Читать книгу Call Girl - Jenny Angell - Страница 5

ONE

“Mind the gap … Mind the gap!” I was standing on a subway platform in London, in the Underground, listening to a disembodied voice telling me in the tones of a not-too-friendly nanny to watch my step. I appreciated the concern, if not its delivery.

So I stood there dutifully minding the gap, and I thought about the newspaper advertisement folded into the shoulder bag I carried. It felt conspicuous, as though everyone else on the train platform could tell exactly what was in there, and what it said.

I had picked up the Phoenix just before leaving Boston, on an impulse that wasn’t really an impulse but was disguised as one anyway. My impulses usually are. I was in London for a week, lecturing at the London School of Economics, and my mind wasn’t exactly on my work.

It should have been, of course. It was an honor and a privilege to be here, and my professional life shouldn’t be impacted just because I was having problems in my personal life. But that’s the way that it always works, isn’t it? You think you can separate it all out, put your life into neat little compartments where nothing overlaps with anything else. You think that, and you’re wrong.

My personal life was screaming for attention. Loudly. I needed money. I needed a lot of money, and I needed it quickly.

I needed the money because Peter, my most recent boyfriend, had not only decided to fly to San Francisco to meet up with some ex (whom he had been fucking behind my back the whole time we were together, as it turned out), but had also emptied my checking account before leaving. A prince among men.

Rent was due. The decimated bank account had held all the money I had to live on until the end of the semester. That was when the two community colleges where I taught sociology elective classes would be paying me. I had to live within those parameters, with budgets planned well in advance and no extra or surprise expenses allowed.

Peter’s desertion decidedly qualified as a surprise expense.

In any case, the end of the semester was two months off. Which was why I needed a lot of cash.

I dealt with the crisis in my usual way. I spent one night getting very drunk and feeling very sorry for myself, and I got up the next morning, did what I could to deal with my hangover, and made a list. I love lists, I always have. Lists give me the illusion of being in control. I listed every possible way I could get the money I needed.

It was a depressingly short list.

The one thing I was not going to do was ask for assistance in any way. Not from my family and not from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. I had been the one to make the bad judgment call, it made no sense to ask anyone else to pay for my mistakes. So even though I had written down the words “government assistance” on my list, I ignored them and moved on.

I frowned at the remaining items, crossed off “childcare,” both since I’m really incompetent with children and also the pay was too low to make much of a difference, and frowned again at what was left.

I was going to have to try one of these options. I didn’t have a lot of choices left. I took a deep breath, and I went to work.

I called a number I had found in some campus newspaper, Boston University or Northeastern or something, the ubiquitous one we’ve all seen, the one that is looking for people to sit in cubicles and respond to sex chatline calls. Talk sex, convince them that you’re hot for them, that sort of thing.

Well, the rat bastard boyfriend had told me that I had a sexy voice, so I figured it was worth a try. I’d only do it this once, of course.

I clearly hadn’t given the idea enough thought, because I was totally unprepared for the sleaziness of my interview. I hadn’t imagined ahead of time the really scary visuals: the rows of tiny cubicles, with women sitting in them wearing headsets and talking; they never stopped talking. Lights were flashing on their phones. Mostly they were middle-aged, with sagging flesh and garish makeup and an air of indifference that might have been cruel if it hadn’t felt so hopeless.

And I hadn’t visualized the way-too-young greasy guy with way too many piercings who never even looked at me as he squeezed words out past a toothpick sticking to his lower lip. His eyes didn’t leave the skin magazine he was thumbing through. “Okay, honey. Eight bucks an hour, two calls minimum.”

“What does that mean, two calls minimum? Two calls an hour?”

That earned me a glance. I couldn’t tell if it was amusement or pity. “Two calls minimum at a time.”

I stared at him. “You mean keep two different people on the phone…?”

“Yeah, that’s right.” He sounded bored beyond belief. “If one of ’em wants you to be a Ukrainian gymnast and the other wants you to be a tattooed lesbian, you go with it. Time’s money. Want the job?”

I was still stuck imagining the reactions of the clients when you got them mixed up. It was indescribable. Sure. For eight dollars an hour. This could happen.

So I gave up, tore up the list, and panicked again for a while about the money thing. The bills kept coming in, as they have a habit of doing: time stops for no bankruptcy. I could read the official-looking print through the rusted gap in my mailbox: computer-generated, thin envelopes. Some had a strip of red around the edges. No need to open them. I knew what they said.

