by Tracy Quan
The extra work when we’re alone is a labor of…not love, exactly, but something like it. I avoid fucking for too long with other clients—even the clients who make me come. But Milton, who doesn’t turn me on, gets what I won’t give others. For one thing, I don’t have to be as guarded. When a client turns you on, that’s when you have to walk the line. Milton is hard work, but he’s easy in other ways.
“Your boyfriend’s a lucky guy,” Milton said, after he (finally) came. He has no idea how lazy I am when I’m not working! “I hope he appreciates you.”
As Milton got dressed, I tried not to look impatient, but I was anxious to bring out the Velcro rollers! My hair was in desperate need of a pick-me-up after our marathon.
Finally alone, I breathed a sigh of relief and wrapped my hair in large purple rollers, then hopped into the shower, where I treated my body to an aromatic reunion with its favorite bath gel. For business, I have a big supply of unscented soap because, well, a hint of perfume can really mess things up for a client. Men rightly fear the olfactory powers of their wives and girlfriends, so perfumes are forbidden at work.
But now, covering my legs with lotion, spraying my neck, I was a smooth, scented “civilian” again. I pictured myself on my back, luxuriating in my laziness. I enjoy being a girlfriend—but would I enjoy it if I didn’t get to be something else the rest of the time? If there wasn’t something exotic and sneaky about being Respectable?
I zapped the crown of rollers on my head with the blow-dryer, then finished my makeup. Dressed for dinner in a smart houndstooth skirt, girlish sweater, and Gucci loafers, I left the apartment, feeling rather pleased with my day: This afternoon, in my slutty lingerie, I shunned perfume. Tonight, demurely skirted, I feel like one of those perfumed women whom other women might pay homage to—by not wearing perfume…
When I got to Chez Es Saada, Elspeth and Matt were already seated. They were conferring over their cocktails, heads bowed together so you could see from their profiled jaws that they were siblings. It’s not so obvious from the front.
“You,” Elspeth said, “and Jason are the culprits tonight. If it weren’t for Matthew we would have lost our table.”
Matt kissed my cheek as I slid into my seat, and it felt like a married kiss. Though, never having been married, how would I know?
“You smell so pretty,” he said under his breath. Making a cell-phone gesture, he got up from the table. “I’ll be back—gotta call the office,” he said, kissing me again.
“Mmmmm,” Elspeth commented, sipping on her drink. “The honeymoon continues! Matt says you’re going to Vera Wang next week with Allison. I have to meet the bridesmaids,” she reminded me. “When are we all having dinner?”
How I could possibly have imagined that having a matron of honor was a smart idea? My problem is, I’m too impulsive where respectability’s concerned. I should have given the wedding party more thought before assigning Elspeth that role!
“The fabric you picked out for our dresses,” Elspeth was saying. “Is your heart really set on that? It makes me look sort of washed out. I think it’s too dark.”
“That’s interesting,” I said. “Jasmine was telling me just the other day that the color is too light for her.”
“Oh, really?” Elspeth laughed in despair. “Maybe it’s just right, then! So what does Jasmine do? I asked Matt and he couldn’t remember.”
God, what does Jasmine say when people ask her what she does? I tried to remember; I had temporarily forgotten because I so rarely have to deal with Jasmine’s alibis.
“She’s…involved with real estate,” I said.
“Oh? A broker?”
“No, investments—I really don’t understand what she does. It’s all mumbo jumbo to me!” I sighed. “I was never very good at math.”
“Really? She manages a REIT?”
I felt my skin getting warmer, my bra clinging uncomfortably to my body, and saw, with relief, that Matt was returning.
“I think she manages some buildings.” Then, forced to embroider on Jasmine’s behalf, I added, “For one of her relatives.”
“Oh, a landlord. Well, why didn’t you say so? In New York?”
