Madam. Jenny Angell

to call again. I had some confidence and I expected a nice opening night.

      What I got was an avalanche.

      This was a step on the learning curve. Clients, I learned, absolutely love new girls, girls they have never seen before, girls who are new to the business. They adore them. I don’t know if it’s some sort of little sick initiation rite that they’re imagining doing, or something leftover from the ever-popular deflowering-the-virgin concept, but whatever it is, they love new girls.

      Their assumption was that a new agency must be full of them.

      I was hard-pressed to handle all my calls that night. Some weren’t serious, they were just checking me out, testing the waters, trying to pull me into some erotic chat, but my time at Laura’s had taught me how to deflect them – I wasn’t going to play their reindeer games. Others were dead serious: who did I have that I could send out to them right now? There were the perusers of menus, sitting back comfortably, perhaps with a snifter of brandy to hand, asking me to go through my offerings one course at a time. “Ah, yes, and you said that you might have someone else a little older? Can you tell me about her, too? Okay, now remind me again – the one named Tina …?”

      There I was, in the midst of it all, answering phones, putting people on hold, racking my brains to keep names straight and numbers remembered, trying to screen these guys so that I wouldn’t send someone out to see a homicidal maniac my first night in business.

      The three women I had lined up already were frantically working the telephones, themselves calling up possible recruits.

      “Hi, Peach? This is Kara, I’m a friend of Stacey’s, she asked me to call you.”

      I cut right to the chase. “Super. What do you look like?”

      Kara, no beginner herself, was clearly used to the drill and rattled her stats off in a practiced manner. “I’m a redhead, shoulder-length hair, I’m twenty-two. C cup bra. I weigh 123 pounds, five-foot-six, and I’ve got a car.”

      The last part snagged me right away. “Okay. Can you get over to Newton in half an hour?”

      “Sure.” She sounded amused.

      I riffled through my scribbled notes, most of them in the margins of my textbook. If anyone were ever to read it after me, they’d be in for a shock as the pages were scrawled with my notes … CARL AT THE FOUR SEASONS, BLONDE …

      I found what I was looking for. “Okay, give this guy a call, Bill Thompson, 555-5454. Call me back after you talk to him, to confirm.” I disconnected, then called Bill myself. “I’ve got this adorable redhead who’s dying to see you. She’ll give you a call in a minute, and she can be there in half an hour. Her name is Kara. Just give her directions.” I hung up before Bill could say anything. This was not the time to chat: I was on a roll.

      “Hello? Hi, yes, this is Peach. Where are you located, sir? The Plaza? Can I confirm your name with the reception desk? Great. Do you have any particular preferences? Okay, yes, I do have a stunning blonde, she’s a college student, she’s 34-24-32 and weighs 110 pounds. Her name is Lacey. I know that you’ll like her.”

      Looking back, I don’t know how I got through that night. I don’t even remember what was on television (for me, that’s an extraordinary statement, because TV is definitely my friend). My magazines and Yellow Pages had been kicked off the bed. The ashtray was overflowing with cigarettes I had lit and then forgotten. I was setting up calls one after the other, stretching out late into the night. “Pam? Honey, can you take another two calls? You’re the best, thanks. I have John in Cambridge and Louis at the Four Seasons, in that order. You can call them both now. Here are their numbers. Do you have something to write on?”

      Finally, I had to begin telling people they needed to call back the next day. Some took it well; others, not so well. I remember hanging up the phone after one guy called me names at the top of his voice, tiredly massaging the back of my neck, the realization dawning that this was going to work.

      It wasn’t until three-thirty in the morning that I shut off the phones, padded into the kitchen, opened the bottle of Veuve Cliquot that I had left chilling in the refrigerator, and toasted myself. My new agency – Avanti – lived!

      I had suddenly, mysteriously, become a madam.

       A HEAD FOR NUMBERS

      I don’t think that I left my apartment for three days after that.

      I was blessed with a great memory for numbers, so I didn’t need to develop a routine for keeping information that would leave traces behind: no one will ever break into my place and find a mythical “little black book,” because it simply doesn’t exist. I found that the memorization skills that had served me well in school were again coming to the fore, and that I could, absurdly, remember nearly all the numbers of the people who had called me that first crazy night.

      I probably found the only job in the world where my favorite party trick is a professional asset.

      I had hired Jake, a driver, through one of the girls I’d met at Laura’s place. It was the girl’s brother, actually, who worked for a taxi service by day and picked up whatever jobs he could find in the evenings; she said he spent all his time and money at the Suffolk Downs horse races. Since three of the girls working for me that first night didn’t have cars, I’d kept him busy. He stopped by my apartment at the end of the night and dropped off the money the girls had given him to hold for me, my part of what they had earned. Back then, my agency fee was sixty dollars an hour, and I just asked the girls to give the fees to Jake. They paid him out of their own take from the call, usually around $20, depending on the distance he had to drive.

      Now I called him and asked him to meet up with the girls who had their own cars and pick up their fees, as well; I wasn’t about to leave anyone holding my money for too long. Not this soon in the relationship, anyway.

      I sat on my bed and counted my money. Then I counted it again. And again. I had put out eighteen calls that first night, at $60 a call for me. I had calculated what to charge based on what I had learned from Laura – and a few surreptitious calls to some other agencies. Prepared, that’s me.

      Even better than all that, I had a waiting list for the next couple of days.

      There wasn’t much time to rest on my laurels, though – the telephone kept ringing. The word was out, apparently, that Avanti was the newest, hottest service in town. Everyone wanted to try me out. Everyone wanted to work for me. I did quick phone interviews and prayed that the girls I was talking to had given me accurate descriptions of themselves. “Okay, that’s super, and what name do you want to use? Zoë? All right. Check in with me when you’re ready to go to work and I’ll see what we can do for you. Yes; I’m Peach, that’s right.”

      I didn’t pick up the client line until I felt I was ready. I had a quick cheat sheet of who was available and what she looked like; then I took a deep breath and plugged in the work line, and we were off and running again.

      Jake was elated. “Hot damn, this is the best it’s ever been. I’ve driven for other services and it was nothing like this. Anytime you need a driver, I’m your guy.”

      I didn’t have time for mutual backslapping. “Can you meet Melanie at the Star Market on Commonwealth and pick up some money from her? She’s holding $360 for me. She’ll be there at six. She’s driving a red Subaru.”

      “Sure thing, Peach.”

      I yawned and walked into the kitchen to make some coffee. I’m not a big coffee-at-night drinker, but it looked like I was going to need it. Wearing my socks, my sweats, and my favorite Paris Hard Rock Café T-shirt, I probably didn’t look like anybody’s idea of a madam. Which was perfectly fine with me.

      Around midnight, I got a call from Robert, a French guy I’d met at a party I’d gone to while I was still working for Laura. We’d