Читать книгу Undercover: The Adventures of a Real Life Gigolo - Luke Bradbury - Страница 8

Mid September

The phone’s ringing was crashing through my head. I’d only got in from the pub a couple of hours ago, and I had to crawl out of bed to go and answer it. I checked the alarm clock as I stumbled out of the room: 5.20 a.m. And I was due back at the café at ten. My brain hurt just thinking it.

‘Hello, my name’s Clare. I saw your advert. I’d like one of your escorts to come over. Now.’

Please, God, no.

Of course, I could have told her that it was just not possible, too short notice, and gone straight back beneath my duvet. But Clare was only the second woman to call in three weeks. And if we were going to make a go of things then we needed every client who came our way.

But please, not at this time of the morning.

‘The thing is, Clare, it’s just gone five. I can’t see any of the boys being free to come out to you at this hour. Later today, or this evening, it’d be no problem.’

I stifled a yawn. I could barely keep my eyes open.

‘That’s a shame, because I do really want to see someone now. I guess I’ll just have to call another agency.’

Why couldn’t you have done that in the first place and then I’d still be asleep?

But now I’d answered the phone it made good business sense to do everything I could to keep Clare sweet. It was important people came off the phone feeling good about us. I racked my still mashed brains.

‘I tell you what. I’ll ring round and see. I’m sure to be able to find one of the guys to come right on over. I’ll get back to you as soon as I know who.’

Like there were going to be any contenders at this time of the morning. It was going to have to be me or Mark.

‘Thanks for your trouble.’

‘All part of the service, Clare, all part of the service,’ I grimaced, and put the receiver down. I stumbled out of the living room and back across the hall to our room. I hovered at the doorway. Through the darkness I could see the duvet mound of Mark’s dead-to-the-world carcass. He’d had the good fortune not to have been woken by the phone. I was tempted to give him a good kick just so he could suffer as much as me.

But I didn’t. I took a deep breath and shut the door with a quiet click and went back to the phone.

‘Good news—I’ve got a guy for you. If you can just give me your address, I’ll pass it on to him. He should be with you by seven, is that okay?’

I hung up, and went and made myself a mug of strong black coffee.

Clare lived out in the north-west London suburbs, Greenford way. The roads were quiet and the morning sunlight beyond the cab window was pleasantly subdued for my bug eyes. There was a feeling of space, of wide streets and grass verges, and long front gardens. Hardly anyone was about.

I walked up the path and opened the door to the porch, stepped in and closed it behind me. The doorbell chimed against my hangover. Through the mottled glass I could make out the svelte figure of Clare coming towards me.

She pulled open the front door.

‘Luke, I presume. Do come in,’ she smiled.

My spirits rallied. That’s more like it. I’d have happily gone home with you last night for free.

I don’t know what I’d been expecting, but she wasn’t it. Someone more suburban, I suppose, whatever that meant. Clare was in her late twenties, and given the unearthly hour of the morning she had a sexy glossiness about her. She had shoulder-length brown hair and a classic beauty, like Lauren Bacall. She was wearing a scarlet silk dressing gown over a floor-length cream nightdress. I, on the other hand, felt—and suspected I looked—like garbage.

She didn’t seem to mind though. She looked up at the staircase but it was as if she had second thoughts. She swivelled on her kitten-heel mules.

‘Come on through to the lounge.’

I stepped through and she closed the door firmly behind me. The sharp click of the latch was like a switch in my brain. It was a split-second sense of unease. Probably my lack of sleep making me jittery.

Smarten up, Luke. Look at where you are.

I was in a sexy woman’s front room, in a nice house in suburbia, and she wanted to sit down and feel comfortable and relaxed and have a drink with a guy like me. That was all.

‘I’m having a whisky and soda. Would you like one?’

‘Yes, thanks.’

Hair of the dog. And some.

She gestured me towards her leather sofa and I sank into it as she fixed the drinks. The respite was all fine by me, because I needed to ease into the right groove if the sex was going to go well. The alcohol would help kick-start my confidence.

How many clients does it take before it’s all water off a duck’s back?

Clare handed me a glass, and stood before me and watched me take a sip, then took a sip of her own. She ran her gleaming white teeth over her top lip.

‘Look, you don’t mind if we don’t use the bedroom?’

