Fast Girl

by Suzy Favor Hamilton

  “When are you going to buy it?” I asked, already prickling with excitement. Although I was proud of how much money I made in Vegas, it was almost like play money, and I never thought specifically of using it to cover my Vegas expenses. I spent as much as I wanted in Vegas and what was left sat in our safe at home, untouched.

  “I’ve already picked out the condo I think is best for us,” he said. “I want you to go check it out, and if you think it looks good, I’m going to make an offer.”

  As I strolled through the condo, snapping pictures to send to Mark, I felt a deep sense of satisfaction, like I was exactly where I was supposed to be. Maybe everything would really work out the way I wanted after all.

  I DIDN’T HAVE TO DO everything a client wanted on a date, only what I was comfortable with, and the decision was totally up to me. At the same time, there were certain sex acts that cost extra, which the client knew up front. Mark and I had, in our old life, been very open when it came to sex. There was a lot I was comfortable with. And besides, there wasn’t a judgmental bone in my body. I wanted to make my clients feel good and help them to live out their fantasies, and so I responded enthusiastically to almost everything they wanted to try. But there were a few things I wouldn’t do, and that was that. No one ever tried to pressure me. But now that more and more extreme behaviors—drugs, taking high-end gifts, overnights—were becoming the norm for me, I had to push the boundaries even further. I started expanding the range of things I was willing to do, of my own accord. For a little while, at least, it worked.

  When pushing the sex boundary lost its thrill, I started to occasionally tell clients who I was, so that by the end of my time in Vegas, probably a total of ten knew my real identity. When I did tell a client, I loved seeing how excited he got when he learned I was a famous runner who had competed in the Olympics. I didn’t think about the risk I was bringing upon my family and myself. My clients had just as much reason to be discreet as I did. Many of them were married and saw escorts specifically in order to avoid a messy, and expensive, divorce. Even the ones who were single had successful careers and didn’t need it known publicly that they had a taste for sex for hire. Most important, we had a special bond that no one else could understand. There was no way any of them would betray me. I was sure of it.

  MARK’S OFFER ON THE CONDO at Trump had been accepted, and I was able to move in right away. The address seemed very exclusive to me, and I loved living there from the start. Having a Vegas address was another step toward living my fantasy. I quickly made friends with my neighbors, chatting to whoever crossed my path. I talked a mile a minute, never stopping to think I might be saying the wrong thing or befriending the wrong person.

  One night, after seeing a new client, my phone buzzed. It was another of my clients, a regular from San Diego. I smiled, figuring he was sending me a sexy note or letting me know he’d been in town that weekend. And then I read what he’d written: “A man from the Smoking Gun contacted me about a picture of you from your real estate company’s website.” My hands were shaking as I pushed the button to dial his number.

  “What happened?” I said as soon as we got on the phone.

  “It was really weird,” he said, sounding rattled. “This guy contacted me and introduced himself as a reporter from a website called the Smoking Gun. He asked me if I had ever gone to see an escort named Kelly in Las Vegas, and before I could even try to deny it, he said he’d read my review of you, and so he knew that I had seen you. And then he said he had a photo and he wanted to send it to me and get me to confirm it was the same Kelly I had seen in Vegas. Only when I looked at the woman in the picture, she wasn’t named Kelly. She was named Suzy and she was a realtor in Madison, Wisconsin. But the woman in the photo was definitely you.”

  “What did you say?” I asked, my stomach twisting. I knew members of the Erotic Review were able to exchange messages on the site as a way to share information about girls they liked, and that the Smoking Gun writer could have easily posed as a member in order to infiltrate the escorting world and seek information about me.

  “I didn’t say anything,” he said. “I didn’t call him back. I called you instead.”

  “Thank you,” I said, feeling grateful that I had so many amazing, loyal clients. I could still save the day. I knew I could.

  “Say it’s not me,” I said.

  “Okay,” he said. “I can do that.”

  I could tell by the tone of his voice that my client found the whole situation very odd. I could also tell that he was nervous that he would be exposed as someone who paid for sex. I quickly tried to reassure him.

  “Thank you,” I said. “I’m so sorry you had to be bothered with this. It’s nothing. Really. Nothing will come of it.” To show him I was not the least bit worried, I added, “When will you be in Vegas again?”

  After receiving this call, I went back to my regular Vegas routine, without a care in the world. Looking back, of course, this seems impossible to believe. But, as far as I was concerned, I had figured out a way to outsmart this reporter, and that would be the end of it. It never occurred to me that he would contact many more of my clients who had also left reviews for me on the Erotic Review and ask them the same question. It had been easy to dismiss Mark’s worry when clients I genuinely liked and trusted had discovered my real identity. This was different, and clearly more serious. But I was more concerned about Mark’s reaction to the news than what might actually come of it, and so I put off calling him until the next day.

  “Mark, one of my clients called me and told me that a reporter from the website the Smoking Gun had contacted him asking if Kelly, the Vegas escort, was the same person as on our real estate website.”

  “What do you mean?” Mark said, the panic audible in his voice. “Who was it?”

