Callgirl. Jenny Angell

startled people at the tables next to us, and a floor manager looked interested and began drifting in our direction. Jerry saw everybody looking at him, and in a tone that implied they would all agree with him, he said, “What do you want? I pay her more than she’s worth, and now she’s nickel and diming me about the time!”

      I walked out. I waited for him in the front hall. There was a statue there, with a periodic sound-and-light show about the Native American heritage of the Pequots. I thought about Irene’s words and looked at the feather headdress on the statue whilst I waited for Jerry.

      I wondered what the gorgeous women in the slinky black dresses in the casinos frequented by James Bond et al. would have done in my place. I thought about what they would have done for a good ten minutes.

      And then I did it. I got in the car and headed home alone.

       SIX

      And so spring drifted imperceptibly into summer. It was another of those springs that we get so frequently in New England, where if you’re not paying attention for a week, you’ve missed it altogether. One day it’s damp and chilly and you’re wearing a wool jacket, and then within a week you’re waking up sweating with your bedsheets twisted all around you, the sun is blindingly bright, and the temperature is hitting ninety degrees with some regularity.

      I had turned in my last grades at the end of May, and in June I started summer school.

      Three classes, I thought with relief. It didn’t mean that I could do without Peach, but it meant – hopefully – that I could keep my focus where it belonged, in the classroom rather than in the bedroom.

      Summers are important – not to mention fun – for not-yet-established professors, because the curriculum everywhere tends to get a little lighter. Students don’t want to take calculus over the summer; they want to take their electives then, learn something interesting and a little offbeat. And so in the summer months, most colleges are more open to suggestions for subjects that aren’t necessarily part of the general semester’s curriculum.

      I was teaching the same classes I had in the spring, Life in the Asylum and On Death and Dying. I was also teaching a Thursday evening class at the Boston Center for Adult Education, giving women tips and destination suggestions for world travel alone. When I was doing my undergraduate work, a friend and I – both of us travel-mad – had written a book on women traveling alone, and while I had traveled mostly on a shoestring since then, I knew that I could be helpful. And, besides, teaching the class was fun.

      Peach, unfortunately, was less than pleased about my class on world travel. “What if I need you?” she asked. “Thursdays can be busy.”

      I shrugged. “It’s just one night a week, Peach. I never work every night, anyway.”

      She wasn’t deterred. “If one of your regulars calls,” she warned darkly, “I’ll have to send him to someone else.”

      I had my own regulars by then. And I am here to tell you that regulars are a very good thing. The thought of losing one was enough to give me pause… Well, actually, it would have given me pause, were it not for the fact that regulars can also be fickle. A sure thing isn’t a sure thing until the money is in your pocket and you’re on your way out the door. If the rest of life hadn’t already taught me that, working for Peach certainly did.

      It wasn’t even particularly that I adored my regulars, even, or certainly not all of them. But they have the advantage of being a known factor in a swirling sea of unknowns.

      One of the – oh, what is the word that I want? troubling? disconcerting? – things about being an escort is that you often feel like you’re going on a series of blind dates. You never know who or what exactly is waiting on the other side of that door when it opens. That uncertainty can get a little wearing.

      All right: it can get very wearing.

      Besides that, you have to be “on” all the time. Taking an acting course or two might be, in retrospect, the best way to prepare for this job, because the moment the door opens you’re committed to getting out of there with two hundred dollars in your pocket and, hopefully, a client who will request you again and again. And you need to work for that. Whatever it takes. Selling yourself all over again. Being exactly who he wants you to be. Chameleons, that’s us.