny into the room.

A bedside lamp lit a room that was about double the size of Danny’s student digs. The bed alone was about the size of his room. In the bed, a naked woman stirred. “What have we here then?” she said.

Danny didn’t move.

“Come closer,” the woman said, putting on her glasses. But Danny still stayed by the door. “Come on, I haven’t got all day,” the woman snapped.

“Yes, Prime Minister,” Danny said.