We Buy Hours by J. David Liss

 

We Buy Hours, I thought the sign said when I glimpsed it while stopped at a light. 

How could you buy hours? Did they mean they wanted to hire workers by the hour?

We buy hours. What hours would I sell? I know that time is a precious gift, but frankly, I hadn’t used my time all that well. I could definitely think of some hours I would love to trade for cash. Some I would just give away, free for nothing. Those days I spent away from Amy come to mind, wasting my life running around after girls. Or maybe when Amy found out what I was doing.

We buy hours, no matter what condition they’re in, the sign continued. 

I realized it must be a typo. The sign should have read, We Buy Houses. 

It was a printed sign 18 inches x 18 inches, beige cardboard with black letters, nailed to a utility pole. 

I had thought about selling my house. I didn’t need it with Amy gone. We got it thinking we’d need the space when we had kids, but that never happened. 

I still believed Amy would come back, but in the meantime, I needed money and I didn’t need a three bedroom, two bath house. Anyway, why did I think that Amy would come back? I spent so much time away from home that we grew apart. Work, the gym, my buddies (who weren’t really particularly close; we were drinking buddies, not really friends), somehow all these things took priority. 

My house was in a sorry state. I had not been maintaining it. I didn’t have the money to do the landscaping, renovate the bathrooms and kitchen, or do any of the other work the house needed. I didn’t list the property because I didn’t think anyone would buy a house in such a state of disrepair.

Apparently, there were guys who would buy houses no matter what state of repair they were in. Before the light turned green, I copied down the address and phone number on the sign, but when I called, nobody answered. So I decided to drive to the address, which was in a nearby strip mall. 

It turned out to be a plain vanilla office, the kind that a business rents for no more than a year in order to sell something and move on. When I rang the bell and walked in the door, there was an empty reception room. I thought that maybe I had come too late and that this business had taken off. But I heard a woman’s voice call from an inner office, “I’m in here. Please come on back.”

That voice sounded so familiar – breathy, caressing, arousing.

I went through the inner doorway, and seated at a desk was a blonde woman wearing a white lab coat. As my eyes adjusted to the artificial light my heart caught in my mouth. 

It wasn’t a blonde woman; it was the blonde woman. My chest tightened. “You’re…” but she got up from behind the desk and put her forefinger to her pursed, heavily lipsticked mouth and made a shushing sound. Then she flashed that come-love-me smile and said, “I’m very pleased to meet you. Please call me Marilyn. What’s your name?”

She was perfect: the way she leaned slightly forward and engaged my eyes when she spoke, locking my gaze in hers so that I couldn’t look at her cleavage; the controlled whisper of her speech; the incredible soft glow of her skin.

“Michael Jenders,” I stammered. “Pleased to meet you.” 

“What can I do for you, Michael?” Now her manner turned business like. She went back behind the desk, leaving me wondering, What does she mean, what can I do for you?

“I saw your sign about buying houses, no matter what condition they’re in, and I’m thinking about selling my house which, frankly, I haven’t maintained well. Perhaps you could take a look at it and let me know what you’d be willing to pay.” 

Did that sound like I was coming on to her?

“We have no interest in buying houses, Michael. What sign are you talking about?”

“It’s on the corner of Grove and 27.”

“We do have a sign there, but it says we buy hours, not houses.”

“Oh, I thought that was a typo. Are you looking to hire hourly labor? I could actually use some extra money and I’m pretty handy. What kind of work is it?” 

Everything I said seemed perfectly normal, except that as I looked at her I could only think of how much I wanted to sleep with her. Don’t get me wrong; I did not think for one minute that I was with the most famous woman who ever lived, the actress who created the modern stereotype of the sex symbol, the actress who committed suicide in the 1960’s. I just didn’t care. There wasn’t anything about Marilyn that wasn’t perfect.

“Michael, the sign was very straightforward. We buy hours. You have hours that you’ve lived, and hours that you will live. That’s what we buy.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I’ll show you, silly.” The smile was back and there was something conspiratorial in her eyes. “Think of an hour that you would really love not to have lived. It could be as boring as a long wait in traffic to get over the bridge, but I hope you pick something filled with passion, anger, disappointment. 

“You may not want to sell the hour when you kissed the first girl you had a crush on, or anything that brought you happiness, but it’s up to you. How about the last breakup with your girlfriend? That must have been terribly disappointing. You still love her, but she just couldn’t take you anymore. You probably still think she’ll come back.”

“How could you know about Amy?”

