My cell phone rang as I stepped from the train onto the platform. My commute from the suburbs to the city had ended in its predictable way, a call from Mom to catch up on my life since yesterday. Because I was always up and away from the house before Mom and Dad were awake, the morning phone call had taken the place of the conversations we used to have over breakfast before school.
The usual pleasantries followed. When was I going to look for a better job than being an office temp? A job that offered benefits and security… She’d just begun to express wishes that I find a guy. ‘I’m not getting any younger… Grandkids would be nice to have around while I’m still young enough to enjoy them…’ At that point, pleading to be in a hurry, I hung up and checked my messages to make certain I had the correct time for my first appointment.
I had plenty of time so, stopping at the Coffee Clutch, I sat at one of the tables outside on the sidewalk to enjoy the perfect weather with my coffee. A short block away was the apartment I kept in the city that my parents knew nothing about. I’d given serious thought to moving out of my parents’ house and to the city. I was almost 19. At the point of my life where most girls my age were in college, married, working and living in their own place or all of the above. Money was no longer an issue, but… But, the city was less than an hour’s ride by train from our suburb. If Mom knew I had an apartment she would be dropping by at all hours of the day and any day of the week. I’d never be able to keep my secret a secret.
Instead, I lived at home in the bedroom which had been mine since I was sleeping in a cradle. Mom and I still rode bikes together. Shopped together. Gardened, talked and watched weepy-eye Lifetime/Hallmark movies together. To keep Mom happy I even went out on dates occasionally, so she’d know I was looking for a husband.
Dad? Oh, he huffed and puffed and bellowed like an elephant wondering, ‘When are you going to leave the damned nest so your mom and me can have some damned peace and quiet around here!’ But on Saturday mornings after falling asleep on the couch during a late night binge of watching the afore-mentioned weepy-eye movies, I’d find a blanket covering me and Dad making a huge breakfast while yelling, ‘Eat, you idiot child, and put some meat on those skinny bones so you have the energy to find your own damned place and leave me in peace!’ Yeah, I’ve had Daddy figured out and wrapped around my little finger since I took my first steps.
Thinking of steps, I looked at my watch and began stepping towards the brownstone my apartment was in. I couldn’t have wished for a more perfect location to live. Two blocks from my train stop in one direction and one block from the subway in another. In the lobby I checked my mailbox (empty) and then ran the stairs for the cardio. On the third floor landing I met Danny heading down. A junior in college, Danny lived in the apartment below mine. Jeans, t-shirt and looking delicious as always in a rumpled way. I knew he had a little crush on me and wanted to ask me out. School work, part-time jobs, lack of money and a bad case of shyness kept him from asking.
Exchanging ‘Heys‘, I was several steps past when I heard him stumble and almost fall with the thud of a bookbag hitting the steps echoing in the stairwell. Grinning, I tried very hard not to laugh. I just knew he’d turned his head to check out my butt and tripped. I stopped on the landing above his and watched as he fumbled for his dropped bag.
“You okay, Danny?”
“Ahh, yeah. Just clumsy, I guess. You know,” Danny changed the subject by pointing to my coffee. “It’d be cheaper to brew coffee instead of going out to buy one every morning.”
I’d made up the story of going out for coffee when Danny met me coming in, as he was going out once too often. “I know. I guess I just like the taste.”
“Hey, Olivia,” Danny said as I was turning to go the remaining steps to my floor. “Thanks. I know I haven’t told you, but having someone as quiet as you above me, I mean, living in the apartment above mine, it’s really great. I saw the hardwood floors when I moved in and I was afraid that I’d be hearing the clump, clump, clump of footsteps at all hours. How someone as big as you can move so quietly, well, when I’m trying to study, it really means a lot.”
Since the reason I was away and not in the apartment at night would be too hard to explain, I just took the compliment with one reservation. “Someone as big as I am?”
