Huge Ajax's Arc

Chapter 380 of 619

The four room workers filed into the empty suite and waited. Ajax stood by the cold hearth. Tucker leaned in the doorway, arms crossed, his two gold chains bright against his bare chest. He knew this game better than any man in the house. Ajax had watched him work a room a hundred times, buying drinks and listening while others talked themselves into deals. Now Ajax needed that skill turned to a new problem. "The captains drink and leave," Ajax said. "They don't sleep. That ends tonight." He told the workers to take off their shirts. They looked at Tucker first, then obeyed. Ajax walked the line and studied them the way a buyer studies stock. Broad shoulders. Flat stomachs. Hairy chests. Good biceps. The silver chains he'd bound them with lay against their skin. "A man who has drunk two cups is easy," Ajax said. "He is warm and slow and lonely. You will make him want to stay. Sit close. Pour his wine. Laugh at his talk. Flirt. Make him think a warm bed is his own idea and you are the reason to climb into it." The youngest worker shifted. "And if he wants more than talk?" "Talk first," Ajax said. "The bed sells itself after that. You entice. You do not promise what you won't give." Tucker pushed off the doorframe. "Let me," he said. He walked to the nearest worker and set a hand on his shoulder. "You don't chase. You hold still. You let him come to you." He tilted his head, held the man's eyes, and said nothing. The worker leaned in without meaning to. Tucker stepped back and grinned. "See? He moved. I didn't." Ajax watched the lesson land. The other three copied it, holding still, holding a look. Tucker moved down the line, fixing a stance here, a hand there. He fed each man one line to use and made him say it back. That night Ajax stood at the bar's edge and watched. A gray-bearded master sat over a second cup of plum wine. A shirtless worker slid onto the bench beside him and poured. The worker laughed low at something the master said, then leaned close and murmured. The master's hand found the man's forearm. He did not rise to leave. He drank a third cup, then a fourth. Tucker came to Ajax's side. "Corner master booked a room," he said. "So did the two by the fire." By the time the lamps burned low, five of the nine empty rooms were spoken for. Ajax heard boots on the stairs and doors close above. The wine had pulled the captains in. The men had made them stay. Ajax set down his cup. The beds would earn now. Every master who slept warm would talk of it at the docks, and more ships would come. He had turned a slow room into a full one. But five strangers now slept over his canal, and each of them had climbed the stairs wanting to come back.