Madam. Jenny Angell

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      JENNY ANGELL

      Madam

      Thanks as always to my husband, to my literary agents (Philip Spitzer, Lukas Ortiz, and Jane Judd), and to the wonderful editors at Avon/HarperCollins in London: Keshini Naidoo and Sammia Rafique. And thanks especially to Peach: this book is both for and about you, and all the fragile and lovely spirits we’ve known together.

      

      This is a second-hand memoir, written about a person other than myself. Because of that, and because of the necessity of protecting people’s identities, particularly Peach, it can be viewed as true but not completely factual.

      Most people in this book are composites. Most places have been changed. While I spent countless hours with Peach talking about this book, listening to her stories and thoughts and her feelings, I cannot guarantee the accuracy of anything that is written here that does not include me directly.

      Readers are urged to take it as it is meant – as an example of living a life that many people could otherwise not imagine, and yet one that is familiar in enough ways to perhaps help people see that we are not so different from each other, after all.

      

      For Peach, of course

      CONTENTS

       Prologue

       Rendezvous

       Working the Phones

       The Making of a Madam

       Losses

       Leaving Mother Superior

       Night One Chez Peach

       A Head for Numbers

       Jesse, Jesse, Jesse…

       Escort Business Etiquette

       The Belle of Boston

       Callgirl Salon

       Under… and Over… Jesse

       Private Yellow Pages

       The Client From Hell

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

       Catering by Any Other Name

       Business and Family

       Phoning It In

       Addiction

       Alla

       The Road to Happiness

       The Most Important Person

       Baby Makes Three

       Taking Charge

       A Romantic at Heart

       You’re Fired!

       Can’t Get Enough of Muffy

       Moving On

       Epilogue

       Original Titles from Mischief

       Author's Note

       About the Author

       By the Same Author

       Copyright

       About the Publisher

       PROLOGUE

      For three years of my life, I worked as a callgirl. I worked for a woman-owned and woman-operated escort service, and that agency is what made those three years more than just an emergency financial stopgap. It became, instead, an interesting and empowering experience for me.

      I wrote my story of those years in a memoir titled Callgirl. And because the madam I worked for figured so importantly in that story, I decided to share what one madam’s life is like. It’s Peach’s turn; this is her story.

       RENDEZVOUS

      The couple had been sipping wine for almost half an hour when he made his first move.

      They had already exhausted talk of his work (he was an accountant, so that part didn’t take too long) and hers (she was a graduate student, she told him, though when you purchase companionship through an escort service you never know whether you’re being told the truth), and he had been watching the ample cleavage defined by the black lace camisole long enough to be feeling excited. Very excited.

      Still, he liked the sound of her voice, and he listened to it longer than he had planned.

      He took the wineglass from her hand, gently, courteously, and placed it on the glass top of the coffee table in front of them. She was smiling. When he kissed her, her lips were as warm and yielding as he had thought they would be.

      She put her arms around him and drew him in closer, her mouth, her lips against his, her tongue exploring inside his mouth, feeling hot, feeling impatient. He sensed a surge, a response inside himself, as though his groin were suddenly on fire.

      She leaned back on the bed and pulled him on top of her, still fully dressed, and her legs came up and encircled him, pulling him down harder on top of her. She was kissing