“No,” I said faintly. “I’m trying to remember—somewhere in New England or maybe…” I realized with alarm that Jasmine would never forgive me if I were to discuss her New Hampshire property deals with Matt’s sister—an assistant D.A.! “Delaware,” I said more decisively. “I’m sure she said something about some apartment buildings in Delaware.”
Matt slid into his seat and looked around for a waiter.
“Delaware?” Elspeth persisted. “Where in Delaware? That’s a strange place to be investing in real estate.” Elspeth cocked her head to one side. “Delaware, hmmm. I can’t wait to meet her.”
A waiter appeared, and Elspeth loudly announced, “A round of French whores for the table.”
I almost dropped my menu. Elspeth flashed a sly smile at her brother. “Oh, come on, Nancy.” Elspeth pushed her glass toward me. “Try this—it’s called a French whore and it’s delicious. Want one?”
“I think I’ll, ah, just have my usual,” I said, backing away from her glass, wondering privately if the Kir Royale should be renamed. Manhattan call girl? Paranoid prostitute?
Elspeth’s cell phone emitted a few bars of electro-Bach, causing a nearby diner to glare at us. She picked up the call and quickly hung up.
“I thought it might be Jason,” she sighed.
I was getting edgy, due to the arrival of some communal appetizers—another Elspeth initiative. Like most hookers, I have an acute respect for germs. Sharing food is something I like doing with Matt when we’re alone; but sharing food with his sister is a bit like having to kiss a client. And while I have the stamina to resist clients, I find it harder to dodge my future sister-in-law. If you don’t participate in communal appetizers, you feel like a food prude. If you try a polite nibble of what everyone’s having, it’s not enough.
“Have some more,” Elspeth was saying. I stared at the spoon and wondered if straight people just assume they’re above germs.
Fortunately, Jason appeared, saving me from a second helping of shrimp.
“How about Jason?” I insisted. “He must be famished.”
“I am,” Jason agreed, happily accepting whatever Elspeth was offering.
“How’d it go?” Elspeth asked him.
He nodded in reply. This is their version of a kiss hello? But they seemed so relaxed that I almost envied them. For a minute.
“I kept calling your cell phone!” Elspeth announced. “You said you were leaving at six-thirty!”
“Oh. Sorry. I know. Endless negotiations. Deal’s turning into a casualty zone,” Jason half mumbled. “And their lawyers leave town tomorrow morning.”
He wasn’t so relaxed after all. He looked a little flustered—or annoyed. I couldn’t quite tell. Jason had saved me from the communal appetizers, and now they were saving Jason from Elspeth’s queries. He chewed as much food as he could for as long as he could, then turned to face me.
“Matt says you’ve found a place!”
His eyes were darting around, and if I were his wife or girlfriend I’d think something was up—but Elspeth’s face was buried in her menu. She had delivered her semiaccusation, ruffled his nerves, and moved on. A marital moment so seamless and surreal that I wondered if I was imagining it. The kind of thing you can’t even talk about because it almost didn’t happen.
Why was he more than an hour late? Does every husband of means disappear into an illicit twilight zone around six P.M.? Until last night, I never thought of Jason as somebody’s john—even though I’ve met plenty of guys just like him on the job. I guess I don’t like to think about the obvious: Could I bump into my future brother-in-law while I’m working? Maybe Jason and I were late for…roughly the same reason.
WEDNESDAY. 3/22/00
Last night, snuggling on my couch with Matt, I rested my head on his shoulder and found my com
fort zone disturbed by further thoughts of Jason, unreachable on his phone the other night—at the “usual hour,” like so many husbands. Like so many johns. And why should I care? He’s not my husband, I wasn’t born yesterday, we’re all adults here. But…what about my future husband? Is that what Matt will end up doing? I doubt he’s ever been to a hooker. If we settle down—and if he can afford it—shouldn’t I just take this in my stride? We won’t be thirty-something forever…and I wouldn’t want him to cheat on me with a civilian!
“What are you thinking about?” Matt asked affectionately. He was now in the process of muting the NY-1 weather and surfing silently toward CNN.
