The Education of a Very Young Madam (20 page)

At six o'clock the following morning I got a voice-mail message: "Hi. It's Freddie. Just wondering how you're doing." That was it. No apology. No explanation. Not even a hint of sheepishness in his voice. Just like we'd been friends forever and that night had never happened.

I can't quite explain how the two of us ended up together after that. It doesn't make much sense, given the way things began. But then, love and attraction never have made much sense to me. I can tell you, however, that he was persistent, even pushy, in pursuing me after that, and I like that quality in a man. Less than two weeks later I had checked out of the hotel in New Jersey where I'd been living and moved into his apartment in Manhattan.

It was a power struggle between the two of us from the very beginning. Freddie was used to having women wrapped around his little finger. He just had a way about him that made the ladies fall in line, and he had come to expect it to be that way all the time. But I wasn't used to being controlled by anyone. Not anymore. At first he must have liked the challenge. I liked the challenge too, and on top of that, I got to have the ultimate playboy—the guy every woman wanted—fall in love with me. How could I not love that?

We made big plans together. The first thing we wanted to do was open up a private gambling club in his apartment. We both liked to play and would spend nights at the underground places in Chinatown losing, then winning back, then losing our money again (mostly my money, actually). I figured that, as long as we spent as much money as we did gambling, and as long as so many people we knew did too, some of that money might as well be going into our pockets instead of the pockets of strangers.

I planned to continue with my agency in New Jersey, of course, running it from his apartment. And then maybe, if things went well, eventually he'd help me expand my business into New York. Freddie was such a figure on the club scene that he definitely had the contacts to begin generating a new client list. He really got into the idea, and we talked about what kind of identity we'd create for our new agency to distinguish it from the thousands of others that already existed in the city. We were going to base the concept on Freddie's club personality: "Play like a Playboy!" What man wouldn't want to be Hugh Hefner for a night?

Freddie loved the idea of starting our own empire together, but ultimately, falling in love with a strong woman was too much for his ego to handle. He was jealous of my time and called my work "the other man" in our relationship. He hated being ignored while I pulled all-nighters to get ready for a tour or being asked to hold on while I answered call after call after call on a busy Monday morning. But at the same time, he liked the money I brought in. And he liked the way we sounded together—the Playboy and the Madam. It was as perfect a combination as the Quarterback and the Homecoming Queen.

He felt even more neglected when my friend Mandy called out of the blue to tell me she was coming to New York on a tour with a couple of other girls and she wanted to see me. We hadn't seen each other for two years at that point, not since she had come with me to New Jersey to help me decide if I should start up my business. I was beyond excited that she was coming. Even when we were far away from each other, I still felt like Mandy kept a place in my heart that very few people have ever reached. I considered her a true friend in every possible way.

We decided to meet for lunch the day she arrived, and even though I don't usually have time to socialize during the day, I threw all my work aside so that I could give her my full attention. Freddie, of course, noticed this right away. "Just a few days ago you wouldn't leave your desk for anything, not even to sleep," he complained, "but
now
you can find the time for something besides work?" I tried to explain that this was different because of how much Mandy meant to me and because of how long—too long— it had been since we'd seen each other. No matter what I said, I couldn't make him understand.

I just ignored him after that and did what I wanted to do. It was a good thing too, because it turned out that Mandy was in bad shape. She told me over lunch that her boyfriend, the crazy guy she was always fighting with but really loved and had stuck it out with for years, had just run out on her. He hadn't said good-bye either, just left behind a Dear Jane letter. She hadn't been able to get in touch with him since he left, not even to ask him why. And she hadn't seen it coming at all.

She told me she was fine, just sad, but I could tell that that wasn't true. Her anger showed through her cool jokes until it finally hit her as we were talking. "I've lost the one thing in my whole life that made me happy," she said. After that she just got more and more upset.

I didn't want to leave her alone, so I offered to stay with her in her hotel. Ofcourse, when I told Freddie that, he thought only of himself and got even more pissed off, but I didn't care. I had a real scare the next day, when I left Mandy for a while to get a few things done. After I was finished, I tried calling her so I could meet her back at the hotel, but I couldn't get ahold of her. I called and called, but she didn't answer the phone. I left messages, but she didn't call me back. I was going crazy with worry about what she might have done to herself while I had left her alone.

Finally she did answer her phone. She hadn't done anything to herself, but she had been thinking about it. I rushed right over, feeling guilty and hopeless. Mandy had been there for me before when I had been in a very dark place, and I wanted to help her, but I wasn't sure that I could. How was I going to make her want to live when sometimes I don't even want to live myself? I know it's a horrible thing to think, but sometimes I believe we'd all be better off dead. It's an ugly world, and happiness seems to be this thing that everyone wants and fights one another for, as if there is only a limited amount out there, not enough to go around. But no one ever seems to get to be happy for very long. Who knows what the answer is? I just knew that I desperately wanted my friend to be okay.

Mandy and I locked ourselves in her hotel room for the next few days and talked about everything,
everything,
that was going on in our lives. We even managed to have some fun. And, as tends to happen when I'm with Mandy, she probably ended up helping me more than I helped her. We talked about Freddie, and she got me to see my relationship for what it was—something that wasn't so great. By the time Mandy went back home, I think she was okay and I was really glad that she came.