I shook my head. ‘Nope. Wherever you’re happy,’ I smiled, trying to put her at her ease.

She looked over at the closed door. ‘I like to keep the noise out, you know.’

Clare bent her head towards me and drew the hand that wasn’t holding her whisky glass up my neck so my upturned lips met hers.

Actually, I didn’t know. Okay, people would start leaving their homes about now to go to work, but apart from the odd slammed door and cars passing the house, it wasn’t exactly Piccadilly Circus around here.

Then she tensed and pulled away from me as if someone had walked across her grave. And whoever it was, at that moment they’d walked over mine too.

What is it? There’s something not quite right about this set-up.

My head was in no fit state to make much sense of what the hell was happening, but a moment later Clare had gathered herself together and it was as if any unease she’d just felt now spurred her on. Falling to her knees, she set down her glass by my feet and grabbed at my belt and unbuckled it fast. She was dragging my jeans from my hips even as I was pulling off my shirt.

Clare’s hands were around my dick and she was drawing her open mouth to it and I was scrabbling around in my pockets for protection while all the while my body couldn’t have given a damn. And I held the condom out to her and those inviting lips of hers halted in mid ‘O’ and she flicked an evil grin up at me from between my legs. ‘Sixty-nine,’ she growled, and grabbed at my waist, and we struggled and tumbled together onto the rough of the carpet.

Hers was a damn practised mouth that jackhammered me to my senses and slewed off my shattered drunken skin. I drew her nightdress up from her ankles along the length of her legs towards me and buried my face in its silk before burrowing beneath it with my tongue. Clare writhed with pleasure as I licked her clean.

I flickered licks and kisses over her belly towards the uplands of her breasts and she rose on her elbows to meet me and I wiped my mouth on the back of my hand and kissed her. I kicked my legs from under me and entwined them with hers and drew her down towards the floor again.

I ran my hand up her smooth thigh and she eyed me with desire.

‘You’re my birthday present,’ she whispered as I leaned back and ripped the wrapper off another condom with my teeth.

‘What?’ I raised my eyebrows.

‘I celebrated with friends last night but you’re my private party,’ she grinned.

‘Happy birthday,’ I replied as I thrust into her.

She gasped, and her legs on reflex buckled upwards, caging me between them. Her hands on my back gripped tighter. I got into my stride, my eyes all the while intent on her. The rise of her breasts in unison with my own rhythmic drive towards her, the taut honeyed length of her neck, her handsome jaw-line jutting upwards, her closed eyes and the healthy thickness of her hair. And half a metre away was the telly on a corner-stand, and below it the DVD player, and on the slim shelf between them a revolver.

What the fuck…?

I’d never before seen a real live gun. Or maybe it was fake. But the point was, I had no idea. And Clare was within reaching distance.

She could clip me right here and nobody would know. All my friends are asleep. I could just vanish into thin air, and nobody would ever know.

It wasn’t as if she even looked in that direction. She was too busy being pleasured by me. But if she’d got a gun in the house, what on earth was it for? Protection against me? Or against someone else? I certainly couldn’t concentrate on the sex any more. I just wanted out of there.

The lovemaking slowed to a halt and Clare and I drew apart. I tried to act as if nothing was the matter. Our session would soon be drawing to a close—the minutes were ticking by. We settled back on the sofa.

‘Would you like a coffee?’ she asked.

‘No, no, I’m fine.’

‘I could certainly do with one. You stay here.’

No, you stay here. I don’t want you anywhere but here.

If she remained with me then I had some chance of controlling the situation. Out of my sight, I hadn’t a clue what she might be up to. But I couldn’t say anything without alerting her suspicions and she left the room.

So, my hunch earlier had been right and not just a figment of my drink-addled imagination. There was something out of kilter about this place. I tried to avoid looking at the gun but it had a magnetic appeal. I anxiously looked away. I didn’t want Clare to come back in and find me staring at it.

The more I thought about it, the more I was certain it wasn’t just the two of us in the house either. During the sex, I’d had the distinct impression we were being watched, even though the door was shut. I hadn’t a clue how anybody could see us, but I just felt it. It gave me the creeps.

Or maybe I was just imagining things. You could scare yourself shitless if you wanted to. I flicked another look over at the ledge beneath the telly. The gun was still there. I damn well wasn’t imagining that, that’s for sure.