“The other night—” I paused. “Elspeth got me thinking about…my dress!” I looked up at him. “Why did you ask me that?”
“Your neck got sort of tense. Stop worrying about your dress,” he teased. “You’ll look great. You could get married in a beach towel for all I care. Just tell me where to show up. Listen, there’s something I want to ask you about.”
I stretched out on his lap and looked into his eyes while he played with my hair.
“You know,” he said, “that apartment is still empty. It’s been empty for almost two months.” The Carnegie Hill two-bedroom.
“And?”
“The owners don’t really want to rent. They want to sell it. Should I buy it? I want to know what you think.”
“If I think…?”
“This is the right time to buy,” he said. “Prices are climbing, rents are crazy, and it makes more sense to own—but you keep saying you don’t want to have the wedding until next year, and I just want to make sure…” The look in his eyes made me gulp hard. “I want to make sure you feel okay about this because if I buy it now it’s not going to be in your name—until we’re married. I discussed it with Karen, and she says the board will never allow us to put it in both names—unless we’re married.”
“Can’t we wait? Until we’re married?” I sat up.
“We can’t,” he said, putting both arms around my waist. “This is a really good deal and this market is—” He paused. “We have to decide this together.”
I blinked. He’s asking me how I think we should spend his hard-earned money? He’s never done that before. This is something my previous boyfriends never thought to do, never had to do. This is—this is what really sets the perfumed wives and fiancees apart from the nonperfumed girls who charge by the hour. Oh my god. I am in over my head.
Suddenly, I wanted to bleat, “But I’m a teenaged runaway—I have hardly any savings and I can’t handle money! You can’t ask a hooker who spends all her money on handbags and Hermès scarves how you should be investing your money!”
“What’s wrong?” Matt asked.
“I—I don’t know what to say,” I told him. I had the urge to run away. But I’m not a teenager anymore—and we’re in my apartment on my couch, drinking my white wine and watching my TV. Which is to say, I’m where I hoped I would eventually be—the first time I ran away. So where would I run to now?
Then I remembered how I once faked it with Liane: By pretending to be part of her milieu, instead of the scrappy little bar hooker turned escort, I effectively became a scrappy escort turned private call girl. I should be able to think of something to say!
“You’re asking me to help you make a huge decision,” I finally said in a solemn voice.
“Well, who else would I ask?” He seemed genuinely charmed by my puzzlement. “I don’t want to make any more huge decisions without you.” It’s so much easier for Matt to come right out and talk about his big decisions. If he had any idea what decisions I have to make…but those decisions a girl has to face on her own.
“Just think about it,” he said. “We’ll talk about it in a day or two.”
“A day or two?” I was getting a bit high-pitched.
“Yes.” He was firm. “We don’t have that much time, but we can’t make this decision overnight. If you think we should set the wedding date for this year, it’s up to you.”
“Why…this year?”
“I know you want everything just right and you want the day to be perfect—” Not the real reason I’ve been insisting on a later date, but let him think it! “This market has its own momentum, though.”
Later, in bed, I began kissing him and couldn’t stop. But Matt pulled away from my mouth and held my arms firmly in his hands.
“Do you want me to spell it out?” he said. “Maybe I should.”
“Okay,” I whispered, having no idea what he was getting at—but I could feel something happening; he was somehow taking charge of things.
“Well, I really want to buy the apartment—I want to put in a bid at the end of the week.” His fingers around my upper arms were gently loosening up. “I don’t want you to feel like you’re just shacking up with me—I want this to be your place, too. Our place. But sometimes I’m not sure what you want. If the real estate market wasn’t so insane, I would wait until after the wedding, but—”
Seeing the look in my eyes, he reached down and stopped talking. His fingers slid over my skin. It wasn’t just the surprise that made my heart beat faster—the surprise of being pushed into such a tight corner. It was a feeling of both victory and fear that I couldn’t talk about. I pulled him closer. My secret panic, the excitement, his nearness, his touch; the flood of emotions was overflowing elsewhere. I could feel myself getting damp. More than damp.
