Two weeks later, out of the blue, she called. “Work,” she said. Peach was never one to waste words. “You’ve got to talk him into it, though.”
“Oh, Peach,” I said in dismay. She knew I hated the selling part.
“No, no, it’s all good, once he hears your voice it’ll be fine, just let him know how sexy you are. It’s Mario in Weston. If you can get him, you’ll love him, guaranteed.”
“He’s the one who has a youth fetish.”
“That’s the one,” she said briskly. “I told him you’re twenty-five, but sweet and naturally sexy and new to the business. I told him to stop being so rigid and try something new. He’s half-convinced.”
“Great,” I said gloomily. Another client who had to be talked into seeing me. “Give me the number.”
He answered on the second ring. “Yeah?”
“Hi, is this Mario?”
“Yeah. Who’s this?”
“My name is Tia. I’m a friend of Peach’s.” I paused, and he filled the gap. “Oh, yeah, right. You wear lingerie?”
This was okay so far. “Yes, I have –”
He cut me off. “Okay, wear something nice, not too cheap looking, you know what I mean? None of that garter belt bullshit, just something nice to look at. What brand of perfume you wear?”
It was all off-script, and I was a little off balance, but I recovered quickly. “Chanel Number Five,” I said. “But if you don’t like that, I also have –”
“No, no, that’s good,” he interrupted. “Peach says you’re real smart, real educated. She bullshitting me? Tell me the truth, I won’t hold it against you if she lied.”
I cleared my throat and my mind. “No, she’s right. I have an undergraduate degree in psychology from Harvard, and a master’s in social anthropology from –”
I was becoming accustomed to the interruptions; in an odd sort of way they paced the conversation. “Yeah, okay. She said you wrote a book.”
“I’ve published four books and a number of monographs,” I started. “I’ve also co-authored –“ “Yeah, yeah. Okay. You wanna come over?”
“Yes, it sounds like we have a lot to –“
“All right,” he said. “There’s no room in the driveway; I got cars, you know, but don’t park on the grass, all the girls they park on the grass, it’s dying. They don’t tow from in front of my house; you can park in the street, but be sure your wheels ain’t on the grass, you get me?”
“Absolutely,” I promised.
“Okay. Now, where are you coming from? Allston? Okay, here’s how you get here…”
I put on lacy (but not revealing) white panties and a matching bra, then put on over them a loose camisole that I often wore on hot nights in lieu of pajamas. It covered my ass but stopped just below it, and outlined my breasts nicely because it was silk, and fell just right. I put on a gray little-nothing suit, trim at the waist, something I could (but didn’t) wear to teach. He seemed to appreciate the academic side of me. I added black tights that shimmered a little (thanks to a high percentage of Lycra), moderate-heel shoes (he’d probably classify the fuck-me shoes as cheap), and added earrings, bracelet, and a slim chain holding a cross. If he was indeed Mafia, then he was also Catholic. I almost forgot the Chanel, sprayed it generously, tried to kiss Scuzzy goodnight (he was too busy trying to drink from the bathroom faucet to pay attention) and left.
The house in Weston was in a relatively nice neighborhood – relative for Weston, that is, which specializes in the mock-Tudor style mansions so beloved of the nouveau riche, the stone and stucco mansions favored by the inherited money, and a lot of simply really big houses. Mario’s was modest by those standards, a sort of ranch that had expanded in several directions with several different choices of building materials. Charitably put, it was eclectic. I thought it was awful.
I hadn’t, as the saying goes, seen nuthin’ yet.
Mario answered the doorbell. He was probably in his very early fifties, with the tiniest suggestion of a potbelly, and hair everywhere. He was wearing a bathrobe and boxer shorts, the robe was open, and I didn’t think I had ever seen anyone that hairy before. Maybe in a National Geographic. Maybe.
“Great, you’re here,” he said, shutting the door behind me and draping an arm casually across my shoulders. We were standing in his living room, graced by a replica of the statue of David, tremendous mirrors with black and gold borders, and a shag carpet. Really.