Suddenly, I heard muttering outside the door. My whole body stiffened. I didn’t give a damn about the money. I just wanted to collect my stuff and get the hell out of there. Seconds later, Clare came back into the room with a mug of coffee in her hand. I tried to act as if nothing was wrong. We even had sex again because I just wanted to do what was needed to get out of there as quickly as possible. The gun in my head I had to force into the shape of my cock battering Clare’s pussy so I could perform. I didn’t even need to wait for her to call a cab. I could do that myself once I was down the street and away from here.

But I didn’t need to. She’d already arranged it for me and gave me my fee and the fare. When the cab came to collect me, I took one last wary look at the gun under the telly. I was back in the porch before Clare asked if she could phone for me again.

‘No problem,’ I muttered. ‘No problem.’ Hoping desperately that she wouldn’t. And I walked out into the early morning sunshine, hurried down the garden path without a look back, and climbed into the car and was out of there.

‘So, how goes it, stud?’ Mark threw at me across the grass as we lounged around after our regular evening kick-around in the park.

Mark knew perfectly well how things were going with the escort work. I’d gone to bed as soon as I’d got back from a gruelling stint at the café to catch up on the lost zeds and told him about my time with Clare when he came in later from his temping job. He’d seemed impressed with the combo of hot sex and danger. He was just asking now to pique the interest of the other guys.

It worked. There was an incredulous look on one or two of their faces.

‘Stud, Luke? Since when?’ teased Simon as he rolled the ball from hand to hand.

I rested a foot on the opposite knee and picked at the caked mud on the sole of my trainer with a lolly-stick I’d found in the long grass.

‘Since my balls dropped, mate. But you wouldn’t know about that, would you?’ I flung back, to laughter from the others.

And was rewarded with the football hitting my head, knocking me sideways.

I rolled to the ground in mock collapse and stretched out, held my hands behind my neck, and watched the clouds shift high above me. The image of self-satisfaction. For a split second the fading sun and the sky were blotted out as Rob passed within inches and went and collected the ball. He looked down at me.

‘Have you seen Jenny again?’

‘Over a cup of tea.’

I didn’t feel the need to say anything more than that.

Paul looked at Rob and then at me and back again like we had some conspiracy going on.

‘Jenny? Who’s Jenny?’

‘Oh, Jenny’s an Older Woman. She answered our ad,’ smirked Rob. ‘I’ve met her,’ he crowed as if he wanted people to consider him as much the stud too. Like meeting a client for a cuppa was real hot sex-work.

Mark was far more interested in the girl and the gun.

‘Luke was called out at dawn yesterday morning. For sizzling suburban sex!’

There was a chorus of No? and Really? around me. I did a couple of sit-ups and then sat up to survey the lot of them.

‘Oh yes, my friends,’ I grinned.

‘You’ve actually had replies to the ad? I just thought it was a bit of a laugh,’ admitted Simon. He had the ball again and had stood up and was bouncing it up and down.

At least he was honest. I wasn’t quite sure how to take it. I shrugged my shoulders and looked up at him, my arm above my eyes to cut out the fading sun’s glare.

‘Well, y’know, we made a serious enough effort to get the women calling.’

‘I couldn’t do it…’ Simon stuttered. ‘Imagine if it came out that a local schoolteacher was on the game? I’d lose my job. I’d have to go back home with my tail between my legs.’

He pursed his lips as if he was thinking up some further excuse not to get involved, and resumed his bouncing. He didn’t realise that he didn’t need to. I understood.

‘No worries. That just means all the more clients for everyone else!’ I beamed, trying to make it easier for him to back out.

‘You know I can’t get involved,’ blurted out Mark. ‘Before I started going out with Natasha, yes. But not now.’

Mark had only been dating his new girlfriend for a few weeks but he was already getting serious about her. So he was into escort work by proxy, then. I let his words hang in the air. I saw no point in making an issue of it.

‘So, this suburban sex siren. What was she like?’ piped up Rob, who wanted to get back to the crux of the matter.

‘Oh, how you’d expect a suburban sex siren to be,’ I replied, with as enigmatic a smile as I could muster. ‘It was her twenty-ninth birthday the day before, but I was her own personal gift to herself. Waiting to be unwrapped.’

