Desdemona matched his gaze with her own as she picked up the card and held it between two fingers as she eased her dress down over her body until it fell to her feet. Naked, she continued to look at him even as his eyes left hers to travel up and down the length of her frame. At ease, she withdrew her iPhone from her bag and attached the card reader, tapping her foot as she rung his purchase.
“Name your damn price, Mademoiselle,” he ordered, his eyes intense as they finally shifted up to lock with hers again.
“That will be eighty-one-hundred dollars with tax. For the dresses. Don’t worry, I’ll cover delivery,” she said, before swiping the card through the reader.
She reached for the dress of his choosing: a sheer black lace halter dress with a low back and the mystery of the nudity beneath it hidden by the folds of the A-line skirt that fell to the tops of her heels. With a twirl, the dress rose up high around her waist. “You like?” she asked, coming to a stop.
“To hell with this,” he said, quickly undoing the button and belt of his pants to free his erection where he sat.
“Antoine,” she chided, like a teacher scolding a misbehaving child, as she picked up her flute and took a sip.
He bit his bottom lip as he stroked the length of his penis with a tight grip.
She removed the dress and hung it back on its hanger before calmly placing all three dresses back inside the garment bag. He began to grunt in the back of his throat at his rising pleasure, and she closed her eyes as her clit swelled to life, wanting to be pleased as well. She bent to pick up her own dress.
“Shit,” he hissed from behind her, his urgency clear.
Desdemona released a breath, recognizing the pleasure in the depth of his hazel eyes as he stroked himself.
She desired a climax, but not him. She did not want him. He was just a man—a john—attached to a decent penis. She could achieve the same climax back at home with her two fingers or one of her toys.
She stepped over to him and pressed the side of his face against her flat belly. She felt his body tremble at her nearness as she looked down at him working himself so feverishly that his hips seemed to uncontrollably jerk forward. And when he roughly cried out as his cum shot from him like a cannon, some landing on her cheek and nipple, she stroked his head, comforting him. His moans and cries subsided as he became flaccid.
I owed him that nut.
She stepped away from him and stepped into her Lycra dress before dropping his card onto the table and picking up her tote. “Never contact me again, Antoine,” she said, using the back of her hand to swipe his ejaculation from her cheek.
He looked up at her, his breathing still ragged, before his eyes squinted in understanding.
That one moment between them had cost him access to her courtesans.
He nodded. “It was worth it,” he said.
With her clit throbbing and starved, jealous of his climax, she slid on her shades and scarf and turned to leave him on the plane. She didn’t bother to retrieve his burner phone and just blocked his number on her end.
* * *
I could be in Paris.
Not that she’d never been before. She had. She had just never gone on her own. Just to go or for vacation. It had always been for work. Sex. Servicing. She’d seen no more than the Charles de Gaulle Airport and various luxury hotel suites. Never the landmarks she’d heard about or seen in TV shows and films. The Eiffel Tower she’d glimpsed from a window, and that was no more effective than a postcard. The Louvre or the Champs-Élysées? The Latin Quarter and Versailles? Never.
Just fly in. Screw. Fly back out.
“You’re tensing up, Ms. Smith. Is everything okay?”
No.
Desdemona released a breath and forced her body to relax as she lay atop the padded massage table of the spa located in her building. “Everything’s fine,” she said, her face resting inside the padded headrest.
“Good,” the woman said.
Desdemona couldn’t remember her name.
She closed her eyes and tried to enjoy the feel of her skilled fingers working the muscles of her back with deep glides. In truth, it was the area below her navel that needed the massaging with a little toy that vibrated. After watching Antoine climax she’d felt like a cigarette—or fifty deep and hard strokes. Over and over and over—
Desdemona sat up on the table, her heart and clit pounding in unison, and reached around for the white sheet to cover her breasts. “That’s enough,” she said.
Her erotic thoughts plus the woman’s hands gently kneading her body made things really awkward, really quick.
“But you have more time available,” she said. Desdemona looked at her name tag with a stiff smile. Roberta. That’s right. “I’m fine, Roberta. You were wonderful. I just remembered an appointment,” she lied, accepting the robe the woman handed her.
“Yes, ma’am.”
She covered her face with her hand when she was left alone, but visions of Antoine’s ejaculation plagued her. Teased and taunted her.
The times have really changed.
Cruising through Greece. Jetting to Paris. Men content with pleasing themselves.
It was so far removed from her days streetwalking. She lightly touched the spot on her cheek where his seed had been as she remembered seeing and doing far more for much less. Twenty for a hand job. Fifty for a blow job. The roughness. The fear. The long nights waiting on corners and in dark spaces for a car to pull up. The hits and punches from men just as angry as they were horny. And then those bums who paid up front then robbed her for the same money once they were done with her.
She closed her eyes, hating that she could almost recall the moldy scent of cheap motel rooms. And back then, that half hour in those dingy damn rooms with their scratchy sheets and lumpy beds had been a respite from the street.
She had had no wealthy consorts, just johns. Tricks.
Sometimes, she honestly forgot.