Suitably enough, one of the classes I was teaching was a sociology elective called On Death and Dying. Suitably, of course, because I was accompanying it with such dark thoughts. I would break the class into discussion groups and stare over their heads out the window and feel that cold claw of fear somewhere in my stomach. One of those weeks we talked about suicide.

It didn’t sound like such an impossible option.

And then, slowly at first, my thoughts kept going back to the newspaper. I sometimes looked in the After Dark section of the Phoenix, even after I decided that I couldn’t possibly be both a Ukrainian gymnast and a tattooed lesbian, and I wasn’t stopping anymore at the chatline number ads.

The next pages, the ones after the telephone lines, were for the escort services.

I’d look, and then I’d shut the paper and let my cat Scuzzy sleep on it while I pretended that it wasn’t there, and corrected student essays instead. And yet … and yet.

Why not?

Was it such an impossible idea? Did I really want to add an extra fifty hours a week to my schedule, working at a Borders bookstore or a Starbucks coffeehouse for just over minimum wage? Those were the next options on the list, after all. I’d even interviewed. Borders said I could start any time.

It was around then that a voice in my head started speaking up. It sounded suspiciously like my mother’s voice, and the voice was not happy at all about the direction my thoughts were taking. It was interesting that the voice hadn’t spoken up when I looked into the sex-on-the-phone idea, but that was another issue altogether. The voice was certainly going into overtime now.

Just wait, I said to the voice. Hold on a moment. Let’s think about this. You can sit in a cubicle and pretend to be having sex with two (or more, as seemed to be the assumption) men at once, keeping them on the phone for as long as you can, and having the same conversations twenty or thirty or forty times a night. Or you can do the real thing. Once a night. For a hell of a lot more than eight dollars.

And what’s the difference? Honestly?

There’s a huge difference, the voice responded. It sounded exasperated, as my mother’s had when I was disagreeing with her on a moral question. Okay, I said, trying to be open: but why? Where do you draw the line? Why is one thing semi-acceptable and the other not at all? You wouldn’t exchange sex for five dollars; I’ll accept that. But, let’s see: would you for five hundred? For five thousand? For five million? Ah, yes, that’s a different question, isn’t it? So, as Churchill once said, now we know what you are, we just have to determine your price.

The voice had fallen oddly silent. I couldn’t blame it: it’s hard to talk back to Churchill.

Later on, when I got to know some of the other callgirls, I asked them the same question. Why is having casual sex with a man you pick up in a singles bar considered acceptable, but having sex as a business proposition is not? Which is more ethical? Marie said that what decided her to start working for the service was the moment she stopped and really thought about how many men she had allowed to put their penises inside her, men who later made her skin crawl with disgust – and that for no money at all.

It gives you pause, it really does.

I had let the rat bastard boyfriend touch me, kiss me, fuck me. Now the mere thought of his dick, his hands, his tongue made me feel queasy, dirty somehow.

And in the end, as it turned out, I had paid him.

So I picked up the Phoenix on my way to Logan Airport and England, and I sat in the student dormitory that was all I could afford for the week I was lecturing there, and I opened the After Dark section and read the ads.

I circled one.

* * * * * *

Peach was brisk when we spoke on the telephone. “You can refuse any call if you don’t like the sound of the guy, or how it feels,” she said. “You can say no to anything that he asks for that you don’t want to do, and I’ll back you up. The only thing you can’t do is steal clients.”

“Steal clients?” I must have sounded blank.

“Yeah, slip them your phone number, make a deal with them. Arrange to see them without going through the service. They try it all the time. I’ve got the regulars pretty much whipped, but they’ll always try it with a new girl.”

It had never occurred to me to steal clients. The whole point of going through an agency, I had thought, was so that I would be protected by that agency. Okay, so I was still pretty naïve at that point.

She had a little canned, obviously well-rehearsed speech. I tried to take it all in. This business is a crapshoot, sometimes it’s okay, sometimes less so. You’ve never done this before? That’s good: they like that. They like to think that they’re the first. Remember: you can say no to anything. One hour exactly. I get sixty dollars, you get the rest. Tips are all yours, but don’t get too excited; the eighties are over. No one tips anymore. So why don’t you try it out, just one call? Just give me your description and I’ll send you out, after that you can decide whether it’s something that you want to do again or not.

I could have sworn that somewhere in the narrative she stifled a yawn.

I was far from yawning, myself. I answered with some trepidation, but apparently they were the right answers; apparently I passed whatever internal test I was being subjected to. There was the briefest of pauses when I had finished. “Hmm. All right. I’ll have you see Bruce tonight. I know he’ll like you.”

