Sin City (54 page)

“It's too like mine.”

“No, it's not.” Any tart can be desired. Adored is different, special.

“Anyway, it's kinda goofy, isn't it? We don't want guys to rib us.”

“Goofy?” I don't like this girl. If anything is goofy, it's Desirée, when it belongs to that straight hair, those childish freckles.

“Hey, don't get sore. You're English, so I guess you'll get away with it.”

“What d' you mean?”

Desirée shrugs. “Forget it. Right, now dress. We provide our own clothes here, even special costumes – you know, stuff like nurse's uniform, school kid, SS guard. Maybe rubber, if you like. It's up to you. The guys soon find out who's best at what.”

She's ripped my plastic cover off. I feel sick again and scared. I might just manage something simple like hot oil massage, or even Crème de Menthe French, but not SS guard – not ever, not on principle. It's sadistic, horrible. I long to be back home, even back at Beechgrove. Our Las Vegas trip is really almost over. Norah and I should be packing in our hotel room, or buying our last souvenirs. I'm missing Norah, badly. She's my only link with England, with the real safe simple me.

Desirée is rifling through her wardrobe, tossing outfits on the bed, negligées and party gear, a full-length evening dress in slinky black.

“That'll probably fit you. At least we're the same height. Go on – try it on. Carl likes us to wear evening gowns after six or so. He's all for class, really bawls us out if he finds us with our nails or hair just anyhow. We can take the plane to the local beauty parlour, if Bob's got room and time. They give us special rates. And there's a great new place for sculptured nails, just opened. Here – let me see your hands.”

I hold them out, reluctantly. I've never bitten my nails, not consciously. Let's say they just break off.

“Jeez! Carl won't pass those. You'd better come with me tomorrow and they'll fix you up with false ones. It'll take an hour or two and set you back fifty bucks at least. You earn a lot in this job, but you have to spend a lot, as well, just looking good. Know how much this dress cost?”

“No.”

“Four hundred.”

I turn away. My wedding dress cost that. Torn now, stained with booze and sweat, bundled in an old brown paper bag.

“What's wrong? You homesick, Carole?”

“No.” I can hardly be homesick when I haven't got a home.

“
I
was. Real dumb, wasn't it? My Mom was always nagging and my Dad was real mean, yet I still missed them when I came here. I cried the first few days. It takes a while to settle down. Don't worry. I'll look after you. You stick around with me. Okay?”

“Okay.” School again. Best friends.

“What size shoes d'you take? Hell, the sizes aren't the same in England, are they? Try this pair, anyway. They match the dress.”

The shoes slip at the heel and the dress is straining everywhere. I don't look bad, though – really rather ritzy. I rarely wear all black. It makes me look much older, more sophisticated. The neckline is cut low. Desirée adds a sparkly diamond choker, stands back to check the effect.

“Yeah, that's great. I just love clothes and stuff, don't you?”

I nod. I daren't say “yes” out loud. It's as if Reuben's listening still, trying to wean me off such trivialities.

“Here, try this red one.” She slings me a crimson sheath-dress, slit right up both sides, starts stripping off herself. “I'll dress up as well, show you my new catsuit.”

We
are
at school – best friends – dressing up, showing off, trying out new make-up, giggling, fiddling with each other's hair. I was wrong about Desirée. Okay, she's a bit naive, but she's also very generous.

“Go on, Carole, keep it. Yeah, for real. I've got loads of bracelets and I never wear that one. Oh, and have this blouse. It looks real cute on you.”

We've turned her room into a dress shop. Half the stuff is on the bed or floor, drawers pulled out, wardrobe just a row of empty hangers. We're both modelling cocktail gear at eleven-thirty in the morning, with rainbow-coloured eyes and three-inch heels; my broken nails enamelled scarlet now, my hair swept up on top. All the things Reuben disapproved of – frippery and fashion, froth and tinsel.