I didn’t know you could get one of those in the nineties.
Our immediate destination was the kitchen, where we stopped to pick up two bottles of champagne, then proceeded to a large bedroom that was on the same floor. “The bathroom,” he informed me on the way, pointing. “This is the one you use.”
“Okay.” That was a nice touch, my own bathroom. If he lived alone, I sure as hell didn’t want to use whichever one was his. Working for Peach, I’d seen enough bachelor bathrooms to last several lifetimes. Some of them I had actually been compelled to use. “This is a great house – everything is – so – convenient,” I said.
“Yeah, I had to make it over to get it right,” he agreed. I could believe that. He shut the bedroom door behind us.
In one corner was a big-screen television (can one say enormous-screen television?), tuned to a basketball game, with the sound turned off. Most of the room was dominated – dwarfed, even – by a tremendously large waterbed, one with a carved and elaborate headboard containing nooks and crannies for any conceivable accou-trement. Behind its myriad shelves was a mirror. Even the television was eclipsed by that bed.
“Did you wear something comfortable?” Mario wanted to know, and didn’t wait for an answer. “Take off whatever you want to take off so you feel good. I’ll get us some champagne.”
I couldn’t argue with that program. I had already seen the labels. Mario might have questionable taste in home furnishings, but his choice of champagne was impeccable. This was Cristal.
I slipped out of the shoes, blouse, and suit, and left the tights on for the moment. They looked good with the camisole, which was black and purple. I sat on the edge of the bed (not an easy task with it swaying beneath me in response to some internal current) and waited to see what might transpire.
Mario poured champagne into wineglasses and gave me one. Raising his glass, he said something rapid and incomprehensible in Italian, not one of my languages. I raised my own and said, in a hesitant foray into flirtation, “To you.” We drank. It was really good.
We watched the game for a while, since apparently he had some serious money invested in its outcome. I inquired after his team and rooted for it, which seemed to amuse him no end. We drank more champagne. He brought out a gorgeous enamel tray, easily the most beautiful object in the house, on which he proceeded to generously pour white powder from an impressively large plastic bag. He smoothed it into lines, located a slim metal straw that looked like (and in all probability, was) gold, and offered me the tray.
I obviously didn’t have a problem with that. It wasn’t just the callgirls who did drugs: a surprisingly high percentage of clients under fifty used cocaine recreationally, and often wanted to party with their escorts. Peach was always keeping an eye on the girls, and if one of them had a problem with the stuff, she didn’t get sent to any of the partying clients. The rest of us took our chances.
Sometimes there were other drugs. One client took a lot of different pills and insisted his guest do the same. I was warned about him (one girl nearly passed out on his cocktail de maison) so when I saw him, I palmed the pills and just followed his lead to see what I was supposed to be feeling.
But I was delighted any time anyone offered me coke, and tonight it might prove to be necessary, to counteract the champagne. I was currently on my third glass.
We did some lines and drank more champagne, and he talked a little about some unnamed illness he had. I wasn’t really listening, I was trying to figure out what he might like in the way of activity; and I decided it was time for a little c
loseness. I crawled over to him and started a back massage, which turned into a front massage, which turned into my stroking his cock without a whole lot of expectations, not knowing how he was reacting to the coke.
A common side effect – a really common side effect – of doing cocaine is an inability to obtain or maintain an erection. Mario was slow, but surprising, and between my hands and my mouth he got excited, not even noticing when I slipped on the condom, and then, just as he was saying, “I don’t think –,” he came. Nice.
We retired to our respective bathrooms to freshen up, and then regrouped for another round of champagne and coke. He was talking nonstop now, about his family, his business, and the problems he was having with some recalcitrant (his word – he had an eclectic and fascinating vocabulary) business associates in Miami. He was planning a trip there, to let them know who they were dealing with. He looked at me appraisingly. “I’m taking one of Peach’s girls down with me. Maybe you’d like a vacation?”