“Tonight?” For all my eagerness, that seemed very soon. Too real, too fast. Panic set in. “Peach, I’m not dressed up –” I was wearing jeans and a t-shirt, with a black vest and an olive linen jacket over it. Not my image of how a callgirl should dress. (Like I knew anything: I had seen Pretty Woman and that film starring Sigourney Weaver as a scholar by day, callgirl by night and that was about it. What you might call a limited frame of reference.)

Besides, how I was dressed was not the only issue here. “You see, I had hoped to meet you in person before I started,” I said. You know, like a real interview.

“That’s not necessary,” she said, her voice brisk. “You can’t lie about your description, the guy you see will tell me the truth. I don’t need to see you first.”

“I want you to,” I said, thinking that I was sounding petulant and not knowing what to do about it. I had wanted to come across as – oh, say, at least marginally sophisticated. “I mean, there’s no problem, I look young, I look good, but…” My voice trailed off. Now I was definitely sounding lame. Great interview. Articulate as hell. Try that on one of your classes someday.

Her voice changed subtly. Later, when I got to know Peach, I recognized the slight shift in manner and attitude: the nursery nanny whose charges aren’t following directions. Obedience and agreement are expected. Don’t tell me you’re going to be difficult. “A lot of different women work here,” she said. “Our clients have all sorts of tastes. I’m already thinking of one or two who I think you’d enjoy; one’s a surgeon, the other is a musician. They’re guys who want to talk, guys who’ll appreciate you, who don’t just want a quick visit.” She was being careful, I realized, not to use the s-word, not to be any more specific than she had to be. “I think you’ll enjoy spending time with them.” Come on, now, children, playtime is over, listen to Nanny.

I said, trying not to sound stubborn or defensive, “I still want to meet you first. I want you to see me. I want to be sure.”

Peach was dismissive. “There’s no sense in meeting unless you find you like the work, unless you want to keep doing it. And don’t worry – you’re dressed perfectly. A lot of the clients go for casual. So do it, or not. You decide. Call me at seven, if you want, and I’ll set it up.”

And that was that. Do it, or not.

I decided to do it.

She was as good as her word. When I called her back she was full of information, delivered at the staccato speed of a submachine gun, and I found myself scribbling on the back of an envelope from my jacket pocket. “His name is Bruce, his number is 555-4629. Your name is Tia – isn’t that what you said you wanted to be called? Anyway, you’re twenty-six, you weigh 125 pounds, thirty-six, twenty-six, thirty-five. C-cup bra. You’re a student. Call him, and then call me back after you’ve talked to him.”

Did she always tell her employees what they were supposed to look like? I wondered. I didn’t ask, though, and later found out that, indeed, Peach tailored the precise description to what the client was looking for. Within reasonable bounds, of course. Now, however, I was just reacting to the speed of it all. I said, slowly, “Peach, I called you to say that I want to try it. How did you get me a client so quickly?”

She laughed. “I had a feeling that you’d say yes. Now call him. Do you remember everything I told you?”

Barely. That was a lot of data, I thought, staring at the envelope. A lot of data that I had never thought about actually articulating to anybody. I remembered a line from Half Moon Street: “Don’t worry, I’m naked underneath!”

Apparently these were guys who didn’t want to take that on faith.

Well, okay. I didn’t have any idea what my real measurements were, but those sounded as good as any. I took a deep breath. This was it. I was really doing this.

Bruce asked me to go through the statistics again, but he seemed pleasant enough (I had been expecting stuttering, maybe?) and gave me directions to Revere. To a marina. He lived, it transpired, on a boat.

He was a bear of a man, bearded, with eyes that twinkled behind his glasses. We sat on a small sofa in the cabin of his sailboat, drank a very nice chilled Montrachet, and talked about music, our conversation interspersed with clumsy silences. It felt oddly familiar, as if…well, to tell you the truth, what it felt like was a date. A first date. A blind date.

An extremely awkward one.

He got up to refill our wineglasses and when he came back he did the little classic pretend yawn and stretch that is a favorite move from everybody’s first junior high romance; but at that moment I leaned forward to pick up my glass and so he missed. Oops.

I hadn’t done it all that well in junior high, either, come to think of it.

He cleared his throat. “Do you mind if I put my arm around you?”

I was bemused. Did I mind? Um – well, no. I came here for you to fuck me, you’re paying two hundred dollars an hour to fuck me, I don’t expect I should balk at you putting your arm around me… I looked at him, unable for a moment to respond. He really meant it. It was endearing beyond belief.

