by J. Jackson
“Hmmph.” He looked at her intensely, trying, she felt, to make her reveal her hand, but she held it close to her chest, willing an indifference into her silent stare. Finally he blinked. With a smile, he said, “I think you just might be worth it. Come with me, Alexandra.” Taking her hand he patted it, pleased with his contrived familiarity, and his apparent success. “I’m in twelve sixty-two.”
“And so,” she thought, as she entered the elevator, “begins my career as a call girl.”
Returning to her own room the next morning, Sandy felt okay – no, she felt better than okay. The evening had been quite pleasant. They had, at first, just chatted over drinks. “I’m going to have to be very careful in the future,” she noted to herself, for she was not used to so much booze and had felt rather tipsy far too early in the evening. Although she felt a little wobbly while she undressed, the client had, nonetheless, loved her performance. And he, Petrov, had remained a gentleman all night. He had shown great control during the initial felatio, and the intercourse on the bed had been traditional – undemanding, mellow and calm. Later, while trying, albeit unsuccessfully, to get him up for a third round, Sandy had gotten somewhat more vigorous. He accepted her ministrations eagerly, if somewhat bemused, and, when she finally had to admit defeat, he cradled her, calling her his dear, wild, little minx. They fell asleep entwined, and woke fresh, with Sandy, anyway, not feeling the least bit of regret.
After breakfast, Petrov said, “It’s so nice of you to leave the money thing until last. Most of the girls I’ve ever met, in cities all over, demand payment up front,” then, after he’d counted out the cash, and handed it to her, he leaned in and kissed her. “You’re something special, you know. An absolute doll. Thanks.” Oddly, Sandy felt herself blush at his compliments, and with a quiet goodbye, she slipped out the door.
“Thirteen twenties,” she counted, as she waited for the elevator. “Yeah, he was nice. I didn’t think he’d rip me off.” But she thought about what he had said – about others girls taking their payment in advance. She’d have to keep that in mind – play it by ear, maybe, depending on the client.
Later that week, after a couple more lucrative evenings, Sandy decided to move closer to the heart of London. It had barely been a fortnight since she had arrived in Britain. My how things had changed. Notwithstanding, she packed up her belongings, neatly folding even her old traveler’s backpack, placed everything neatly into her new, matching luggage set, and took a cab into London proper. She was amazed at how easy it was. Installing herself in a rather majestic old hotel, she hardly waited at all until the flow of traffic found her. Young studs, killing time; rich bachelors, looking for solace; weary old travelers; and hungry businessmen. Sandy loved it – the excitement and the diversity.
But that being said, she still felt a paradoxical pang of something – remorse or distaste – at the idea of prostitution. Sandy liked what she did, she enjoyed, not only the sex, but the power and financial freedom, and she wasn’t really ashamed of it; yet, occasionally, she still felt an odd conflict raging within her. Even now, she still had difficulty reconciling her actions with her ingrained morals. Notwithstanding, her six month vacation gradually stretched to a year in the highbrow hotels of London, and her shoestring budget blossomed into a modest fortune.
Arriving home after her year away had presented some problems, though nothing insurmountable. Sandy signed on to an escort agency and worked pretty steady until school started up. Although most of her clients were traveling businessmen and conference attendees, she developed a small list of regulars, whom she ‘dated’ through the next few years of university, still taking the odd referral from the agency. During that time she nurtured contacts and slowly worked her way into the ‘escort’ network – the community of call-girls. After graduating with a degree in commerce – and the knowledge to handle her increasingly complex finances – Sandy left the escort agency to work on her own out of a posh downtown hotel, gradually cultivating a serious client list of eighteen to twenty gentlemen who kept her well-heeled. Sandy still took the occasional referral, usually as a favour to a trusted regular, but it was rare enough now to make it novel. Amazingly, going out with someone new had become a little bit of excitement in an otherwise routine career.
Concealing the nature of her business from her family and the few old friends she maintained took a little bit of craft. As much as she hated being deceitful, Sandy couldn’t imagine her parents finding out what she had been doing for the past five years; hence, she had had to come up with an answer to the question of what she did for a living. Rather than being constantly evasive, she worked out a stock answer. “I’m a Value Consultant,” she told everyone. “I work with an association that looks after big money – buying and selling services. Not stocks, as such, but luxuries. It’s really quite a unique position, rather esoteric and hard to describe.” She’d pause, then add with a laugh, “but the money’s pretty good.” Her ambiguity usually fended of any further prying. When she moved to her ritzy, upscale Yaletown apartment, she explained away her ability to purchase it outright as having won a lottery. “And,” she often thought, “in some sort of way, that’s exactly what happened.”
“Ah, yes,” Sandy smiled, shrugging away her reminiscence. Stepping into the opulent bathroom, she leaned over to run herself a tub. “And, I doubt the members of that silly Scottish rugby club,” she chuckled, “have ever imagined the life-altering – world-shifting effect their ribald little tradition had on my life – Alex’s young Canadian cousin.”
With, perhaps, one exception, as fate would later have it.