I agreed that it sounded like a terrific idea, but in the end he took someone else to Miami, which was just as well since I couldn’t imagine how I’d explain an unscheduled vacation to the two colleges where I was teaching. But I’m sure that whoever ended up going had a marvelous time. Mario would have made sure of that.
I jumped when the phone rang. It was Peach, calling me out. “Can you stay?” Mario asked. “Sure,” I said. I couldn’t believe that an hour had already passed, which was definitely a first for me. Usually I couldn’t wait for it to happen. He spoke into the receiver. “I’m going another two hours. Okay, sure, here she is.”
I took the phone. “Hi, Peach.”
“Jen? Is everything all right, honey? You want to stay?”
I shrugged. “Sure, Peach. He’s nice. We’re having a good time.”
“Okay. I’ll talk to you shortly.”
Mario resumed chatting, asking my opinion on topics ranging from the creation of the solar system to the reasons that people get divorced. He asked a lot of questions on a plethora of topics. He talked about politics and ethics and the changes he observed in society. It was at a level I couldn’t relate to, opinions formed during a life with little education and no exposure to abstract thinking. I was fascinated.
Yet he had clearly experienced financial success and had come to realize that he had a need for something more. He had tried the Church; of course he went to Mass every week, but it didn’t answer his questions. We did more lines. He shyly told me I was pretty. I never took off my camisole.
He extended my stay yet another two hours. I finally left at four in the morning, my purse full of cash, a gift-wrapped package in my hands, an extra hundred-dollar bill pressed into my pocket at the last minute to “buy more stuff like that thing you was wearing tonight.”
The package contained two bottles of Chanel No. 5. Perfume. Top of the line. I had spent a fascinating night, had enjoyed (more slowly than he thought appropriate, but I was driving) an incredible champagne, and had made over a thousand dollars. I was a little railed, but that would pass.
Two nights later, Mario requested me. New camisole, same tights. I arrived on time, was escorted to the bedroom. Same champagne. This time, a speech. “No one told you about me, I guess, so you don’t know, but you was magic. See, I never can get it up, and if I ever get it up, I don’t come. Not with nobody. But I did with you. And that makes you a really special girl – er – lady.”
He was right, of course. It had happened because I didn’t know, I thought that was part of the encounter, I was tender and enthused and expected success.
Now that I knew, the knowledge might prove a hindrance. I didn’t have to worry about that for long. “I’m sayin’ you shouldn’t be doin’ it every time, ‘cause that one time will last me, you don’t know, like someone took a curse off me. It was there, then it was gone. I’m old enough to enjoy somethin’ like that and not want no more. Maybe sometimes you can touch me a little, I like that, but don’t feel bad if nuthin’ happens. It’s what I was tellin’ you about, back when I was sick, I never could do it since then…”
I hadn’t been paying attention when he told me about his disease (in some graphic detail, as I recall, hence my tuning it out), and I resolved to get the particulars from Peach. “I like you,” I said, and I was speaking the truth. “Sometimes that’s all it takes, two people comfortable with each other.”
Mario shook his head. “It’s you,” he said firmly, “You’re blessed. It’s like a miracle. I’ll never forget you did that for me.”
Then we talked about betting on horses, betting on dogs, and the problems in the two industries. As it turned out, Mario made a good portion of his money via gambling. “I’m not a flashy guy. I don’t go to no casinos, that’s for tourists. I bet on games, and I bet on fights, and once in a while I bet on how stupid the City Council is.” There was a light in his eyes. “I always win when I bet on that one. They haven’t failed me yet, them morons. They just get stupider and stupider.”
He talked about his mother, but not about his father. His brother had been a fisherman out of Gloucester – they was all Sicilians up there, goombas, but getting out of the business, wasn’t no future in it no more. “All them guys, they had their mortgages on their houses and on their boats, they thought it would go on forever. Then the feds come in and close the fishing grounds. Just like that. They never went to high school. Them guys, all they know is fish. They thought it would be there forever.” He was concerned about his brother. “So what’s a guy with a longline boat gonna do when he can’t fish no more? Whaddya think? I’ll tell you what he does. He finds other products to bring into port.”
