He laughed and signaled for the waitress. “You’ll be just fine,” he said, nodding. “Just fine.”
I looked away.
I would be fine.
That I swore to myself.
And so it was to begin.
18
My first client was an Asian man who was at least as old as my father. Later, when enough time had passed and I knew I had successfully established myself in Mrs. Brittany’s mind, I asked her about my first assignment. I had some suspicions about why she had chosen him, which she confirmed.
“Because of how bad your relationship was with your father, I wanted to see if you could handle a man of, shall we say, that vintage.”
Using the word “vintage” to refer to men wasn’t an accident. On a number of occasions, Mrs. Brittany expressed her theory that men were like wine. They grew better with age, calmer and more self-assured. Successful men, that is. There were, of course, men who would always be boys, she told me, and if you were a true Brittany girl, you’d know which was which and handle each accordingly.
“When do I stop being tested?” I had wondered out loud. “Or have I?”
“Never, if you work for me,” she’d replied, and she lived up to that.
Part of what made her escort service so successful was the follow-up. She didn’t ask her clients to fill out a questionnaire. No, it was nothing as mundane as that. Instead, she personally interrogated each client the first chance she had, and based on that feedback, she decided how much work one of her girls would get.
Just as she had initially promised the young, wild, undisciplined, and rebellious Roxy (I could think like this because in my mind, I had become a different person), ninety percent or more of my assignments involved flirtation but not intimate sexual relations. I wasn’t lily-pure by any means. There were men who were so charming, handsome, and sexy that it was inevitable I’d have them spend the night at my apartment or go off with them for a weekend on a private jet to some exotic Caribbean island home. Those men lavished more expensive gifts on me and were willing to pay almost any price Mrs. Brittany demanded.
My bank account and investments began to grow. Years after I had started, I fantasized about my father managing my wealth. It brought a smile but also a sense of loss, because thinking about him inevitably led to thoughts about my mother and Emmie, whom I had long ago nicknamed M.
However, it wasn’t until nearly two years after I had begun as a full-fledged Brittany girl that I began to spy on my family. Naturally, I wondered if they still lived where we had lived together. I had kept close enough tabs on them to know they were still living in the same place. I would wander through Central Park and make the turns onto the East Side streets that would bring me to the corners where I could look, hopefully unseen, at my family’s town house. I really wanted to see what M looked like now. Did she resemble me at all? Did she look more like our father or our mother? What did they look like? Older? Had the years been kind to them, or had the loss of me taken some toll?
Sometimes I would stand for nearly an hour and see nothing, no one, but often, because I admitted to myself that I wanted to see them, I would plan the timing better and see M coming home from school or Mama arriving after shopping. I rarely saw my father, but when I did, I saw how slowly he walked. He had lost his perfect army-cadet posture, too, and he had become more gray-haired.
In fact, they all looked different to me now. It was as if I were watching them on television or in a movie, perhaps because I was observing them unseen. I tried to study the expressions on their faces, wondering if somehow, someway, I could discern any of them thinking about me, wondering about me, and being sad about me. I had no real way of knowing, but I liked imagining that they were doing just that, that it was why my father was so gray and stooped.
A few times, I saw Mama pause near the front stoop and look behind her. I pulled back to remain unseen, but I was able to peer at her and see the way she studied the street. Could she sense my presence? Was it true that mothers had a sixth sense when it came to their children, a sense they would never lose? When I saw her looking around in front of the house as if she was hoping to see me, I wondered if she often looked for me when she walked or took a taxi.
Invariably, after I had done one of these spying missions, I berated myself. Was I getting soft, regretful? This would only lead to terrible guilt and affect my work. I was afraid Mrs. Brittany would take one look at me and know. Maybe she always suspected I would do this and had someone following me. All of us Brittany girls were a little paranoid. We knew how closely she kept watch over us, over everything we did on our own. Surely she had some help.
My paranoia became so intense that I often stopped to look around to see if I could spot someone following me. Sometimes I would deliberately make a wrong turn or go into a store I had no interest in just to see if I could spot someone waiting out there, watching and tracking me. Of course, I expected that every phone call I received and every package delivered was scrutinized by someone at the hotel. It was, I imagine, like living in the world of Big Brother in Orwell’s novel 1984 or some other type of dictatorship in which everyone spied on everyone else. I got so paranoid sometimes that I searched the apartment for hidden microphones and cameras. I never found any, but that didn’t convince me that they weren’t there.
Because of all this, there were often times, especially in the longer periods between appointments, when I would seriously consider leaving Mrs. Brittany. As if she could sense it, something more lavish would be done for me. I was sent on holiday with one of the other girls. No expense was too great. We had periodic retraining sessions at her Long Island estate, which always culminated with grand parties. I met some of the new girls and saw how they envied and respected me and looked to me for advice and guidance. If this was Mrs. Brittany’s intention, it worked, because it boosted my ego and drove back any thoughts of resigning.
Where would I go, anyway? What would I do? What else was I trained to do? I didn’t have enough to keep me in my high-living style for life. Everything I made was under the table, so to speak. Mr. Bob described it as being beneath the radar. The result was that I had no history. If I were to write a résumé for some job, it would be full of blank spaces. I began to realize that the effect was to make me invisible. It got so that I wondered if I would see myself reflected in a mirror.
The one love of my life had married and was on the verge of taking over his father’s business empire. In the beginning, I often thought of Paul and wondered if Norbert had finally told him who and what I was or if he always knew and was indeed working for Mrs. Brittany right from the start. Whenever I asked her, she just smiled and refused to answer. She wasn’t tormenting me. She simply wanted me to believe she was in control of everything that had to do with me.
Finally, nearly two years later, Paul came to New York specifically to see me. He went through the service, and Mrs. Brittany permitted it. No other assignment made me as nervous and insecure. I was practically trembling all over when he came to my apartment to take me to dinner and a Broadway show.
When I opened the door, we simply stood there looking at each other for a good ten or fifteen seconds, neither knowing how to start. Finally, he said, “You always surprise me with how much more beautiful you become, Roxy.”
“You never surprise me with your compliments,” I replied, and we both laughed.
I thought we would begin with a drink at my bar. He told me he had developed a liking for the Cosmopolitan cocktail. All of us Brittany girls could mix drinks as well as any bartender in the best clubs, hotels, or restaurants. There was one full weekend at the estate for just that training, and we had a great deal of fun getting a little looped in the process.
Usually, I had a nonalcoholic drink if I had cocktails first at my apartment with a client. Mrs. Bri
ttany’s admonition about getting drunk was frightening, first because of how angry it would make her for any of us to be at a very dangerous disadvantage. To be taken advantage of by a client was like ripping up your future, and for Mrs. Brittany, that was the loss of her investment in you. Besides, it cheapened the whole experience, and if there was one thing Mrs. Brittany guarded, it was the special elegant nature of her enterprise. Second, there was the real danger of embarrassing ourselves in public and therefore drawing more attention to the Brittany escort service. The more secret it was, the more special it was, and the more special it was, the more expensive it would be. More expensive meant it was more special, so it was a circle that rolled on, spinning great profit to feed the Brittany financial machine.
It was that night, however, when we both had something to drink, that I finally learned the truth. Paul confessed to having known from the start that I was one of Mrs. Brittany’s girls.