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The boy turned around quickly as he heard the sound of bottle neck on glass, the buyer was already sitting down pouring himself a large Jack Daniel’s. “So all Robert had to do was have sex with Japanese women? What a life.” The boy said as he walked back to his chair and sat down.

He pressed record on his phone and waited for a response.
“Like all of modern society, there is a lot of showing off, you know, the, my car is better than your car thing, I think it’s called ‘The Jones’s Syndrome’. The client was simply catering to that syndrome. If a woman has a western, educated man with a huge penis, then her friends envy her, and she in turn can look down on her friends and feel better about her empty life, and the package, well they spend the rest of their lives being taken care of, they are trophies, so they are well dressed, well fed and are treated well, in public anyway, I don’t really know how they are treated in the privacy of the bedroom, and I like it that way.”

The boy was looking at the buyers’ watch, 11:15, “Sorry am I boring you?” The buyer asked.

“No, not at all.” The boy answered, “I was just admiring your watch, is that an Omega?”

“Yes it is, it was a gift from a client, he was a sultan or a sheik or something, in Saudi Arabia, he wanted twins, a boy and a girl, between sixteen and seventeen years old, white and well educated and he would prefer blonde, if we could find them. John and I knew we would not find them on the streets of Paris, or London for that matter, so we headed to Sweden, Stockholm specifically, capital cities always have the most homeless people, capital cities seem to be more ruthless than smaller places. And the Swedish education system is good, most, if not all students speak English and there are a lot of blonde people there. It took John and I almost a month to find the twins, a month is a long time in our line of work, but this was big money, from a big client and we wanted to keep him happy.

I was sitting in a café on Renstiernasgata 23 when I saw them, they were beautiful, their hair seemed to glow in the morning light, they were perfect, both for the client and in their beauty. I followed them to school, and I followed them home that night, and the many other nights that followed, they were cheerful children, but their father was a drunk. He would come home late at night and beat his wife and them, although I never once saw any signs of bruising on their beautiful faces I could hear them being tortured by the father late into the night. I was so happy every morning when they emerged from their home, still breathing and tragically still smiling. I witnessed this for days and every time the father came home my heart sank, it sank to a new depth everyday, I remember on the eighth day I sat in my car crying as the father entered the house. That night at around 4:00am an ambulance arrived at the house, I could hardly breath, my heart was pounding, then the police arrived, the mother was taken in the ambulance and the father was taken by the police.

I waited until it was time for the twins to go to school, then I waited another two hours before I knocked on the front door, it was the girl who answered, her skin was so clear, her features, so soft, it was only the redness in her eyes which gave away the tears she had shed through the night. I asked her if she was OK, her English was perfect, possibly better than mine, she said she was fine and asked me who I was. It was then that her brother came to the front door, he shouted something at me in Swedish, his sister turned to him and gently placed her hand on his shoulder, and she leaned closer to him and whispered something in his ear. The brother looked at me, his eyes were red from crying, I imagined them sitting, holding each other, crying with each other, it was a beautiful and yet horrifying image I had in my head when the boy spoke, “I am sorry sir, but we had a little bit of a bad night, you see. What can we help you with?” I was in shock, here they were these beautiful twins, their mother taken to hospital, their father taken by the police, and they were asking how they could help me.

This was the first time I have ever questioned my morality, I wondered what kind of life they would have with the client, would it be better than this, or worse? I told them I was there to make sure they were OK; I told them I was there to offer them a better life, and I told them I would take care of them and their mother. Within twenty four hours, they were on a ship to Saudi Arabia, and within a week I had received this watch. I don’t know what happened to them, but I like to think they are living a fantastic life, eating in the best restaurants, wearing the finest clothes and smiling to each other every day.”

“What about the parents?” The boy asked as he poured another beer into his glass.

The buyer finished his glass of whiskey, picked up the bottle to pour himself another and said, “I spoke with the client and he agreed to take care of her hospital bills, I found out later that he relocated her to a small village in Sweden, where she could live a happier life, as for the father, I hope he spent the rest of his life in prison”.

The boy watched the buyer as he slowly stood up and walked out of the room. The air in the room was thick with the smell of whiskey and beer, the boy got up and walked over to the window, he stood there looking out at the street below him, lit only buy a few street lights, there was a fox looking for food, scavenging around searching for any leftover scraps in the bins.

“Shall we continue tomorrow?” The tramp buyer whispered into the boys ear, the boy jumped a little, he had not heard the buyer come back into the room.

“But it’s still early; I thought we could do more.”

The buyer studied the boy for a moment before he spoke, “I am very tiered today, and I have a bad head, maybe too much to drink last night, I think it’s better if we continue tomorrow.”

The boy walked over to the table, picked up his phone, finished the last drop of beer from his glass and said, “OK, tomorrow it is then.”

As they reached the front door the buyer put his hand on the boys shoulder, “remember there will be food here for you, do not eat from those places, it is dangerous.”