I’d imagined a lot of things, back in London. I’d imagined even more since then, sitting alone in the whirlpool at my gym and thinking about what I was about to do. I’d imagined a lot of pretty unimaginable things, to tell the truth. What I could never have imagined was this polite awkward guy asking my permission to put his arm around me.

“That would be nice,” I managed to say, and a moment later he kissed me.

Definitely a first date kiss.

I returned it with some enthusiasm, moving my arms up his shoulders and around his neck and drawing him deeper, closer to me, opening my mouth to his and gently sliding my tongue against his teeth.

And it was at that precise moment that I knew it was going to be all right. This wasn’t anything esoteric or bizarre or dangerous: this was something I had done before, something I did well, and – best of all – something I enjoyed doing.

He slid his hand up under my t-shirt, raising my bra, and then he was touching my breasts, playing with the nipples as they hardened in response, still with his mouth crushed against mine. I moaned slightly and pressed my body closer to his, and I could feel his heartbeat accelerating, hear his breath coming faster. We pulled away from each other, slightly, responding to some inner common impulse, and his eyes met mine. “You’re beautiful,” he said.

“Thank you,” I whispered, tracing the shape of his lips with my fingertip.

He cleared his throat. “Would you – can we go in the bedroom?”

I knew just what to say; this was easy, after all. I could do this in my sleep, on automatic pilot. I didn’t even have to think about anything. It couldn’t have felt more natural. “Yes, please,” I said, keeping a sense of controlled eagerness in my voice.

The bedroom wasn’t far. We were, after all, on a boat.

I had taken the precaution of buying condoms on my way over. Now I hesitated before following him, ostensibly finishing the wine in my glass, and I slipped one from my handbag into my jeans pocket. Nice work. Unobtrusive as hell. Hey, what do you want, I’m new at this.

And it was still feeling like a first date.

The room was illuminated only by the open door to the living space. I could see a bed and little else. It didn’t matter; the bed was really all that we needed. I slid out of my jacket and vest, pulled off my t-shirt and bra. I did it slowly, as seductively as I could manage, unhooking the bra behind me and letting it drop to the floor. Bruce was watching me. “You’re beautiful,” he breathed again, and I smiled and extended a hand to him, suddenly confident of my power, of my attraction. “Come here,” I said, my voice as low and husky as I could make it.

Marlene Dietrich, eat your heart out.

We ended up sitting on the bed, next to each other, kissing deeply. Later, I learned that some callgirls won’t kiss, that they consider their lips the only part of themselves that they can withhold. Even now, I disagree. Maybe the pretense of romance is better than no romance at all. Or maybe I just like to kiss.

He pushed me back on the bed, gently, his head going down to my breast, his mouth on my nipples. I leaned my head back and closed my eyes.

I had thought it was going to be terrible. I was still dealing with the confusion of it being – if anything – pleasant.

I was struggling with the buttons on his flannel shirt, pulling at them, my own breath sounding ragged. I pulled the sides of the shirt apart, ran my hands against his chest, up to his neck, pulling him up to kiss me again, more demanding this time, murmuring something as I did.

There was a moment of awkwardness with the jeans, both his and mine, and then they were off and we were lying next to each other, our hands groping, our bodies pressing together. I could feel his cock hard against my leg, and I sighed again as my fingers crept down and touched it; I could feel the excitement pulsing through it, through him.

He was kissing my neck, running his tongue along my collarbone, his hand holding my breast. I stroked his cock, gently, firmly, feeling all of his body straining against me. I moaned softly, my fingertips light on him, his inner thighs, his curly hair, his cock, his balls. I felt myself getting wet, felt my pelvis straining to be closer to him, and it was he who, to my surprise, pulled himself up on an elbow. “Do you have any protection with you?”

Wow. Either this was the nicest man in Boston, or else Peach really did have him trained. “In my pocket,” I said, gesturing at the clothes on the floor.

“Do you mind?” He picked my jeans out of the pile and handed them to me, immediately going back to kissing my neck. I fumbled for the condom package, and he took it from me.

I sat up then and leaned down to touch his cock with my lips. Yeah, I know, I know, you shouldn’t do anything without protection, what can I say, he wasn’t all that close to coming, and I was trying to show him that I liked him. Even then, I was thinking about repeat business.

I was already understanding, if only at an intuitive level, the credo of every callgirl. Regular clients are our bread and butter, the reason that we can keep doing what we do. Finding someone like Bruce and making sure that he asks for us, over and over again.

