by Tracy Quan
Eventually, I introduced Jasmine to Liane, who decided to work with her occasionally but did not take a deep liking to my ambitious new friend. Jasmine was too well established by then to curry favor with Liane. And it was never in her nature, anyway, to look up to another woman, even if that woman was old enough to be her grandmother.
5 The Folks Who Live on the Hill
WEDNESDAY. 3/1/00
Busy e-mail day, even if you discount the junk. Two offers from the online Viagra pushers, some further come-ons for an herbal cocktail that will “postpone your [sic] ejaculations,” followed by the usual “make money without working” ads. Hmmm. Something does not add up.
Then a strange e-mail from Allie—is there any other kind?—announcing her radio interview. “$exual Empowerment at the Turn of the Millennium. Celebrate International Women’s Herstory Month and the Evolving Sisterhood of $ex Workers. Tune in to WBAI-FM 99.5.”
WBAI is kind of obscure, but you hear it from time to time if you take a lot of cabs. Allison will be radiating her message of sexual “empowerment” to hundreds of left-wing cabdrivers. They won’t be able to sit still when they hear that creamy voice of hers. When I pointed this out, she e’d back: “That means I’ll be reaching the escort-agency girls on their way to hotel calls. And those are my constituents!!” Constituents? Does she think she’s running for office? Most hard-core escorts would regard Allie as a mere carpetbagger, with her Fairfield County childhood, her monthly allowance (which didn’t stop coming until she’d been hooking for three years) and her pampered initiation chez Liane. And that cheerleader thing—oops, she doesn’t like to talk about that.
An e-mail from Elspeth: “We never get a chance to be alone,” she abruptly began, “and this has gotta change!” Gulp. “I’d like to meet your other bridesmaids—Jasmine and Allison, right? Maybe we can all have dinner at Willow. Where do they work?” Oh, boy. “If that’s not convenient, let me know. Miranda is dying to meet Jasmine!”
Miranda? Elspeth was discussing Jasmine and Allison with my cousin? When? At the party? And enlisting her as some sort of…what? Assistant in-law? If I don’t answer her mail, will Elspeth know that I read it? She’s writing from AOL, not her work address. But rumors about Carnivore, that spooky new e-snooper, echoed in my head. Surely this is a sisterly overture, quite innocent? But if she’s supposed to think I’m entirely innocent (when I’m not), then what if I think she’s entirely innocent and…god.
Another e-mail from Karen, the real estate broker: “Looking forward to seeing you both Friday. Three lovely 2BRs and a very special 1BR. Have a good feeling about this—especially the 2BR at 93 & Mad. It’s that great bldg with the dollhouse shop on the ground floor.” Ninety-third and Madison! I fired off a premenstrual e-ply to Karen: “Let’s give Carnegie Hill a MISS. It is DEFINITELY NOT my cup of tea!” (Hey, I’m the customer. I can use ALL CAPS if I want.)
A message from Bloomingdale’s, confirming an order for six push-up bras. And from Garnet Hill confirming five pairs of sensible Hanro panties along with my new 310-count sheets. Online shopping’s supposed to save time that would otherwise be spent schlepping between lingerie and housewares. Jasmine claims it’s technology’s gift to hookers: we never have to leave home, so we can shop while we’re on call. But online shopping’s a time sink—there’s no limit to how much “Windows” shopping a girl can do. In the physical world, at least your feet give out when you overshop. What kind of wake-up call do you get online? Your fingernails might chip from too much clicking. And some shopping sites load so slowly, it’s just like calling the catalog and being put on hold.
The perils of the Net! I was sitting there, waiting for a snazzy new Bloomingdale’s gimmick to load—supposed to give you more accurate colors. But then, seeing the time, I freaked out and abruptly logged off. I think they’re right about this Web-addiction thing. I almost forgot to turn a trick—a first, for me.
I threw my Prada heels into a shopping bag, along with some lacy underwear, and raced over to Jasmine’s apartment in my jeans. Better to be semiprepared for Harry than late. If you’re even five minutes late, you can actually miss him, he’s so tightly scheduled. I rang Jasmine’s buzzer and looked around anxiously for signs of Harry’s Town Car.