“I meant as tall as you. You’re nowhere near fat! You have an incredible… I mean, your body is totally… Ahh…”
The laughter I’d kept in earlier bubbled out and I took pity on the shy nerd. “It’s fine, Danny, and thanks for the stammered-out almost compliment. I gotta run to get to work on time, but score an A on a test for me today.”
I had a corner apartment on the top floor. No clumping footsteps above me to have to put up with. Closing the door behind me I tossed my keys on the table beside the door and breathed in the sweet smell of privacy. This was my first apartment and although I didn’t spend much time here, it was still mine. All mine! I could decorate it the way I liked. Paint the walls the colors I liked. Buy furniture that I liked. I could even run naked through all the rooms. Cook in the nude. Throw caution to the wind and even fry bacon in the nude! Tried that once. Hot bacon grease spattering out of the skillet had me grabbing for an apron very quickly. So, ok, probably wouldn’t fry bacon in the nude again, but the important point was I could if I wanted to.
Going to the bedroom, I stripped and tossed all my clothes onto the bed before opening the doors to my closets. The outfits I wore to and from home were for Dad and Mom’s benefit. The clothes I kept here in my apartment were my real work clothes. Shopping in stores I could never afford on my pay as an office temp had filled my closets with beautiful garments.
Knowing who I was meeting, I picked out a black dress. Shaking my head, imagining what my dad would say if he saw me headed out the door for a date in a dress this short and without a bra, I laid it on the bed. Hosery, garter belt and panties, also black, joined the dress. Stooping, I surveyed the choices I had in heels and picked my ash colored Christian Louboutins. Unlike many of my friends who exceeded 5’8″, I liked being tall. Unless I’d had another growth spurt, I was still just under six foot tall in my bare feet. The four inch heels of my Louboutin’s would elevate me to about 6’4″ and the client I was seeing this morning liked tall women. Tall women in short dresses and no panties I remembered. The panties on my bed went back into my dresser’s drawer.
With wardrobe picked out, that left the proper handbag to complete the assembly. Transferring what I’d need from the department store handbag I’d brought from home to an ash colored Celine Trapeze handbag took only a minute. Earrings and rings were removed and laid on my dress from home, where I couldn’t help but remember them. My Cartier watch was the only indulgence I allowed myself to wear home. It was exhausting enough to remember to leave behind my jewelry. Luckily, my parents wouldn’t know a four thousand dollar Cartier Rose Gold watch from a ten dollar watch bought at Wal-Mart. Checking the time before removing it, I headed into my bathroom to do my makeup and hair.
Thirty minutes later I was dressed. Sitting, I adjusted my hose and, putting my hand between dress and flesh, pulled my tits up to show more cleavage. Inspecting myself in the mirror, I nodded. With a silk wrap for street wear my own mom would have to look twice to recognize me as her daughter. Ready to leave, my last action was to spritz the air three times with my favorite perfume and then walk under the sweet-smelling fog.
My actions this Monday morning would probably have confused almost everyone. But, there was a perfectly logical explanation that I hoped I’d never have to use. You see, a month after graduating high school, I actually was working for an office temp agency. Living at home to save money while trying to decide ja oder nein (three years of high school German) on the whole college thing. I’d finished working for the day at the job I’d been sent to and was in front of the building trying to flag down a taxi, when a lady had approached, handed me a card and offered me a job if I were interested.
DISCREETOFFICESERVICES.COM… The address on the card she’d handed me was in the same building where I’d just worked but on a different floor. Inviting me upstairs to her office, she’d poured coffee and…
~~~~
“Discreet? Sounds like you work for the CIA or something,” I joked, setting my purse down beside my chair and accepting the coffee mug Marla offered me.
“Or something,” Marla replied with a small smile, leaning back in the leather chair behind her desk. Holding her coffee mug in both hands, she inspected me. “I’ve noticed you working in the building this past week. You’re a very pretty young lady. Head cheerleader and Prom Queen in high school, I bet.”
