Substitute prostitute

“I’d like to see Joanna, please.”  The man smiled, a little hesitantly, and Marie smiled back.  It was her turn on the desk, and to be honest she was quite happy about it.  Sometimes this was the easier aspect of customer service.

“I’ll see if she’s free,” she said.  “Does she see you often?”  They’d tried ‘Are you a regular?’ as a line, but that frequently got embarrassed mumbles and people leaving.  While they tried to present this as a business transaction and nothing else it seemed that the people making the purchase still had issues with it that they hadn’t got over.  Madame even thought that perhaps that was an essential part of the process, but then Madame had been going to evening classes on Psychology and was starting to think some pretty odd things.

“Uh, yes,” said the man.  He was middle-aged, a little flabby about the waist and his arms were a bit short for his height, but otherwise he wasn’t bad looking.  He made Marie think of one of her schoolteachers, and that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing either.  “It’s André.  She’ll know who… she’ll know me.”

“Excellent,” said Marie, beaming brightly at him to distract him from her fingers quickly typing his name in on the keyboard.  She could touch-type which meant that the customers often didn’t even realise they’d been checked out in the database.  The screen flickered, and she let her eyes focus on it briefly.

“Ah,” she said.  “You’re going to be in the Boudoir.”

André’s smile, which had been a little tenuous anyway, stretched to breaking point.  “Uh,” he said awkwardly, his shoulders hunching.

“On the house,” said Marie.

“Oh!”

“Would you like to sign up for a loyalty card?  It comes with a 5% discount….”  Marie’s voice trailed away, seeing the telltale rabbit-in-the-headlights look in his eyes.  “Do you know your way to the Boudoir?”

“Oh yes,” said André, and he started off towards the curtain that concealed the stairs.

“Very good,” said Marie, and only sighed after she was sure he was at least half-way up the stairs.

*

André opened the door to the Boudoir and looked in.  The room was about the size of a king-size hotel room and contained an enormous waterbed, a couple of hard-backed chairs, shag-pile carpet, a tall, wooden wardrobe and a mirrored ceiling.  There was a connecting door that led to an en-suite bathroom, and there was a silk man’s dressing gown laid out on the bed already.  He closed the door behind him and locked it, and then considered for a moment and unlocked it again.  He checked the connecting door but that was already locked, and when he pressed his ear against it there was only silence.  Perhaps that would be opened after Joanna arrived.  He got undressed quickly and pulled the dressing gown on, wondering if there would be a time limit since it was free.

He’d just sat down on the bed when the door opened and a tall, dark-skinned woman came in.  She was wearing gauzy fabrics draped around her body that shifted and shimmered as she moved, making it hard to tell if you were catching a glimpse of something that was supposed to be covered up or not.  She smiled at him.

“Oh, am I in the wrong room?” he said, standing up.  Inwardly he was cringing at the idea that he’d ended up in someone else’s room, but another part of him, hot and embarrassed was thinking that he knew that this was the Boudoir and it was his, damnit, they’d offered it to him.

“I hope not,” she said, smiling at him with both her mouth and her eyes.  He felt a little flushed in a different way now.  “You’re André, aren’t you?”

“I was told this was free,” he said, sitting back down on the bed.  “That means I don’t have to pay.  Or sign up for anything.”

“And it is,” said the woman.  “I’m Semilla.”

“Where’s Joanna?”

“She’s elsewhere,” said the woman.  “I’m a substitute.”

“I don’t want anyone else, I want Joanna,” he said, almost automatically.  Then, as his brain caught up with his ears, “What do you mean, you’re a substitute?  You can’t just substitute people like that!”

“You can substitute teachers,” said Semilla.  She came and sat down next to him on the bed.  “You can get in temporary replacements for people on maternity leave, or when they’ve got serious, long-term illnesses.  Why can’t you have a substitute prostitute?”

“Because I don’t want you!  I want Joanna, she understands me.”  As soon as the words left his mouth he felt like he wanted the floor to open and swallow him up.  He’d admitted to a dependency.  They’d put her price up immediately and he’d not be able to come here again without his wife finding out.  His head sank.

Semilla put her arm around his shoulders.  “But I’m here to provide a specialist service,” she said.  She caressed his arm.  “Free of charge.  I know what you like, I know what you really want.  Joanna doesn’t offer that kind of thing, as I know you know.”

“She said she wouldn’t tell!”

“She didn’t have to; we have cameras.”

He lifted his head and stared into her eyes, desperation and despair mingling.

“Oh, don’t look at me like that.  We have to get feedback somehow, and you’re barely willing to tell us who you are at the front desk, let alone fill in a questionnaire afterwards about how your experience was and how it could be improved.”

“…blackmail….”

“Hardly!  We’re running a business, and you’re a valued customer.  You come back, and you have needs that we understand how to meet.  You’re exactly the kind of customer that we want, and want to encourage.  Word of mouth is tough in this business, but we think that in the pub or in the bars you might casually mention a place where a man can get needs met for a reasonable price.  It’s not a lot, but it helps.”

“Huh?”

“Don’t worry about it.  But for this evening, I have something a little special for you.  Something that I know you want, and that you probably wouldn’t dare ask for.  And I have,” her hand moved up and caressed his neck, under his jaw, “all the time in the world,” she leaned in and kissed him on the lips, “for you.”

“For me.”

She stood up and led him over to the wardrobe, which she opened with her free hand.  There were no clothes inside.

“Where shall we begin?”