I stare in the mirror. I hardly know the woman who looks back. She
is
a woman, not just some odd kid – glamorous, seductive, and more important than I realised. Men have to pay to touch her, pay for every minute of her time. Not
any
men. Why do work I hate? They won't give me the ugly ones, the cripples, or expect me to do sadistic things like whipping. I'm a special case, a new girl, who'll be treated with kid gloves. Angelique told me I'd be popular – English and the youngest, and with tits. Whatever Desirée said about gaining an inch on top, her boobs aren't exactly obvious. She's got courage, though; she must have. It takes guts to do this work at all. A lot of girls would be simply too conventional, or too feeble and straitlaced, or say they disapproved of it because they were really just too plain to get the chance. I've been negative myself, seeing all the bad things, ignoring all the good. If a nineteen-year-old with mousy hair and a 34A chest can buy herself expensive gear like that – a dozen evening gowns, a whole row of cocktail dresses, diamonds (fake maybe, but huge), thirty, forty blouses and enough belts and bags to stock a leather shop – then the pay must be fantastic. Money makes you powerful. Even Reuben taught me that. I don't have to fritter it away, blow it all on clothes. I can also change the world with it.

Suddenly, the whole room shakes and rattles, and a throbbing roar drowns Desirée's voice. “Whatever's that?” I shout.

She waits until it stops. “Only Bob. It's a real old crate, his plane. He bought it cheap, fourth-hand. You get so used to it in time, you hardly hear it.”

I peer out of the window, but it faces front, not back. I can see only barbed wire fence. I strain my ears to listen. I can hear tramping feet, a laugh. Clients. Rich ones, who can afford a private plane. Attorneys and physicians. Film producers.

Desirée checks her watch. “It's lunch in twenty minutes. We'd better put this stuff away.”

I leave my hair and eyes exactly as they are. I want to stay Adorée. I swap my dress for a pair of leather trousers with zips both back and front. They're so tight, it's hard to eat.

There are just five of us for lunch. Which means the place is full of men. And still I haven't seen one. No one even mentions men – nor anything you couldn't say quite safely at a Women's Institute coffee morning or a Conservative Women's Luncheon Club. It's just clothes (again), and holidays, and a bit of local gossip about the man who runs the gas station. Peg serves lunch and another jolly lady passes rolls and butter and pours out jugs of milk. Yes, milk. Nobody drinks wine, or even beer. The food is good and homely – a chicken casserole with jacket potatoes and lots of healthy vegetables. Desirée sits next to me, and the other girls make sure I'm not left out, give me double carrots, ask me about England, say they like my hair.

The apple pie's delicious. I lean back in my chair, lick sugar off my lips. It's ages since I've had a home-cooked meal, sat around a table with a group of friendly girls instead of psychiatric patients. Even before Beechgrove, meals were pretty miserable. My mother wouldn't cook, and if she deigned to join us, there were always rows and sulks. I understand better now what Angelique meant about a home. Her own meals back in Watford can't have been much fun. I've seen her brother eat – or try to eat. She said her friends refused to visit, were too appalled by George. Just her and him, silent at the table, while her widowed mother got on with the chores.

Peg removes my empty dish, offers coffee, tea. I'll get ruined if I'm waited on like this. I keep feeling I should help, or do the washing up. I accept a cigarette instead, blow smug and lazy smoke rings.

A car draws up, a door slams. More rich clients?

“That's Carl,” says Kristia, a Swedish girl with fantastic hair but rather podgy legs. “Late for lunch as usual.”

I tense. Carl. The overseer. God. Supposing he doesn't approve of me, sends me packing?

He's small, with gingery hair fading into grey, and a pallid doughy face. You'd call him ugly if it wasn't for his clothes, which are plain but very elegant. He's dressed like an accountant or a lawyer in a dark grey business suit, expensive shirt. His eyes are on me instantly, detective eyes, missing nothing, taking in the evidence. I can feel them measuring my hips, sneaking down my cleavage, up my legs. Should I stand up, or smile, or say hallo, or put my cigarette out?

“You're Carole.”

I nod.

“Hi.”

“Hi.”

“I'm Carl.”

I nod again.

“Settled in?”

“Yes, thank you.”

“Love the accent. Where you from?”

“Portishead.”

“Where?”

“London.”

“Great city.”

“Yes.”

“Wanna see me in my office?”

“Er, yes. When?”

“Now. Bring your coffee with you.”