“Thanks for the compliments.” I felt the heat of a blush on my cheeks. I’d never felt comfortable accepting compliments for things I’d been born with. After all, how much credit can you take for being the recipient of a lucky arrangement of bits and pieces of genetic code? “But you lost your bet. Cheerleader, yes, but not the head cheerleader, and I got enough votes to be a member of the Queen’s Court, but not the Prom Queen.”
“If I lost, then you won. I’ve got a job offer for you. You see, ten years ago I was sitting in a chair much like the one you are sitting in now and looking across a desk very much like this one. I was being offered the same opportunity I’m offering to you. Different office, different city, of course, but the offer was the same.”
“And in just ten years you worked your way up to being the boss? Or CEO, or whatever your job title is? You must have been very hard-working.”
“I was. Also, the job I was offered, and am now offering to you, has sort of an expiration date. You either move up to management in a few years or you leave the field entirely. Eight months ago I chose to move here, open my own agency and move up to management.”
“Well, you must be doing something right. I mean, your office decor cost thousands! I measured an office to help order furniture for a new Vice-President of a company I temped at. I saw the magazine they were ordering furniture from, so I know something about how much furniture like this costs.” I reached out to run my hand over the smooth surface of her desk. “Solid walnut. Probably cost more than I’ll make in a year on my salary.”
“Very perceptive of you. So, in a nutshell, let me make my pitch to you. Out there,” Marla began with a graceful, encompassing wave of her hand. “Out there in the city, there are hundreds, thousands, of successful men and women. They became successful because of long hours of hard work. Long hours of hard work which left them exhausted and with few opportunities to enjoy the fruits of their hard work.
“They had little time or energy to socialize, to date, to meet new people, to fall in love. Some of them remained single. Some settled for ‘good enough’,” Marla said with air quotes. “Most of my target demographic are in their middle-to-late thirties. All of them well off financially and tired of being single. Tired of having settled for ‘good enough‘.
“They’re out there looking for the excitement that was denied to them when they were on their way up the corporate ladder and not so well off financially. Unfortunately for them and fortunately for me and perhaps you, a leopard doesn’t change its spots so easily. They are still stuck on that corporate treadmill. Long hours of hard work is all they’ve ever known for so long, that getting off that treadmill seems impossible for them.”
Marla shrugged her shoulders to express bewilderment at the idea that people would voluntarily work so hard. Rising from her chair, she walked from behind her desk to the chair beside mine and sat.
“But… Isn’t there always a but? But now they have corner offices and private secretaries. Very large bank balances. Huge stock portfolios. Plush houses or mansions in gated communities. Expensive cars. And the damned fools are still working over eighty hours a week! Now that they have everything they once thought they wanted, the idiots still can’t stop from working themselves into an early grave.
“But… There’s that but again. But humans want excitement, crave intimacy. Since my clients seem incapable of relaxing and taking the time to go out and find that intimacy, I provide them with intimacy. Any type of intimacy they desire, when and where they want. Do you understand?”
It took me several seconds, but the light bulb finally lit up over my head. “You’re a Madame?!”
Marla shrugged again and held her hands up and out. “What’s in a name? Madame, CEO, company president. Call girl, escort, consort, mistress, hooker, whore… All the same thing. A rose by any other name… The only thing which changes is the degree of respectability the public attaches to the name.”
Marla leaned back in her chair and asked me, “What would you say if I told you that all women become whores at times?”
“I’d say that you’re wrong,” I replied forcefully. “My mom would never become a whore.”
“Really? Give me your definition of a whore?”
“A woman who has sex for money.”
“So you agree that if a woman has sex for compensation, she’s a whore. Money isn’t the only form of compensation there is. So now expand that definition. My definition of a whore would be… Any woman who has sex for any reason other than her own enjoyment. Are you a virgin, Olivia?”
“Umm, no…”
“Do you think that you’ve whored yourself?”
“NO!”
