The memory of that day made my stomach tense up. I smiled stiffly.
In a more patient voice, he said, “Just think about it. You don’t have to decide this minute.” He paused. “God, you look…are you okay?”
My palms were sticky. If we broke up now…I thought, it would all be so simple. I stared at my ring.
“I’m sorry,” I said, picking up a strawberry with my spoon. “You deserve someone more stable. Less neurotic.” My fingers trembled. The strawberry tumbled onto the tablecloth.
“Don’t be silly,” he told me. “It doesn’t matter what I deserve. That’s not how love works.”
“How love works? You’re an expert? Is that something they covered in business school?” My eyes filled with tears and I rushed off to the ladies’ room where I calmed my nerves by checking the voice mail on my cell phone.
A tongue-in-cheek message from Milton: “Put those dirty videos back in the deep freeze, kiddo—I’ll be in Tokyo for the next three weeks.” He promised to call after his business trip. Milton’s bottomless appetite for porn videos, awkward positions, and oversize sex toys doesn’t turn me on. But the sound of his voice is always so reassuring. I closed my eyes and replayed the message.
Then I dabbed some powder under my eyes and returned to my boyfriend, emotionally refreshed—much to his relief and mine. You see, the thing is, I really think Matt benefits from me being in the business, even though it has to be kept a secret. I’m a much better girlfriend when I’m feeling secure about my clients, my bargaining power—when I’m having a good week. When I’m seeing other guys—for money—I’m better in bed, too. I know it.
Later, helping me into my coat, Matt brushed his lips against my left ear. I felt his teeth nipping discreetly at my lobe. “I must really be in love with you,” he whispered. “You’re so fucking impossible!”
A shiver of pleasure ran through me as he steered me toward the sidewalk. I smiled up at him, brought back to safety by his desire for something more immediate—something I knew I could deliver.
As we proceeded to my apartment, I went over my mental checklist: Is the ringer on my business phone off? Did I put my excessively diverse condom assortment in the special drawer? Hide that incriminating dildo? Stash all my cash? Lock up the videos? A working girl can’t be too careful.
My body was responding to his unambiguous grip—his hand circling my arm—and the nervous feeling in my chest was migrating through me, toward my panties. Toward him.
MONDAY AFTERNOON. 2/7/00
This morning, I got one of those calls. “It’s Bob! Remember me?”
“Of course!” I trilled.
Oh, dear. Which Bob? As I made small talk with the familiar voice, I ran through my Bobs: Bobby M., the lawyer in his forties from Short Hills; Bob, no last name, in the insurance business, who wears glasses; a “snowbird” called Bob in his sixties who hangs out in Boca Raton, needs a large-size Trojan; a Bob from Greenwich who—
“Is this still Sabrina’s number?” Bob asked, thrown off by my voice.
Ah. The snowbird! Taking a break from his sun-drenched winter.
“It’s me!” I assured him in a softer voice; this Bob thinks I’m twenty-six.
Jasmine regards multiple naming of the working self with impatience: “Who can keep up with all your names?” Jasmine doesn’t use a work name, she calls herself Jasmine at all times. “Suppose some guy runs into you at a gallery opening, calls you Boopsie or Cupcake or whatever, and screws everything up for you? Hide it in plain sight,” she insists. “Besides, they think it’s tacky when a girl has too many names.”
Different names are handy because so many clients have the same name. Bobby the lawyer calls me Suzy, Insurance Bob calls me Lisa, and Bob the Snowbird knows me as the kittenish “Sabrina.” I can identify nine out of ten johns (or Bobs) by crosschecking a guy’s voice with the name he calls me. This is like having Caller ID software implanted in your forehead. Unlike some girls, I never have to crassly inquire “Which Bob are you?” to a man I’ve had sex with. In other words, it might actually be classier to have a few working names. Despite what Jasmine thinks.
Two years ago, I bought a small list of guys from Daria, who left the business…to get married. Neither she nor I had an inkling, then, that I, too, would contract the marriage virus. Half-Persian, half-German, from somewhere vaguely south of L.A., Daria was confident that I would do well with her clients because, as she put it, “You’re exotic like me. You’re not as busty, but that’s okay because you’re Asian.” (Like so many Californian hookers, Daria had pretty much assimilated after five years on the East Coast. But her D-cup breasts were undeniably West Coast and so was her assessment of my figure. By local standards, I’m almost busty. Really.)
I gave myself a new name, making myself years younger and much newer to the business. Daria’s former clients think “Sabrina” has been working for two years at the most.
As a child, I used to harangue my mother: “Why was I called Nancy? Why can’t I be a Suzy or a Barbara? Why wasn’t I named Felicity?” Not having the faintest idea what she was foretelling, Mother replied, in that prim tone (which remains her parental hallmark), “When you grow up, you will have the freedom to choose any name you wish. Until then you will be called Nancy.”
So what would Matt think if he knew how I’ve realized my earliest ambitions? He’d be…appalled. I’m sure he has no idea how much fun it is to rename yourself at will. And how do you explain a thing like that to a guy like Matt, anyway?
You don’t.
TUESDAY. 2/8/00
When Bob showed up, I was wearing a short pleated skirt with high narrow heels. My red toenails glistened against strappy golden Pradas—a confectionery bare-legged look that I could never wear to a john’s office or a good hotel. Wouldn’t dream of wearing outside of my apartment, actually.
“Look who’s here!” I cooed.
I fluttered around the living room, bending forward to adjust the VCR—and to grant a quick peek up my skirt. Easy to do, in heels. If I were traveling through the halls of the Peninsula or the Four Seasons, these shoes might throw me off. But within the radius of my bed, I’m gliding; I belong in them.
I’m a better twenty-six-year-old today, at thirty-something, than I was at twenty-six. And I enjoy being a “new” girl—more than I ever enjoyed it when I really was new. So when Bob mentioned the Stanhope, a hotel I’ve been to many times, I feigned ignorance.
“Sabrina,” he chuckled. “Didn’t Daria teach you anything?”
“Only the important things.” I giggled and pulled my skirt down to hide my transparent white panties.
“Don’t do that,” he protested. “Daria wouldn’t want you to cover up your pussy like that, would she?”
“Daria taught me how to eat pussy,” I remarked in a friendly voice. “She teaches by example.”
His eyes twinkled as I slipped into his crude routine.
“Does she?” he replied gamely. “So she did teach you something. Daria likes to have her snatch licked, doesn’t she?”
“Only if you know what you’re doing,” I told him. “And she tells me you have a well-trained tongue.”
(Daria and I didn’t know each other that well. In fact, we worked together just a few times before I bought her book. But her clients like to think we were lovers. Before she moved on, Daria planted this cute idea in their minds—and called during her honeymoon to remind me. She was a conscientious call girl, even in retirement.)
Soon