Sarah's Education

by Madeline Moore

  Sarah flushed. ‘I didn’t mean we should, only that if we did –’

  ‘But I was shy, in the beginning. And before I could approach, that fast-talking historian had scooped you up.’

  ‘David?’

  Christopher nodded. ‘I have waited for you to lose interest in his fusty musings on the past. And finally, you have!’

  ‘Well we’re still … seeing each other.’

  ‘You must, like me, prefer musing on the future, else you wouldn’t be a philosophy major.’

  ‘Is that what we do?’

  ‘I think it is. We take the events of the day and apply critical thinking so we may separate foolishness from wisdom and, perhaps, prevent the past from repeating itself. It isn’t merely remembering it, as the historians would have you believe. Don’t you agree?’

  ‘Maybe. If we are heard.’ Sarah felt awkward, as if she’d suddenly doubled in mass. It happened when she was uncomfortable in her surroundings, and suddenly, in this bar, with this gorgeous young man who had just confessed his feelings for her, she felt very uncomfortable. ‘I should go.’

  Christopher thudded his forehead on the table. ‘I’ve ruined everything.’

  ‘No.’ Sarah stood. From what seemed a great height, she touched his head. His hair was incredibly soft, not at all what she’d expected. ‘I’m strange, Christopher. Sorry.’

  ‘But –’

  She threw a few bills onto the table and grabbed her knapsack, ignoring the protests of her tablemates. It was suddenly imperative to her that she get out, quickly, before she became so huge she wouldn’t fit through the doors.

  She scurried out into the cold night air, intent on getting home as quickly as possible, given her sudden girth. I’m strange,’ she’d said, to the gorgeous young Bajan man who’d shown an interest in her. How ridiculous! She almost batted her head with her fists in frustration, but she held back, for fear the other pedestrians would see, and think, Oh, how strange.

  ‘Well, it’s true,’ she muttered. Ah. Talking out loud. She pressed her lips together in a thin, exasperated line. She was a call girl. Veronica was her pimp, albeit a bubbly, blonde one. In a few short months her new profession had become as much a part of her as being a philosophy student was, though she’d been the latter for years. Christopher had spoken of critical thinking. Had she ever applied it to her ‘decision’ to trade sex for money?

  What if she were found out? How long would it take for the whole campus to be abuzz with the news? What about the legality of what she did with her clients, never mind the morality? She could go to jail!

  Sarah’s feet, in their $400 boots, pounded the pavement as she quickened her gait until she was almost running. She’d expected Jack to come back for her but he hadn’t and quite likely never would. He’d enjoyed her virgin schoolgirl ‘act’ and paid handsomely for it and that, in his mind, was that. Over. Meanwhile she’d continued to play the part of the mooning nubile maiden. That is, when she wasn’t hiring herself out to other men. Where was the logic in any of it?

  ‘It’s not too late,’ she whispered, consoling herself. Again, she pressed her lips resolutely together. But it wasn’t, was it? Nobody knew. Nothing had actually happened. Just a night out with her friends, a few drinks. She could call Veronica (nothing more or less than a pimp!) as soon as she got home and put a quick end to all this. Sure, she’d miss the money, and maybe the excitement. And it was fun to be adored, but Christopher adored her. She could dump David and take up with Christopher if she wanted, but even that seemed dangerous. No, best to get out of the escort business and patch things up with David. Turn up the heat and get a ring. Graduate. Get married. Teach, maybe, have kids.

  She rounded the corner. As if her thoughts had summoned him, David was on the porch of the house where she rented a room. Coming? Or going? Sarah ducked behind a bush. David was leaving.

  She should call out to him. Run into his arms. Go, she urged herself, go. But she stayed put. Run into his arms and then what? Take him upstairs and make love to him and never mind that the thought neither excited her, as the thought of Jack did, nor even stirred her interest, as Christopher had.

  He’d called David fusty’. That wasn’t David’s fault, any more than it was her fault that she felt physically huge whenever she was extremely uncomfortable. Nevertheless, she did feel that way from time to time and David was fusty.

  David. Marriage. Teaching. Babies. None of it appealed. Not in the least. So she stayed where she was while David descended the front stairs and slouched into the night.

