Diary of a Jetsetting Call Girl

by Tracy Quan

  Where I discovered that Izzy’s outgoing message has changed again! And now I can’t understand a word of it.

  Duncan was in the kitchen, wearing a striped apron over his jeans, peeling some very ripe tomatoes. I called to him in a low voice, almost a whisper. “I think I need your help with something!”

  He put down his implements, hung up the juice-splattered apron, and rinsed his hands. Then he followed me into the library where I was perched on the edge of a chair. Yes, that chair.

  On that carefree afternoon, when Milt was fucking me from behind, I almost came thinking about—I looked away from Duncan, embarrassed by my unreadable thoughts. Well, I hope they were unreadable.

  I dialed Izzy’s number and gave him the phone. “Vive la différence,” I said, trying to keep it light. “But I don’t like the way these robots keep changing sex. It was a female before. Now it’s a guy. And I’m not sure I understand what he’s saying.”

  He listened, frowned, and handed the phone back. “Turned off at the owner’s request.”

  “But—but—Serge is supposed to be here at eleven-thirty. With Natalia. And they haven’t confirmed.”

  Duncan’s eyebrows shot up to his forehead. “Were you dealing directly with Serge?”

  “No,” I said.

  “I didn’t think so.” But he refused to pry.

  A madam turns her phone off without warning, in the middle of doing business with you, and it only ever means one thing. I know because, unbeknownst to Milt, I’ve been through this before. Twice.

  But this kind of thing “doesn’t happen” to girls like me. My connections are supposed to be impeccable. And I’ve taken as many precautions as I could to prevent it. Or so I thought.

  “Something happened. I know it.” I placed my phone on the table. A book fell to the floor. My hand was shaking.

  “Just take a deep breath,” Duncan said.

  “Serge is someone’s driver. Did he talk to you about her?”

  “He wasn’t talkative that way.”

  “She wouldn’t just disappear,” I said. “She has a reputation to protect. I wouldn’t deal with just anyone—”

  “I’m sure you wouldn’t.”

  “People like that don’t just disconnect. Do you know what I’m talking about?”

  When I looked up into his eyes, I felt like I was drowning.

  “Well, I might. But I think it’s best to assume I don’t know anything.” There was a long silence as I digested this. “When did you last speak to her?” he asked.

  “Wednesday, after Katya left. You were in Tanneron. But Serge was here. I spoke to her that night.”

  “That’s not even two days. Well,” he agreed. “It sounds like—something bad may have happened.”

  Oh God. I’m in her phone records, too! That’s REALLY bad.

  “Please don’t tell Milt about this? It would wreck his vacation!” And make me look a little cheesy, perhaps. Customers tend to disappear on you when things like this happen—to you, to your friends. You can’t let them hear about it. “Anyway, look, there are things he doesn’t WANT to know.”

  “I know what you mean,” Duncan said.

  “I’ll—” bet you do, I almost said. I bit my lip. “I’ll have to talk to him though.” Then, to my surprise, my phone began vibrating. I stared at the number. “It’s—it’s New York.” My husband! The call went into voicemail, and I switched everything off.

  If Izzy’s in trouble with the law, it’s a good time to make myself hard to reach.

  But—

  Maybe Tini’s trip to St-Max has nothing to do with Allison, and everything to do with Isabel’s sudden silence.

  When I returned to the pool, Allie had vanished. If Duncan found some “inappropriate” way to keep her occupied, I just don’t want to know.

  I settled into the chair next to Milt, grateful to be alone with him. “I just heard from Isabel.”

  “And?” He was still looking at his newspaper.

  “Um … there’s been a slight change of plans,” I said. “Natalia was supposed to return from Rome last night. And she had to stay over. Something involving her mother! Izzy feels terrible of course because she wanted to surprise you with someone gorgeous—someone equally gorgeous … but she doesn’t want to send just anyone. She’s very particular,” I riffed. “Probably TOO particular, but I think you’ll agree that it’s better to err in that direction than the other. And she PROMISED she’ll do her level best to make this up to—to us, just as soon as she has someone special for us.”