“Really?” Marla said with a tone of satisfaction in her voice. As if she’d already won our argument. “Ever been with a guy out on a date and he’s all over you? He’s whining about how horny he is. Pawing at your boobs and between your legs? Trying to undo your jeans? Your bra? You don’t feel like having sex but to keep the guy happy you’ve gotten naked and spread your legs? Perhaps given him a blowjob or hand job just to satisfy and calm him down? Stop his whining? Wouldn’t that qualify as having sex not for your enjoyment, but for the compensation of stopping his incessant whining? Did you ever feel you were obligated to have sex because he was paying for the date? Haven’t you already whored yourself?”
Marla stopped talking and waited for my reply. Remembering some of my dates in high school and what had happened during them, I thought about her definition of a whore as a woman who has sex for any reason other than her own enjoyment. I thought and… Marla took my continued silence as a yes.
“Olivia, I don’t know you very well but I’d make another bet that our experiences growing up were pretty much the same. Middle-class mores. Pretty and popular in school. I was the Prom Queen by-the-way. We all whored for something,” Marla said. She didn’t say it in a gloating voice though, her tone was of someone just stating a fact. “You’re tired of his whining, so you have sex just to shut the asshole up. Maybe you think it will gain you popularity in high school. You’re afraid of not having a date for the big dance, so you do what it takes to keep a guy who will invite you to Senior Prom. There’s so many reasons other than because you wanted to have sex.”
Marla picked up a leather folder off her desk and walked around her desk to sit in a chair next to mine. “What I do is simplify things. I discard all the reasons a woman will have sex except for one. Money.” Taking a paper from the folder, she wrote something and handed it to me. The only thing on the paper was a number. “That is how much a woman earns every time she sees a client I set her up with. If my girl agrees to see a client, she’s only obligated to spend up to two hours doing what the client wants. The number is doubled if the client wants to include someone else.”
I started doing the math and was speechless while Marla continued.
“The number is also doubled for every hour or part of an hour past two hours of one of my girl’s time he wants. I negotiate with my clients for anything past a threesome for four hours. So, let’s say my client needs a date, arm candy, for a corporate party. The party lasts three hours and at the end he, or she, has a friend who wants to party on into the night for another two hours.”
I tried to do the math. I doubled the number for the third hour and added it to the first number then added another doubled number for the third person joining the fun. That still left… I gave up.
“Would you like to use my calculator,” Marla asked with a laugh. “Here, I’ll make it simple,” she continued and pulling the paper from my hand, she wrote a much larger number down and handed the paper back to me. “That is how much my girl will make for five hours of her time.”
Holy Shit!!! I was speechless! A five hour party with two guys would go a long, long way to paying for a month’s rent on a large city apartment. I’m pretty sure that there are times when each of us will wonder what we’d do for a large sum of money. I took another look at the number Marla had written down. I was tempted to ask for that calculator so I could calculate the number of days I’d have to work at the temp agency to get to that amount.
I sighed and handed the sheet of paper back to Marla. I shook my head. “I live at home. Even if I were tempted, I could never ‘date’,” This time I used air quotes. “Go out on dates every night and still work to explain how I was making money.”
“Who said anything about working for me only at night?” Marla asked. She got up and opened the blinds of a window. The city skyline was prominent. “Out there today I had six girls working. I still had to turn down clients. I’d have to turn down clients if I had twelve girls working every day. Some of my girls are like you. They live in the suburbs and when they are able, they come to the city and work one or two clients, sometimes even three clients a day, if I can work the scheduling right.
“Successful men and women who are too busy to take the entire day off. Too tired after work for a date. But maybe they can free up an hour during the day. So I get a request for a girl at such-n-such time at either a hotel room or maybe just their office. If a girl is available and can make it to the location in time, I send her.
“Some of my girls are proper, suburban married mothers. No kids or the kids are in school or at their grandparents’ for the day. Husbands are at work. She’s bored so she tells everyone she’s going to the city to shop and maybe see a movie. She’ll let me know the date and the hours she’ll be available in advance and I’ll have a client lined up for her. Usually two clients if she has the time. Before she reaches home, money is deposited in her private bank account. Usually, I’ll never even see her that day.”