This is the most serious deal a girl can make with a guy, and I have no idea what I’m doing. I’ve charged men by the hour—that was one kind of deal—but this, this makes my business look like some kind of child’s game. What if I say the wrong thing? What if I say what ought to be the right thing but it turns out to be the wrong thing for me? If only I knew what I wanted!
His questions, his offer, made me feel like a total amateur, flustered and needy, instead of the sneaky professional I like to be. I enjoy playing the amateur with clients and boyfriends—especially with boyfriends. It’s my secret indulgence. But this was scary. It wasn’t a secret game or a private fantasy; it was real.
I closed my eyes and whispered, “Make love to me, I don’t want to talk anymore. Please?”
It was a strange sensation—helpless, deceptive, scared, guilty—and I didn’t want to like it. But it turned me on—or maybe not. Maybe coming was the only way I could escape this feeling. At any rate, it worked well enough to relax me so that, afterward, I fell into a dreamless sleep.
When I woke this morning, it bothered me to think that if I quit the business for him, maybe our sex life…Will it change? Am I hooked on having secrets? On getting away with something? Do I ever, really, give myself to him? Or is he just one of the more emotional rides in a working girl’s erotic Disneyland? Should I reconcile myself to…giving back the ring?
If I work on the sly, I’ll always be lying to him, and I’ll never really settle down. If I settle down, quit my past…then what? I’ll have to invent some future version of myself, and who exactly is that supposed to be?
8 One of the Girls
THURSDAY AFTERNOON. 3/23/00
This morning I was reaching optimum aerobic heart rate when I spotted Allie—heading for the locker room. She was dressed for Pilates class in loose navy sweats, lugging two huge shopping bags, a white Duane Reade and a Big Brown Bloomie’s. Her wavy ponytail protruded from the back of a denim cap that was pulled down over her forehead, so I couldn’t tell whether she was avoiding me or just blinkered by her choice of sportswear.
After nearly a week of silence I wasn’t about to make the first move. But I had been pumping away for at least fifteen minutes, so I cut my cardio short, hopped off the Lifecycle, and headed for the shower. Allie was crouching in front of a locker, trying to cram one bag on top of another. A bright red ankle-strap sandal fell out, scratching her forearm with its spiky heel. She gasped in pain, turned to grab it, then saw me enter, glistening with fresh perspiration.
“I’ve been looking all over
the gym for you!” she exclaimed.
“You have not,” I said grimly. “You’ve been avoiding me all week, and we both know it.”
“I can explain! Oh, help,” she said to nobody in particular, as she fiddled with the bags. “This isn’t working.” She pulled off her cap, threw it on the carpet, and leaned back against a locker. She was sitting on the floor looking very resigned.
Peeking into the locker, I saw some slutty-looking shoes way past their prime; they had once been pretty expensive, judging by the labels. In better condition were some staid-looking flats and once-trendy Olive Oyl platforms, unused, wrapped in plastic.
“Where’d you get all these shoes?”
“Donations! I’m taking them downtown after Pilates. Roxana’s meeting me at the women’s shelter, and we’re going to help Gretchen do a safe-sex workshop for some homeless teens. And I’m learning how to be a peer counselor!” Allison looked as excited as a farm boy attending his first county fair, and I feared for the street waifs who were about to become a way station on her journey to personal fulfillment. Would they be able to withstand all that compassion? From a thirty-something call girl with a weakness for middle-aged stalkers—who thinks of herself as the right-on “peer” of a street urchin?
“I’ve been picking up old shoes and used clothing all week!” she sighed. “For the homeless street girls.”
“Silly me! I just assumed you were sitting in a Starbucks holding Jack’s hand for the last six days. I had no idea you were engaged in such worthy activities!” I replied.
“I—” Allison faltered and began to look embarrassed. “I can explain about Jack. You—um—haven’t said anything to Jasmine or Eileen, have you? About Jack?”
