I’m an escort and I’m on my way to pick up my date.
I know what you’re thinking, but I’ve never had sex for money. That’s not what I do; I’m simply good arm candy for single women who don’t want to go out alone.
I don’t kiss, and physical contact even on the level of holding hands or putting my arm around my client is a rarity. That’s not to say that I’ve never been propositioned by a client, but I’m content in my relationship.
All right, maybe it’s been a while since I’ve been able to say that I’ve been “happy” in my relationship with Melissa, but I haven’t felt the need yet to risk everything—and I do mean everything—by sleeping with a client.
Melissa is a beautiful woman, and what’s more, she’s intelligent. Even if she didn’t have the long, flowing blonde hair, the big blue eyes, the large—if fake—breasts, and the tight butt, I still would have fallen in love with her mind.
The rest is just a perk: a very, very nice perk.
She purses her lips as she looks down at her crossword, completely ignoring my lingering presence.
This is how it goes before I head out for a job.
The service sometimes springs for a town car, but it looks like I’m stuck in a cab tonight.
I don’t have fancy tastes or anything like that; the problem is that the kind of transportation arranged is indicative of a client’s pocketbook. Town cars are generally somewhere in the middle of the road. Limousines, while one might think they’d only be requested by a wealthy client, are generally reserved for recently-18-year-old girls looking for someone to take them to prom, and those never pay very well.
The best of all possible worlds is when a client asks that I show up driving some exotic sports car, although I’ve only ever gotten that particular call a couple of times in the year that I’ve been doing this. Those are the clients with the deep pockets.
Getting a call to pick someone up in a cab…I’m not expecting a big tip at the end of the night.
I head downstairs and wait for my cab.
The rules for tonight, just like any other night on the job, are simple.
First, never am I to give any kind of physical contact other than incidental touching of the hands. Putting my arm around someone or allowing them to put their arm around me is extra, and that’s as far as it can ever go.
Second, Melissa insists that I don’t have more than two cocktails on any given night while out on the job. I don’t know if she thinks people want to get me drunk to see what happens or what, but I’ve never been in a situation with body shots or beer bongs.
Not since college, anyway.
Third, if we have plans and I get a call, I don’t take the job. This one has never really been an issue, though, as we never seem to have plans anymore.
Finally, at the end of the night, it’s my sworn duty not to tell her anything about what happened on the date — and I mean absolutely nothing.
She doesn’t want to hear where we went or who I was with, she doesn’t want to know if things went well or went poorly. Despite this whole thing being her idea, she’s a little squeamish with the reality of it.
I tried to tell her once a while back that the most anyone’s ever asked me to do is to escort them by the arm — that was a prom thing — but that itself was too much information for her.
To be honest, I don’t know why Melissa suggested that I do this if she feels the way she does about it, but the extra money it’s bringing in has been enough to keep me going out when I get the call.
The cab pulls up and the driver calls my last name out the window.
“Yeah,” I answer, and get in the back.
I pull out the card on which I wrote the address and read it off to the driver.
He starts the meter and we’re on our way.
Tonight is supposed to be a low-key event. What Jenny, my agency contact — that’s not really her title, I just like referring to her like that — told me about the evening was that a young woman needed someone to escort her to “some minor charity event, or an opera performance or something.”
Jenny’s not that great with details.
When we pull up to the building, I’m a bit surprised that my client asked that I show up in a cab. I’ve never been inside, but I’ve lived in the city long enough to know this place is on the upper end of things.
I get out and ask the driver to wait.