The Sexopaths

  Then there was the phone call. The sweat dripping from his armpits. The burr of the ring tone. Adrenaline pumping. Pulse rising. Fight or flight in an uneasy truce. Hold on? Hang up? Then a girl’s voice. Too late. It’s done.

  A fresh wave of combative hormones had unbalanced him as he reconnoitred the tenement. Glancing upwards, the sloping pavement seemed to shift beneath his soles – he wasn’t sure if it were sudden vertigo or the realisation that Monique’s office window was within easy bowing range, should a vengeful Cupid be perched watchfully on the sill. He’d registered the possibility when he noted the address, but responsibility was diminished by dopamine.

  Now there was the real possibility of being spotted. Or what if she happened to slip out for a latte and cross in his direction? The girl had taken an age to answer the intercom. He’d yanked the hood of his sweatshirt out of his jacket and covered his head, hating the whole thing and holding the light fabric in place against the belligerent October easterly. Finally a disembodied ‘Top floor, number eight’ had penetrated the growl of the traffic, admitting him with a prolonged buzz of the electromagnetic lock-release that followed him up to the first landing, announcing his guilt like the giant’s Jack-napped golden harp.

  As he turned the corner he’d almost crashed into a young cleaning woman restraining an unruly vacuum. Attractively proportioned, and smartly kitted out in the kind of one-piece tunic that promised only underwear beneath, she’d mumbled a foreign-sounding ‘Hello’. He’d offered to carry the offending device but she’d explained ‘I clean here,’ quickly averting her eyes beneath his speculative gaze. She’d stooped to gather the cable, a hungry little gape in her uniform revealing a well-proportioned cleavage. Momentarily he’d been spurred on, but as he exchanged her perfumed space for the darkening musty stair, he felt a suffocating urge to halt, to turn, to escape. Not exactly cold feet, he reflects, more like early-onset cold turkey.

  Indeed, he’d known full well what crushing anticlimax lay ahead; what little hope there was of satisfying needs he barely understood. It was a juncture at which he’d happily slide the cash under the door and silently depart. But he was duly contracted by an irrational obligation to complete the deal, to play his part in the depressing and familiar scenario. The uncomfortable initial hiatus, the hairdresser chat, ideally a shower if the girl offers or requires it – a godsend despite the often tawdry facilities, a means of both running down the clock and of providing smooth passage from dressed to undressed, otherwise a degrading sixty seconds of clumsiness, critically observed.

  On Victoria’s part, Adam is forced to admit that at least she’s showing some initiative. Her persistent tongue, rasping like a cat’s, is making small but persuasive inroads into his resistance. She seems, by dint of his silence, to be treating her last question as rhetorical. He picks up the loose end:

  ‘Does the cleaner count?’

  ‘Mmm?’

  ‘The cleaning lady. Sex. On the way up in the stair.’

  ‘I do not believe you.’ She breaks off to make this statement.

  ‘It crossed my mind. A fantasy.’ He tries to lace the comment with irony, but it seems to go undetected.

  ‘Some men jerk off outside the door before they knock – it settles them down.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Others – they can come only one time.’

  He wonders if there’s an inquiry buried beneath this observation, but he doesn’t respond with an indication of his own predilection. As if his silence has given her licence to investigate further, she lifts off him and says:

  ‘Please to turn over, honey.’

  Adam complies. She’d been robed when he lay face down, and now the sight of her in all her glory demands that instinct kicks in. The near-perfect appearance, the long jet-black hair, the oiled breasts glistening in the candlelight of the heavily curtained bedroom, the tiny shiny briefs barely covering what presses from beneath, the matching ebony wet-look hold-ups and stilettos. She says:

  ‘Do you want anal? Is all in the price. With condom – I only do oral without.’

  It’s such a matter-of-fact shot from the hip that Adam can’t answer. A ricochet of indignity catches him unawares and impairs his capacity to know his true feelings. He says:

  ‘I’m quite impressed by your tongue right now.’

