Diary of a Manhattan Call Girl. Tracy Quan

in the shop who understands “garter belt”?—when my cell phone rang. Steven, the cause of this maddening culture clash.

      “I was just thinking about you,” I chirped. Suddenly I remembered Steven’s specs: bitchy, not chirpy. “No, tomorrow looks uncertain…Confirm with me in the morning. I can’t talk,” I added in a firmer voice. “I’m shopping.” For him, actually. But I didn’t say that because, well, it’s like telling a John you’re at the drugstore picking up some more K-Y.

      Sheer stockings, like a girl’s lubrication, should simply materialize, out of the erotic ether. Do not let daylight in upon magic.

      The salesgirl drifted away, in search of easier customers. Unable to resist a bargain, I snatched up three pairs of half-price thong panties—cute little animal prints. Perfect for Ted P., who likes to watch me changing my underwear in his office, and the more panties per minute the better. Some fetishists are so easy to shop for. Others must wait.

      WEDNESDAY. 2/2/00

      Every girl has a favorite customer. Plus, a john whom she barely tolerates in order to meet her weekly quota. In between the two extremes are bread-and-butter guys—the mainstay of a call girl’s business. You plan for bread-and-butter guys, cultivate them, seek them out. But you never plan to have a favorite john.

      Allison’s favorite was Jack.

      Last summer, he practically went into mourning when she decided (for the umpteenth time) to quit the business. Jack didn’t want Allison to know he was seeing other girls, and he mostly saw her friends so he could mope about how much he missed her. To have a regular who’s so easy—a quick blow-job-with-a-condom—and so devoted! We all sort of envied her. Who wouldn’t? Jack seemed like the perfect client.

      Until he got a call from Tom Winters, a twisted IRS agent who was auditing Allison and calling everyone she knew. Winters wanted to prove that she had vast reserves of hidden wealth; he couldn’t believe that she simply had no savings or real assets after more than five years in the Life. Winters was curious about Allison’s lifestyle—her apartment, her prices, even her body. (He asked one girl if Allison had had a lot of expensive plastic surgery. Yes, paying cash for major cosmetic work leaves a major trail, if you’re being audited for undeclared income.)

      Jack told the IRS how much he paid Allie and how often. He described the furniture in her living room. Never mind that these antiques came from her grandmother. Winters was convinced he could “prove” that Allie spent gobs of undeclared income at big-ticket antique shops. Auditing call girls was more than a job for Tom Winters: it was a hobby, an obsession, a calling.

      And Jack didn’t just tell him about Allison. He told the IRS how they had been introduced—about the other girls she worked with, like me and Eileen, and he ended up providing Tom Winters with a list of private call girls on the East Side. Allison lost many of her best clients—along with the best part of her mind—all because of Jack, the weak link. Winters decided to LUD her, as they say. He got a printout of her Local Usage Dialing records and started checking up on everyone she had ever called. He used her phone records to connect the dots and came up with some alarmingly accurate theories. He threatened her clients with professional and marital embarrassment—i.e., the tax audit from hell, meaning lots of loaded questions aimed at surprised wives, prickly bosses, and gossipy junior associates. Allison’s clients were terrified of being linked with a “known tax evader.”

      One night last fall, Allison woke me with a drunken hysterical call: “You’re the only person who had this information! I should have known!”

      “Allison?” I whispered, trying not to wake my exhausted boyfriend.

      “How else could the IRS know all these things? How else could they know that Fred came over to my place on Tuesday, May the fourth? Or the name of the girl who sent him?” she wailed in a high-pitched voice.

      I sat up fast and moved away from Matt, hoping he couldn’t hear her.

      “What are you talking about?” I asked in a horrified whisper.

      “I’m talking about that IRS agent—who I never should have seen today!” She stopped suddenly and I heard a deep raw sob. “He knew everything! My clients, my prices, he even knows I charge extra for—for—” There was a humiliated whimper that made me cringe. “So, when did you turn me in?”

      “Please calm down,” I begged as her accusations grew clearer.

      “I’m not as stupid as you think!” she cried. “You won’t get away with this. I’ve got stuff on you, too!”

      When I hung up, I was shaking.

      “What time is it?” Matt demanded angrily. “Who was that? Why are all your friends either in trouble or causing trouble? “ he railed. “What is wrong with you? Do you have even one normal girlfriend?”

      The weeks that followed were harrowing. I did not speak to Allison and barely spoke to my boyfriend, for fear of saying something incriminating. Matt started quizzing me.

      “What’s going on in your life? Was Allison threatening you?” When I tried to brush the whole thing off as girlish hysteria, he refused to believe me. “You were trying to hide your conversation the other night! Why?” My distress made him angry. “What have you done?” he demanded.

      For the first time, I was forced to consider just what Allison, in fact, had on me. We’ve been trading customers for five, maybe six, years. She knows my boyfriend. We’ve had dinner with each other’s families. She’s the only working girl I’ve ever introduced to my mom or my cousin, and yet she’s the most unstable. What was I thinking when I allowed her into my personal life? Allison even knows where I hide my cash—whatever I don’t spend, that is. I hired a lawyer, the notorious Barry Horowitz, who normally defends rich sociopaths—like those Dalton kids who hacked off that homeless man’s hand in Central Park. I hired him to defend myself against my best friend! And against Tom Winters, the IRS agent, who was also asking people about my furniture and my clients and looking for a weak link in my life.

      Tom Winters was neutralized before he could get to my boyfriend. By mid-November he was a front-page story in the Post, a public embarrassment for the U.S. Treasury Department. He had been caught—on tape—doing the very thing he accused every call girl in New York of doing: pocketing undeclared income. Winters had used his government job to extort cash from terrified shopaholic hookers who were caught spending far more than the income they declared on their tax returns. A small Barneys shopping bag filled with hundreds did him in. (It’s amazing how much cash you can fit into a bag that was designed to carry a bottle of foundation.)

      When Allison came to her senses, I felt like I was waking from a bad dream. You know, that moment when you’re not sure it was a dream and you’re not sure you’re awake yet?

      Jasmine had cautioned me last fall about making up with Allie. “If a girl ever threatened me like that—you don’t get to do that in this business! Not without consequences. And if it wasn’t for that silly bitch, your boyfriend wouldn’t have been asking you all those questions.”

      Yes, Allie got me into trouble with my boyfriend, but I managed to get myself out of it. I’ve kept his mind off “all those questions” by keeping Allie at arm’s length. I never converse with her when he’s around, always turn my cell off when I’m with him, and, to date, he’s none the wiser. Yes, I am always looking over my shoulder and sometimes I need to be alone just to decompress from my own shadow, but that’s the cost of making friends with the girls you work with. (Some hookers refuse to socialize with the other girls—and who can blame them?)

      I persuaded Jasmine not to tell anyone about Allison’s insane threats. Allison needed to get back on her feet and replace the business she had lost. If the other girls knew she had threatened to turn someone in, they’d be shocked—and she would never get any business from them again. Eileen, for example, is angry enough at Jack; I can just imagine how she’d take