While I did a quick change in Jasmine’s bathroom, I could hear the intercom. Harry was on his way up when I emerged from the bathroom, clad in my undies and heels, feeling bloated—period due in less than a week—but doing my best to think slim. My panties felt snugger than usual. I pulled my tummy in and stood tall. Heels help.
“Your bra’s inside out,” Jasmine hissed.
I was fully adjusted, holding a hot washcloth behind my back, when Harry walked in the door, beaming from ear to ear.
“Beware of a middle-aged man in a hurry,” he chortled as Jasmine unzipped him. He slipped easily out of his pants and stood before us in paisley socks, black suspenders, and brown wing tips.
I wrapped the hot washcloth around his cock and heard the crinkle of a Ramses wrapper as Jasmine wriggled into a kneeling position.
“Tell me,” he said, in an earnest tone. “Have you ever—did you ever catch your brother jerking off?”
“Once, when he was about twelve,” I answered breathlessly. I was trying hard to picture someone other than my younger brother at the klutzy age of twelve. Hardly my idea of a sex god. It’s easier for Jasmine to chatter away about giving Little Brother a blow job because she hasn’t got any brothers. But she was too busy to talk.
“Was he—ah, yes—hmmmm…How big was he? Bigger than you expected?” Harry asked. “Or smaller?”
I tried, instead, to picture a juvenile Harry as the virile sibling. Suddenly, I had a cramp in my calf—couldn’t wait to sit down and get out of my fabulous-looking heels.
“His cock was massive!” I recounted. I brought my pussy closer to his thigh, then twisted it away from his wandering hand. Now he was fondling my tender premenstrual breasts. “When I saw it, I couldn’t believe how hard he was—I just had to try it—so I put my mouth—” Harry finished my sentence for me, with a long groan of satisfaction.
After he departed, I told Jasmine about the Carnegie Hill 2BR perched high above the repulsive dollhouse shop.
“What’s wrong with you?” she said. “Why don’t you go see it? I can’t believe you’re playing it this way. The more apartments you look at, the longer you can draw this thing out. If you narrow it down, you’ll just paint yourself into a corner.”
“But Carnegie Hill’s hateful! Anemic!”
“A Laura Ashley theme park with fake streets,” she agreed. “Anemic.”
“And fake sidewalks. Is that how people see me? Do I look like the kind of woman who wants to live next to hundreds of dollhouses?”
“For god’s sake. The point is to give yourself room to maneuver. Anyone can see that you’re in a panic about this.”
“Anyone?”
“Well, anyone who really knows you,” she said dismissively. “Look, you need to devise a grand master plan. This situation can be managed,” she insisted. “As for that dollhouse shop—” She made a sound that was a cross between a wheeze and a snicker. “No, seriously. I like that—could be a great cover for you.”
“Excuse me?”
“Well, how many tricks have you turned in Carnegie Hill?”
“Almost zero.”
“Right. You’re less likely to get caught by Matt if you guys move to Laura Ashley country. He’ll be home watching the ball game—”
“He doesn’t watch ball games.” I slipped out of my heels and flexed my foot methodically.
“So he’ll be home watching Bloomberg in his shorts! And eating raspberry scones or whatever the hell they snack on in Carnegie Hill, and you can say, ‘I’m just going out to Sarabeth’s Kitchen to pick up some more fucking scones, dear,’ then sneak down to the St. Regis for a quickie without running into him. Even if he goes out to buy a newspaper. Use your imagination.”
Jasmine’s idea of
wedded bliss was making me very queasy. Scones. Sarabeth’s. Cutting-edge betrayal. Tricks at the St. Regis.
“This is grotesque,” I said. “I can’t live like that!”
“I don’t see you trying to sell your book,” Jasmine pointed out. “Or doing anything to make it possible not to live like that. You have no intention of quitting, and yet you refuse to face your real feelings.”
“Maybe I will just quit—turn off my phone. Sell my book. It’s worth something.”
