Madam Page 9

  Hubert has had time to think, not a good thing. “You’re sure that Lisa isn’t back yet? When will she be back?”

  I don’t want to lose the call, and I can feel him hesitating, feel it slipping away. “Hubert, I honestly don’t know. They’re in Europe, in the Alps. Skiing. It might not be for a while, and she’ll be overloaded with course work when she gets back. But I know you’d like to see someone tonight, and I’d love to have you see Gloria. She’s got long brown hair, I know you’ll remember her. Green eyes.” (Thank goodness for contact lenses.) “She’s 36-24-32, she’s twentytwo, she’s beautiful and really, really sweet. I know that you liked her, and she really liked you a lot.”

  Come on, Hubert. Get with the program here. I know you’re going to ask for her. You know you’re going to ask for her. Let’s stop dancing around each other and just get on with it.

  “Oh, okay, Peach.” He still doesn’t sound convinced.

  That’s as close as I’m going to get with him. “I’ll have her give you a call, Hubert. I know you’ll have a good time. It will … ”

  He interrupts. “When, exactly?”

  I told him she gets out of class at eight, I remind myself. I’ve always been pretty good at remembering my inventions. “Probably about eight-thirty.”

  “That’s an hour from now!” If a person can be said to howl, Hubert just howled. I sigh. He’ll survive. “Yes, she doesn’t get out of class until then. I’ll have her call you, Hubert. I promise.”

  I disconnect before he can say anything else, check that the new guy is legit, then call him back. “So, Jack—can I call you Jack?—this is Peach calling back from Avanti. Thanks for your patience. Now, tell me a little about yourself. Is there any particular type of young lady you have in mind to see this evening?”

  Some nights, I simply do not get paid enough for what I have to do.

  The Client From Hell

  Even though clients blend into types, rather than individuals, Peter Povaklas stands out. Because he’s demanding. Because he’s pathetic. And, maybe, because he’s hopeful. Peter doesn’t give up on his dream, no matter how far he is from realizing it.

  He does all the wrong things, naturally. He invites girls to go down to New York City with him and participate in orgies, and then when they do, he complains that they’re not monogamous, or asks them to pick up the tab at the pre orgy dinner. I’m not sure exactly what the etiquette is in that sort of situation, but I’m pretty sure that he’s not following it. I’ll have to look in my big white Emily Post book sometime.

  He’s nasty, coarse, and boorish, and then complains that girls don’t want to spend extra time—unpaid time, mind you—in his wonderful presence. He insults them and is subsequently surprised when they don’t gush over him. He’s astonished when I tell him that someone has chosen not to see him at all, something I’ve had to do on more than one occasion.

  But at the bottom of all the nonsense I believe there’s this sad little boy who just wants the house and the white picket fence and June Cleaver waiting for him at the end of the day. It’s not his fault that he’s fifty years out of date. It’s not his fault that he can’t see that what he’s doing isn’t going to get him there, never in a million years. He’s the product of his background as much as I’m the product of mine, and his background doesn’t allow him to be sensitive, caring, or respectful.

  I once heard insanity definted as doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. That’s Peter Povaklas. He’s caught in this little centrifuge that just spins him around and around, doing the same thing over and over and being constantly surprised that the same routine hasn’t worked yet another time.

  He’s a long-term relationship for me. He’ll be here when I finally close my doors. Me and Peter Povaklas.

  Some of the girls don’t mind him. Aside from being demanding and fussy, he’s really not all that difficult. He doesn’t have people swinging from chandeliers—for him it’s pretty much vanilla sex. And the girls learned how to handle him, how to insist that they call me right away so he can’t play his reindeer games around the phone. One night Cilla stopped by to have a drink and drop off her fee, and she told me about a conversation she’d had with Peter. It went something like this.

  PETER: Okay, come in, let me see what you’re wearing.

  CILLA: Hi, Peter, I just need to check in with Peach first.

