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“When you say he’s a straight guy, you mean…?”
I held up my left hand as if it were a shield and spun my ring around. I told her: “He works on Wall Street. His boss is Pamela Knight. She was on Moneyline last week. He’s one of her bright young rising stars.” Wendy’s dark lashes flickered, but I couldn’t tell whether she recognized Pam’s name. “He wouldn’t understand my business. He’s always had a straight job. His entire life he’s been so—so normal that he doesn’t even know how normal he is. The other night, we were watching The Sopranos and he started telling me how corporate life is just like a Mafia hierarchy. Where does he get these ideas? The most unusual job he ever had was a stint as a golf caddie in college! He would never understand how his girlfriend could have a job that’s—well, not exactly legal.” To say the least. “And all the guys I’ve been with.”
“But most of your clients are, essentially, straight guys and they understand. Don’t they?”
“Y-yes. Pretty much.”
“Obviously, it’s not his work that sets your boyfriend apart from your clients.”
“Okay,” I said. “It’s not him. It’s me! He doesn’t know I’m a hooker. I’m pretending to be a straight chick. And it’s working! And that makes him a straight guy. It’s…I feel like Dr. Franken-hooker.”
Wendy smiled. “Well, it’s how he perceives you rather than who he might actually be. If you feel like you’re shaping his reality, it’s a heady but onerous responsibility—”
“And his sister’s an assistant D.A.!” I interrupted. “And my cousin Miranda introduced us. So if Matt finds out what I really do, he could freak out and say something to her. To my family! To his family.”
“Hang on,” she said. “Just refresh me on Miranda. She’s older than you? A sort of big sister?”
If I can keep track of my clients’ stories, why can’t my shrink keep track of mine?
“No. Miranda’s almost ten years younger than me,” I seethed. “After college she moved to New York and bought a co-op loft. Uncle Gregory pays all her bills. That’s her dad. He’s older. I mean, he’s my mother’s eldest brother.”
“Yes.” Dr. Wendy looked alert. “I remember now.” She did not apologize for the oversight, and I wasn’t sure she understood how irked I was. Wendy adjusted her glasses. The red frames, unfashionably large, make her look a bit like an office manager. Her frizzy hair always looks like it needs a good cut. But she’s got these sexy almond-shaped eyes—and a worked-out body—that save her from looking frumpy.
I suppressed my irritation and added, “Miranda has no idea what I do for a living. She doesn’t think about how other people make ends meet. You know the type.”
“Yes. I remember. And I know the type.”
Miranda’s downtown existence is entirely subsidized by Uncle Gregory, and she’s blissfully unaware of our parents’ income disparities—which is quite handy. She never asks how I get by because she’s never had to get by. Miranda fancies herself a class traitor and sees me as the chic fogy. When she discovered Matt at a gallery opening, she deemed him “too East Side” for her downtown sensibilities but perfect for me. She takes real pride in our resulting courtship, but I wonder what she would say if she knew about my very East Side profession.
“It’s not that my family is so refined,” I added. “It’s just that we don’t talk openly about money. Miranda probably thinks I get money from my parents, too. If she thinks of it at all.”
I glanced at my engagement ring again, then looked up at Wendy.
“It’s a lovely ring,” Wendy said. “So…” The inevitable question: “How do you feel about it?”
“Like a fraud.” There was more silence, as our time ran out. “Not entirely like a fraud,” I added, quietly. “More like…a successful fraud. My girlfriends in the business see this as a victory. And my regulars are delighted for me. It’s like being an athlete who’s just won a trophy and everyone expects you to make an effective speech and maybe win more trophies and endorse a breakfast cereal—except that I could lose the endorsement if my corporate sponsor finds out who I really am. I’m terrified!”
“So. If your corporate sponsor finds out who you really are?” She echoed my words back. “What then?”
I stared at her, defeated by the enormity of her mental exercise.