“Be my guest,” she said with a cool shrug. “You could probably sell your book very quickly if you wanted to. And get some real bucks for it. But you’re still in your prime. These are important years, the hottest years in a working girl’s professional life span. Your skin’s firm, the body’s good, the guys still think we’re twenty-five. Well, maybe twenty-eight. That’s why I don’t fritter my valuable time away on boyfriends,” she explained. “I use my leisure time to replenish the capital assets. So while you’re wearing out your nerves negotiating personal boundaries with your boyfriend, I’m catching up on my beauty sleep! Getting ready for another day of work. When you’re hot, you’re hot! Don’t just throw it away!”
Looking very pleased with herself, she started emptying a small trash receptacle into a white plastic bag. She scooped up Harry’s condom wrapper from the carpet.
“The longer you take to find a place, the more time you have to exploit your thirties,” she continued. “Or what’s left of them!”
Suddenly, I had an anxious knot in the arch of my foot.
“You need to figure out a strategy.” She paused. “When is your period due?”
Is it that obvious?
“Next week,” I said. “Maybe sooner.” This is a drawback of getting naked on the job. You have no privacy! Your co-workers can actually see the extra pound or so that any normal woman would be able to hide under her business-casual tunic.
“Well, take some dolomite, stay off the salt, and turn that real estate broker into your willing pawn,” she advised. “And avoid premenstrual temper tantrums—you know that’s when you’re most likely to say something you’ll regret. Sound body, sound mind, sound relationship. Or something like that.”
I came home and fired off a friendlier e-mail to Karen: “On second thought, I’d like to see the Carnegie Hill 2BR. We don’t want to prolong our search, and in a market like this, it pays to be open-minded. Right?” Then I sent a note to Elspeth: “Still trying to reach Jasmine about our girls’ dinner at Willow. Great idea. Thanks for suggesting it!”
SATURDAY. 3/4/00
Yesterday’s apartment tour was a small step for the broker—and a giant step for me.
My paranoic fears were on hold: What’s happening to my personal space? To my thirties?
For the first time in my adult life, a man will be paying my rent. Can I handle that? Well, I wouldn’t live with a guy who can’t pay the bills. It’s against my nature. But it’s also against my nature to let someone pay my rent! So where does that get me? Somehow, it gets me to Carnegie Hill. With a view and an extra bathroom.…All that hookerish angst sat obediently on the back burner as I got on with my personal life. Or tried to.
There is something about looking at a new apartment, a prospective home that’s three times the size of your current one. It absorbs your attention. You cannot enter an empty space like that and fantasize about living there without losing yourself a little.
With a new buzz in the air, Matt and I began to explore living rooms and cupboards and empty bedroom closets. In the spacious 1BR with a breakfast nook at Seventy-eighth and Lex, Matt kissed me in the foyer while the broker’s back was turned. In the Ninety-third Street two-bedroom—Carnegie Hill—he pulled my hair to one side and kissed my neck slowly, with a masterful flourish. I couldn’t wait to get back to the bachelor pad, where all this premarital stuff really began. I gave his fly a mischievous tug.
Then he took my hand and pulled me gently into…the master bedroom. Sunlight. Space. New marble bathroom. Just as promised.
“Huge bathroom!” he said approvingly.
I agreed. He looked at the bedroom ceiling for a long time, then looked lovingly back at me.
“Do you know what I think?” he said in a dreamy voice.
Oh, no. Not that! I once had this client—a Garment Center playboy with a smoked-glass mirror over his bed. I also knew a girl from Jacksonville, Florida, who thought her ceiling mirror was real classy. But the thought of staring at myself in the A.M. before I’ve cleaned the sleep from my eyes!
There comes a time in every Serious Relationship where a girl must carefully steer her man away from making a totally inappropriate aesthetic decision, so that they can save face as a couple. I was ready for this rite of passage.
“I don’t think so…” I started to say. Where did Matt even get such an idea? I looked at him and had a strange thought: Does Matt go to cheap massage parlors in the daytime? No way—I hope. “I think…it’s fun and kitschy, but you’d get sick of it.” Brilliant. Nothing to link the disapproval with me. He disapproves of himself.
