Call Girl. Jenny Angell

have him trained. “In my pocket,” I said, gesturing at the clothes on the floor.

      “Do you mind?” He picked my jeans out of the pile and handed them to me, immediately going back to kissing my neck. I fumbled for the condom package, and he took it from me.

      I sat up then and leaned down to touch his cock with my lips. Yeah, I know, I know, you shouldn’t do anything without protection, what can I say, he wasn’t all that close to coming, and I was trying to show him that I liked him. Even then, I was thinking about repeat business.

      I was already understanding, if only at an intuitive level, the credo of every callgirl. Regular clients are our bread and butter, the reason that we can keep doing what we do. Finding someone like Bruce and making sure that he asks for us, over and over again.

      I hadn’t thought about how Peach had gotten him so easily for me, for my first night. Later, I found out that she had an arrangement with Bruce, that he saw new callgirls. Instead of him calling her, she called him. Everybody won: Bruce got the thrill of initiating a first-timer, the girl got an easy call. At the time, however, I was just feeling lucky, feeling like this wasn’t going to be so awful and tedious a job, after all.

      All the questions – is it wrong to like my work? Am I supposed to hate working for a service? – came later. At that moment, I was just glad that I could do it, that it wasn’t unpleasant, and that I was good at it.

      I licked up and down his cock while he opened the condom package. He paused from time to time to pull my hair back from my face so that he could watch me, watch his cock sliding in and out of my mouth, between my lips, and he sighed. “God, you’re good.”

      I moved back so that he could slip on the condom. He kissed me while he was doing it, our tongues touching; he was still sighing with pleasure. And then I was leaning back on the bed and he was on top of me, his big body over mine, his hardness sliding inside me, and I opened my legs to him, wrapped my legs around him to pull him in deeper, and he sighed again, even louder.

      I kissed his neck as he started to thrust inside me, and then I gripped his shoulders and took his thrusts, his cock big and hard inside me, his beard rough against my cheek. At one point I thought I heard him say “Tia.” I wasn’t quite sure, but I said “Bruce,” and that seemed to please him. He moaned again and thrust even harder.

      I could feel us both sweating, even though it was only March, and I had been chilly when I got there. The portholes were open, but it wasn’t the lack of air that was making me so hot, making us so hot together. I slid my hands up over the hair on his chest as he continued to move inside me, and tightened my hands around his shoulders again – they almost slipped off from his sweat.

      He came suddenly, just as I was grabbing his hair and pulling his face down to kiss me again. He groaned and his whole body shuddered; I pulled him against me and held him tightly. “I’m here, baby,” I whispered. “I’m here.”

      Can I tell you this now? It was better sex than I’d had with the rat bastard boyfriend. Ever. And – best of all – I was getting paid for it.

      And it got better. There was none of the postcoital abruptness I usually associate with one-night stands. He rolled off me and pulled me over to him, my head on his chest, listening to the thudding of his heart. I continued to caress him, gently, my fingertips playing lightly over his chest. I blew gently on the sweat, and he shivered and tightened his arm around me. Better, on the whole, than any other one-night encounter I’d ever had.

      Bruce disappeared into the bathroom and was dressed first, but had wine waiting when I emerged from the bedroom, and he kissed my cheek as he handed it to me.

      The telephone rang. He picked it up, said, “Yeah, Tia’s here, hang on a minute,” and passed the receiver over to me. “For you.”

      I was puzzled. “Hello?”

      It was Peach. “All set?”

      “Yes.” I had no idea what she meant.

      “Okay, good, call me when you get out.” She must have sensed that I didn’t understand. She sighed. “I always call when the hour’s up. Some guys play games. Sometimes they try to make you stay longer. He pays for your time, and I make sure that he gets what he paid for. And that you get out safely, that you’re not stuck or stranded or anything like that. So leave now, and call me from a pay phone.”

      “Okay.” I handed the telephone back to Bruce. He obviously knew the drill: he had the money in his hand already. “I really liked meeting you, Tia.”

      I smiled as I slid the bills into my jacket pocket. “It was nice meeting you, too, Bruce. I hope I can see you again.”

      “I’d like that a lot.” He even sounded like he meant it.

      He escorted me off the gangway, kissed me again on the cheek, gave me a brief hug. “Good-night.”

      “Good-night, Bruce.” And I walked away toward my car; I felt like singing, or skipping, something joyous and happy. I had just spent a pleasant evening. After I took out the sixty dollars that was Peach’s fee, I had made one hundred and forty dollars. In one hour.

      Anybody else out there making that kind of money?

      I called her from the first pay phone I spotted; she asked politely how it had gone, and wished me a good night.

      I hung up the telephone and was struck by an incongruous thought. I remembered sitting in that whirlpool at the health club, and feeling grateful that I had the lifetime membership (a gift, ironically enough, from my mother), so that I would always be able to go there. I was grateful that they were open late at night. I remembered sitting there and thinking, when I start working, I’ll come and sit here and let all the bad feelings soak away with these bubbles. I’ll use this place to feel clean again.

      I was smiling broadly as I got back in my car to drive home. There was nothing that I needed to cleanse myself from. What bad feelings?

      I slept really well that night. No nightmares, no waking up sweating with the panic pressing in on me, no knots in my stomach. I was gainfully employed. I even wrote a check to the electric company.

      This was going to work. And I wasn’t even shocked that there weren’t any bad feelings at all.

       TWO

      The next day dawned, as next days inevitably – and depressingly – do. I had showered when I got home, and did it again out of habit before getting dressed and heading out for class. I dressed in community college attire, which (per my definition, anyway) means professional enough to be able to be distinguished from the students and not so formal as to make people think that one is taking oneself too seriously. In the world of academia, community colleges are certainly not to be taken too seriously. That’s unfortunate and not even very accurate; but wasn’t it Lenin who said that perception is reality? It’s where a lot of people start – and where a lot of people finish up, too.

      I didn’t want to think about that.

      I was fortunate in my Death and Dying class. It was being offered as a partnership agreement between the college and a local hospital, and was largely populated by registered nurses going back to school to acquire a Bachelor of Science in Nursing. So there was not only a lot of motivation among the students, there was also a lot of expertise. I was talking about death: my students were people who dealt with it every time they went to work. It was more than a little humbling.

      That first morning after working for Peach, though, I have to admit that I wasn’t feeling particularly humble. I was feeling high.

      That day we were talking about death and war. It was one of my favorite classes on the syllabus, because there was so much material with which to challenge the students. I didn’t want to tell them whether war was right or wrong; I wanted to challenge their perceptions and help them come to their own conclusions. Or their own confusion. Either was acceptable.

      I