“Maybe,” she proposed, “your ‘corporate sponsor’ appreciates a side of you that is real, but it’s not the complete you. That’s not the same thing as being a fraud.”
“Maybe,” I said, unable to look away from my substantial-yet-tasteful diamond.
“Are you still keeping a journal? It might be helpful at a time like this.”
“Sort of. But I lost a whole month! Trying to encrypt it in Word! Don’t ask.”
Wendy nodded sympathetically. “You should consider getting an iBook.” My shrink, the Mac hugger. I guess it goes with all that ethnic pottery.
On my way home, I popped into what looked like a reputable lingerie shop on Broadway. I requested sheer stockings—supplies for Steven, Eileen’s client. A tattooed salesgirl with eyebrow rings and a vacant smile—was she also on Ecstasy, perhaps?—tried to sell me fishnet thigh-highs. Then, sensing my dismay, she steered me toward a rack of sheer black pantyhose with virtual lace “garters” built into the sides. Interesting, and rather pretty, but not what this new client is looking for. I was about to demand the manager—was there a responsible adult in the shop who understands “garter belt”?—when my cell phone rang. Steven, the cause of this maddening culture clash.
“I was just thinking about you,” I chirped. Suddenly I remembered Steven’s specs: bitchy, not chirpy. “No, tomorrow looks uncertain…Confirm with me in the morning. I can’t talk,” I added in a firmer voice. “I’m shopping.” For him, actually. But I didn’t say that because, well, it’s like telling a John you’re at the drugstore picking up some more K-Y.
Sheer stockings, like a girl’s lubrication, should simply materialize, out of the erotic ether. Do not let daylight in upon magic.
The salesgirl drifted away, in search of easier customers. Unable to resist a bargain, I snatched up three pairs of half-price thong panties—cute little animal prints. Perfect for Ted P., who likes to watch me changing my underwear in his office, and the more panties per minute the better. Some fetishists are so easy to shop for. Others must wait.
WEDNESDAY. 2/2/00
Every girl has a favorite customer. Plus, a john whom she barely tolerates in order to meet her weekly quota. In between the two extremes are bread-and-butter guys—the mainstay of a call girl’s business. You plan for bread-and-butter guys, cultivate them, seek them out. But you never plan to have a favorite john.
Allison’s favorite was Jack.
Last summer, he practically went into mourning when she decided (for the umpteenth time) to quit the business. Jack didn’t want Allison to know he was seeing other girls, and he mostly saw her friends so he could mope about how much he missed her. To have a regular who’s so easy—a quick blow-job-with-a-condom—and so devoted! We all sort of envied her. Who wouldn’t? Jack seemed like the perfect client.
Until he got a call from Tom Winters, a twisted IRS agent who was auditing Allison and calling everyone she knew. Winters wanted to prove that she had vast reserves of hidden wealth; he couldn’t believe that she simply had no savings or real assets after more than five years in the Life. Winters was curious about Allison’s lifestyle—her apartment, her prices, even her body. (He asked one girl if Allison had had a lot of expensive plastic surgery. Yes, paying cash for major cosmetic work leaves a major trail, if you’re being audited for undeclared income.)
Jack told the IRS how much he paid Allie and how often. He described the furniture in her living room. Never mind that these antiques came from her grandmother. Winters was convinced he could “prove” that Allie spent gobs of undeclared income at big-ticket antique shops. Auditing call girls was more than a job for Tom Winters: it was a hobby, an obsession, a calling.
And Jack didn’t just tell him about Allison. He told the IRS how they had been introduced—about the other girls she worked with, like me and Eileen, and he ended up providing Tom Winters with a list of private call girls on the East Side. Allison lost many of her best clients—along with the best part of her mind—all because of Jack, the weak link. Winters decided to LUD her, as they say. He got a printout of her Local Usage Dialing records and started checking up on everyone she had ever called. He used her phone records to connect the dots and came up with some alarmingly accurate theories. He threatened her clients with professional and marital embarrassment—i.e., the tax audit from hell, meaning lots of loaded questions aimed at surprised wives, prickly bosses, and gossipy junior associates. Allison’s clients were terrified of being linked with a “known tax evader.”