“Really? Kitschy?” He looked philosophical. “I never thought of it that way. You have…an interesting take on things, honey.”
I was feeling very diplomatic and socially nimble when he added, to my astonishment, “But it’s so much healthier than air-conditioning. And you’re always complaining about what AC does to your skin. But if you don’t like the idea.…Well, so much for my career as a handyman.”
“Oh!” I squeaked before I could stop myself. “A ceiling fan?”
“Right. Uh, what did you think I was talking about?” he said, with a perplexed look on his face.
I stood there with my mouth open, at a total loss for words. Not only had I somehow dragged us onto the wrong side of the decorating tracks—I had dissed my future husband’s handyman cred! How stupid could I be? I turned beet red.
“I don’t know,” I mumbled, feeling less like a crossover success and more like a clumsy hooker. Despite my respectable upbringing, I’ve perhaps been exposed to One Social Element Too Many.
“Getting seduced?” Karen’s upbeat broker’s echo intruded on my embarrassment. “This place is so darn huge, I can’t find you!” she called out. “What do you think?”
“Yes!” I exclaimed, with relief. “It’s so roomy!” I headed out the bedroom door and announced, “I have to see the guest bathroom one more time.” And locked myself in there for a couple of minutes, with the water running. With any luck, I figured, Karen will start bending Matt’s ear about what a great place this is and he’ll forget the entire misunderstanding. I know how guys are. Or thought I did.
MONDAY. 3/6/00
Today, I told Wendy about the ceiling-fan debacle.
“Why did that bother you so much?” she asked. “Couples miscommunicate. That’s what couples do—they try to communicate and they succeed only part of the time.” Wendyspeak for fail sometimes. “And it’s not as if you had a fight.”
“I felt like a social outcast!” I explained.
“Come on. Because he was thinking ‘ceiling fan’ and you were projecting ‘mirror’? Do you really think Matt is that prudish? Do you think he’d be so shocked and horrified? Sometimes I think you overestimate his conservative qualities.”
“I was projecting some cheesy guy’s aesthetic onto my fiance. Like he was some—some guy with a deep tan and a gold chain.” I covered my mouth in horror and stopped talking.
“What’s happening? Have you ever wanted Matt to be—more like that? Someone you wouldn’t be intimidated by?”
“Intimidated? I’m not intimidated. What are you talking about?”
“Well, you’re intimidated by the choices you’re making. And you’ve made it clear to me that you look down on some of your clients.”
“I do not look down on my clients! I wouldn’t let someone come all over me if I looked down on him!” I blurted out. “Do you look down on your clients?”
“No.”
> Wendy wasn’t pushing the issue. I, however, was remembering Bob.
“There’s this guy, I saw him last month. I hardly ever see him because he lives in Boca. Do you know what Boca’s like? Boca Raton?”
“Of course. My parents hang out there.” It’s obvious she doesn’t, though. Wendy’s more of a Key West type. “It’s not my favorite place, but I know it well,” she said.
“He’s a very sweet man. He’s easy, clean, very gentle and considerate. He’s a self-made guy, in real estate, and he wears a gold chain! And he bakes his skin to a crisp, and he—he reads thrillers, and he has a Brooklyn accent! He’s like a truck driver who made good.”
“And?”
“And the last time I saw him, I thought about Matt. I wanted Matt to be different for a moment. I wanted him to be more like this guy!” I confessed. “Because then he would still have money but he wouldn’t—he would have different attitudes. I wouldn’t worry about telling a guy like Bob that I’ve had sex for money, even if he were my boyfriend. Maybe I would soft-pedal it and say I’ve been kept by a few guys. For a man like Bob, that’s a polite way of saying you’re a hooker. Those guys understand—they don’t have this view of the world where every woman’s supposed to be a yuppie. Or a Jane Austen fan. They think girls who play for pay are just part of life. And I’ve known girls in the business who really like these guys because they were brought up differently. Like, there’s a girl I know—Eileen. We’re not close friends, but we work together. She has no intellectual hang-ups at all! I can see her having a very satisfying relationship—with a guy who wears a gold chain.”
“And if Matt were more like that?”