  She smiles faintly and bends to adopt the implied procedure, ensuring a temporary break in the dialogue. After a couple of minutes she breaks off and draws herself up beside him, working him steadily with one hand. She leans across and presses her lips upon his. There’s a taste that can only be his own and he has to fight the impulse to recoil. She seems to sense his reluctance and breaks off, though keeping very close she whispers, now throatily:

  ‘So… what you enjoy to do with your wife?’

  Adam isn’t sure he wants to tell her, but feels a duty to answer. He says:

  ‘You know – massage, that kind of thing.’

  ‘What like?’

  ‘Well – I use massage oil… slowly… all over… and eventually make her come.’

  The girl starts kissing his neck and face, lower down her grip tightening. She says:

  ‘She like you to tie her?’

  ‘Sometimes.’

  ‘And blindfold?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Who you think she imagine?’

  ‘I daren’t ask.’

  ‘And you – what you like?’

  ‘I like… the same.’

  ‘Done to you? Tied?’

  ‘Aha.’

  ‘And who do you imagine?’

  He can’t answer this immediately, and before he can offer the diplomatic suggestion ‘From now on – Victoria’ she fastens onto his mouth again. Her slippery body squirms against his and she increases the tempo of her hand-speed. He realises he’s being carried with her will and yields, opening his mouth to the urgency of her hard, flicking tongue, swallowing her surely affected moans of pleasure as if they were gulps of warm liquid. Indeed, he drowns, passing into an unmeasured period of suspension. When the petit-mort subsides and he bobs back to the surface of proper consciousness, the girl is mopping his salty torso with tissues.

  She returns from the bathroom seemingly unfazed by her toplessness; to his effectively post-coital eye her breasts have lost their allure, assuming asexual proportions like those belonging to tribal women in tv documentaries. Seeing him in the act of dressing she raises an eyebrow, then casts about for the gown she’d discarded not many minutes earlier. Once is enough?

  But he’s impatient to leave. The predicted claustrophobic discomfort is setting in like cramp in his muscles. His phone is sure to ring any second, and he has no legitimate reason to be unobtainable.

  Meanwhile she takes a cigarette from a packet on the dresser and, lighting it, settles upon the bed. After the first deep draught she offers it to him.

  ‘No thanks, I… oh… okay, thanks.’

  He wonders what he’s doing and why he relents, but the nicotine works its speedy magic. Nevertheless he sits tentatively beside her. Moments earlier she’d toyed with his naked body, and hers was freely available to him; now he feels like he’s checked out, no longer a guest who can access all areas.

  As though reading his mind, she edges closer so they are touching. ‘Your time not finish.’

  He chokes a little on the cigarette.

  ‘You no smoke?’

  Adam shakes his head, squinting through the dizziness and acrid smoke.

  ‘Sometimes.’

  ‘Is no harm. Relax.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘You come back? Now you have my number.’

  ‘Of course – you were very good.’ He wonders if the promise conveys a hollow ring – but he guesses she’ll be hardened to that.

  ‘Some guys they like to see different girl every time. Is more exciting.’

  Adam can’t tell if she’s just making an observation for conversation’s sake, or if the statement is really a question, an obtuse at
tempt to get at his – and therefore others’ – motives for perhaps not returning.

  ‘Well – maybe. But with different girl it may not be nice. Is risk.’

  He wonders why he’s lapsed into her idiom; she can probably understand him perfectly well if he just speaks normally. He reverts:

  ‘I thought most girls’ business comes from regulars?’

  ‘Regulars – they come and go.’ She sends an expanding cone of smoke skywards.

  ‘How long have you been… working?’

  This time she’s happier to elaborate. She says:

  ‘Few year. I was in bad relationship. He cheat on me many times. I decide to leave him.’

  Adam nods thoughtfully, though wondering why she would admit any credence to his sympathy. He says:

  ‘That was here – in the UK?’

  ‘No – I from Zagreb.’

  ‘Did you… work… in Zagreb?’

  She inhales and shakes her head. ‘All family live there.’

  Adam nods again. He says:

  ‘Croatia.’