  What was the difference between trading one’s body for a diamond ring and a big party and a lot of stuff, and trading it for cold hard cash? Except that one required a lifetime commitment and the other only a night? God, it was hard to know which thoughts were stupid and which were wise.

  When David finally disappeared, Sarah stepped from her hiding space. She no longer felt huge; she was just Sarah, shapely and, if anything, on the skinny side. Weird, maybe, but she’d never really been a pawn in this game called life. She’d been making decisions all along, so it wasn’t all that difficult, now that the coast was clear, to simply acknowledge that and accept it. She was a student, she was an escort, she was a page, and more, a daughter and a sister and a friend. Parts of a whole. She didn’t need Jack and she didn’t love David and she didn’t want Christopher. Not really. Perhaps she did tend to compartmentalise but all the compartments made up a whole, and it was Sarah, and she was just fine with that.

  ‘Onwards,’ she ordered herself.

  8

  THERE WAS AN article in the Toledo Blade about GeoMancy having to lay off twenty per cent of its employees. Perhaps that was why that George had wanted to appear at his company’s function in a wheelchair. It’s harder to fire the handicapped.

  Sarah was getting more comfortable with her new popularity at the university. She didn’t, after all, have to join in every pub night or study session in order to be a part of the gang; she just had to pay a little more attention to her fellow Phil. Honours classmates. Christopher, likely humiliated by his confession of a crush, kept his distance. Sarah was fine with that. She didn’t need the complication.

  Sometimes she idly wondered what exactly had happened to cause this surge in popularity. Hair and make-up could only be credited with so much. Part of it must be from her new confidence. Each date she went on reconfirmed her power to please men and nurtured her blossoming sensuality. That made her approachable by both sexes. Interesting.

  She’d upgraded her wardrobe as well, but subtly. Her fellow students would have been shocked if they’d known what she’d paid for her flared shortie boots, stretch-fit jeans and scarlet kid-leather bomber jacket. Sarah had also splurged on a $2,000 laptop that she’d distressed so she could pass it off as second-hand. For the first time, she had money. That made her more confident, too.

  Though she was still a loner by nature she’d become more at ease with other people, as well as in her own skin. Since her night out at the student pub she’d not felt that strange ‘hugeness’ that came over her when she was outside her comfort zone. She hadn’t been back to the pub but she’d found other ways to spend time with new friends. Even loners need study partners and someone to eat lunch with or argue philosophy with or sit with in lectures. It became easier for her to greet a guy or wave a girl over to the lunch table or scrunch along a study bench to make room for one more.

  David had preferred her as an outsider. Well, she’d preferred him then, too. Perhaps he suspected that the one date a week she allowed him, always climaxed by a perfunctory handjob, was charity on her part. She knew she had to do something about him but she held back for fear of hurting him. One day, Sarah had decided, she’d let him fuck her and then she’d let him go. If she played her cards right he’d be riding high on his sexual abilities and eager to test them on other girls. He’d barely notice she was gone. That was the plan anyway. David was a nice guy, but she’d outgrown him, pure and simple.

&nbs
p; Sarah’s newly elevated self-esteem took a knock when she found herself in Veronica’s waiting room with two other escorts. They looked to be in their mid- to late-twenties. One had geometric-cut glossy black hair, the other an upsweep in molten honey. They wore more make-up than Sarah, but carried it well, as if they were in a beauty-related business. In a way, they were.

  One’s suit was charcoal with a faint chalk stripe; the other’s two-piece was emerald, worn over a yellow silk blouse. Both suits had to be by famous designers, Chanel or Givenchy or the like. Sarah didn’t know style well enough to recognise them. Perhaps she should start reading Vogue?

  The women ignored her. She eavesdropped on their chatter. The blonde had flown in on a private jet the previous night, from a party in Montreal where there’d been a number of Hollywood celebrities whose names she managed to drop into every sentence. The raven-haired one had spent the weekend at a ‘simply fabulous’ house party that’d been thrown by a mysterious someone ‘in oil’.