  Somehow, I felt that “us” was the magic word that would smooth everything out.

  “Kiddo …” Milt put his newspaper on the stone surface next to his chair. “Girls called Natalia who hang around St-Tropez in July are supposed to get delayed in Rome. Whether it’s a problem with her mother or a private appointment with the Pope himself! Isn’t that half the fun of dealing with one of Isabel’s girls?”

  Poor Natalia. At this point, she might be calling Izzy in a panic. Dodging the police. Or simply wondering where her next date is coming from. For the sake of my customer’s peace of mind, though, I smiled sideways and said, “I like the way you’re thinking.”

  “You, on the other hand, more than make up for the absence of any number of Natalias. And I’m kind of particular myself!” He picked up his newspaper. “When Duncan goes into town,” he suggested, “let’s lock ourselves in the media hut and watch some porn movies. You know what? I miss being alone with you.”

  Perhaps I overdid the hand-wringing. Now he wants to reassure me by devoting an entire session to “us”—a situation I’ve done my level best to avoid during this Viagra-fueled sojourn.

  Later

  Alone with Milt in the media hut. There’s something about watching porn on an eight-foot screen that I, for one, could do without. Repeated mechanical insertion at life-size (or smaller) dimensions is graphic enough for me.

  “No disrespect to your decorator,” I told Milt, “but I prefer watching stuff like this on my rickety little TV set. Be it ever so humble.”

  He smirked and patted my knee. “Just humor me a minute—there’s a great scene coming up.”

  “Okay … but the human clitoris loses some of its inherent cuteness when it gets to be the size of a cabbage.”

  “Hmmmm. I see your point.”

  “Thank you.”

  He waved the remote at the wall—“Bye-bye for now!”—then placed his hands between my thighs. He coaxed them apart, gently, and slid a finger beneath my panties. I twisted my hips—fractionally—to keep him from getting too close to my inner lips. Milt is such a veteran john, he’s almost a pro. When a working girl moves her pelvis a certain way, he knows how to pull back. Just enough to make her relax, so he can remove her panties.

  I lured his hands away from my pussy toward my breasts. I don’t really mind his fingers, but I don’t want him to make a habit of using them. There are things I like done to me when I’m not working. Things I allow a john who’s a runner, because I won’t see him again for a year. None of these actions can be permitted with my regulars.

  Sex with a regular shouldn’t be intrusive. Even though he’s just a john, there’s a chance he might become an important part of your life—a part that needs to be carefully managed. A finger in your panties? Thin end of the wedge. Needs watching.

  After many days of threeway acrobatics, our porno tryst in the converted dairy shed was a simple pleasure. Mostly for Milt, of course. For me, the pleasure comes from knowing HE’s happy.

  Just checked voicemail and found a hang-up from my husband, followed by a message. “I’m having dinner with Elspeth tomorrow and I’m worried. She sounds kind of weird. I’ll let you know how it goes. AC went out at the office, so I’m home now, working on this deal.”

  Should I call back? It’s not like Matt to worry about Elspeth. But I can’t bring myself to call him from this house—even when Milt’s napping.

  Friday, later

  I was sh
owering when Duncan’s SUV pulled into the driveway. Peeking out of my bathroom window, I saw Allie look around quickly before stealing a kiss. The nerve! Well, she was responsible enough to check if Milt was around. But her mouth lingered a second longer than it should have before she scurried into the house. They’re both playing with fire. And driving me insane.

  I dried off quickly and wrapped a towel around my naked body. When I heard her bedroom door, I dashed across the hall and knocked sharply.

  “We need to talk,” I said. One frightened unblinking eye was staring through a crack in the doorway.

  “Open the fucking door,” I hissed. “Are you alone?”

  “What do you mean?” she gasped, as I pushed the door open.

  Closing the door behind me, I said, “You know exactly what I mean. You’d better not invite Duncan in here!”

  “You’re the only other person who’s been in this room since I arrived.” This might be the one true thing she’s told me in days.

  “Did you go into town to meet Roxana?”

  “Rrrrrrr … um … Roxana?”

  “I know all about it! Roxana told me everything.”

  “She did?”

