Sin City (55 page)

Carl jerks his thumb at them, wants those off as well. He takes a step towards me as I slip them off. I flinch, freeze. Is he going to touch me up, put me through my paces? I'm not sure he even goes for girls. Angelique was cagey when I asked, hinted he was gay, but Desirée told me airily that he'd slept with a thousand different women, tries out all his “ladies”. God knows which is true. I just wish he wouldn't come so close, peer at me like that; his eyes right in my navel now, then running round my groin.

“Turn round.”

No “please”. No “Would you mind”. What do I expect? You don't say please to horseflesh or to cows. It's worse still with my back to him. I can't see his face, can't see what he's thinking, keep expecting his hot hands to land on my cold back. They don't. He doesn't touch me, doesn't speak at all. The suspense is really awful. I want to scream with nerves.

“Okay,” he says, “You'll do. Get your clothes back on.”

I'll do. I'll do. How dare he? I'd like to order
him
to strip, go up close to view his saggy stomach, his puny little prick, ask him to turn round, go down on both knees; then say sorry, no, he's failed. Instead, I drag my clothes on, sit down when I'm told to, accept a cigarette, answer all his questions about what he calls my “work experience”. He knows I haven't any, but he still wants all the intimate details of my personal likes and dislikes, my repertoire, my special skills and preferences. He's slumped back in his chair now, feet spread wide apart so that his trouser-straining crotch is facing directly towards me; head thrust forward, lie-detector eyes watching every ripple on my face. It's even harder to stay cool now he's viewed me naked. It's as if he can still see me – see my nipples and my bush, the crease between my buttocks, that mole on my left thigh. I can feel myself blushing through the layers of make-up; hear my voice, too shrill, saying the wrong things. I drop a trail of ash, stoop to pick it up, bang my head on something sharp. I try to smile away the pain, answer Carl's last question.

“Well, no, I haven't ever actually …”

“Okay, kid, relax. You'll learn. And if you don't, you're out. What about a professional name?”

“Yes, I've thought of one. Adorée.”

“What kinda name is that, for heaven sakes?”

I bristle. “It's my own name. My father chose it. It means adored. My Dad was very fond of me.”

“Must have been. So why the Carole then?”

“My … mother called me that. She's dead now.”

“Angelique said your Pa was dead. They're both dead?”

I'm almost crying as I nod, not because I've made myself an orphan, but because I can't stop lying. I don't know why. It's as if I'm never quite enough just as I am, got to be more tragic, more dramatic.

“Poor kid.”

There, you see, sympathy already. He's smiled for the first time. I simper back, start flirting with him; despise myself, continue.

“Well, Carole, I think we'll get you working right away, okay? See how you make out. Like to start this afternoon?”

I stare at him, my own smile frozen now. I'm speechless. I haven't even seen my room, or met all the other girls. Angelique promised they'd break me in quite gently, give me time to settle in.

“Don't worry. All I want you to do is look after a wife.”

“A wife?” I'm catching Norah's habit – parroting. But I'm so confused I can't manage more coherent words. Does he mean some sordid dykey thing? I can't. I won't. I was never told this brothel serviced lesbians.

“Sit still, Carole, can't you? You're so darned twitchy, you're driving me up the wall. Where was I? Yeah, this couple. They're coming in at three o' clock. It's the guy's birthday and his visit here is a present from his wife – her own idea, in fact. She did the same last year, drove him all the way from Barstow, then waited while he did his stuff. That's where you come in. I just want you to sit with her, make her feel at home, okay? Have a cup of coffee with her, tell her about England – anything you like. She's a real nice woman – friendly – you won't have any problem. Then, afterwards, you can help pass round the plates. We've made the guy a cake, a huge one, seventy candles.”

“Seventy?”

“Yeah, he's older, actually, but men are just as vain as women when it comes to birthday candles. He was seventy last year. And the year before, no doubt. Right, any questions?”

“Er … no.”

“Good girl. That's it for the moment, then, until I've called the doctor. He won't come up till later. Go find Kathy and ask her to show you where your room is, sort you out any stuff you need. You've met her, haven't you?”