  She gives him a look of surprise, as if it’s rare for punters to know this. He says:

  ‘I have been there. To speak at a conference – at the Esplanade. It is a beautiful city. Brave people.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘And you have not met anyone since?’

  She shakes her head a little sadly. ‘I always hope. We do not know what waits for us. I want one day to settle down – have children like my sister – with good man – like you.’

  He ponders for a moment, intrigued by her shelving of their double-standards. While he’s thinking, she says, as if by way of explanation:

  ‘Some girls – they do this to find man. I know girls – they have marry client.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes – sure. They say they like man – but first they like money. Is good way to find man with money and man who want girl.’

  Adam can’t help musing that it would liven up a dinner party: ‘And how did you two meet?’ Or maybe shock it into silence. He wonders if this particular strategy applies primarily to escorts from abroad. He says:

  ‘How did you come to the UK?’

  ‘My friend – you know Nina? – she already here.’

  She’s another of the girls on the Angels website. He says:

  ‘I recognise the name.’

  ‘You see her?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘She live with guy – she only do outcalls. Is more difficult, yes?’

  This seems to be Victoria’s reasoning for why he hasn’t had the pleasure.

  ‘I guess so.’

  Feeling invited, he takes a little step further into her world. ‘How about you – do you do many outcalls?’

  ‘Not many – I like to work in day. Outcalls mainly night – middle of night, two… three in morning.’

  ‘Do you have problems – getting into hotels… past the porter?’

  ‘Me – no. I dress like hotel guest not like hooker.’

  Her use of the informal noun causes him to turn and meet her gaze. As if to explain, she says:

  ‘Some people say hooker, some say escort… call girl – it does not bother me.’

  Adam senses a little quickening of his pulse. He says:

  ‘You do a good job – the name’s not important. It’s a proper job.’

  ‘You are nice man.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  How can she mean it, though? It’s a funny old world. He says:

  ‘Do you know many of the other girls from Angels365?’

  She nods, inhaling as she does so. ‘Of course. You ask me.’

  To one side of the cigarette a corner of her mouth turns up with the hint of a smile. It’s as if she understands what drives his curiosity – that she thinks he’s looking for a recommendation. He hesitates, unsure about homing in directly upon a name. After a moment he says, casually:

  ‘Well, there’s a girl called Jasmin…’

  ‘She is good. She is crazy. I have work with her – you know – a two-girl? The man he like her okay. I like her. You like her.’

  Her final sentence seems to be a statement, though she watches him with a studied look. The resumé is evidently complete. It tells him a smattering of what he already knows, but he gets the feeling that Victoria will be thrifty when it comes to dispensing details of her co-workers’ clandestine practices. Now he asks, somewhat ingenuously:

  ‘There’s one called, er… Xara, I think?’

  At the mention of this name, Victoria inhales again and rolls her eyes.

  ‘All the guys, they speak about Xara.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Why you all want Xara? She look like Asian girl.’

  Adam is caught off guard by both the question and the observation. Is that true? And so what? These are comparisons that haven’t previously occurred to him. And racial stereotyping and apparent prejudice among the Angels is not something he’s tuned into. Of course, they are technically in competition with one another, despite the need to team up when money talks. Victoria seems to detect his disquiet over her indictments. She says:

  ‘Is okay – Xara – she will like you.’ There’s a definite emphasis upon the you.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘She can choose her client. She like you. She is… Elite.’ It’s the most lofty rating on the website.

  ‘But so are you.’

  The girl shakes her head forgivingly. ‘I am just escort. Hooker.’ She smiles quite wickedly, now taunting him with the word. She crosses her legs, revealing the bare flesh above her black stocking tops.

  Adam has a hunch that, were she to make the wrong move, incipient inertia could gain the upper hand over the momentum to depart that he’d felt a minute earlier. But it’s not what he wants.

  Victoria adds: ‘Xara – she is… in control.’

  Inwardly he concurs, and wonders if she really does comprehend this truth; whether she has perhaps met Xara. Or is it just juicy gossip, plucked down from the online grapevine of message boards and blogs that binds the girls and their more loquacious punters? Regardless, it confirms his impression of a dispassionate intelligence, a trace of animal cunning. He nods slowly, and then says:

  ‘Would you do a two-girl with Xara?’