Marla sat quietly and just watched me as I thought over all she’d said. I felt as if an entirely new world was opened to me. I wasn’t a virgin. I was even on the pill already because on some of the dates I went on to satisfy my mom, I also satisfied myself.
“Sooo, I could continue to come into the city as if I was still working at the temp agency,” I thought out loud. “What if a girl has to be on a train at a certain time? Would you pressure her to stay for another client?”
“Never. You are only obligated to stay two hours each time you agree to see a client. All of my clients know this and that at the end of two hours if you need to leave, that’s it. It’s over. I’ve worked for a Madame who pressured her girls to do, ‘just one more’. Pretty soon she had no girls working for her. I don’t intend to make that mistake.”
“Your girls do anything the client wants? There are things I’ve never done before.”
“Yes. You’ll need to go into this with your eyes open, Olivia. If you decide you want to. If you agree to meet a client you are obligated to do anything he, or she, wants to do for at least two hours. On that point there is flexibility on only two conditions. Any act that might result in an arrest. So public sex is out! Any act that could result in bodily harm. So hardcore BDSM is out. My clients know these conditions. Clients, especially those who make appointments during the day for when they might have a break in their schedule, usually want just straight sex for some fun and stress reduction. But if I get a message that one of my girls refused any reasonable request, she doesn’t get paid.”
“I could do just one client a day and make way more money than I’d make temping all day,” I thought out loud. “Do your girls, umm, find work every day?”
“Olivia, have you looked in a mirror lately? You’re tall, beautiful,’ with a fantastic body… You are everything my clients are looking for. Olivia, I can guarantee that within a month you’ll have every day booked with at least two clients.”
Ten times’ the first number Marla had shown me for a week. That would be somewhwere around… Holy fucking shit!
“Doing the math, Olivia?” I nodded and Marla continued. “Don’t forget to add in the tips. Your clients will be wealthy and though you may never ask for money nor discuss money with them, they often will show their appreciation to my girls for good service in the way of tips that average between two and three hundred dollars. Often more. Tips are kept by the girls. I don’t get a cut of tips.”
I had my mouth open to ask the obvious question, when Marla anticipated me and answered before I could ask.
“Think about it before you ask why I don’t take a cut of the tips. Knowing they get to keep 100% of tips make my girls try very hard to satisfy my clients. Satisfied clients keep coming back for more. I make more money from repeat business of well satisfied clients than I would from any cut from the tips. Another business lesson I learned from a previous employer.”
Damn. Even at the low end of tips, with just ten clients a week, two a day, that would be an extra two thousand dollars. That would boost the total to… HOLY FUCKING SHIT!!
“Tax free?”
“Your tips? You can declare as much as you want or none. Your salary from me, yes. It’s all taxable. No way do I want to cross the IRS. I file W-2 Forms just like any other business. As far as the IRS is concerned, I just run another temp agency. Pay stubs and info for filing taxes are kept here in the office. I never mail them out where husbands and others might see them. It’s your responsibility to come get them if you want them.”
I was silent for a long time, as amounts kept going round-and-round my brain. Even with days off for holidays it would be more money than I’d ever thought to earn. I could pay my way through any college I wanted. I wouldn’t need to work. Of course, I’d join a sorority. Frat parties every weekend.
Marla finally broke me out of my daze and led me to the door. Handing me another business card, she told me to think about her offer. “No pressure, but if you have any questions you can return here. If you decide you’d like to try working for me, come back and I’ll tell you the rules I have and then send you out to meet your first client.”
Walking to the nearest subway stop, I phoned Mom to tell her I’d missed my regular train and would be a little late. At the dinner table that night I tried hard to act as if this had just been a normal day, where nothing out of the ordinary had happened.
Pleading a stressful day, I brushed my teeth and put on one of the Hello Kitty night shirts I wore to sleep in before going to bed early. Lying awake in the dark while thinking about what I could do with lots and lots of money…
Chapter Two coming…