“Mm.” The violinist. Maybe she should wife-sit too. Provide some background music, divert the wretched woman from what her husband's doing. An old boy of seventy-two. Has he got his legs, I wonder? Will he need a winch? Perhaps she's older still, can't do it any more, has to hire a substitute, a treat just once a year.

All my anger comes seething back again – anger with the couple, with Angelique, with Carl; with the whole stupid crazy set-up. Is that all Adorée's good for, sitting with some pensioner, making instant coffee, small talk? I kick my chair back, close the door behind me more loudly than I need, fumble for a Kleenex as I walk back along the passage, start scrubbing at my face. I don't need all that make-up or come-hither eyes. And I may as well change back into a simple skirt and blouse. Skin-tight leather trousers aren't exactly working gear for a geriatric social worker.

I pace up and down the room, up and down. It's huge, what they call a VIP lounge, though its not a lounge, not really, since the only furniture is an enormous water-bed. You can't count the chair – that's metal, and described in the brochures as an adult monkey bar. Don't ask me what it's for – I don't know, don't want to know. There are a lot of things that go on here which I've simply turned my back on, blocked out of my mind. The dominance and bondage, the slave training, spanking lessons, the video-taping service which immortalises customers in any sado-masochistic mayhem that they choose.

I've been here two whole days now, and they've gradually lifted up the corners, let me see what's there beneath the roses and the Pine-Fresh. I'm no longer scared and sickened, though I tend to cringe a bit when I hear Carl use his favourite words – “standards”, “class”, and “style”. Okay, he's achieved them as far as externals are concerned. Dress and meals and décor are all elegant enough, but what about the clients and the other sort of menu? Is a fantasy dungeon “classy” (complete with rack and thumbscrew); a torture-chamber “stylish”? I haven't seen those yet, hope I never do. I prefer to forget the more outrageous things, pretend they never happen. Some of them I can hardly quite believe – the guys who pay to have a girl shit in their mouth, or be dragged around the room with a string tied to their tongue. I try to stop my ears to those, act deaf.

We do that all the time in what we call the real world. I mean, last night's news on television – a kid of just fifteen strangling himself with the bed-sheets in a children's home; a trusted babysitter molesting a six-year-old; a Chicago street gang with a thousand members buying double-barrel shotguns with their profits from the dope. I was watching it with Kristia and Joanne. We switched channels, didn't we, preferred to listen to a jingle for Diet-Aid Dream Topping. Diet-Aid, when half the world is starving.

There's a commercial break now. The huge TV set above the bed is advertising itself “… elegant oak-grain cabinet frame, infra-red remote control, and fifty-inch diagonal screen with the sharpest clearest picture you can …”

I switch it off. It's only there to show the adult movies. (I still don't know why “adult” should mean porn.) I don't think my client will want porn. He's a virgin, and probably underage. You have to be eighteen to use the brothel, and with an identity card to prove it, but some boys borrow older men's ID's, and Carl says if they've got the cash, why probe? I suspect Carl chose me purposely for this lad. As someone who is working here illegally, I'm not likely to tell tales on him. And if he's inexperienced, he won't be too demanding, can't make unfavourable comparisons. Actually, I feel a bond with him. He's Korean, a foreigner, and I'm a foreigner myself. I don't mean being English. The twenty girls who work here are by no means all American and include some dusky skins and unpronounceable names. No, it's because I don't belong yet. The girls are very matey still, but it's only superficial and I can sense a lot of rivalry bitching on beneath the smiles. The cosy happy family isn't what it seems. Desirée said she liked the work. That's rare. Most of the girls endure it as a duty, the only way they know of making money. Some of them resent the men, even hate their guts.

I mean, I had this talk with Naima, who was really bitter. She's half Moroccan, escaped from some whorehouse in Casablanca where the madams and the cops worked hand in hand, took away everything she owned – her passport, all her papers – so she was completely in their power. She often worked fifteen hours a day, got through over a hundred clients in that time, which works out like those quick-fire Vegas weddings – eight minutes apiece. She never left her room, rarely had a second for a sit-down or a fag. Okay, it's a palace here, in contrast, but she said she's still basically a fucking-machine who can't choose or vet her clients, has to service anyone who comes. “We're just beds for them to lie on, Carole, or chairs to sit on. They get on, they get off, they get dressed, and it's next please.”

