Well, I feel bad about not writing a new story for a while. I have to get in the writing mood which, thankfully, I got in about a week ago. However, I had to work on a science paper, a large application, and an enlgish paper. Biggest was the english paper which, had I flunked it, would have cause me to flunk the the quarter and, therefore, the entire year. So, you know, priorities. Anyways, yay for spring break! The story was kind of inspired by the song "Roxanne," hence the title. I use the Moulin Rouge version (entitled "El Tango de Roxanne". If you haven`t figured it out already, its a tango) because it was the first version I heard and I like it better than the police version.

Author's Note: After I wrote this, some revisions came about. I have removed the quote from "El Tango de Roxanne" and the story is now name "A Night with Roxanne." Enjoy!

He was the strangest client that she had ever seen. There had been some pretty strange ones, too. Every girl in her line of work got them. The most preferable for her were the masochistic ones. The whole dominatrix act worked wonders in relieving some of the frustrations of the job. It didn't hurt (she smiled to herself at the pun) either that it made her feel like she was getting revenge on every single person who had hurt her in some way. Oh no, none of the clients had ever physically harmed her or, if they had, it wasn't tolerated for long. Sadism or any type of violence towards anyone of the girls was not allowed and dealt harshly with by "Father". It was not out of love, purely business. No one wanted to buy a battered up sex doll.

The fetish-loving ones gave her the creeps. It was a common game among the girls to see who had gotten the weirdest fetish thrown at them. Sakura was currently the victor with a client who had wanted her to suck on the fleshiest part of his bald head. No matter how many jests were made about them, though, she was still highly uncomfortable with sucking on someone's toe to get them to moan or nibbling on a man's ear for ten minutes. What ever happened to making love to one another then cuddling afterwards? She had read about it in those dime-store romance novels when she was a starry-eyed youngster. Then again, none of those books had a heroine become a teenage prostitute. None of those girls had to spend years going from street corner to street corner, from car to car, from dirty motel to dirty motel building up a list of clients that varied just as much as it stayed the same. Young, old fat, skinny, rich, poor, they were all men who liked her for one thing and one thing only-sex.

The man before her was different. Very different. The first thing that had struck her about him was that he was young. Just about her age, in fact. She really didn't get many young clients. Most people her age, she assumed, would be bumping and grinding up against each other in some club somewhere. Then, they would drunkenly stumble into a taxi with a person made exceedingly attractive by alcohol and get their sex for the part-time job friendly price of nothing but a hangover and some regrets. Those who couldn't pick up strangers in a hot, loud nightclub were always left with the option of a tube sock and the internet.

The few young clients that she did get could be placed into two different categories of men. The first group would be those smarmy college frat boys who were only with her to brag to their buddies the next morning about getting laid by a really hot chick. No mention that the chick had been a prostitute would ever be made. The other grouping of young clients were those clients who she actually had some compassion for. They were the high school age kids who saved up the money they got from flipping hamburgers just so they didn't have to be the last virgins in school. She usually sent these boys home, money still in hand, with the promise that someday a girl would be willing to take their virginity without having to be paid for doing so. She always got reprimanded harshly by "Father" for sending away money, but she didn't mind as long as she never saw those boys on her street again.

The other strange thing was that he actually took care of her. Most clients wouldn't care if she was freezing cold or hadn't eaten in a week. Just as long as they got their sex and were satisfied, they were happy. He, however, always asked her if she was thirsty when they entered the hotel room and, on several occasions, ordered room service for her after scrutinizing her body. That was the other thing; he took her to hotels that actually offered room service. Usually, she was dragged to some disgusting hotel where they shared the room with various stains on the linens and insects that liked to crawl into the folds of her clothing on the floor. Some clients wouldn't even spring for a room and she had to learn to navigate her body around seatbelts and the cracks between seats. She had gotten enough burns from rubbing against rough cotton seats or from pulling her hot, sweaty skin away from leather too quickly to last a lifetime.

The weirdest thing about him, however, was the thing that she couldn't, for the life of her, figure out. She had never seen it before in all of her years on the streets. The thing was that, even though he paid for it, he didn't want to have sex with her. In fact, he hadn't even tried anything remotely intimate like kiss her or touch her body in anyway. She would think he wasn't attracted to her, except she knew it wasn't the case. Attractiveness was kind of a major part of the job description unless you were one of those foreign girls a few blocks over who weren't very pleasing to the eye but were taught to be very pleasing to the body. She knew she got freaked out at anything that wasn't "by the book", so she had to rely on visual stimulators. Sure, the innocent roundness of her face and the hopeful twinkle in her eyes had left her, but she still had a substantial bosom and hips that had gotten the child-bearing "seal of approval" from numerous grandmas in the grocery store and park. Besides, not many men can stand screwing a dog-faced stick for very long.

