Читать книгу Madam - Jenny Angell - Страница 11

I placed my first ads in the After Dark section of the Boston Phoenix and waited with some trepidation for them to come out.

One of the ads was advertising for girls to come work for me (“education required,” I had written), and the other was for the service itself. Both had a boudoir-lace edging and stood out, if I do rather smugly say so myself, among all the screaming ads urging readers to “try out my tits” and to “cum all over my ass.”

I had already hedged my bets. During my transition between the suburbs and the Bay Village, I had been doing more than just decorating (although I have to say that my new apartment, with its skylights, exposed brick walls, and claw-footed bathtub, had indeed been absorbing quite a lot of my energy). I had also been talking to my former colleagues, asking them if they knew anyone who would like to work for me. That wasn’t stealing from Laura, I rationalized. I was employing a network, something altogether different. And of course I got names.

To tell the truth, I don’t always run the employment ad these days. Not every week, anyway. Maybe one week out of the month. The reality is that from the beginning I’ve had the most success getting potential employees through a network – friends, acquaintances, cousins, colleagues, fellow students.

It makes them happy, since they are referred by someone who knows how I work, who knows that I won’t be weird or dangerous or take advantage of them. It makes me happy, too, because referrals aren’t very likely to be cops.

So the first Thursday that the Phoenix came out with my ad, I was ready. The phone lines were set up: one for clients to call in on, one for my outgoing calls, another as a strictly personal line. I had voice mail, I had call waiting and call forwarding, and, just for security, I had my Yellow Pages. I had my textbooks. I had a stack of mindless magazines, a pen, some scrap paper. I was sitting in the middle of my canopied bed with my television on to keep me from getting too nervous, and I was ready.

My voice mail message implied much more than it said. “Hi, we’re busy right now, but someone can talk to you if you call us back after five today.” I could imagine what the caller might think when he heard those words, filled with a breathy double entendre. He probably was fantasizing that the place was filled with women, maybe having sex with each other while they wait. (That, I have discovered, is a premiere fantasy for most of my clients, the idea that women just can’t wait to rip each other’s clothes off every chance they get.) I know what callers had assumed when they called Laura’s place. Of course, in her case, they were correct – minus the jumping on each other part of it: a lot of beautiful girls, scantily clad, each one sitting patiently, just waiting for that one caller to ask for her. Well, chez Peach, it was a little different. It was just me.

But they didn’t have to know that.

I had hoped for some modest business. Maybe a couple of calls on my first night, some contacts for future work. I knew that my voice, with its Southern undertones of peach blossom and bourbon and hot nights, was seductive but businesslike. I knew that anybody who called could easily be enticed to call again. I had some confidence and I expected a nice opening night.

What I got was an avalanche.

This was a step on the learning curve. Clients, I learned, absolutely love new girls, girls they have never seen before, girls who are new to the business. They adore them. I don’t know if it’s some sort of little sick initiation rite that they’re imagining doing, or something leftover from the ever-popular deflowering-the-virgin concept, but whatever it is, they love new girls.

Their assumption was that a new agency must be full of them.

I was hard-pressed to handle all my calls that night. Some weren’t serious, they were just checking me out, testing the waters, trying to pull me into some erotic chat, but my time at Laura’s had taught me how to deflect them – I wasn’t going to play their reindeer games. Others were dead serious: who did I have that I could send out to them right now? There were the perusers of menus, sitting back comfortably, perhaps with a snifter of brandy to hand, asking me to go through my offerings one course at a time. “Ah, yes, and you said that you might have someone else a little older? Can you tell me about her, too? Okay, now remind me again – the one named Tina …?”

There I was, in the midst of it all, answering phones, putting people on hold, racking my brains to keep names straight and numbers remembered, trying to screen these guys so that I wouldn’t send someone out to see a homicidal maniac my first night in business.

The three women I had lined up already were frantically working the telephones, themselves calling up possible recruits.

“Hi, Peach? This is Kara, I’m a friend of Stacey’s, she asked me to call you.”

I cut right to the chase. “Super. What do you look like?”

Kara, no beginner herself, was clearly used to the drill and rattled her stats off in a practiced manner. “I’m a redhead, shoulder-length hair, I’m twenty-two. C cup bra. I weigh 123 pounds, five-foot-six, and I’ve got a car.”

The last part snagged me right away. “Okay. Can you get over to Newton in half an hour?”

“Sure.” She sounded amused.

I riffled through my scribbled notes, most of them in the margins of my textbook. If anyone were ever to read it after me, they’d be in for a shock as the pages were scrawled with my notes … CARL AT THE FOUR SEASONS, BLONDE …

I found what I was looking for. “Okay, give this guy a call, Bill Thompson, 555-5454. Call me back after you talk to him, to confirm.” I disconnected, then called Bill myself. “I’ve got this adorable redhead who’s dying to see you. She’ll give you a call in a minute, and she can be there in half an hour. Her name is Kara. Just give her directions.” I hung up before Bill could say anything. This was not the time to chat: I was on a roll.

“Hello? Hi, yes, this is Peach. Where are you located, sir? The Plaza? Can I confirm your name with the reception desk? Great. Do you have any particular preferences? Okay, yes, I do have a stunning blonde, she’s a college student, she’s 34-24-32 and weighs 110 pounds. Her name is Lacey. I know that you’ll like her.”

Looking back, I don’t know how I got through that night. I don’t even remember what was on television (for me, that’s an extraordinary statement, because TV is definitely my friend). My magazines and Yellow Pages had been kicked off the bed. The ashtray was overflowing with cigarettes I had lit and then forgotten. I was setting up calls one after the other, stretching out late into the night. “Pam? Honey, can you take another two calls? You’re the best, thanks. I have John in Cambridge and Louis at the Four Seasons, in that order. You can call them both now. Here are their numbers. Do you have something to write on?”

Finally, I had to begin telling people they needed to call back the next day. Some took it well; others, not so well. I remember hanging up the phone after one guy called me names at the top of his voice, tiredly massaging the back of my neck, the realization dawning that this was going to work.

It wasn’t until three-thirty in the morning that I shut off the phones, padded into the kitchen, opened the bottle of Veuve Cliquot that I had left chilling in the refrigerator, and toasted myself. My new agency – Avanti – lived!

I had suddenly, mysteriously, become a madam.