  PETER: Just give me a minute first, okay? You’re like an adding machine. I want to be sure that I want to see you first. Let me see what you look like.

  CILLA: You know what I look like, Peter. I’ll spin around as much as you want, but I have to call Peach first.

  PETER: But—

  CILLA (cutting him off): But you know Peach won’t send me here anymore if I don’t call. She says that I waste a lot of time and she’ll send someone who’s going to watch the clock more. So let me call her so I can keep seeing you, okay, Peter?

  PETER (grumbling): You all watch the clock.

  CILLA (sweetly, reaching for the phone): You can always ask for another hour, Peter. That would be more relaxing …

  PETER: What do you mean, an extra hour? You think I’m made of money, or something? Go ahead, fine, if that’s all you can think about, make your fucking call.

  Nice way to start an intimate sexual encounter with somebody—but what do I know? Whatever works. If I’ve learned anything from this business, it’s that—whatever works.

  Some of the girls aren’t as good with Peter, or with anyone for that matter, when they start demanding more. Most of us, after all, were raised to be nice, and it’s hard to drop that polite façade we cultivate, even in the face of rudeness, even when someone is taking advantage of them. It’s difficult to stay firm and sweet at the same time. There are so many of them out there, guys who are predators in the smallest ways, who live to take advantage of someone like a college girl trying to make a living.

  So I’m clear about boundaries. Very clear. When a girl starts liking a client too much, I try to ease her off him. I’m not an idiot; I’m not going to shoot myself in the foot and not send her if no one else can go, or if he asks for her; but, by and large, when I can, I try to back them off. Because it’s when you start liking a client that the boundaries get blurred. And that’s never a good thing.

  My own boundaries started to get blurred a little when Benjamin came back into my life.

  Benjamin. I’d met him during the first year I was in business for myself. He was driving taxis and playing in a garage band called Mnemonic. I’d been out somewhere—funny how I can’t remember exactly where—and was coming back late at night. Benjamin was driving the taxi. I was a little drunk, a little high, and I invited him upstairs with me.

  There aren’t that many taxi drivers I’ve met who resist that sort of invitation.

  Benjamin stayed around, though. The next morning, he fixed my VCR so that the 12:00 digits would stop blinking, and cooked me breakfast, which was really a feat when you consider that I didn’t have exactly what one would consider a well-stocked pantry. My idea of dinner preparation was having Dining In on speed dial. He left to return his cab and go to a rehearsal, but he smiled when he did.

  Like he already knew he’d be back.

  With Benjamin, I drifted into something not entirely unlike a relationship—to paraphrase The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy—without really thinking much about what was happening. He was just there. He’d come and go as he pleased, sometimes staying with me for a couple of days, then not coming around for a week. I let him have a key more out of apathy than anything else.

  Odd, when you consider it: what eventually became the most important relationship of my life didn’t exactly start out auspiciously. Actually, it barely started at all. One day I considered myself single, and then, almost imperceptibly, Benjamin was there.

  Sometimes.

  The sometimes part of it became wearing. Not that I was seeing anyone else, particularly, but I just felt like I was always reacting,
an observer in my own life rather than a participant. And I don’t do well with that. Jesse should have taught me about that, if no one else had.

  But it seemed that the more the business blossomed, the more I was willing to take a passive role in my personal life.

  When he was there, Benjamin was fun. If there were people over, he’d hang out with us, play board games, have a drink, get high. I remember deep discussions from that time that probably weren’t all that deep at all, but sure as hell felt that way at the time. That’s a high all in itself. There’s nothing like solving the world’s problems in a single night to make you feel good.

  To be honest, it wasn’t the best time in my life, and I was grasping at straws for a little happiness. I had these ideas that once the business was up and running and I was Someone, someone cool and hip and popular, that everything would be good, and I’d be happy. All the shadows would be gone and I’d feel content, competent, and beautiful.

  Sometimes I felt that maybe I did have a handle on it, that I was just a breath away, a footstep away, a thought away from happiness.

