Callgirl. Jenny Angell

(Well, maybe it was the unwritten agreement in the suburban wives’ job descriptions, too, for all I know.) They had less leisure, less time: they hurried into the mall at lunchtime to buy a birthday gift or a necklace to wear on their power-date after work.

      We giggled about it, Irene and I; but there was truth in our observations. These were the women who were downtown Boston. And so of course I thought that Peach would look like them. You don’t get any more “downtown” than a madam, after all.

      God knows I had tried to imagine her. Peach’s voice was light, but intense: she was a woman who made quick decisions and usually stood by them – until somebody like me made her change her mind. She had started her own business, and had run it for the past eight years; so perhaps the suits weren’t so far off. But her business was seduction and pleasure: the softer fabrics of the women from North Andover and Manchester-by-the-Sea might be more her style. Which way would she go?

      There was a voice at my elbow. “Jen? Are you Jen?”

      I hadn’t even seen her coming. She was my age, give or take a few years – she had to be, to have been in business that long, and have gone to school; it seemed obvious that anyone who required an education from her employees certainly had one herself. She had long thick red hair, a pale face, and tremendous green eyes. She would have looked as though she had just stepped out of a Rossetti painting were it not for her khakis and leather jacket. The pre-Raphaelites, if I remember correctly, favored ethereal white gauzy dresses instead.

      I offered my hand, and she hesitated before shaking it. “Hi, yeah, I’m Jen, you must be Peach.” Another scintillating remark brought to you by the professor.

      “Let’s go sit outside,” Peach suggested. So much for lunch.

      We sat on a concrete wall in the sun and wind, and she came right to the point. “Are you a police officer?”

      I stared at her. “Um – no. That was why I called you…”

      She was calm. “I just have to make sure. You are not a police officer?”

      “No. Do I look like one?”

      “Fine, then,” she said, and we went on from there.

      I wish that all of life could be that simple.

      * * * * * *

      Okay, so here is what you learn. The Gospel According to Peach. I don’t know whether it’s true or whether it’s one of those cherished urban legends, one specific to activities outside the law. In any case, the common understanding is that if you ask a person if he or she is a police officer, and he or she answers “no,” but in fact is a police officer, then any subsequent arrest won’t stand up in court. It still sounds odd to me; but Peach knew her stuff, so I assume that she knew about that, too.

      She wasn’t one for small talk. She even had a canned speech for this part, too. “If you ever, ever have any suspicions or bad feelings about a client, don’t do the call. There are a couple of ways out of it. If you think it might be a setup, ask if he’s a police officer. If you really are suspicious, then say you think you left your keys in the car, you’ll be right back, and just get out. If it can wait a few minutes, then when you call me to check in, ask me if your sister called.”

      I was bemused. “My sister wouldn’t call you.”

      “Doesn’t matter,” she said impatiently. “It’s a code. Hang up and tell the client that I heard from your sister whose husband is much worse, he’s in the hospital, and you have to go. Say you’re sorry, tell him to call me back, that I’ll take care of him. And then leave. I’ll talk with you before I take his call so I know what’s going on. Never, ever do a call that doesn’t feel right. Trust your instincts.”

      Think what you will, her system worked. No one from her agency ever was arrested, the whole time that I worked for her.

      So we met, and she reassured me that I was attractive enough and young enough (at least in appearance) to make it in her profession, and I went home a little bemused and oddly self-confident. Months later, she would tell me that she had felt intimidated by me at that first meeting, that she saw me as clever, sophisticated, and educated and that scared her; but of course at that time I didn’t know that. All that I was aware of then – blissfully – was that I had passed muster.

      The reality, like it or not, is that we are all governed by the dictates of Madison Avenue, by the excesses of Hollywood. No matter how much we want to say that it isn’t true, it is. If you say that you aren’t influenced by Gap posters or twenty-something television programs, if you say that you never compare yourself to them and wonder in your heart of hearts whether you measure up, then I’m sorry: you’re simply not telling the truth. Newsweek talks about youth culture as though it were a distant phenomenon, to be studied anthropologically; but I guarantee you that the reporters working on the study are concerned about belonging to the very group that they write about.

      Take me. I had earned two master’s degrees and a difficult doctorate. I was living independently and reasonably happily. I was embarking on a career that I had wanted desperately for all of my life. And yet, that afternoon, I got more pleasure out of the assurance that I was young enough, thin enough, pretty enough, seductive enough to be able to work for an escort service, to hold my own along with twenty-year-olds, than I did out of all of my real, important accomplishments.

      So maybe I’m not so smart after all.

      * * * * * *

      I didn’t work that night after meeting Peach. I gave myself permission, instead, to invest in my new job, to fashion and create and slip into my new persona.

      I went to my health club and stayed there for three hours, sweating and straining on the Stairmaster and in the weight room, then rewarding myself with twenty minutes in the whirlpool. I chose a Stairmaster machine next to a woman I knew casually from the gym. She worked for one of the software companies out on Route 128. We saw each other once in a great while outside of the club, but mostly our conversations took place as we were panting and watching our heart rates. We told each other about our love lives, or the lack thereof, depending on what was happening at the time. “Want to come to a barbeque tomorrow night?” Susan asked, her eyes on the glowing red dots of the program monitor in front of her.

      I hesitated, then replied. “I can’t.”

      That piqued her interest. “Oh, my God, you didn’t tell me, that’s so cool, Jen, are you seeing someone? See, I told you! I knew you’d get over that loser Peter.”

      “Nothing like that.” I paused to swallow some water from my bottle. I couldn’t help my thought, I couldn’t help but imagine what she would say if I told her the truth. No, Susan, it’s not really a date; only sort of. How shocked would you be if I told you what I was really going to be doing? That my date will end with him paying me two hundred dollars? I stifled the laughter that bubbled up with the thought.

      I couldn’t even imagine what she’d think. If she believed me. That was a big if. “I just need money, I’m doing some tutoring.”

      “That’s cool.” She was focused again on her hill-climbing pattern. “I need to do something like that.”

      I smiled my Inner Secret Smile and asked, innocently if a little breathlessly (well, I was on a Stairmaster), “Why? I thought you high-tech geeks made all the money.”

      “Yeah, but tutoring, at least you meet someone who’s not a cubicle rat. I’d just like to occasionally have a conversation with someone who has some social skills.”

      Well, yeah, I thought, the ones I’m seeing aren’t all geeks. The social skills part, I wasn’t so sure about yet.

      After showering and drinking some fruit juice at the club bar, I headed out to make some additions to my wardrobe. Nothing fancy, just as far as the Citibank card would allow me to go. New job, new clothes, my mother always used to say. I had a picture of her, the first day at the bank where she was an assistant vice-president, her hat just so and her gloves matching her shoes