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “He’s a regular from San Diego. I told him to say the woman in the picture wasn’t Kelly, and he said he would. We’re fine. I’ll call Bridget, just in case. It will be okay.”

  “Bridget can’t help us if this reporter really knows who you are and plans to out you. I can’t believe I just bought that condo there and it’s all falling apart already.”

  Just the thought of losing the condo, losing my life in Vegas, was enough to make me want to fight back with every ounce of my being.

  “I’m not going to let this guy win,” I said. “It’s all going to be fine. Other people know who I am, and they’ve never done anything. We don’t have anything to worry about.”

  Mark didn’t sound convinced, and neither was I, to be honest. But I certainly wasn’t going to stop, or run home. That wasn’t even an option. Later in the day, my client called me back to tell me that he’d denied the woman in the photo was Kelly and even said a few things to try to throw this reporter off of my trail. He still sounded a little on edge, and he indicated that he didn’t have any plans to come to Vegas for a little while. I told my client that when he did make it back, I would give him a proper thank-you.

  Even though I was proud of myself for handling the situation without Mark, it was hard to put the incident out of my mind. For the next week, every time my disposable phone buzzed with an incoming text or call, I steeled myself before answering, worried that it would be another client saying he’d been contacted. I worried that the reporter might be calling me directly. Every time Mark called or e-mailed me, I was afraid it was with the news that the Smoking Gun had done a story on me. In my downtime, I worried about what would happen if my double life were finally exposed. But mostly, I worried about what I would do if I had to stop. That just wasn’t an option.

  I stayed on the move, always busy, frantic, even. I took as many appointments as I could. I bought myself whatever caught my eye. When all else failed, I did the delicate dance of meeting a man in a bar and convincing him to spend his money on an escort, even though this possibility had been the furthest thing from his mind in the moments just before he met me. As the days passed without any further calls, I put it a
ll out of my mind. As far as I was concerned, I had dodged that bullet, and now it was business as usual.

  Chapter 19

  WHO I REALLY AM

  The service called me and told me that I’d been hired, along with another girl, to go on a golf outing. That sounded like fun, something new. Plus, it involved just the kind of challenge that appealed to my competitive nature.

  “Here’s the deal,” said my contact. “You’ll only get paid five hundred dollars to be there all day. I know that’s way below your normal daily rate, so just win somebody over, get him to invite you out that night, and you’ll make up for it.”

  The other escort working with me that day was Briana, a wonderful girl I’d worked with before and considered a friend. I also respected the fact that she was supporting her mom and a boyfriend all on her own. We’d been told that the event’s organizer hired two girls every year, but the year before the girls were awful and his clients had not been pleased. As Briana and I headed over to the golf course together, we decided that this year was going to be very different.

  “This is going to be the best time of their lives,” I said.

  I was wearing a very short gray sleeveless dress over a sexy lace bra, and nothing else, so I was feeling sexy and free. We worked it from the moment we arrived at the lobby of the golf club. When we saw the guys we’d be escorting, I got very excited. I was immediately drawn to the one who was a dead ringer for Patrick Dempsey. He had such charisma that I wasn’t sure if it was the actor or not.

  “Holy cow, you look exactly like that actor,” I said.

  He laughed and pulled up a picture of himself with Patrick Dempsey.

  “Are you his stunt double?” I asked.

  “No, we just look exactly alike,” he said. “I actually met him in person, so we took this picture together.”

  He might not have been the movie star, but he did look exactly like him. I was completely attracted to him, and so I hopped onto his golf cart. One of the other guys was clearly smitten with Briana, so she hopped onto his cart. Our job was to entertain the guys on the golf course, meaning they wanted us to drive the cart around, meet the other guys they were playing with, and flirt with them. I could more than handle that task.

  I had my Louis Vuitton bag with me that day, and of course I always carried condoms in this purse, even though I wasn’t expecting to need them for an afternoon golf outing. Briana had a purse, too, but apparently she wasn’t as prepared as I was. “Do you have any condoms?” she asked me.

  “Here,” I said, pulling out a strip and handing them to her.

  As we drove to the third hole, it was clear the movie star look-alike was very into me, and as I learned more about his fast-paced career in Los Angeles—he actually worked in the movie industry—the feeling was certainly mutual. I was always turned on when I had a client who was particularly successful. The path to the fourth hole led us through a secluded area on the edge of the course, with big mounds of earth that shielded us from view. He drove us around one of the trees to a place where no one could see, and I got out a condom and took care of him right there in the golf cart. It didn’t take long, and we were both completely covered again before anyone could see us. I’d never done anything like this, in broad daylight with a client I had only just met. But it also seemed totally normal, and I didn’t have a single moment’s worry or sense of shame.

  Engaging in such risky behavior filled me with adrenaline, and I was as high as I’d ever been. The men couldn’t keep their eyes off us, which only encouraged us to take it further. At the next hole, Briana and I both bent over in front of the look-alike so that our skirts lifted just enough to reveal what was underneath and test his concentration. Every hole, it got more extreme. Our clients loved every minute.

  On the sixth hole, the look-alike hit the ball into some brush.

  “Come and help me find the ball,” he said.