  Then it would be gone, as if I had never even been close at all.

  Part of that construct, for me, involved being in some sort of relationship, not that casual sex is something to be sneezed at, mind you: I’ve always seen it as an integral and fulfilling part of life, and after Jesse left it became a mainstay of my existence.

  Being popular, I hadn’t had any problems securing a partner for a night, a week, a couple of months even—nice guys, some of them, though their names and faces seem a little blurry to me now.

  But I was also beginning to realize that at some point the soiree is over and the people go home. And you’re stuck with you.

  Waking up to the prospect of dealing with a dozen emotionally needy men wasn’t exactly what I had in mind when I closed my eyes and imagined something I could call happiness.

  Benjamin wasn’t what I had imagined, either, but I was beginning to understand—and, more importantly, accept—that nothing ever is. I think I was important to him, but I was on a list of other important things, like the band and the Red Sox and work. He fit me in, and that was exactly what it felt like: being fit in.

  I didn’t like being part of a list.

  We drifted like that for some time, me too lethargic and unable to commit to make him leave, him too busy and unable to commit to want to stay for very long.

  I’d see other people I knew, my friends, doing the same thing—drifting. What had happened to dating? What had happened to being a couple, and being okay with being a couple?

  Even Jen, who by then was fast becoming one of my closest friends, even she was equivocating about the whole thing. She was seeing Luis, then she wasn’t seeing Luis, then she was seeing Luis again. It was as if we had all lost some sort of internal compass that our parents’ generation had been able to grasp and use for guidance. We’d lost it, and all sense of where we were going.

  So Benjamin came and went, and I spent days and nights talking to Siddhartha and Court, wondering how it was that I had come to such a pass, where my most significant relationships were with my cats.

  In the meantime business was booming. We were in the mid-nineties, and little boys were making fortunes out of Web sites they thought up one night when they’d done too much coke (I know—I was there for a couple of them) and spending some of their fortunes on girls who never would have looked at them before they had dollar signs after their names. We were all doing well then.

  Sometimes I’d drink too much pinot grigio and complain, but Jeannette always laughed at me. She had a cat, too, with some computer-related name I can’t remember, though what I do remember is her laughing eyes over the rim of her wineglass. “Never underestimate the value of a relationship with a cat,” she said, nodding wisely. “With a cat, you know where you stand.”

  I just know that after a few days with them, I was always looking forward to Benjamin showing up, and that’s never a good position to be in. When you start wanting him to be there more than he wants to be there, it’s a problem.

  Robert offered to take me away for a long weekend. Lily offered to run interference; she even slept in my living room for a week so that if Benjamin came over I wouldn’t be tempted. Cilla offered to see him for free so that I could really despise him. So my friends were solidly on my side.

  Unfortunately, my heart wasn’t, and that’s the most treacherous friend of all.

  Let’s See … How Can I Prove I Did It?

  I needed to get out of town.

  Benjamin hadn’t shown up in over a week. The clients were particularly annoying, the sun was bright, and everything in my universe was screaming, “Road trip!”

  Jeannette was up for it. She almost always was, and she usually had ideas about what to do. “Ogunquit,” she decided.

  It sounded like a good plan. Ogunquit is a small town on Maine’s southern coast, very much a summer people sort of place; winters are cold, with slate gray skies and waves to match, but in the summer all the antique shops, bed and breakfasts, and theaters open up, and the place comes alive with riotous colors and a multitude of languages. It’s also something of a gay mecca, which I find attractive. Any place with a live-and-let-live motto is fine in my book.

  Best of all, Ogunquit is only a few hours’ drive north of Boston. It’s like a vacation without commitment.

  Ogunquit means “beautiful place by the sea” in the Micmac language, and as we pulled in that Friday afternoon, it was clear that it was aptly named. The shore snakes around so that you get tantalizing glimpses of it from the road, promising relief from stress and the workaday world. We drove through town first, Jen swearing at the pedestrians walking in front of us. I just looked out the window, passing the creepy Leavitt Theatre with its peeling white paint and green window boxes, Maxwell’s Pub with its dubious promise of karaoke, the Mad Hatter Bakery.