Talking with Mandy reminded me of something I already believed about relationships: There has to be balance. For example, it would be really hard, if not impossible, for me to have a serious relationship with anyone who didn't have a past of his own. As soon as things went bad between us, any guy could use what I do for a living against me if there wasn't something in his own life that I could use against him too. I also believe that the only way relationships can work is when you don't need each other's money. But that's not how it was with Freddie and me. He was always borrowing money for something, even to take me out. It's not that I cared about the cash. I had money to spare, and I like to share what I have with the people I care about. That's why he was jealous of my work and my friends. He was insecure because I didn't need him, but if he was going to keep up with the lifestyle he'd gotten used to since we'd been together, he did need me. That wasn't good for either of us. If there isn't a balance between what people bring to the table, eventually money always gets in the way.

That's the one and only thing I've figured out about love after all the times I've tried it. Other than that love is something that's still a confusing part of my life. I've yet to conquer it, mentally or emotionally, and usually I think it's best just to stay away from love altogether. After all, emotion is weakness. It was my first love, Andre, who taught me that.

My habit now is to keep a few guys going at the same time so that I never get bored and I never get too serious. (And that doesn't mean sex with all of them, by the way.) That's how I always have someone to keep my mind off the others and off my work when I need a distraction. But sometimes I forget my own rules or choose to ignore them. Freddie was one of those times, and a hard reminder that my rules about love are there for good reason.

The last time I talked to Freddie we were screaming at each other on our cell phones. We'd been fighting for the past several days, and at that moment I couldn't remember if I liked this guy or hated him. In the back of my mind was the question Was I going to take this abuse or do as Andre taught me to do: fuck emotions—maintain my pride and respect at all costs?

Then Freddie said the absolute wrong thing: "You are nothing. You have no friends. You're just a cheap whore from New Jersey, that's all you are."

I knew he was at work when he said it. He was bartending at a friend's restaurant, and I knew he was probably saying these things in front of people. People I knew. Then he told me I had to get the hell out of his apartment right away. We'd been living together for less than a month at that point, but I wasn't going to argue with him anymore. I knew things were over. I told him I'd be right over to pick up my stuff.

"If you go there, I'll have you arrested," he answered, still screaming. "My brother's at my place and he's a cop. He has your hard drive with all your business info on it. You can go to jail for a long time for what you do."

I was stunned. Who was this guy? I obviously didn't know him at all. He definitely didn't know me at all if he was threatening me like that. Playing with my heart is one thing, fucking with my money, my livelihood, my security, my freedom.. .that cannot happen.

On top of everything else, Freddie still had my dog. Max is my heart and a reminder of my time with Mark, who was a much better man. Max had moved into Freddie's place with me, and Freddie loved him right away. He used to take that dog with him everywhere (probably because the dog is a chick magnet), and he, Max, and the bunny would all play together like kids when I was too busy to pay attention to any of them. Now Freddie was threatening to let the dog out into the street.

I hung up the phone and started to think. It was Thursday. On Thursday nights he always went to the bar-lounge Naked Lunch after work...The wheels were turning.

I knew someone who could get me a gun quickly, so I called him up to see what he had handy for my protection. He told me he had a .22 that was clean as a whistle and available immediately for $500. I sent my assistant with the cash to pick it up.

Next I called my Asian Boys. I wanted to show Freddie that I did have friends, plenty of them, and they would do just about anything for me. I had known these guys for a while, mostly because I liked to gamble in Chinatown, and they always ran in packs. Very few of them are dangerous alone, but in numbers, it's a different story. I knew I could count on them. They told me they could gather together ten boys to accompany me to the club and fifty more would be nearby. The extras would be available with one phone call if we ran into trouble. I was definitely going to make an impression.

Just over an hour after hanging up on Freddie, I walked into Naked Lunch, .22 loaded, ten gangsters behind me. I ordered a bottle of Hennessy for the boys and a bottle of Veuve Clicquot La Grand Dame Rose for myself.

Freddie wasn't around. To pass the time, I danced, drank my champagne straight from the bottle, and waited. Soon I spotted some of Freddie's friends—one of his best friends, Nick the Bassist; a photographer whose name I couldn't remember; and some others I'd met when Freddie took me to the Hamptons for Memorial Day weekend. I walked up to them and told them I was celebrating the fact that I was single. The photographer told me that he had broken up with his girlfriend too. He suggested we celebrate together. I ignored him and turned to Nick.

"It's too bad we never finished what we started," I told him.

The party in the Hamptons where I'd met Nick had turned out to be a sex party, something that Freddie had not warned me about when he invited me to the beach for a long weekend. I guess he assumed that, because of what I do, I'd be fine with that sort of thing. But I wasn't. One night, when Freddie was off somewhere else doing god knows what with god knows who, I decided I should get to know his friend Nick the Bassist a little better. I wanted to see if Freddie was as open about relationships as he claimed to be. If he expected me to be fine with him going after any and every girl who walked by, then he wouldn't mind if I took up with just this one boy. The bait worked. Freddie caught us making out and immediately got jealous. He promised he would behave from then on. I thought it was kind of too bad at the time because Nick, I bad found out, was a really cool guy. Even though we didn't get around to doing anything serious, Freddie had been mad about it ever since. He couldn't get over the idea that I could be with another man. But, of course, he never had a problem accepting his own double standards.

As I continued to put on my carefree show for Freddie's friends, Nick just stared at me. He leaned in toward me and said, "It's never too late, you know. You tell me when."

"I'll meet you outside in fifteen minutes," I said and danced away.

I went back to my boys to thank them for coming with me. I told them to stay and have a good time but I had changed my mind. We weren't going after Freddie, not tonight. I had other ideas.

Outside, while I waited for Nick, I ran into Jaime the Gambler, another one of Freddie's many friends.

"Freddie's really upset," he said, actually seeming concerned. "He thinks he fucked up."