Her other inclination would have been that he was a cop sent to arrest any girl who tried to sell herself to him. She was a little derailed from that notion when he paid her upfront. Most cops would take her into the room and ask her very clearly (for the cameras and mics) how much she charged. They always made sure to confirm that she was really accepting money in exchange for sex, too. This guy had just unlocked the door of his car the first time she leaned through his window, driven to the hotel, and gave her the money as soon as they entered the room. He then proceeded to lie on the bed, still fully clothed, and close his eyes. The general lack of conversation had also somewhat killed her image of him as a cop. She always expected an interrogation, but his few muttered phrases were always about if she was hungry and to tell her that it was fine if she wanted room service.

She wasn't fully convinced of his not being police, however. She had watched enough shows, heard enough stories, and was taught enough to know about body mics and hidden cameras. Her third time seeing him, she found an ample opportunity to search his coat for spyware technology when he fell asleep on the bed. She dug her hand into all the pockets and searched the cuffs and lapels of the suit coat before nearly having a heart attack when he spoke. In a gruff voice, he told her to stop wasting her time and that she shouldn't be worried because there were no bugs attached to him or hidden anywhere in the room. Turning to look at him, she found that he had not turned his head or even opened his eyes to look at her. She sheepishly sat in the computer chair at a desk with no computer and began peeling an orange that she had sent away for.

It was at that same desk where she now sat, amusing herself by nibbling on the peeled segments of orange and drawing little twisters on a pad of paper with the name of the hotel printed on top. She was startled out of her thoughts when he spoke once more to her, saying more in fifteen minutes than he had said during their previous sessions combined.

"Why were you looking for wires in my coat?"

She considered the question. Should she really tell him the truth? Saying that she was suspicious of him and wanted to know what the hell was going on didn't seem like a good idea if she wanted to keep him as a customer, no matter how unorthodox of a customer he may be. However, he didn't seem like the guy who would want to put up with some bull response. Besides, she was pretty sure he already knew what she had been doing due to his statement beforehand. Therefore, she decided just to answer truthfully.

"Honestly, I thought you might be a cop. Your attitude is just so weird that I wanted to cover my bases on what was really going on."

"Stupid woman," he said. "If I were a cop, I wouldn't bug just my coat. Any idiot could lose it. You should have checked under my shirt for wires. If a cop lost his shirt, he probably wouldn't be thinking too much about eliminating your line of work."

Bristling at the comment, she set down her pen a little harder than necessary. Not only had he called her stupid, but he had also grouped her together with the rest of her sex in a most derogatory way. "Father" and the most hated of all her clients called her "woman". She wasn't going to let this asshole do it too, customer service be damned.

"Excuse me sir," she said, emphasizing the last word for a reason, "but if you're so goddamn intelligent then why don't you tell me how I was supposed to get your shirt off when you were napping on the bed, you lazy ass. And don't call be 'woman'. I have a name, you know." Glad that she was finally able to yell at someone, she leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms and legs comfortably. The comfort soon dwindled, however, as she began to fully comprehend what the consequences of her actions just may turn out to be. A sigh came from the bed across the room and she looked up, more worry than she would have liked crossing her face.

"Fine, then." The words sounded more like his previous sigh than actual speech. "What is it?"

"What is what?" she asked, confused by his question.

"Your name. I obviously can't call you by your name if I don't know what it is." He sounded as though he was rolling his eyes, but she couldn't know for certain because he had yet to open them.

"Oh." She thought about giving him one of her street names. A lot of men didn't want a normal name like they could find on any given neighbor or co-worker. Most of them wanted either something foreign and exotic, something that sounded like it was the name of a dog the size of a palm, or some beautiful actress or supermodel whom they would never have a chance with except in their fantasies. Some men, the most loathed of all, would simply forbid her to have a name and treat her like an inhuman sex robot. She knew that this guy, however, would probably be disgusted by a cutesy or obviously made-up name. She also felt that he would be able to see through a lie, no matter how realistic the name, and would look down on her for lying. Besides, she secretly really wanted to tell him. It might be nice to have someone other than the other girls and the detestable "Father" know her real name.

"Its Ino," she said. "My name is Ino. Please call me by it."

He opened an eye. Barely halfway open and only one eye, but somehow it made her glad to see that sliver of an eye looking her way. "Ok then, Ino."

A ghost of a smile grazed her lips. However, she was curious about something and hoped her curiosity didn't hurt her. "You know," she said, "Its considered common courtesy to offer up your own name when someone gives you theirs."

The second eye opened an equal bit as the first and both were now on her. She couldn't read the expression in them, but she knew enough to tell that the expression was neutral and not hostile. He looked at her for an extended period of moment or two before he spoke.

"Shikamaru," he said. His eyes closed once more after he spoke and he turned his head away from her, towards the ceiling.

Ino allowed a smile to turn up her lips after he turned away. She gathered up the peels from her orange and ripped the pages that she had doodled on off the pad of paper. On her way to the trashcan, she turned her head to look at the man and said, "Its nice to meet you, Shikamaru."

He only grunted in response.

This is going to end up being my first multiple chapter story. Hopefully, I will be able to finish. I will try (or, at least, I`ll crank out a ton of chapters this week so I don`t forget when school starts). Reviews keep me motivated and make me feel good about myself (how sad is that?). Fun Fact: as I am writing this, I sound like Kelly (from The Office) in my head. Creepy.