“What?” I was genuinely interested. My friend Irene had done her dissertation on the composition of fishing crews, so I knew a little about the industry. “What does he replace the cod with?”
He looked at the silent basketball game for a long moment, and when he spoke, he wasn’t looking at me. “Heroin. They bring in heroin cause the money’s good. But Gloucester – there’s nuthin’ there, not anymore. The fish factories are all gone, the quarries are all closed. People hanging out ‘cause they don’t know anyplace else to go, nuthin’ to do, nuthin’ to look forward to. So when the fleet comes in, their first customers are their goombas. You see them all the time outside the Crow’s Nest an’ Saint Peter’s Club, just sittin’ there, high, waitin’ and waitin’ for nuthin’.” He roused himself and looked at me. “Joey, I’ve tried to get him outta there, I could get him a job here like that.” He snapped his fingers by way of illustration, and I had no reason to doubt him. “Hell, I’d even just give him the money, I’d pay off his mortgages for him, ain’t nuthin’ to me. But he’s too proud, he won’t take nuthin’ from me. And he can’t leave Gloucester. It takes some people up there like that, they can’t go over the bridge, anyplace that ain’t Gloucester ain’t home.” He shrugged. “Joey, he respects the old ways, and the rules are the same now as they was then. Don’t mess with the drugs. That ain’t for us. We’s above that. But he’s got a boat, Joey does, and a family, and no fish to catch, and too much stubbornness in him to take what his brother wants to give him.”
He paused. “So how does he make ends meet?” I asked, feeling pulled into this poignant and tragic tale. Anthropologists keep their distance; but this was no field study.
“He don’t bring nuthin’ in,” Mario said finally. “He takes stuff out.” He glanced at me, shrugged as though making a decision, and then spoke the damning words. “Guns,” he said. “Guns to Northern Ireland. All them gung-ho paddy-boys here in Boston, they’re always raisin’ funds for the cause back home. They pays the money and gets the guns and whatever else the hell they need. And then at night they drives their trucks up to Magnolia Harbor, where there ain’t no one watchin’, and they loads up Joey’s boat, and then he’s off, same as the old days when he was settin’ out for the banks. He stays out about the same time he used to, and when he comes home he stays drunk until it’s time to go out again.�
� He hesitated, then said, explosively, “Jesus Christ! It ain’t fair. Just ‘cause he loves his home. And there ain’t nuthin’ that nobody can do about it. What does the fuckin’ government know about fishing? What do they know about my brother?”
I put my arms around him and held him. Anything that I could say at that point would be inadequate, meaningless, insulting. I knelt beside him and held him, rocking him gently.
I started seeing Mario at least once a week. I know that he was seeing other girls. I think Lori was right, he had someone in most nights, except of course for Saturdays, when he was in town with the goombas.
I thought that I was probably the only person who understood why he was such a steady client. I was the only one who knew of the great emptiness inside him, the aching love for his brother and his inability to make things all right for him, the infinite sadness that he sought to forget by filling his house and his life with women, champagne, gambling, drugs. I understood; but I never referred to it; and he never spoke of Joey to me again.
Interestingly, none of us was jealous of the others seeing him. There was enough of Mario to go around. Everyone drank his champagne and did his lines and listened to him; and by and large, they liked him.
But I remained the only one whose opinion he sought.
On night I awakened to the telephone. As soon as the answering machine picked up, the caller would disconnect, then start again. It was annoying: I lived in a studio apartment, and it was unbelievably loud.
Cursing fluently, I tried to pull the cord out of the socket, and instead picked up the receiver. It was Peach. Peach always closed the service by two o’clock (she has theories about the level of desperation and impairment in people who call services after two), and the clock at which I was squinting said three-thirty. “Peach. Are you all right?” Peach had had a history of dramatic suicide attempts. This sounded like it had some potential in that direction.
Callgirl: Confessions of a Double Life Page 21