One night last fall, Allison woke me with a drunken hysterical call: “You’re the only person who had this information! I should have known!”
“Allison?” I whispered, trying not to wake my exhausted boyfriend.
“How else could the IRS know all these things? How else could they know that Fred came over to my place on Tuesday, May the fourth? Or the name of the girl who sent him?” she wailed in a high-pitched voice.
I sat up fast and moved away from Matt, hoping he couldn’t hear her.
“What are you talking about?” I asked in a horrified whisper.
“I’m talking about that IRS agent—who I never should have seen today!” She stopped suddenly and I heard a deep raw sob. “He knew everything! My clients, my prices, he even knows I charge extra for—for—” There was a humiliated whimper that made me cringe. “So, when did you turn me in?”
“Please calm down,” I begged as her accusations grew clearer.
“I’m not as stupid as you think!” she cried. “You won’t get away with this. I’ve got stuff on you, too!”
When I hung up, I was shaking.
“What time is it?” Matt demanded angrily. “Who was that? Why are all your friends either in trouble or causing trouble? “ he railed. “What is wrong with you? Do you have even one normal girlfriend?”
The weeks that followed were harrowing. I did not speak to Allison and barely spoke to my boyfriend, for fear of saying something incriminating. Matt started quizzing me.
“What’s going on in your life? Was Allison threatening you?” When I tried to brush the whole thing off as girlish hysteria, he refused to believe me. “You were trying to hide your conversation the other night! Why?” My distress made him angry. “What have you done?” he demanded.
For the first time, I was forced to consider just what Allison, in fact, had on me. We’ve been trading customers for five, maybe six, years. She knows my boyfriend. We’ve had dinner with each other’s families. She’s the only working girl I’ve ever introduced to my mom or my cousin, and yet she’s the most unstable. What was I thinking when I allowed her into my personal life? Allison even knows where I hide my cash—whatever I don’t spend, that is. I hired a lawyer, the notorious Barry Horowitz, who normally defends rich sociopaths—like those Dalton kids who hacked off that homeless man’s hand in Central Park. I hired him to defend myself against my best friend! And against Tom Winters, the IRS agent, who was also asking people about my furniture and my clients and looking for a weak link in my life.
Tom Winters was neutralized before he could get to my boyfriend. By mid-November he was a front-page story in the Post, a public embarrassment for the U.S. Treasury Department. He had been caught—on tape—doing the very thing he accused every call girl in New York of doing: pocketing undeclared income. Winters had used his government job to extort cash from terrified shopaholic hookers who were caught spending far more than the income they declared on their tax returns. A small Barneys shopping bag filled with hundreds did him in. (It’s amazing how much cash you can fit into a bag that was designed to carry a bottle of foundation.)
When Allison came to her senses, I felt like I was waking from a bad dream. You know, that moment when you’re not sure it was a dream and you’re not sure you’re awake yet?
Jasmine had cautioned me last fall about making up with Allie. “If a girl ever threatened me like that—you don’t get to do that in this business! Not without consequences. And if it wasn’t for that silly bitch, your boyfriend wouldn’t have been asking you all those questions.”
Yes, Allie got me into trouble with my boyfriend, but I managed to get myself out of it. I’ve kept his mind off “all those questions” by keeping Allie at arm’s length. I never converse with her when he’s around, always turn my cell off when I’m with him, and, to date, he’s none the wiser. Yes, I am always looking over my shoulder and sometimes I need to be alone just to decompress from my own shadow, but that’s the cost of making friends with the girls you work with. (Some hookers refuse to socialize with the other girls—and who can blame them?)