It's tea this time. I'm so nervous, half of it slops into the saucer. I'd somehow pictured Carl as big and butch. And young. He's old. Quite lined and with one of those high foreheads where the hair is disappearing, thinning into shiny scalp. I wobble after him, wish I'd worn a skirt, something less constricting. I can feel apple pie and fear leaking through the zips.

His office is just that: a desk, a swivel chair and several metal filing cabinets. I suppose running a brothel is just another business; the same problems of client satisfaction, marketing, PR. He's good at the PR. I recognise some of Angelique's hard sell. Carl goes further; tells me how the Silver Palm ploughs back money into the community, keeps it prosperous, how the girls support the local stores, the local charities, raise funds for senior citizens.

There's a mirror on the wall and he keeps casting furtive glances in it, straightening his tie, or smoothing down his hair, admiring his crowned teeth. His nails are pink and glossy. He must have had a manicure. He's as vain about his brothel as he is about his person, gives me all the Caesars Palace spiel. It's getting a bit boring third time round.

“If a guy comes here and asks about the competition, or is scared he's missing something better someplace else, I always tell him ‘Go right ahead and check it out. If you find a house with more class, more style, more exciting girls, you stay right there, Sir.'” He shrugs, taps the desk with his slim gold-plated pen. “They all come back.”

He then moves on to pay and rules. I can see the martinet now. I keep nodding, mumbling “yes” and “no” on cue. He makes it very clear that he's doing me a favour, not vice versa.

“You're lucky to be working here, you know that?”

I nod. He's crossed one leg over the other, the foot right up on his knee. I feel somehow threatened by that foot, the black ridged sole squared up to my face; the immaculate grey trousers straining over slightly plumpish thighs; two television monitors framing his chair like blank-faced robots.

“I got girls lining up to work for me – high-class girls – some of them with Ph.D. s or fluent in six or seven different languages.”

I say nothing. Angelique told me he was short of girls. Anyway, I can't see how a Ph.D. would help.

“I turn down more than I take on. I've had tears and bribes – the lot. It makes no difference, Carole. If they haven't got that something, then it's ‘Good day, Ma'am'.”

I'm tempted to give him a good-day myself. I loathe what he's doing – building up my insecurity, so I'll never dare demand a better deal, keeping me grateful and enslaved. There's a sudden silence. I can feel his eyes still on me. I look up, look away again, start chipping at the polish on one scarlet nail.

“Right, get your clothes off.”

“What?”

“I can't hire you without giving you a look-over. It's not fair to our customers. You might have scars or birth-marks, or some hidden disability. And you'll have to see the doctor for a check-up. Okay, other places hire girls over the phone, but that's not the way I do things here. I prefer to see the goods I'm buying, inspect the merchandise.”

He laughs. I don't. It's not a joke. It's monstrous.

“Come on now, I haven't got all night. Another girl just called me for a job – an ex-movie star from Hollywood.”

I'm just too shocked to move. I never knew I'd have to strip, assumed Angelique had vouched for me, guaranteed my lack of scars. Carl's been talking all this time as if I've got the job already, been accepted on his payroll. Now I could be shown the door. Oh, I haven't any birth-marks – no marks at all, except a tiny mole the size of half an ant on the back of my left thigh, but Carl may well be checking something else. Like have I got a really sexy body, some instant oomph which turns men on? The answer's no. It must be. I mean, Milt and Victor didn't want to know, and Reuben's panting compliments were probably only lies, like all the rest.

I stand there with my shoulders hunched, my whole mind in a fret of fear and fury. Why should I submit, be inspected like a cow or a piece of horseflesh? And supposing I don't pass? Do I hitch a lift back to Norah and the maid, become a char myself, end up sweeping floors and scrubbing toilets?

I undo one button of my blouse, curse Desirée's trousers with their double zips; inch the front one down a bit, fumble with the back one. Carl says nothing, absolutely nothing. His silence makes me clumsy as I fight with four more buttons, claw at stubborn bra hooks. My boobs spill out at last, but I immediately try to hide them with my hands. I'm not even stripped yet, but I've never felt so naked, so totally defenceless and exposed. It's even worse once I've pulled my trousers down; stand there barefoot on the carpet in nothing but Angelique's brief and flimsy panties.