‘That sounds fine,’ I said, doing some acting of my own. ‘I suppose it’s just the actual work we need to know a little bit more about now. I wonder if we could perhaps speak to one or two of the, ah, workers. To get a sense of it.’
‘Yeah,’ said Esmerelda, recovering herself. ‘You know, the vibe.’
Abby smiled directly at Esmerelda. ‘So then you wouldn’t mind starting off on our star level, dear? I think you’ll need some elocution lessons as a part of your training.’
Elocution lessons? For the denim-clad Doberman who punched overly instructional fashion photographers? Hmm. I happily imagined what that might look like.
To add insult to injury I could feel Esmerelda doing imaginary maths in her head, working out how much she would get paid in this essentially non-existent role she was pretending to interview for. Once she reached the answer, just $375 for the two-hour sale of her whole self—while her employer netted $1125—her hackles went up.
I placed my hand over hers. ‘No, of course not Abby, she would not mind taking a few elocution lessons. Crumble is all about self-improvement.’
Abby glanced over at me. ‘For both of you dear. You sound a little … haughty.’
Haughty! Haughty! What. A. Bitch. I had had years of elocution lessons, and my speech, if not my grammar, was beyond reproach. To have it questioned by a madam! And not even a real madam. This lady sat behind a plastic laminated desk and wore cheap shoes and nylon-blend clothes. There was no way she pocketed $15,000 for every two-hour, $20,000 fleur-de-lis session. I had no idea why she was lying about being the owner, but she was. I found myself leaning out of my budget chair over to her desk.
Esmerelda smiled her fake smile and pulled my arm in restraint. ‘Nah, she don’t mind at all. Violet’s all about self-improvement too. Aren’t ya Violet?’
I fumed internally, wrapping my arms around my waist so that my hands did not accidentally spring out and choke Abby.
‘Well then,’ said Abby as she stood, ‘that’s settled. You may come back on Monday and speak to one of our models to get a feel for the “vibe”. We could begin training the day after that.’
My anger turned to panic. Monday? There was no way we were coming back here on Monday. Or any other day for that matter. I would rather eat glass than endure another mortifying session with Abby. And it was not impossible that I could be in police custody by then.
‘Oh,’ said Esmerelda in mock dismay, glancing from Abby to me. ‘We can’t make it Monday.’
‘Well, another day during the week then,’ said Abby, making her way around the desk.
‘Oh, ah, no,’ said Esmerelda, ‘we ah …’
‘We have another job interview,’ I said, channelling my new disdain for Abby into bravado. ‘Tonight.’
‘Oh yeah,’ said Esmerelda catching on. ‘And another one after that tomorrow.’
Abby stopped short in front of us, Esmerelda and I stared up at her. Abby plastered her faux smile on, and I could see that her teeth, while bleached to within an inch of their lives, were themselves crooked and untidy. Just like her. She was about as real as those pearls.
‘My, my,’ she said, sounding remarkably like the big, bad wolf, leaning in over us. ‘What busy girls you are!’
‘Yep. Super keen,’ said Esmerelda, attempting to stand while Abby was inclined over her. ‘Places to go, people to do.’
‘And where else are you interviewing, may I ask?’ Abby asked, clearly not asking at all, rather demanding.
‘We’re going to the Pink Palace,’ I said, surprising myself. The lie was so clear and effortless.
Esmerelda’s head whipped around and she stared at me in astonishment.
‘The Pink Palace?’ said Abby sarcastically. ‘I think you’ll find it rather common.’
I could not believe it. The Pink Palace was a real place? I had just made that name up. Honestly, some people had no imagination.
‘Oh,’ said Esmerelda, tapping me on the shoulder, ‘you are such a kidder Violet!’ She turned back to Abby. ‘Isn’t she a riot! We’re actually off to Sydney’s Secrets tonight, then the Private Palace tomorrow.’ She giggled, a first, and said, ‘Pink Palace?! Violet!’
I had to hand it to Esmerelda, she was a true chameleon. I was deeply frightened.