I persuaded Jasmine not to tell anyone about Allison’s insane threats. Allison needed to get back on her feet and replace the business she had lost. If the other girls knew she had threatened to turn someone in, they’d be shocked—and she would never get any business from them again. Eileen, for example, is angry enough at Jack; I can just imagine how she’d take it if she knew about Allie’s recent conversations with him.
Allie has never been the sharpest eyebrow pencil at the makeup counter. Her reputation as the natural blonde with the wonderful voice—too-dim-to-hurt-a-flea—has been her meal ticket. And not just with men! Allie’s the kind of girl madams adore because she’s too disorganized to steal their customers. During the last seven years, she has decided to quit the business at least four times. Professional call girls regard her as harmless competition. Fortunately for Allie, nobody knows about her angry threats. Well, nobody but me. And Jasmine.
Today, Jasmine remarked, “That girl owes you big-time. You protected her reputation.” We were walking back from the nail salon, after an emergency pedicure (for Jasmine, due to a stubbed toe) and a routine manicure (for me). I still haven’t said anything to Jasmine about Allison and Jack.
“If I were a bitch,” she continued. “I’d blackmail Allison and she’d be paying me to keep your secret. How much do you think it’s worth? Three hundred a week? If it’s any more than that, it’s not worth it, she might as well quit the business. But I think she could come up with a couple of hundred. The logic of blackmail—”
“Don’t even think that way!” I said in horror.
“Please, Allison’s so kinky she’d fucking love it, having to turn tricks to pay off some evil blackmailer. Wasn’t she claiming to be a sex addict last summer? This is right up her alley!”
“Stop it,” I moaned.
“Oh, come on. She’s lucky I’m not a bitch. Therefore I won’t do all those things—which, by the way, I know she would love to have done to her. That girl loves attention, and if there’s one thing a blackmailer gives you, it’s attention.”
I suppressed a spiteful giggle. “Blackmail is not something to joke about,” I said primly.
Jasmine became eerily calm. “No,” she agreed. “It’s not.” We were standing at the corner of York and Seventy-ninth, waiting for the light to change.
“And not being a bitch is not some sort of unique accomplishment that you get a great big medal for,” I added.
“Maybe not,” Jasmine allowed, heading into the crosswalk, “but it should be.”
Uh-oh. Five o’clock. Time to rinse off my camphor mask, rewind the video, change the sheets. Milton’s due to arrive any minute now!
THURSDAY. 2/3/00
This morning, an emergency rendezvous with Allie at the health club. I was climbing backward on the StairMaster when she appeared, flushed and damp, in flower-print running shorts and a cropped T-shirt.
“I have to talk to you,” she panted. “I need your advice. You’re the only person I can talk to…Why—uh—are you doing it like that?”
“It’s supposed to work the glutes,” I said through clenched teeth. “Can you just broadcast our problems a little louder?”
When I got to the women’s locker room, Allie had already showered. She was standing in front of a full-length mirror, sprinkling talc-free powder on her breasts. The nine-to-fivers had cleared out and the moms had gone off to Power Yoga, leaving the room empty.
“It’s about Jack,” Allie began. Then, frowning at her image in the mirror, she added, “Does my tummy look sort of…huge today? I feel so puffy.”
“Your abs look fine,” I reassured her. “What’s going on with Jack?”
She patted the thin strip of blond hair between her legs with a powder puff, then stood on the scale—carefully setting the powder puff aside before she dared look at the number settings. She stepped off the scale, began pulling her panties on, then confessed, “I—um—ran into him last night.”
“Ran into him?” I squinted at her furiously. “You saw him, didn’t you.”
“No! I mean, yes, but not the way you mean. I ran into him because—” She blushed. “He surprised me. I was coming home from a call, and Jack was standing outside my building holding a huge bouquet of lilies! You know I love lilies.”
“Allie. A john who shows up without an appointment is a stalker. Even if—especially if—he’s carrying your favorite flowers. You could have been walking home with a straight friend—with a boyfriend or something—and then what? Sneaking up on a hooker is pathological and disrespectful,” I told her. “Not to mention ungentlemanly.”