I hadn’t thought about how Peach had gotten him so easily for me, for my first night. Later, I found out that she had an arrangement with Bruce, that he saw new callgirls. Instead of him calling her, she called him. Everybody won: Bruce got the thrill of initiating a first-timer, the girl got an easy call. At the time, however, I was just feeling lucky, feeling like this wasn’t going to be so awful and tedious a job, after all.

All the questions – is it wrong to like my work? Am I supposed to hate working for a service? – came later. At that moment, I was just glad that I could do it, that it wasn’t unpleasant, and that I was good at it.

I licked up and down his cock while he opened the condom package. He paused from time to time to pull my hair back from my face so that he could watch me, watch his cock sliding in and out of my mouth, between my lips, and he sighed. “God, you’re good.”

I moved back so that he could slip on the condom. He kissed me while he was doing it, our tongues touching; he was still sighing with pleasure. And then I was leaning back on the bed and he was on top of me, his big body over mine, his hardness sliding inside me, and I opened my legs to him, wrapped my legs around him to pull him in deeper, and he sighed again, even louder.

I kissed his neck as he started to thrust inside me, and then I gripped his shoulders and took his thrusts, his cock big and hard inside me, his beard rough against my cheek. At one point I thought I heard him say “Tia.” I wasn’t quite sure, but I said “Bruce,” and that seemed to please him. He moaned again and thrust even harder.

I could feel us both sweating, even though it was only March, and I had been chilly when I got there. The portholes were open, but it wasn’t the lack of air that was making me so hot, making us so hot together. I slid my hands up over the hair on his chest as he continued to move inside me, and tightened my hands around his shoulders again – they almost slipped off from his sweat.

He came suddenly, just as I was grabbing his hair and pulling his face down to kiss me again. He groaned and his whole body shuddered; I pulled him against me and held him tightly. “I’m here, baby,” I whispered. “I’m here.”

Can I tell you this now? It was better sex than I’d had with the rat bastard boyfriend. Ever. And – best of all – I was getting paid for it.

And it got better. There was none of the postcoital abruptness I usually associate with one-night stands. He rolled off me and pulled me over to him, my head on his chest, listening to the thudding of his heart. I continued to caress him, gently, my fingertips playing lightly over his chest. I blew gently on the sweat, and he shivered and tightened his arm around me. Better, on the whole, than any other one-night encounter I’d ever had.

Bruce disappeared into the bathroom and was dressed first, but had wine waiting when I emerged from the bedroom, and he kissed my cheek as he handed it to me.

The telephone rang. He picked it up, said, “Yeah, Tia’s here, hang on a minute,” and passed the receiver over to me. “For you.”

I was puzzled. “Hello?”

It was Peach. “All set?”

“Yes.” I had no idea what she meant.

“Okay, good, call me when you get out.” She must have sensed that I didn’t understand. She sighed. “I always call when the hour’s up. Some guys play games. Sometimes they try to make you stay longer. He pays for your time, and I make sure that he gets what he paid for. And that you get out safely, that you’re not stuck or stranded or anything like that. So leave now, and call me from a pay phone.”

“Okay.” I handed the telephone back to Bruce. He obviously knew the drill: he had the money in his hand already. “I really liked meeting you, Tia.”

I smiled as I slid the bills into my jacket pocket. “It was nice meeting you, too, Bruce. I hope I can see you again.”

“I’d like that a lot.” He even sounded like he meant it.

He escorted me off the gangway, kissed me again on the cheek, gave me a brief hug. “Good-night.”

“Good-night, Bruce.” And I walked away toward my car; I felt like singing, or skipping, something joyous and happy. I had just spent a pleasant evening. After I took out the sixty dollars that was Peach’s fee, I had made one hundred and forty dollars. In one hour.

Anybody else out there making that kind of money?

I called her from the first pay phone I spotted; she asked politely how it had gone, and wished me a good night.

I hung up the telephone and was struck by an incongruous thought. I remembered sitting in that whirlpool at the health club, and feeling grateful that I had the lifetime membership (a gift, ironically enough, from my mother), so that I would always be able to go there. I was grateful that they were open late at night. I remembered sitting there and thinking, when I start working, I’ll come and sit here and let all the bad feelings soak away with these bubbles. I’ll use this place to feel clean again.

I was smiling broadly as I got back in my car to drive home. There was nothing that I needed to cleanse myself from. What bad feelings?

I slept really well that night. No nightmares, no waking up sweating with the panic pressing in on me, no knots in my stomach. I was gainfully employed. I even wrote a check to the electric company.

This was going to work. And I wasn’t even shocked that there weren’t any bad feelings at all.