A scowl crossed Abby’s un-Botoxed forehead and stayed there for a few beats. She looked at her cheap watch. ‘I suppose I could let you in for a quick chat now. Just for a few minutes.’
Esmerelda pumped Abby’s hand. ‘That’d be totally great.’
Abby did not look pleased. Whether it was because she had been pushed into doing something she did not want to do, or because Esmerelda was shaking her hand like it was an almost-empty can of hair spray, I did not know. What I did know was that this was my chance to stand up while holding the magazine in place. Surprisingly it hardly moved. It occurred to me that I really needed to think about buying underwear that did not extend all the way to my navel. The thought of buying slinkier underwear immediately made me think of Searing. I was a deeply, inappropriately, lusty widow. Probably not my worst problem, since I was also a widow who had just successfully interviewed for a position as an escort.
CHAPTER 16
HEIRESS UNDERCOVER
We followed acidic Abby back down through the gloomy hallway and into the smart reception area. She nodded at the receptionist, who then pressed a buzzer under the desk. There was movement on the other side of the room and an almost invisible secret door opened up in the wall. It was camouflaged with the same fleur-de-lis wallpaper and had no handle. I felt like I had stepped into a spy movie.
A large, brown, bald man, who bore an uncanny resemblance to Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson, stepped through the secret door and looked around. Abby walked towards him, Esmerelda and I following in her wake. As we drew closer the resemblance faded. He was not quite as brown or as good looking as the original model and he was wearing a red Madonna-style radio mic. Still, he was six foot four and built like a small tank, so all in all it was pretty impressive.
‘Barry,’ she said nodding at the tank-man, ‘let the others know we have two prospective employees.’
Barry? I was less impressed. Since everyone in this place probably sported a fake name I would have gone with something more masculine like Axel or Diesel or Dallas. Barry was The Rock equivalent of A Pebble.
He nodded his head in understanding and keyed the headpiece.
We had just walked through the secret door into a red hallway when Esmerelda stopped dead and began ratting through her tiny black Chanel clutch.
‘Darn,’ she said a little too delicately. ‘I’ve like, left my phone back in your office, Abby.’
We both stared at her. Surely that was the oldest, most uninspired, worn out trick in the book? There was no way asinine Abby was going to fall for that cliché. Once again, I envisaged Esmerelda and I being unceremoniously thrown out. This time the vision included Barry. Although the visualisation was improved by Barry’s presence, ultimately it would not help us with our Crystal quest.
Abby eyed Esmerelda shrewdly. Esmerelda pulled her best innocent-by-reason-of-mental-defect face and promptly showed Abby the contents of her clutch: lip gloss (mine), Prius car fob (Mother’s) and a banged-up wad of $5 and $10 notes with a smattering of gold one and two dollar coins (definitely hers). It was the saddest little purse innards I had ever seen. It was in desperate need of a Gold Visa, a European car fob, a clip of high-denomination multicultural notes (Australian, US, Yen and a few vintage five hundred Euro notes), Dior lipstick, mascara and eyeliner, and a phone. Shockingly, Abby felt pity for the clutch too.
‘Go back and make it quick,’ she said, lips tight, frustration evident.
Esmerelda nodded like a successfully scolded child and took off back towards the reception desk.
Abby turned to me. ‘Is she always like this?’
If by ‘like this’ you mean dodgy and deceptive, then, definitely.
‘Yes,’ I said.
The walls were painted an inky black and the stark white ceiling featured red glass chandeliers, with half a dozen lights and red drop crystals. It felt somewhat like walking through a uterus. Not very sexy in my opinion. But then again I was not exactly the target market for Magic Models, was I?
Abby opened a wide, ebony door at the end of the hallway. We came out into an enormous bar and lounge area, and finally my visualisation of what a bordello should look like came to life. The expansive floors were covered with the same plush red carpet as the hallway. On the right-hand side of the room the carpet gave way to black marble tiles where a long bar ran. There were eight large chandeliers, crafted from the same red crystal as those in the hallway, which ran two by two, side by side, from one end of the large rectangle-shaped room to the other. The walls were covered in black, grey and white fleur-de-lis wallpaper.