  Neither mentioned getting fucked, as far as Sarah could tell. They sprinkled their conversations with foreign words and phrases, so she couldn’t understand it all. What she could follow was about five-star restaurants, movie premieres, the latest exhibitions at art galleries and so on.

  By the time the two of them went in to see Veronica, Sarah felt like a junior apprentice in a profession she’d begun to think herself a mistress of. She’d had a few memorable experiences with kinky guys and a few forgettable fucks with regular guys, but nothing swanky or sophisticated. She’d never actually been an escort, except with George, and then she’d been dressed as a nurse. Nothing fancy about that.

  When she got her turn with Veronica, Sarah blurted, How come I never get the glamorous dates?’

  Veronica smiled. ‘Patience, my dear. Do you remember how you got into this business, and why?’

  ‘Um …’

  ‘Because you look so young and innocent. There’s a demand for that. Don’t rush yourself. As time goes by you will become more sophisticated. At your age and experience, do you really think you could hold your end up in a conversation about politics, art or literature, with politicians, artists and writers? Besides, you’ve sampled some of my best clients. Peter was a real peach, don’t you think?’

  ‘Yes.’ Sarah blushed. ‘I ejaculated,’ she blurted.

  ‘Did you like it?’

  ‘I didn’t even know at the time. But I was incredibly sensitive for a few hours afterwards. It was … interesting. But I want dates where the guy actually talks to me. I don’t know much about politics or literature but I am familiar with philosophy and drama. The rest I can learn.’

  ‘And so you shall. Look, if you really want a public gig where all you need do is look pretty, no physical contact required, I’ve got just the thing coming up.’

  ‘What sort of gig?’

  ‘The Exotic Auto Show starts in a few weeks. I could get you a job as a model. All you’d have to do is pose prettily next to cars and have your picture taken. The pay isn’t what you’re used to and the hours are longer, but it’s easy work and you’d get to meet all sorts of interesting people.’

  ‘Pay?’

  ‘Eight hundred a day, and no tips. It’s from ten in the morning till ten at night, but with lots of breaks. There’d be two of you spelling each other, so you’d actually only work about six hours.’ She paused. ‘And one other advantage; this’d be work you could tell your friends about. It’d help explain why you have so much more money to spend these days.’

  Sarah considered. Her grades were fine. She could afford to skip lectures for two days, one before and one after the weekend. And it had been difficult, pretending to still be dirt poor when her bank account was fat and she was carrying more cash in her purse each day than she’d spent in an entire semester last year. Every so often, she and her housemates had pooled their resources to get a pizza and a bottle of wine and she’d just tossed in small change to pretend that she was still poor. It made her feel guilty. If she had a legitimate source of income, she could treat the others once in a while.

  ‘I’ll do it,’ Sarah said.

  ‘Excellent!’ Veronica went to the door. ‘You’ll be working with Nancy.’ She called the girl’s name.

  Nancy came in. Sarah’s heart dropped. She’d recognise that straw-coloured hair, snub nose and wide thin-lipped mouth anywhere. She was the girl Sarah had misdirected.

  Before Nancy could speak, Sarah blurted, ‘I’m so sorry about the mix-up that day. What an idiot I was! I had no idea about the new hotel.’

  ‘Yeah, silly you, so silly you stole my date, “by accident”.’

  ‘It really was an honest mistake,’ Sarah protested.

  Veronica put in, ‘That’s all in the past, girls. Kiss and make up. Sarah’s going to be working the Auto Show with you, Nancy, so you two had better get along.’

  Sarah made a tentative move in the girl’s direction. Nancy’s face relaxed into a smile that Sarah hoped was sincere and reached out for Sarah. Each kissed the air beside the other’s cheek.

  Veronica said, ‘That’s better. Now, Sarah, you’ll be working in costume, so I need your shoe size and your measurements.’

  ‘A six shoe, and “small”.’

  ‘“Small” isn’t very exact. Run along to the wardrobe room. Craig will take your measurements.’

  ‘Craig’ turned out to be the older gentleman who’d spanked Nancy. The memory of that scene brought another ghost of a tingle to Sarah’s clit. It was strange, now that Sarah was so much more practised in sexual matters than she’d been back then, that the mental image of a bare bottom and a hard hand coming together still affected her so strongly. She’d have to think about that.