“I don’t really know about her. But people share so many experiences that they become repetitive and it’s not hard to pick a storyline and match it to a client. 

“How would you like to sell that hour when she left you? It wouldn’t bother you ever again. I’m sure I could make you happy by buying an hour like that.”

Nothing was making sense to me. But I wanted to be happy.

“Even if such a thing were possible, why would you want to buy such an hour. It was terrible.”

“My poor baby, you had to live through such a terrible hour. 

“But I’ll tell you a secret. You would be amazed at the kind of experience an actor finds useful. I’m not even saying me; I mean anyone on screen or on stage. Sometimes we keep the hours; sometimes we sell them to others. There are many actors who have been around for a long time, actors who are always looking for another role, for the next immortal performance, as the critics like to say. But the critics are right; some performances are immortal.

“I’ll give you a hundred dollars for that hour. Cash up front.”

“Hell, I’d pay you to take that hour from me.”

She smiled. “Maybe those deals can come later. Let me pay you this time so you see what I’m talking about. 

“Now, I want you to close your eyes and think about the day Amy broke up with you and left. I know it was terrible, but this won’t last long. I’m going to get very close to you. I may even kiss you. I hope you don’t mind.” This was followed by a wicked, sexy, knowing smile.

I closed my eyes and heard the rustle of her clothes as she walked over. I could picture the hourglass figure swaying gently as she walked. It was a famous walk.

“Don’t open your eyes,” her soft voice whispered from close to my ear, and before I knew it those soft lips were on mine. But she pulled back quickly and said, “Darling, you’re not thinking of the hour Amy broke up with you. Now concentrate.” She kissed me again, very slowly.

I remembered how Amy and I were doing the dishes after I had spent the day with my mother. I was telling Amy about our conversation — the same conversation mom and I had been having for 30 years — and Amy just looked at me for about 10 seconds and said, “I had enough. I don’t want to do this with you.” She put down the dishtowel, went to the bedroom, packed a day bag, and told me she was leaving and her sister would come for her stuff. I blocked the door and wouldn’t let her pass. 

“What did I do?” I kept asking. “You do nothing,” she said, and in my heart, I knew that was the problem. I did nothing that could make her want to stay.

It felt that there was a warm wind blowing from my brain through my mouth into Marilyn’s mouth. Then, I couldn’t remember what was troubling me about my relationship with Amy. It ended, somehow. That was it.

Marilyn looked like she had just eaten something delicious. She was working the flavor of it in her mouth, like chewing gum. It was really sexy to watch.

“That was very good,” she said with a bright, almost childlike smile. You did a good job!”

I was still lost in her kiss, feeling my soul pressed against her soft, soft mouth. I looked down and saw there was a hundred dollars in my shirt pocket.

“Thank you.”

“The pleasure was mine! Really.”

She dimpled as she said, “I looked around a little bit while we were kissing and there’s a lot in there that we’d like to buy. Of course, when we buy any hour of your life, then it becomes ours and not yours, and no new hours can be added, so you will have a net loss of hours.

“We’d also like to buy some hours in your future, and there are some things I have to let you know before we transact for any future hours. For example, Amy may choose to return to you because of the life you shared before. Of course, if we buy the hours of your life with Amy, you won’t share those times anymore.

“But the truth is Michael, I really want to kiss you some more.”

I wanted to kiss her some more. But I suddenly felt very tired.

“I’d like to do more of that too, a lot more. But I’m a little tired now. Why don’t I come back tomorrow?”

“It’s so good to know that you want to do this some more. And of course you’re tired, silly, you’ve just had an hour taken from you. But all I really need to know is that you want to kiss me some more. I’ll take care of the rest. In fact, I will make love to you.”

My hands were shaking and I could barely stand. I felt a thousand years old. “I’m very tired. You’ll be sucking the life’s blood out of me.”

“Oh Sweetie, that is so silly. Why would anyone want to drink blood? That’s a myth, and one that sounds kind of icky to me. But my partner Clark also needs some hours. We’re running a little low and time is long, so long.” 

She took off her lab coat and underneath it was a tight, yellow sweater blouse with a plunging neckline. She did not try to focus my eyes away from her cleavage, and thoughts of every teenage dream of making love to this woman began running through my head.

“Unless you tell me otherwise, I’ll assume the price of $100 per hour is still satisfactory. We can start now,” she said as she moved closer, her lips dark red, her breasts gently pulling at me like twin moons pulling the tides from the sea.

 

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Published 2/14/26