Bedtime with the Clients

My husband is far away across the country tonight, and I am sleeping with my newest client. 

It's not like it sounds.

At bedtime, it's not unusual for the Brunette to say, matter-of-factly, "I want to sleep with you." He will then follow me to bed and climb in beside me. He's very warm.

He expects to read a few books aloud, turn out the lights, then get out of bed at least once and ride me piggyback to the kitchen for a swallow of water. (Water from the fridge, in a blue cup, which he manipulates himself, thank you very much.) Remember, there is NO contract, so I can't really say he's in breach. 

Truth is, I almost never turn him down outright. The potential for fallout looms too large. Often, I try to trick him by lying beside him while he falls asleep, then switching beds. 

The Brunette just... likes me a lot... He has his own space; he just gets lonely. He comes to my bed almost every night. My husband knows that this is part of my job, but he does get tired of sharing his bed with an interloper. 

All this bed sharing started with the Ginger. He's the client who refused to sleep alone. I *tried* to explain how important it was for him to learn to calm himself down and sleep on his own. (Our longtime client, The Blonde, had some difficulty with this skill, but learned it in a few days.) The Ginger either didn't buy it, or his grasp of the language was insufficient for him to understand exactly what I was telling him. 

We put him in one of those special holding pens with the padded floor. It was surrounded by bars, of course, per the usual. It just made him mad. He screamed for hours, fell asleep, then woke up and screamed some more.  Hours.

I worried he might have grounds to sue us later for false imprisonment, so I gave up. (Excuse me: False imprisonment is a felony!)

In retrospect, I think if I could've found some commercial on television showing how pleasant the holding pen could be, he might have given in. A promotional video, maybe-- or a movie glorifying life behind bars... 

The Ginger is, by far, the most susceptible to marketing of all my clients. This is why expense disbursements for the Ginger are made so infrequently. After all, at best, they're unsecured, non-interest bearing loans. If he had his way, he would incorporate himself and issue an IPO to fund acquisitions... He would buy anything sold from the following site:

http://www.asseenontv.com/index.php?v=toys