Parataxis

Leslie daFox stood at the edge of the road and flapped his hand in a desultory fashion at the traffic.  As befitted London traffic, it ignored him, and a black cab with its orange lamp lit and the back seat vacant drove past him without slowing.  Slightly behind him, two policemen eyed him with suspicion, and further along the street a gaggle of schoolgirls shrieked suddenly with laughter, causing all heads but Leslie’s to turn.  He waved his hand again, and another taxi drove past.

“I say, Sir, are you going deaf?” asked one of the policeman.  Leslie’s face appeared vexed momentarily, but then he forced a rictus of a smile on it and turned slightly to look at the speaker.  As he did so, he held his hand out as though hoping for a bus.

“No,” he said.  “I assume you’re referring to the screeching that has just occurred down the road?”  The policeman nodded, as did his companion.  “That’s commonplace in London when there are children around,” he said.  “I would have expected you to know that.”

“Sounded like someone being murdered to me, Sir,” said the policeman, a smile spreading across his face.  “Seems to me that you’re very familiar with such sounds.”

A taxi pulled up and Leslie’s hand hit the windscreen.  He looked at it, and then at the policemen.  “Cheltenham Road, please,” he said to the driver.  “Do either of you have any money on you?” he asked the policemen.  They looked at one another, shrugged, and finally shook their heads.  “Then you’re making your own way,” said Leslie.  “I’m fed up with you mooching off me and then asking for the receipt so you can claim it back on expenses.”

“Hey, you can’t leave us here!” said the policeman who’d first spoken, his face becoming animated.  “We’re your bodyguards!  In case you try to mur–“  He cut off is a gasp of air as his colleague elbowed him in his ample gut.  “In case you’re attacked,” said the other policeman quickly.  Leslie got into the back of the cab, closed the door and wound the window down.  “I think I’m safe from the driver,” he said.  “I’ve got enough money for the fare, and that’s probably what he cares about.  See you when you get back.”  He wound the window up as the taxi moved off, leaving the policemen stranded behind him.

“Friends of yours, guv?” asked the taxi-driver.  Leslie squinted at the rear-view mirror but couldn’t see enough of the man’s face to tell if he was smiling or not.

“No,” he said.  “Far from it.  Just… the maddening crowd, I think.  People who simply won’t leave you alone.  I’m sure you must get some of them.”

“What, like taxi-groupies?  Nah mate, we don’t get none of them, the job’s not that sexy.  Though, we do get the likes of them what are getting the cab paid for by the better-off, if you get my drift.  I had a lady, well I calls ‘er a lady but there’s not that many that would, if you get my drift, and she was Russian I think.  Couldn’t speak a word of English, but she’s got the address she’s going to written down on this bit of paper, and she shows that to me instead.  Only it’s not just the name of the hotel, but it’s the room number as well, and the name she’s to give to the desk clerk when she gets there, and you can tell from that that she’s going to be pretending to be someone she ain’t, even if she don’t know it.”

“Right,” said Leslie feeling a little lost.  “She’s a prostitute then?”

“I don’t know that she’s like to be called that,” said the driver.  “You know you get some of them, they basically just go to ‘arrods and hang around the posh bags and shoes and wait for foreign gentlemen to come up and accost them.  Then they cost them, if you know what I mean!”

Leslie laughed, annoyed that he didn’t have a notepad with him.  It had been nearly fifteen years since he’s written a sitcom, but the dialogue from the driver was just the kind of stuff he had trouble with, and it would have been good to get it written down, just in case he had an idea for another one.  Well, an idea that didn’t involve the grisly death of two policemen at the start of it.

“I was thinking more of stalkers, actually,” he said.

“Yeah, well, you do get some of them actually,” said the driver.  “My mate Bill, he’s got one.  She’s a right fruitcake from the way he tells it, she comes in on the Runcorn train you see, into Euston – you know your stations, right guv? – and when she comes out she goes along the rank looking for him.  And you can’t do that, right, ‘cos it’s a line, and the guy at the front’s got the job.  So you can’t just take a random fare like, you have to wait your turn.  So she’ll come and find ‘im in the queue, and then she’ll go and stand at the front of the taxi-queue and just keep letting people go in front of her until he pulls up, then in she gets.  And he doesn’t really want to take her, but now it’s the other side of the coin; ‘e’s at the front, see, and ‘e ‘as to take her ‘cos it’s his job now.”

“Right,” said Leslie, feeling a bit bemused.  “His job.  Right.”

“He said she was undressing in his cab a week ago,” said the taxi driver.

“Is she a Harrods’ prostitute too then?”

“Nah mate, she’s a stalker, right?  You’ve got them prostitutes on the brain, ‘aven’t you now?  I shouldn’t’ve said anything, you’re goin’ to be a goer, aren’t you?”

Before Leslie could answer the taxi driver slammed on the brakes, and Leslie was thrown forwards.  Having forgotten to put on his seatbelt, he ended up on his knees on the floor of the cab, one hand stretched out and breaking his fall.

“Sorry about that, guv,” said the taxi driver.  The taxi turned tightly, and Leslie held his ground for as long as he could, and then fell over.  “That’s Bill’s cab there in the side-street –“ the cab lurched and they turned again, “– oh and bloody hell, that’s Bill….”

When Leslie clambered back on to the seat and looked out of the window, he saw that they’d pulled up behind another cab, whose driver was sprawled half-in and half-out of the window, and looked very stabbed.

“Oh no,” he said, with deep feeling.  “Not another murder.”