  ‘You’re the other Auto Show girl?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes …’ She paused. ‘Sir.’ Now why had she called him ‘sir’?

  ‘Strip off then and I’ll measure you. It’s for a bikini, by the way.’

  How odd that she should feel nervous about undressing in front of this man, when so many others had seen her naked. ‘I already have a bikini, sir.’

  ‘A magenta one?’

  She raised her eyebrows.

  ‘The car you’ll be working with is a new Italian model, called, the “Magenta”. Your bikini and your go-go boots will be in that colour. You’ll match the car.’

  ‘Oh.’ She waited.

  ‘Now? Please?’

  ‘Oh, right.’ Sarah unzipped her bomber and laid it aside. She pulled her cashmere sweater over her head and turned her back to him to take her bra off. Silly! He was going to measure her, for goodness sake! As matter-of-factly as she could, she stripped down to her plain ‘off-duty’ panties.

  Craig gave her an amused look but said nothing. He picked up a tape measure and passed it around her chest. The backs of his hands brushed her breasts but he didn’t seem the least affected by the contact. Was he gay?

  ‘You get to keep the outfits, two of them,’ he told her as he noted the measurement of her waist.

  ‘That’s nice.’

  ‘The boots are very good, Italian kid leather, very supple.’

  So he was gay. A straight man wouldn’t have known that.

  He continued, ‘Can you manage four-inch heels OK, for a longish period?’

  ‘That’s a bit higher than I’m used to, but I’ll cope.’

  ‘Be sure that you do. Classique has a reputation to uphold. We don’t want you looking awkward.’

  ‘No, sir.’ Gay or not, there had been steel in his voice as he’d said that. Once more, Sarah had a flashback to him spanking Nancy.

  The tape was around her hips. Just testing, she gave a little wriggle.

  ‘Be still.’

  Any straight man would have given her bum a little slap, at least.

  He noted her last measurement in his book, and said, ‘And no, I’m not gay. No offence, Sarah, but you’re too young for me to be interested in you thatway, and you’re an employee, so off-limits.’

 
Pouting, she said, ‘I saw you and Nancy, and she’s not much older than me.’

  ‘Me spanking her? Silly girl, that wasn’t sexual. She hates to be spanked. That was just a matter of discipline. You, if I’m not mistaken, would enjoy it, but I’m not going to give you that pleasure.’

  ‘Enjoy being beaten, me? No way.’

  Craig shrugged. ‘Before the show, get a bikini wax.’ He closed his notebook with a snap.

  ‘Wax?’

  ‘Best make it a Brazilian. Your bikinis will be skimpy. Off with you then.’

  Driving home, Sarah thought about what Craig had said. What was it about her that had given him the impression that she’d enjoy being spanked? She replayed the scene she’d spied on in her mind. What if it had been her across his knee? What if Veronica sent her on a date where the man wanted to do that to her? What if …

  Unlike the $5 tickets to the regular Toledo Auto Show, entrance to the Exotic Auto Show was either by invitation or at $150 a ticket, to keep the public out. That price, Sarah was sure, was steep enough to keep anyone she knew from attending. She’d decided not to announce the gig to her pals. If some of them showed up to tease her she’d die.

  Craig had driven Nancy and her to the show and had promised to pick them both up after it closed at ten. As he’d dropped them off, he’d handed them a suitcase each, with their costumes. ‘FedEx didn’t deliver them until last night,’ he explained. ‘Don’t worry. They’ll fit just fine.’

  The autos on show were mainly ‘concept’ cars out of Detroit but with a dozen or so production models from abroad, all ‘high end’, priced in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. The Magenta was a new model from the Albina Automobile Company in Milan. Sarah and Nancy reported to Signor Aldo Fulvio, a florid little man in a suit that looked as if it’d been sewn directly onto his body piece by immaculate piece. His title was long and impressive but Sarah could never remember it, let alone pronounce it.

  Nancy could though. To Sarah’s annoyance, it turned out that Nancy spoke Italian fluently. From the moment the girl greeted Signor Fulvio in his own language, he only spoke to her, leaving Nancy to pass his instructions on to Sarah.