  “I know what you’ve been up to! Roxana was standing around in front of the basilica with a bunch of your friends. Wearing these insane scary T-shirts! Do you understand what a catastrophe you’ve created? Inviting all these people to St-Maximin?”

  “It seemed like a good idea!” Allie sat on the edge of her rumpled bed. “I have to admit, it never occurred to me that your mom …!” Now she looked cornered. Beleaguered. “Do YOU understand? What Ruth is trying to do?”

  I leaned against the door, clutching the towel to my breasts, willing myself not to give her an inch of sympathy as she argued her case.

  “Ruth says Mary Magdalen’s identity as a whore is part of a damaging misogynist centuries-old conspiracy, but she doesn’t understand that she’s part of this conspiracy herself! You can see for yourself why she has to be stopped. It’s all on her blog!”

  “On her WHAT? You brought Roxana here because of something Ruth says on her blog?”

  “Ruth gets a hundred visitors a day! And she’s part of a much larger movement. Their goal is to eliminate sex work! We had to do something,” Allie protested. “Ruth says the world will be healed when the Magdalen’s sexual virtue is restored. She’s wrong, of course. I mean, she’s right about Mary Magdalen being the equal of Jesus and a victim of misogyny, but she’s wrong about sexual virtue. WE are society’s healers! And we’re here to defend indigenous Provençal culture! Against sex-negative Christianity.”

  “Listen to me. You’re here on business. You did not come here to plan some multicultural version of the Second Coming! You’ll have to do that on your own time.” I was so angry I was losing control of my towel. “Have you seen what Roxana’s wearing?”

  “Of course! I picked out the fonts! Roxana chose the colors. Anyway, have you seen what Ruth’s followers are wearing? If we don’t respond in kind, they control the discourse.” Oh God. The battle of the T-shirts. “Ruth needs to meet a real sex worker,” Allie added, “in order to understand the issues!”

  “I’ve already MET Ruth.” I decided not to mention Ruth’s T-shirt, sitting in my tote bag. “Do you realize she’s the daughter of my mom’s best friend? She grew up in the village where my mother lives, and I know far more about her than she does about me. I’d like to keep it that way.”

  “You should come out to Ruth! It would make a huge difference if she understood that sex workers aren’t just an abstraction,” Allie said. “We need to educate her about who prostitutes really are!”

  “No we do not! I can’t have Ruth spilling the beans to my mother! Would you want her spilling the beans to yours?”

  Allie frowned. “Well, I haven’t resolved that particular, um.” She looked away, suddenly misty-eyed.

  “I bet you haven’t! Your glorious liberation movement is a total sham!” I was tempted to slam Allison’s door on the way out, but it would be profoundly uncool to let Milt overhear one peep of discord.

  Standing barefoot in the hall, I almost dropped my towel when I saw Duncan on the staircase.

  “I thought, as Milt’s having a swim, I’d bring you these,” he said quietly. “Var-Matin—it’s a local tabloid. A bit like your Daily News. And there’s something in the Daily Mail. About Serge.” He stood on the top stair holding a bundle of newspapers, taking in my exposed shoulders.

  “Th … ank you,” I stammered.

  “It’s no trouble at all. I had to pay another visit to that newsagent in Brignole anyway.”

  I was horrified by the sensation spreading across my damp skin. His eyes flickered as he took in my uncovered legs. My pussy, completely bare beneath my towel, was swollen. As were my nipples. “I—um—can’t really use my hands,” I pointed out, holding the towel tight. For some reason, the cotton against my thighs was almost excruciating. My nerve-endings were now alert to every movement of the fabric.

  “I’ll just leave these here,” he offered. “You can get them when you’re dressed. But I think you should keep them somewhere safe. In your room.” I nodded stiffly and tried to breathe normally. “I have to warn you, there’s a large picture of our friend. You might find it upsetting,” he added. “I’ll be in the kitchen.”

  As I collapsed onto my bed, allowing the towel to fall away from my torso, I had to touch myself to see … if I was really that wet. I was. Am still. Omigod. Why can’t I stop feeling this way?