Rich sighed a high-pitched whistle and shook his head in disbelief. ‘Hang on,’ he countered. ‘If there are girls out there who are willing to pay for it, how come you’re having all the fun? What about passing on some of these gorgeous hordes to the rest of us?’

‘I met Jenny,’ reminded Rob. ‘Easy money,’ he crowed.

I drew my legs towards me and rested my chin on my knees. It was time to come clean.

‘That’s just it,’ I said. ‘Jenny and Clare have been the only callers.’

Rich whistled again. ‘When did we do the photos? A couple of months ago?’ He looked at me with genuine concern. ‘Fuck, Luke. How are you supposed to live? I hate to break it to you, but an average of a client a month is hardly great—there’s no way you can survive.’

For a few minutes nobody said anything. When Rich put it like that, the escort life had very little going for it.

‘Well, it’s early days yet,’ I rallied. ‘It’ll build up gradually. That’s how it works. It’s sure to. The girls’ll come flooding in. It just takes a while for things to get going. Y’know, like any business.’

I heard myself say the words and for a split second wondered if I was trying to convince myself as much as everyone else.

‘We didn’t expect it to be an overnight success, did we, Mark?’

I looked directly at him, willing him to back me up on this.

Mark replied with a sympathetic smile.

‘But don’t give up the day jobs, eh?’

‘The day jobs,’ echoed Paul. ‘I don’t know how you juggle it, Luke. How you’ll manage if—sorry, when—the work starts pouring in?’

‘I’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,’ I murmured in response, trying to look on the bright side. I hadn’t yet worked that out myself.

‘I’ll stick with the temp work, if you don’t mind,’ continued Paul. ‘I want to have something decent to put on my CV when my work visa runs out. Something to show for my time here.’

The sun was going down and had got stuck behind a cloud. There was a definite chill in the air. I shivered. Each one of them had dropped out of our grand scheme. If they’d ever dropped in in the first place.

And then it hit me between the eyes. Out of the guys I was the only one who seemed to consider this business was in any way worth pursuing. Suppose none of them had been truly into it in the first place? Even Mark, who’d only just started dating Natasha, had been a bit too quick to change his mind.

Oh fuck. They were joking?

A cold shiver passed through me again. The mucking about for the photo shoot. It was all for the hell of it. And there was me presuming I was the reticent one hiding behind the phone so I could pass the buck on to someone else.

I swallowed back a breaker of nausea, and trusted that nobody could see through the evening gloom what I was only now working out. Even Rob, my one-time partner in crime who’d at least dipped his toes in the escort pool, would be leaving to continue his Europe walkabout in a couple of weeks.

‘I’ve got to go,’ said Simon. ‘I’ve got some marking to finish off. I’ll see whoever can make it here tomorrow?’

It was the signal for all of us to go our separate ways for the night. Simon picked up his ball. I pulled on my jacket and got up to leave with the others.

I didn’t sleep very well that night. What the guys had said in the park had been playing on my mind. I checked the time on my alarm clock: 6.05 a.m. I had just under an hour before anyone in the house got up. I sat on the side of my bed to collect my thoughts. My gaze fell on the adjacent hulk of Mark, still fast asleep. Looking as if he hadn’t a care in the world. Whereas I was facing the worry of figuring out how to make my new line of business work. Because there really were only two choices. I could throw in the towel right now with the lot of them. That would be the easy option. I’d work my way out of the crummy jobs into something that would at least have some currency when I went back to Australia. Or I could carry on the way I was heading. Alone.

Because, for all Rich’s genuine concern that I might be heading nowhere fast, I remained convinced that I could make a business out of escort work. After all, hadn’t Jenny and Clare proved to me that there was at least some work out there in London? Even if so far it had just been the two of them. I had no one to compare notes with, but getting two clients in two months in a market that clearly nobody was sure was even out there, wasn’t the worst that could happen.

Or maybe Rich was right and I wouldn’t be able to survive. There simply wasn’t the business out there. The girls weren’t biting because for some reason it simply wasn’t their bag. Jenny and Clare were the exception to the rule.

