into her one last time.
‘You’ll let yourself out, Luke?’ she murmured afterwards, pointing at the wad of cash poking out beneath a jewellery box by her dressing-table mirror. ‘I want to stay right here.’
She lay there bathed in a glow of pleasured contentment. I picked up the money and went to the bathroom to get dressed. On my way out of the flat, I poked my head round the bedroom door.
‘Goodbye,’ she purred, tilting her head at me as she said it. The rest of her body nestled into the bed. I noted she hadn’t shifted at all since I’d left her.
Beginning of October
Jenny waved at me as soon as she saw me approaching.
‘Luke,’ she beamed, hurrying up to me and giving me a playful hug.
Both of us had relaxed a great deal over the weeks we had been meeting. I got pleasure out of seeing how much Jenny’s confidence had grown. And for me, still feigning experience with any new client, it was a relief to meet someone I already knew. An advantage of regular clients, I was quickly realising. Because for all the meeting and greeting I did in my new line of work, there was an artificial mateyness about meeting my clients. On one level there had to be for my own protection. My job was to provide the minimum niceties along with the sex, get paid for it, and get out of there. Which was fine most of the time. But the downside of that was that all the new people I was meeting meant very little to me. And I to them. Like they say, you can feel alone in a crowd.
Not with Jenny, though. I opened the café door for her and followed her in, and she sat down at our regular table while I ordered the coffees. Once I’d joined her, she had my undivided attention. That was part of the job description all right, but Jenny was also a means of honing my craft, though it was important to me that she felt our time together to be like time out from the stresses of her harsh working life.
Jenny looked me up and down. ‘Gosh, Luke, you look more handsome every time I see you!’
I winced inside. The way she said it made it sound like one of my mum’s friends saying it. The older woman admiring the young man, but with barely a sexual thought between them. Clumsy as it was, I knew it took all of Jenny’s limited arsenal of boldness to say it.
‘Why, thank you, Jenny,’ I replied, while trying not to think of my mum’s friends and what they’d all think if it got back to them what I was up to on the other side of the world. I didn’t give a rat’s arse what anyone else thought, but I knew it would worry my mum. She just wanted her kids to be safe and happy in whatever job they ended up in but I somehow doubted that escort work had ever figured in her hopes.
I twisted my mug so its handle was facing me, and wrapped two fingers around it. ‘Tell me,’ I continued, ‘how have you been since we last met?’
I brought the mug to my lips and kept my eyes on Jenny. The truth was, I had a very good inkling about what she’d got up to before I even asked. Because Jenny’s life didn’t alter from week to week. It was a long hard slog from one cleaning job to the next, just to make ends meet. Yet, the very fact she’d got her act together to see me on a regular basis, never mind the expense, filled me with a sneaking admiration for her.
‘It’s tough at times. At the end of the week I feel like I could sleep for a thousand years. But do you know, Luke, knowing you has brought a real ray of sunshine into my life!’
I set my mug down. ‘I don’t know what to say, Jenny.’
I really didn’t.
There was silence between us for a few minutes.
‘Tell me, how are things going with you? Is work picking up? It must be, surely,’ she encouraged.
I’d confessed to Jenny about her being my first client, my first regular one too, the last time I saw her. She’d looked surprised at first. ‘I’d never have guessed, Luke. You were so professional,’ she’d said with an air of wistfulness in her voice. She couldn’t bring herself to mention anything more sexual than that, I’d noted at the time, and then wondered whether I should risk angling for another go at it. She might have struggled to find the cash, but then again she had her own flat while I was struggling to pay the rent on a room. But I’d bitten my tongue.
I’d told her about sending out my CV and photos to any agency I could find on the net. She really had no idea about computers at all. But she sure as hell knew what trying to find work was about.
I ran my finger round the bottom of my mug and gazed across at Jenny. ‘I’ve had a few emails from people. I reply to everyone and hope they might book me some time or other. You never know.’
Though when I said ‘everyone’ I didn’t mean everyone. I gave the timewasters a wide berth. They proved pretty easy to spot. The ones who called me ‘Big Boy’ or told me what they wanted to do to me. Or the letters from girls but with a guy’s name in the email address. I’d caught on pretty quickly that the nervy, tentative messages were the genuine article, from women who felt awkward or embarrassed at what they were doing. Once I’d replied to them, they soon relaxed and were able to tell me what they were after.
That was a basic requirement. To make everyone who showed the slightest inkling of interest feel like they had my full attention. Because you never knew what that might bring, whether it was next week or some unknown time in the future. It was all potential work.
‘You’re getting your name around. That’s the main thing.’ Jenny nodded with enthusiasm in her eyes. Like she was gunning for me.
I knew I had to hope things would pick up. Because if I didn’t do that, then what was the point of even bothering? And don’t all small businesses struggle at first? I rubbed my finger across my closed lips and surveyed what I could see of the coffee shop behind Jenny. It was a busy afternoon, but for all the customers these places had, nobody really noticed anybody else as far as I could see.
I focused on Jenny again with a muted smile. I valued the fact that she was interested in how my own life was going. And there seemed no reason not to tell her. It wasn’t as if she was going to tell anyone, was it? That was the element of security there was in my job. Hiring an escort wasn’t something women tended to crow about.
The truth was that Jenny and I had realised that we could tell each other everything. It was as if this half an hour in our week was time out from where we each found ourselves at this point in our lives. Both of us were, to a degree, alone in the Big City. She had no family to speak of, and I was on the other side of the world from mine. I had mates, of course, but there was other stuff that I only told Jenny. We were each other’s sounding board. Like a comfort blanket, I suppose. It felt sometimes as if my mates were now on a different path in life to me. I’d had to wise up fast to suit the work I was doing. They knew what I now got up to when I wasn’t at the café, but they didn’t altogether get it.
It wasn’t as if what I was doing wasn’t legit. Prostitution was within UK law. But it somehow remained something you weren’t supposed to talk about here, never mind openly admit to indulging in. And while I had no qualms about my work, since I wasn’t hurting anyone and, in fact, could see the good I was doing my clients, I was sort of ‘the embarrassing mate’. What I was doing with my life was only seen by Mark and co. as ‘a bit of a laugh’ or ‘every guy’s fantasy’ in the right circumstances.
Jenny, however, gave me the space no one else did to talk about my work without being judged.
Our half-hour was up. We stood up and hugged, and she squeezed my hand and passed the cash to me. I gave her a warm smile and brushed her arm. Jenny’s whole life was running against the clock. But when the weekend arrived, she’d crash out and attempt to catch up on all the zeds she’d missed during the previous week,