Desdemona doubted any of her courtesans had the gumption to survive the shit she’d seen and done. And she made sure they didn’t have to. No violence. No pressure. No obligations. No degradation.
She tried her best to be to them what others hadn’t been to her. Kind. Empathetic. Protective.
“Shake it off,” she said, rising to her feet and closing the robe. “Look at you now, kiddo. Look at you now, Desdemona.”
Notching up her chin, she refused to wallow. Refused to dwell on the middle between streetwalking and being a madam with a roster of wealthy and powerful consorts. She had taken the hard knocks, learned the tough lessons, and made sure that any consort looking to buy pleasure between a woman’s thighs paid the high price and provided nothing but luxury surroundings to do so.
Dark corners. Park benches. Dingy motels. The back seat of cars. Anywhere and everywhere. Never again. Not for her or anyone who worked for her.
Upstairs in her condominium, Desdemona took a hot bath and was just pulling on a short, sublime ivory and silver silk kimono with wide lace sleeves from Agent Provocateur when her doorbell rang.
Still in a Parisian state of mind, she had ordered delivery from a nearby French restaurant. She grabbed cash from her wallet to tip the porter who brought all deliveries from the concierge desk to residents.
She closed her robe tighter before opening the door, smiling at the uniformed middle-aged man. “I have a food delivery for you, Ms. Smith,” he said, his tone polite as he averted his eyes.
They swapped the plastic bag of containers for the cash tip. “Thank you,” she said, closing the door with her foot as she carried the food to the dining room table.
The smell of the cuisine already filled the air before she even opened the bag. Atop the containers was a folded card. She opened it and frowned in confusion. She assumed it was a handwritten detail of everything she ordered. A nice touch, but a waste for her. The French looked like gibberish and some of the English translation beneath it was lost to her as well.
“Parlez-vous français?”
she said with a comical imitation of a French accent.
She had discovered the restaurant via Yelp. Great reviews. Beautiful photos of delicious and artistic looking food. She gave it a go, but when she ordered online she just picked things at random and prayed for something edible.
She had decided on an oyster dish for an appetizer, lobster and scallops stuffed in cabbage for her entrée, and a strawberry tart for dessert.
That was life among the wealthy and famous. She faked it until she made it. Picked up and learned what she could, and the rest she just played it by ear. Now she moved about them with ease and even gave them a reason to pause when she cast them a disapproving eye. It worked, but . . .
Desdemona paused in plating her food, having long since given up eating from plastic or aluminum containers, and reached for the card.
“Hoo-hootres gra-granite ox . . . aglue?” she read aloud, hesitant and unsure.
Not a good feeling at all. Foreign or not. The root issue was her inability to read well.
She set the card down and retrieved a long-handled fork from the drawer before she poured a large glass of her favorite wine. The food was delicious. Well-seasoned and buttery. So much so that she didn’t allow herself to eat too much, thinking of her waistline. But even as she enjoyed the meal, her eyes kept going to the card, and she was reminded of her inability to comprehend it.
She retrieved her phones from where they were charging and went into her contact list, dialing number three. It rang once and went straight to voice mail. “Call me, Mr. President,” she said, before hanging up and setting the phone on the counter.
She tapped her fingertips against the counter as she eyed the portrait of her parents. Both had been college educated, her mother a nurse and her father a pediatrician.
“Do better. Be better, Desi.”
How many times had he said those words to her when she was a child?
Cha-ching. Cha-ching. Cha-ching.
She looked down at the screen and answered the call, placing it on speakerphone. “Ready for the new school term, Mr. President?” she asked, turning to lean her buttocks against the counter.
“Ready as ever,” he said.
“Good,” she said, with a genuine smile. “And how are you?”
The line stayed quiet for a little bit. He knew what her question entailed, and perhaps the pause was him dealing with a sudden pang of pain and regret.
“I miss her,” he finally answered, his agony palpable even via a phone line.
“I know because it equals your love, Francis,” she said, turning and bending over the counter next to the phone.
“If it wasn’t for my children I would . . .”
His words faded, not giving voice to darker thoughts.
She clearly remembered the short and slender man in his early seventies with a head full of white hair that was once a sandy brown and blue eyes filled with intelligence but also some other emotion she couldn’t name at the time. But it became obvious as he spoke of his beloved wife of more than forty years slipping into a coma after a burst aneurysm that the emotion was grief. Pure. Unbound. Brimming.
For nearly an hour he had sat with her in her boutique, fresh off being vetted after a recommendation from one of her consorts who was a governor and fellow classmate. She listened. She empathized. She tried her best to console him.
Desdemona understood grief all too well.
She’d accepted Francis McAdams as a consort. She’d been surprised to learn that the president of a private college earned seven figures, and he was at the top of the highest earners when totaling his million-dollar base pay, another million in bonuses, his retirement plan, and living for free in a large home owned by the university. He could more than afford her rate, she made sure of that. Before entering the education sector he was a brilliant attorney with a stellar law career.