  She shakes her head unambiguously. ‘Xara – she does not do two-girls.’

  ‘Really – I thought maybe…’ He trails off, recognising the dead end, and looks to retrace his steps. ‘I thought maybe I’d read… you know – a field report?’

  She shrugs, takes one last draw and stubs out the cigarette in a glass ashtray beside the bed. Adam recognises the cue – time’s up. Or put more cash in the meter. He rises to his feet and stretches his back, arms above his head, a signal that he’s about to leave; punctuality equals good manners in this game.

  He says:

  ‘I better get going. Look – thanks, it was very nice. Don’t give up the day job.’

  ***

  Outside, he finds the autumn dusk well advanced beneath a blanket of lowering cloud. He turns quickly out of the building, down the hill away from Monique’s office. The pedestrian traffic is thickening and gaining urgency as rush-hour approaches, offering the swift anonymity of the herd. The wind has freshened and backed to the north, and thus sharpened it carries stinging sleety missiles, their glistening traces revealed as they pierce the illuminated pockets of airspace beneath the downlighters fixed to the old tenements. But he welcomes the cleansing chill of the rain, it numbs the anxiety he’d felt on emerging from the stair, like a fox leaving its earth, that moment of exposure when the waiting hunter’s salvo may strike. And in these conditions nobody is looking around; it’s hoods up and heads down as they wait at the lights to cross Queen Street en masse.

  He’s parked deep in the New Town, where regimented Georgian terraces become disrupted by the older thoroughfares of Stockbridge; where Monique for sure will not have left her car today, what with the hill and the cobbles, and t
hose heels. Heels – that’s right, she’s out tonight. He wonders what she will do with her car. He wonders what she will do.

  As the spectre of shadowy liaisons returns to haunt him, catching him unawares, he agonises over his own loathsome efforts to offset its impact; this default to base needs, the history made today. But the hunger is never confined to the past. Experience tells him so. Even now it threatens to return, while Monique’s quixotic antics daily test his mettle. And, for him, it’s not the act itself – that would be easier to thwart. Where once there was titillating twilit exotica, now there are only unyielding false breasts and discarded condoms cast into clinical relief by the spotlight of sordid familiarity; far from irresistible. No - it is the stimulus to which he has become habituated, each fix raising the threshold and rendering the next less effective, until only the most meagre anticipation survives as a source of exhilaration, briefly masking his anxiety and discontent. It may be that his enrolment into Xara’s cast has served of late to raise the temperature of the performance, an unfathomable de Sade-like drama in which bewitched actors take their cues, obedient and breathless as the outrageous script unfolds before them, but in turn the greater anticlimax merely emphasizes the inadequacy of such a salve. The drugs don’t work – if they ever did. And thus here he is, slinking home devalued, alien female pheromone again secreted upon his flesh.

  As for Monique, meanwhile – who knows? She might this very moment be poised to tumble through the gossamer-thin walls that separate the players in the drama that seems to be enveloping him. What if – he speculates – Jasmin-Sharon thinks it would be devilish fun or prudent business to introduce her over a glass of wine to Xara? Imagine if they each were recruited, neither knowing about the other, to discover some drunken confessional moment many years hence that they had participated together in the same orgiastic episode. What if Xara has such a plan in mind, and is targeting Monique through Jasmin-Sharon? Right now, at Xara’s beck and call, he doesn’t know whether he can safely refuse her command, nor whether he is capable of such a refusal.

  As he reaches his car he tells himself his unwelcome fantasies are running away with themselves, beyond the bounds of rational possibility. And yet if any ‘normal’ person were to see his diary for the next few days – Saturday, a call girl and his wife and mind-bending ‘accessories’; Tuesday, maybe two call girls and God knows what else – they would say he has dreamt it up. And yet, he lives the dream. Monique, meanwhile, embarks maybe on the next stage of her journey of self-discovery.