He looks at me again, bewildered. I know another round of questions are about to slip out. He’s trying to control them this time, I think. “What d... you mean give you away, or set you free?” he finally asks. “If you don’t want me, or don’t have five wishes, or don’t believe in this, you can give me to someone else. Then I belong to them. Until then, you’re my master. If you don’t want to give me to someone else, then you can wish me free, then I become mortal. Of course, you can always fall in. During the remainder of the ride home we made comments like, "Now there's a working girl", "I'd like to get me some of that", "She could get me harder than I have been in years", "Back in the day I could have ridden that all day" and "She may be black on the outside but they're all pink on the inside." That night we were playing cards and after a while the conversation got around to the young black street whore we had passed earlier. Then Bill said that he had an idea. He said, "She's out there. That was two months ago.Paige was twenty-five years old. She had married early, at the age of twenty-two. Don had been told that they were planning a child, but when he first heard the news he had to congratulate them over video call and then wait a couple of months before he saw them. It was good to have them over, especially his daughter. She would stay overnight, but Charles had had to leave to attend a long-awaited gathering of friends in the city.“Did you mean that bit about being. Deb thought it was in sympathy for her plight, but it wasn’t because Deb was wronged. It was because Deb was the one that was destroying the marriage. Something she wouldn’t ever allow herself to see. Joyce went through it herself with her husband Terry. He had the patience of Job, but it was too much for him and he filed for divorce about 10 months ago. It was not yet finalized, but they had quietly been going to marital counseling for the past 9 months. She only started when she realized that.