“Well, I was nervous when I saw him standing there,” she admitted. “But he was very polite and he just gave me the flowers, said good night, and walked away.”
“God, how creepy.”
But at least he didn’t make a scene in front of her doorman.
“And when I got upstairs there was a note. Do you want to see it?” She pulled a small envelope out of her gym bag.
I know why you’re holding back from seeing me. I’m truly sorry about what happened, and you’ll always be special to me. I think about you constantly. I miss everything about you. Please give me a chance.
All my love, J.
“Then he called this morning! I think I should see him. He’s being very generous. He’s offering me a lot of money, and you’ve always said I should treat this more like a business. Well, this is a business decision for me.”
“You should set some sort of weekly quota for yourself. But that doesn’t mean you can’t have standards. Some things are not for sale,” I pointed out. “While he’s thinking about you constantly, he’s making breather calls to Eileen. He’s a loose cannon.”
“She doesn’t know it’s him. Eileen doesn’t even have Caller ID! How can she say that?” A towel attendant entered the changing room, and we both clammed up. “Welllll,” Allie mumbled. “Don’t tell Jasmine. Or any of the other girls. Promise me you won’t say a word. But I asked him for two thousand. And he agreed.” Despite wanting to elude everyone’s disdain, she looked rather pleased with herself. “Soooo,” she said, with a hint of smugness. “What would you do?”
Every girl has a favorite john, and who this guy is tells you a lot about the girl. Jasmine’s favorite is Harry from Darien, who keeps a black Town Car waiting while he’s getting a blow job upstairs in his socks and wing tips. Because he’s her steadiest customer and a quickie, she hasn’t raised his price in two years. In my case, there’s Milton. Unlike Harry, Milt is no quickie. Sometimes, he’s a lot of work. But he spends far more than my other regulars, and he’s willing to help if I get myself into a financial pickle. How could I not like him? He’s financially faithful. And the bottom line with a favorite john is that deep down you like it when he’s faithful. Allison’s favorite? A spineless weasel who married into a real estate family, who ratted on us all to the IRS because he was afraid his rich wife would find out about his midday excursions to call girls. Though he likes a bit of variety, he’s really obsessed with Allie. And who else would be flattered to hear that a john “thinks about her constantly”? Most professionals would run for the hills if a client said that.
“When you have a business,” I told Allie, “you have to set your own standards. Weed out the undesirables. Being a call girl is like being responsible for a really hot restaurant. Some people get a little dessert on the house, and some don’t even get in the door. Jack shouldn’t be able to get a reservation. He’s been tainted by this IRS mess, and we can’t afford to have him around.”
“You’re blaming the victim. That IRS agent threatened to ruin his life! You’re not being fair to him.”
“That IRS guy threatened to ruin my life, too. But I didn’t become an informant, did I?”
“But you don’t have children! Jack has a family, a marriage, people who depend on him.”
“Jack’s ‘children’ are grown! It’s not as if Jack’s wife was going to get custody of two people in their late twenties!”
“No,” she agreed. “But he didn’t want to hurt her. He was trying to protect his family. You shouldn’t condemn him for that.”
“He blabbed to the IRS about us—and now they have every reason to think they can come back for more. What kind of man ‘protects his family’ by turning himself into a sitting duck?” I asked. “Even if what he did was justifiable, we can’t afford to deal with him. What if he gets subpoenaed? Every conversation, every transaction you have increases the risk.”
Allison appeared to be listening, so I pressed on.
“Look,” I said very patiently. “Your girlfriends have been sticking together and we’re not seeing this guy—”
“That’s why he keeps calling me!” she said brightly. “And offering me so much money! None of the other girls will see him. Maybe I should ask for three thousand.”
I shrank back in horror.
2 Through the Hooking Glass (#ulink_5f17c061-8b8f-5ca9-913f-4807f2856784)