  The next thing I knew, we were having sex behind a tree. It wasn’t even pleasurable, but I wanted the act itself, the motion and the danger, and even as it was happening, I craved more. As usual, I’d been listening to the same Usher song, “Numb,” again and again all morning before I left for the golf course, just like I did every day when I was escorting. The words were stuck in my head: “Let’s go numb.” By the last hole, Briana and I were both lying on the green with our legs spread, as if they were playing a very adult version of miniature golf and we were one of the obstacles.

  From the golf course, we had a thirty-minute drive back to the Strip. While Briana sat texting next to me, I called Mark. In my heightened state, I was swearing like it was nothing and talking freely without any remorse.

  “Mark, you’re never going to believe the appointment I just had,” I said. “We were on a golf outing and my guy, he looked just like Patrick Dempsey, and he liked me right away. Within five minutes, he pulled over behind a tree, and I did the guy right there in the golf cart. And then I did him again in the woods. And the other girl and I, we were out on the green without any underwear, trying to distract the guys while they were playing.”

  Mark hung up on me, but in my wild mood, this didn’t faze me in the least. Just as we had hoped, Briana’s guy called her. I was thrilled for her, but hadn’t yet heard from the look-alike. And then, my phone buzzed.

  I met the look-alike at his room and spent three or four hours with him, earning about two thousand dollars. I was already numb, hardly thinking about what I had to do now when I was with someone. My body just took over.

  During a break in the action toward the end of the night, I was lying in bed, naked, drinking a glass of wine, and it all came crashing down on me—everything I had just done with this man, everything I’d done in the past eleven months, what would happen if the Smoking Gun really did expose me. I snapped back into reality, into being Suzy, and I started to cry.

  The look-alike was instantly freaked out.

  “Hey, hey, it’s okay,” he said. “What’s wrong?”

  “You’re going to know who I really am soon enough!”

  “What do you mean?” he asked, sounding intrigued.

  “I can’t tell you, but you’ll know when it’s in the news,” I said.

  I still wasn’t entirely sure why I was crying. I didn’t really believe that my story would come out. And while my behavior had gotten more extreme in those late days, I couldn’t seem to make myself care about the consequences.

  After about five minutes, reality just clicked off, and I was Kelly again. I left soon after that with a promise from him that he’d text me soon.

  Not long after that, Mark and Kylie flew into town, and the three of us stayed at our condo at the Trump to spend Thanksgiving together. When they arrived, I was so excited for them to see the condo, my new home. I stood in the lobby with them, facing the bank of elevators.

  “Cool,” Kylie said. “Our house doesn’t have an elevator.”

  Mark and I laughed.

  “You can push the button,” he said.

  Kylie ran along the row, pushing every up button and craning her neck to watch the windows that showed the elevators’ movement between the floors. When we got upstairs, Kylie ran along the corridor, exploring every corner, and once inside, she hurried over to the large wall of windows to look at the view.

  “Wow,” she said. “You can see everything.”

  I had found Kylie a place to do gymnastics nearby, and when she went to class there she fell in love right away. By simply calling Bridget, I could get anything I asked for. I used that connection to get tickets to see Shania Twain. Kylie and I walked there, as the concert was in the casino nearby. The next day, I took her to the Fashion Show Mall and bought her whatever she wanted, wanting to make up for the fact that I’d been gone so much. I was showing off for my family, sharing my new life with them. I wanted them to see all that I could give to them now.

  Mark’s parents came in from Malibu to meet us, and we all had Thanksgiving dinner together at a nice restaurant. I didn’t f
eel the least bit nervous about having my family or my in-laws in town, even though I was very much leading a double life. I was convinced I could get away with anything. By this point, Mark and I had become pretty skilled at acting like everything was fine. I was always happy to see my daughter, and the more time we spent together as a family in Las Vegas, the more I hoped I might make inroads in my plan for us to move there. The mood was strained but not unpleasant. It was the last happy time we’d spend together as a family for a very long time.

  During our time in Vegas together, I made my case to him.

  “I really think you guys should move here,” I said, rushing to list all of my reasons before he could shut me down. “Kylie’s gymnastics here are awesome. She has a great babysitter. She loves the condo and the pool and going to shows. We could get her into private school here, and we’d all be together and have fun, all the time.”

  “And what about my business?” Mark asked.

  “You can quit your job and work out here,” I said. “You can work for Trump. They need good real estate brokers like you.”

  Mark sighed heavily.

  “We’re not moving to Vegas,” he said.

  “But Mark . . .”

  “You want to move to Vegas, fine, but I want nothing to do with it, and Kylie will not be a part of it.”

  And that was that.

  As much as I wanted to have Mark and Kylie there with me, I really just wanted to never have to go back to Madison again. That was more important to me than my family at that moment, as crazy as it sounds. Even with Mark and Kylie still in Vegas, I went back to what was my normal life now—spray tans, nail salons, dropping thousands of dollars in cash on a pair of boots or a dress, and seeing multiple clients in a day, even picking men up at the bar if the service didn’t have enough work for me. I always had to be in motion, which meant I always wanted to be working, and now that I knew the ropes, I made sure I always was.