The bar was all black, white and red marble and granite with rose gold fixtures and massive mirrors in place of backsplashes. The Scotch on the shelves was very, very old Macallan and the glassware on the tables was brand new Waterford. The bar was luxurious by any standard and would have been comfortable in almost any five-star hotel, as long that hotel existed almost exclusively to serve straight, wealthy white men, most of whom were over fifty. Well over fifty. No wonder it looked so familiar.
Running down the left side of the room there were at least a dozen overstuffed lounge chairs in slightly varying shapes, fabrics and colours: from ruby red silk velvet club lounges to black leather Chesterfields. It looked macho but comfortable, and bluntly erotic.
There were lots of side tables and coffee tables, most with champagne buckets filled with ice, Moët or Dom Pérignon. Not very creative or socially diverse or supportive of the plight of the viticulturists of the Champagne region, since Dom Pérignon is a brand of Champagne produced by Moët & Chandon. They could have had offered a Piper-Heidsieck or a Krug or a Bollinger. Viticultural economic diversity was not high on the list of priorities here.
For reasons unfathomable to me, while most of the tabletops were made of black or white marble, a few were crafted from a light bluish-green African turquoise, which is actually a type of spotted teal jasper rather than actual turquoise. If you had spent three years completing an eight-storey luxury apartment building, you’d know about teal jasper too. At any rate the green combined with all the red gave the room a slight and rather odd Christmas feel.
It was decorated without concern for price. Or taste.
The bar was manned by three pretty, athletic-looking female bartenders, and serviced by a small army of waitresses. The waitresses carried silver trays and buzzed back and forth from the bar to the tables, and back to the bar again. Some disappeared with heavily laden trays down a mysterious hallway at the far end of the room. They all wore short black skirts with tiny white aprons, low-cut black cap-sleeved tops with white buttons running from cleavage to navel, and tall black heels with fishnet stockings. They all had long shiny hair pulled up into high ponytails and blood red lipstick. Think 1985 MTV French maids.
Between the French maids, the French Champagne and the Italian marble it resembled what I imagined a brothel in Paris looked like. Not that I had spent much time prior imagining that. Now it was all I could think about.
Down the end of the room near the mysterious hallway was a small dancefloor with two chrome poles running from floor to ceiling. It was occupied by one solitary soul who looked like she would rather be at home cleaning her bathtub. She looked up when Abby and I entered and applied a sexy pout to her face.
There were about twenty other women populating the various lounges. Each one had professionally styled hair, meticulous make-up and long, tanned legs emerging from high-end miniskirts or designer dresses. They were all very attractive and very young. They sat in groups of two or three. There were only about ten male clients in the room. But it was early and I imagined things got busier as the evening wore on.
I must have stopped short in astonishment upon entry to the room because Abby was halfway to the bar by the time I came to my senses. She turned and smiled back at me when she saw the expression of dumb shock on my face. She motioned me further in. I attempted to rearrange my face into something less like startled-heiress and clattered into the red room after her on Mother’s too-big Choos.
‘Impressive isn’t it?’ she said.
I said the first thing that came to mind. ‘How on earth do you keep all that carpet clean?’
‘A specialist cleaning crew comes through every morning at 9 am and dry-cleans it,’ she said proudly. ‘They’re dedicated.’
The carpet? I was standing in what looked like the set of an enormous French fantasy film complete with starlets in full costume and the carpet was my biggest talking point? I wanted to whack myself in the head. Instead I nodded in approval. And I might add it was not even a gratuitous nod! I was genuinely impressed. It is not easy to get stains out of luxury carpeting. Hundreds of cleaners have told me so.
‘I wonder where your, ah, partner is?’ she asked me, glancing back towards the entry hall door.
Um, rifling through your desk looking for Crystal’s information? Picking the locks on your filing cabinet? Stealing the silver?
‘She has a bladder the size of a peanut,’ I found myself saying nonchalantly, taking Abby by the arm. ‘She’s probably just paused to attend to herself.’