After meeting with him and seeing his devotion to his wife, she wisely chose a courtesan with a trashier look and less education. Red was someone he would never connect with on a deeper level. That was important, because he was only looking for a physical release. No connection. No communication. Just sex. Once a week for the last year.
“How is Kimber?” she asked.
“The same.”
“I’m so sorry, Francis,” she said, the truth of her regret present in her tone.
“I know.”
She regretted calling him, seeming to help nudge him toward his sadness over the loss of his wife. “I . . . uhm . . . I was just . . .”
“It’s been a year and you’ve never called me. It’s always the other way around,” he said, amusement now present. “It must be important.”
Desdemona picked up the phone and unplugged it from the charger before she walked backward into the kitchen to eye her parents in the portrait again. “I, uhm, I could use your help,” she said, hating the way her fear and shame caused her heart to pound. “I . . . I—”
“Yes?”
She looked up to the high ceilings. “I need a tutor to help me study for my GED,” she said, the words rushing together and almost colliding.
Her shoulders deflated, and she exhaled through her open mouth.
If he was surprised by her revelation, he covered it well. “A tutor is not a problem, but our business—”
“Is our business,” she said, intervening.
“Good,” he stressed. “Actually, I think Loren Palmer would be great. Let me get me back to you tomorrow?” he asked.
“Yes. Thank you,” she said, amazed at the lightness and relief she felt even as her fear for the new, the unknown, the challenge butted against everything she thought she defined herself to be.
They ended their call.
She set the phone down on the table and opened the container holding her dessert. With a small gasp of surprise, she lightly touched the wings of the 3-D chocolate butterfly on top. The pastry chef had to have a steady and delicate hand to make something so fragile and decadent. “More butterflies,” she said.
With a curious look, she picked up her phone and pressed the home button. “Siri, what is the symbolism of butterflies?” she asked the virtual assistant.
“Here is what I found on the web for ‘what is the symbolism of butterflies?’ ”
Desdemona opened the website and highlighted the text before choosing the speak button, activating the text-to-speech option on her phone.
“The butterfly is primarily associated with change and transformation.”
Desdemona looked down at her bracelet, to which she had been so inexplicably drawn, and felt like she was ready for whatever was to come.
Chapter Five
Monday, August 27, 2018
My biggest regret? Dropping out of school. Thank God my streets smarts and common sense got me this far. Time to see what a bitch could do with some education . . .
“Why am I nervous?” Desdemona asked her reflection as she smoothed her hands over the black T-shirt dress she wore with fluffy fox fur slides.
A millionaire worrying about earning a GED.
“Am I crazy?” she whispered.
Knock-knock.
She looked down the length of the hall to the front door in the foyer, with a light clap of her hands as if to pump herself up. The light slapping of her slides against the wood floors echoed as she made her way to the door to open it.
“Ms. Smith? I’m Loren Palmer.”
Her eyes widened in surprise at the tall man in his mid-twenties standing before her. “You’re Loren?” she asked, pointing a newly polished nude nail at him as she looked him up and down to take in his wild mane of hair pulled up into a ponytail with his edges trimmed and his beard neat. His V-neck T-shirt was fitted on his slender frame with the basketball shorts he wore with vintage Jordans and colorful knee-high socks. His arms were covered with black-and-white tattoos and with it all his black-rimmed vintage Cazal-style glasses seemed out of place.
He nodded. “Yes,” he answered with his raspy voice, hooking his thumb
s around the wide straps of the book bag he wore on his back.
“I thought you were a girl,” she said.
He shrugged, reminding her of the emoji. “It’s with an ‘o,’ not an ‘au,’” he explained.
She continued to eye him. His hair was jet black, soft and shiny, and matched his brown complexion well. Behind the glasses, his eyes were slanted and intense in a deep shade of brown.
“Listen, I was told someone wanted a tutor?” he said.
“Uhm, yeah . . . uhm, me,” she said, tapping her hand against her chest as she finally stepped up. “I want to be tutored.”
“You have to be willing to learn,” he said. “Are you?”
She nodded. “I am.”
Loren walked inside, looking around at the condominium. “Dope place,” he said, tilting his glasses down on his nose with his index finger as he looked over the rim.
That amused her, and she smiled as she closed the front door. “Are those prescription or for show?” she asked, coming over to lead him to the dining room table.
“Prescription,” he said, easing them back in place over his eyes.
Atop the dining room table were school supplies. Notebooks, pens, and highlighters. Even tape, thumbtacks, and index cards. “I thought the view was so nice we could work right here,” she said. “I hope I have everything we need.”
He chuckled. It was deep. “More than enough,” he said, removing his backpack.
Desdemona noticed him eye the chair by which she stood and then looked back up at her. She realized he was waiting for her to be seated first. She pulled the padded club chair back and took a seat before waving her hand at the chair before him to do the same.
“Is it a problem that I’m not a woman?” he asked, unzipping his book bag and removing a large and thick workbook.
“No, it just surprised me,” she admitted.
“Do you want to do the tutoring in a more public place?” he asked, as he looked inside his book bag and removed a case of pencils.
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