Then she started pitching into men – what pigs they were, what garbage; top brass maybe, but creeps: either cruel and ruthless louts or weak submissive slaves. I didn't want to hear. Okay, she's seen men at their worst and in the raw, but there must be some guys left who are decent normal types. Desirée thinks so, anyway. It was quite a relief to escape back to her room from Naima's savage tongue. I can't think how Carl ever took her on, though I suppose he values her experience. Five years on the game in Casablanca (which must add up to umpteen thousand men) is like those Ph.D. s he brags about – a doctorate in fucking.

I prefer Desirée, who believes in pleasing men. Or Angelique, who's kept her sense of humour, counts her blessings. The other girls are much less open with me, so I'm not sure what they feel. They're friendly, yes, but guarded, as if they're still a little wary. I can hardly blame them really, when all I've done so far is eat their food, try their clothes, take up their free time. Perhaps things will be better once I've started work, made myself one of them officially.

This boy will be my first, which is why I'm so afraid. I keep glancing at my watch. Still twenty minutes to go. If they crawl as slowly as the last half hour, he'll be greeting an old crone. I'm no longer scared about it being wrong. Maybe I've been brainwashed, but selling sex seems normal now, even sensible, convenient. Well, I can't defend the sadist stuff, or the way-out kinky things, but I shan't be touching those. And when it comes to simple screwing, I can think of other jobs far worse – writing lies for those commercials, for example. What I'm frightened of is failing.

I lie back on the bed, suddenly leap up again. Reuben could have lain here, on this very counterpane, with another girl – more than one. I've never quite accepted it before, that he walked into this brothel, picked his fancy dishes from the menu, maybe paid for them with money which he'd stolen for the Jewish cause, sold my passport to buy himself a Three Girl Show, or what they call “Fantasy and Fetish”. And then he dared use words like principles, integrity; tricked me into believing in the Utopia of Israel when he'd already flogged my only means of getting there; let me praise him for his kindness in including Norah, too, when all he was doing was picking up her loot – a second passport, a second airline ticket – enough for an All Niter with the most expensive hooker here.

Hold on. He only had those passports for a day – our wedding day. He'd hardly spend his precious time driving to a brothel, fucking whores, least of all when he'd come four times already – with
me
, the night before; more than four, if you count our morning session. And if he was going to sell our passports, he wouldn't waste the proceeds on another round of sex, then turn up for the wedding bold as brass.

He was late, though, wasn't he; not bold at all, but very strange and nervous. Another voice pipes up: of course he'd be nervous if he was working with some gang, planning theft and murder, known to the police, risking his skin by showing up at all. So why did he show up, then? Madmen don't need reasons, scoffs a third voice. If you're psychotic or deranged, you're capable of anything. Shut up, I tell it furiously. That's tattle, even slander. He could just as well have come because he loved me – come to warn me or explain. So why did he say nothing then, and why did … ? The voices fight and wrangle, contradict each other. None of them makes sense. I'm back to where I started. With that sick and senseless image of Reuben lying naked on this bed.

I've got to get him out. I'll never please another man while I'm so involved with this one, still torn to pieces over him. He didn't book this room. I push him off the bed, march him to the door. “And don't think I believed those lies you told me – how you'd never met a girl like me before. I suppose you used those Hebrew words to all of them …”

I'm shaking as I stride back to the bed, walk round and round it. Reuben's over. Finished. The only man in my life just now is my ten o'clock booking. I've got to be professional, got to be relaxed for him. He'll be shy himself and nervous. Angelique warned me about virgins, how I'll have to work harder, take much less for granted. She didn't seem that keen on them herself – more work for less return was how she put it. And Carl gave me a pep-talk about the importance of a man's first time and how it was my concern to make it memorable. I suppose what he's really after is new business, repeat bookings, but all the same, I feel burdened with my twin responsibilities – to the client and to Carl.