A flicker of suspicion crossed her face, but her attention was diverted when she spotted the once-again listless pole dancer.
‘What is that idiot girl doing?’ she hissed. ‘She looks like her dog just died. Wait here.’ And she was off across the amazingly stain-free, ruby red carpet.
Saved by a bored pole dancer in a pair of black Louboutin peep-toe pumps. The world had turned into a strange place indeed.
While I was happy to be liberated from my chaperone and bodyguard, I felt very conspicuous, like a rowboat adrift in an ocean of sleek yachts. Where was Esmerelda?
A group of boisterous young men dressed in Dolce & Gabbana jeans and Gucci T-shirts came out of the entry hall escorted by the blonde receptionist and Barry.
The first half of the group were greeted by a gaggle of French maid-waitresses who began leading them towards the bar. The second half of the group, who were smoking fat Cubans, walked towards me heading for the end of the room and the chastised pole dancer. I blanched as I recognised Matteo Del Rico, the younger brother of my MIA best friend Anna Del Rico, at the back of the pack. He was heading straight for me.
If I got out of this alive, and by alive I meant with my reputation in less than a hundred shattered pieces, I was so going to tell on Matteo. He might drive a Tesla Roadster, be on the top ten bachelors list and run his family’s transport company but his mother still did his laundry and I knew him before he had chest hair.
I put my head down, shaded my face with my right hand and eyes glued to the ground, I felt my way like a blind person to the first cluster of club lounges. I manoeuvred myself into a lounge with its back to the moving pack of men and slid myself (with the lookbook magazine still stuffed into my lace underwear) into it.
The group passed in a waft of burning Cuban tobacco, Armani cologne and Australian testosterone.
I raised my eyes off the red carpet to find myself face to face with two real-life escorts. They looked astonishingly normal—for top model escorts. I had no trouble believing these two could successfully warrant a $10,000 price tag to get out of bed. Or into bed.
One woman had dead straight, white blonde hair parted in the middle, so long it hung by her elbows. It looked natural. Or at least real. She wore a black lace, floor-length Roberto Cavalli dress with a V so low it flew past her chest and her navel, and feat
ured a leg-split so high you could see past her perfect thigh, up to her perfect hip. She had such beautiful Bambi doe eyes that, despite her extreme exposure, she exuded innocence. Her skin was so flawless and pale she might have been part vampire.
The other woman wore her thick chestnut hair in a sophisticated bob that ended with loose yet seamless and perfectly executed curls. Her skin was as smooth as crème caramel. I bet she had zero tan lines. She wore a long-sleeved, skin-coloured minidress with a pair of Fendi gold-mirror strappy sandals. The sleeves on the minidress were sheer and the hem was hand scalloped. I had seen that exact outfit on a runway or a Marie Claire spread. To be honest, I may have seen her wearing it on a runway or in Marie Claire. It was hard to tell.
It was good to know I was not the only one who bought entire outfits straight from magazine spreads.
I sat silently for several minutes while the two women discussed the best way to get rid of red wine stains, whether they should just give up and throw out their ‘skinny’ clothes which they were bemoaning they could never fit into again and the pros and cons of laser hair removal.
I found myself speaking before I realised my lips were moving. ‘Sarah Blackwell, in Elizabeth Bay,’ I said speaking loudly over the increasing noise of music and people.
They stopped and looked at me.
‘What?’ snapped the brunette.
‘Sarah Blackwell, in Elizabeth Bay,’ I said again. ‘SB. That’s the name of the laser clinic. They have this amazing range of relaxing vitamins to choose from before the laser session starts and after about fifteen minutes the laser doesn’t hurt at all.’
‘Really?’ said the blonde, wide-eyed.
‘Oh yes, and she is very fast, you hardly know you have been,’ I said, happy to finally be in territory I knew something about. I was a fan of beauty establishments that offered quality mimosas as a complimentary morning beverage and low-pain beauty. Even if the use of ‘vitamins’ was somewhat questionable.
Heiress On Fire Page 15