I pinched the bridge of my nose to sharpen my thoughts. I knew what I had to do. I was in one of the biggest cities in the world, and there were definitely plenty of women out there who had money to spend and were sexually up for it. You could see that on a Saturday night at any club you found yourself in. Most, if not all of them, used the internet. Which meant that the key was for me to somehow get their web attention.

I rose to my feet, took a deep breath to clear my head, and padded through to the lounge. I sat and faced the computer screen, my hands hovering above the keyboard as I wondered what to type. My fingers slid over the keys, not entirely sure what my next move should be.

Almost without thought I logged into the Male Escorts Esquire site and scrolled down the pictures of me and the guys. I shook my head and winced at how amateur and half-hearted they looked. What had we been thinking? Frankly, we’d been lucky to have even had two clients. Our gormless pics and a couple of tiny ads in the London freesheets were never going to be enough. If I was going to be serious about this then I had to up my game. And I’d have to be damn serious, since running your own successful business as an escort counted for nothing in the job market. While my friends were building up their work experience, I would be effectively opting out. Any people skills I picked up in this game would count for absolutely nothing. Which gave me all the more reason to promote myself damn hard and squirrel away as much cash as I could, so I had something to show for myself when I eventually returned home.

I had to cast my net wider.

I recalled something I’d said to Mark back when we were just thinking about advertising our wares. That the girls weren’t looking because they weren’t aware there was a service for them. And that’s where we’d been going wrong.

My fingers set to work. I googled London Escort Agencies. The first page that came up was enough evidence that there was plenty of work out there. For the women and the gay guys, anyhow. As far as I could see, the straight male escort line was all but untried. From my next Google nationwide search, there seemed to be a grand total of three other gigolos working across the whole of Britain.

Not that any of them really used the term ‘gigolo’ these days. ‘Escort’ was the catch-all phrase, but the trouble was that if a guy called himself an escort then it was invariably assumed that he was gay. Or at least up for it. If you were only catering for girls then you had to stress your hetero-ness. And from what I could see, that alone made you stand out in the crowd.

I accessed a guy called Greg Allen’s site. He was based in Birmingham. Miles away. He looked serious about his escort work. Professional. I couldn’t tell how successful his business was, but one thing I had over him was that I wasn’t living any place due north.

I logged into Male Escorts Esquire again and homed in on my own photo.

Could do better.

But with the right photo I knew I had as much to offer as the other hetero male escorts out there. I already had a pretty successful hit rate at most bars I went to. I’d never quite stuck around for my dates to develop into girlfriends, but that didn’t really bother me. I wasn’t the settling-down kind, for now at any rate. The sex was fun, and the girls had been up for it. I could see no reason why it shouldn’t be the same for me in this game.

I entered a few escort sites to see if I might learn something from their approach. There were hordes of stunning girls available. And they clearly knew how to sell themselves. They spent decent money on their pictures, you could tell, but what’s more they had a whole range of them done to give potential clients a good idea of what they’d be getting. Portraits, full-length shots, semi-naked. And in-your-face ones. And crucially these escorts got signed up with internet agencies so that they didn’t have to do all the spade work. I’d presumably have to pay them something, but at least they’d get me started.

One or two of the girls, I noted, had their own websites. Like Greg Allen. That was something to think about further down the line. But for now it was enough to get my name around.

I homed in on a couple of the girls’ introductory shots, the ones that were on the agency’s main page. The taster pics. They were mostly full-length portraits that hinted at what was to come. All I needed for starters would be some decent photos taken of me that I could circulate with a potted biog to as many of these agencies as possible. And once I started making money I’d be able to afford to get more pictures done. All being well, the pics would end up paying for themselves. If I was one of only a handful of guys on the site advertising my wares, then so much the better.

I reached for a biro and a scrap of paper and began to list what I had to do. Pictures. A basic outline of who I was and what I had to offer. Plus, find the names and contact details of as many agencies as possible.

I logged into Gumtree, which had served me so well when I was looking for a room. A photography student was offering free portraits so he could build up his portfolio. That was exactly the deal I was after to help get me launched. I emailed him immediately.

Buoyed up, I grinned to myself. The guys would be made to eat their words! I knew exactly what I had to do to make a success of this thing. They might not have faith, but I’d always had some level of hope that there was the work out there.

Lots of sex, and money to be made. What guy wouldn’t kill for a job like that?