  Even the sight of Serge on the front page of Var-Matin, looking more scruffy than swarthy in handcuffs, bathrobe and slippers, can’t quell the hunger between my thighs.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  France: Shopper of the Year

  Friday, later still

  But the photos of Serge are cringe-inducing.

  If you know what he really looks like, those lumpy images in Var-Matin—taken during an early morning bust—are bad enough to arouse pity. What happened to the hard-bodied, smooth-faced driver we met—his clean muscular lines? Flawless posture? In a dressing gown, arrested at dawn, he looks less like the slick proxénète and more like …

  Who would have guessed?

  He’s Isabel’s husband, but there are no pictures of Izzy in the French paper—just a photo of where they were living when the arrest went down. And it’s not in St-Tropez. It’s a massive apartment complex, designed to look like a cruise ship, in the newest part of Villeneuve Loubet, just outside Nice. Filled with middle class families and retirees who have been chatting to reporters about what a quiet couple they were. The window of Izzy’s apartment looks onto a sandy playground, complete with swing set and see-saws.

  And now that they’ve both been arrested, they are—according to the Daily Mail—offering to rat on each other. I locked the bedroom door and flipped through the Mail. The only picture of Isabel so far is a dated black and white profile taken in front of Harvey Nichols in London. Izzy, wearing a head scarf, looks convincingly Sloane-ish, and you can’t really see her hair. Under a big headline—SHOPPER OF THE YEAR—the Mail explains: she was arrested first because her husband, “a French citizen of mixed background fourteen years her junior” informed on her to the authorities. Scotland Yard may investigate due to multiple bank accounts and a house in Maidstone, Kent, which he “insisted on putting in his wife’s name.”

  If a straight guy did that, he’d be viewed as a saint.

  “A source close to the couple has told the Mail that Isabel Morgan’s only recourse is to shop her husband, Serge Dolmy, the mastermind and enforcer in their St-Tropez escort service.” According to the Mail, he ran a brothel in St-Tropez, procuring girls from the “shadowy corners of a global network specializing in desperate beauties from Eastern Europe and Asia.” Izzy was introduced to “a deceptively glamorous” lifestyle when she came to Nice on holiday, haunted by memories of an abusive marriage. Within a year, she discovered she was “trapped” in yet another such marr
iage—only much worse, as she was now “caught in the web of an international trafficking network” and terrified of leaving because “her new husband’s links to a Prague syndicate would, he told her, incriminate them both.”

  There’s something in this story that rings true, yet not. Izzy’s phone manner was so bossy. And she kept her maiden name? Nowhere do I see her called Isabel Dolmy, not even in the French tabloid account. Wouldn’t a guy like that make her adopt his surname? Or am I being ridiculously naive? All I really know about guys like that is how to avoid them.

  Didn’t Liane say her old friend Hillary was doing business with Izzy in London? But Isabel Morgan claims that she came to Nice in a state of innocence! Even if she lies about THAT, could she have become the mental slave of this … bathrobed “enforcer”? Well, he’s much better-looking in real life. And he did have a masterful way with Katya. When I saw them flirting in front of the car, Katya looked so docile. Was she afraid? I can’t say for sure that she wasn’t.

  But Liane will be horrified when she hears about all this. And embarrassed by her gaffe—introducing me to this shady couple! Will she freak out? At seventy-something, this could send her over the edge, but she has a right to know what the papers are saying. Especially since the Mail claims Serge Dolmy was sending girls to L.A. and Palm Beach! Florida’s dangerously close to New York.

  Just switched on my phone. More messages from Matt, working from home, tugging at my heart strings. “Babe? I can’t find the ink jet cartridges! Did you HIDE them? Would you call me, please?”

  What hooker in her right mind wants to chat with her husband at a time like this? Reading about Isabel’s marriage in the Daily Mail makes the most innocent spouse seem totally ominous.

  Friday, much later

  This is one hell of a way to learn about another girl’s marital status. Let’s hope MINE never comes to light in this way.

  I sat in my room, re-reading the horrifying news stories. Then crept downstairs where I found Duncan, standing in front of a large copper pot pressing dried cloves into a small onion.