  She was impatient to get out of the car. “Is this place okay?”

  “Sure, anything’s fine.” We got out at the Hotel Viking, with its wide balconies on two floors overlooking the ocean and water on both sides. It sat on a cul-de-sac that ended at the beach. We threw our bags in the room without really noticing it; Jen was eager for the ocean.

  She told me once that her dream was to sail around the world. “You know, take two years off, just go. Let the water be the only rhythm in your life. You couldn’t come back the same person you were when you left.”

  And my own dreams? At the time, they were ill-defined, carrying words like happiness and contentment. Of course, I hadn’t met Sam, then. He’s brought me all the happiness and contentment there is in the world.

  We walked on the beach for a while and then wandered back into town, stopping off at the food market for bottles of wine that we left in our room when we changed for dinner. Ogunquit’s that kind of place. It’s not like Boston, where you have to change for dinner. In Ogunquit, you want to. We ate duck and asparagus and risotto at a tiny restaurant-cum-bed-and-breakfast and shared a bottle of wine with dinner. Jen insisted on cognac after, and we were slightly tipsy by the time we made it back through the thinning summer crowds to the hotel.

  The wide porch outside our room beckoned. It was dark, and the surf was making small hissing sounds on the sand. The perfect night for a glass of wine, or five.

  Neither of us had a bottle opener.

  I was on the phone in a flash. Never mind that it wasn’t the Ritz; I could make the desk clerk into a concierge, I decided, by sheer willpower.

  The clerk downstairs could not only locate a bottle opener; he would be happy to deliver it personally, seeing that he was getting off his shift in a few minutes.

  I stretched lazily across the bed. “Why not? Bring three wine glasses, too, won’t you?” Jen was sitting on the deck, her eyes closed, listening to the ocean. Or maybe sleeping.

  The knock at the door came about ten minutes later. He might have been all of twenty. He moved with the awkwardness of adolescence
and, I swear, he already had an erection.

  We were already well on our way to being toasted, and the wine kept the glow on. Yards away from us, the surf hissed and murmured. Boston could have been a million miles away, and I was feeling playful, very playful.

  Front Desk Boy (I can’t for the life of me remember his name; indeed, I consider it a triumph that I remember anything about that evening at all) was obviously happy to be sitting and drinking with us. He appeared to have no ambitions beyond working at the Viking Hotel, and that was fine with me, too: I was tired of pseudointellectuals.

  Jen must have been feeling playful, too. She was stretched out on a chaise lounge, sipping her wine, her eyes still shut. “So, do you know what she does for a living?” she asked Front Desk Boy, gesturing toward me. I giggled.

  He looked eager. “No, what?”

  Jen smiled without opening her eyes. “She’s a madam.”

  I looked at Front Desk Boy. He was still smiling eagerly, but he was starting to look nervous, as if he had already been the butt of many such jokes and was anticipating being laughed at again. He twisted the wineglass in his hands. “Yeah, right,” he offered half-heartedly.

  “Ask her,” said Jen.

  He peered at me. I was dressed in a slinky blue dress I’d picked up for a small fortune at Sola in Harvard Square, and had slipped out of my high heels. He was impressed, but not enough to let go of his insecurity. “Is it true?”

  I patted the chaise next to me. “Come over here,” I suggested.

  He came, smelling of soap and sweat and some repellant aftershave that he’d probably doused himself in before coming upstairs with the glasses and the corkscrew. He was still in the terrible throes of acne. I decided not to think about his age. He was old enough to work, wasn’t he? I slid a hand onto his knee. “I’m a madam,” I confirmed, softly, looking into his eyes, “down in Boston.”

  “Really?” His defenses were crumbling. He wanted so badly to believe me.