One last secret, p.5
One Last Secret, page 5
My point is, Evan isn’t a totally hopeless waste of space like people imagine trust-fund babies to be. He just operates within the confines of his experience. Don’t we all. The difference is, despite his global travel and countless opportunities to meet the wealthiest and most influential people of our era, his experience somehow remains limited. Basically, he doesn’t have a clue what it’s like to be anyone other than him. But he means well.
‘Does this coffee taste OK to you?’ he asks now.
I shrug. ‘Fine.’ I don’t have a very developed palate. If you think of the things I’ve swallowed – literally and metaphorically – it’s a blessing. I find people who claim to be coffee connoisseurs and go on about the origin of a bean and the coffee bean journey pretentious, frankly. Whilst I’ve faked interest in more grim subjects than coffee and would normally humour Evan, I’m not in the mood today. ‘I’m not moving, I hurt too much,’ I state. ‘If you don’t like this particular coffee any more, then you can go thirsty or go get a fresh one from somewhere else on your own, but I’m not moving.’
‘No, of course not. I wasn’t going to suggest …’ Evan doesn’t finish his sentence. He leans back against the bench. I lie down carefully, my head on his lap. I close my eyes and let the sunlight land on my lids. I can feel the warmth of his thighs. It’s comforting.
‘What is it you want to talk to me about?’ I ask. I could do with a distraction.
‘OK, well it’s big, and I’ve been meaning to talk about it for a while …’ He breaks off. I freeze. For some time, Evan has been mooting the idea of moving to LA or, sometimes, NY. Totally dissimilar cities; the thing they have in common is they are not here. Whenever he mentions either place, I show support, fake excitement, tell him to pursue whichever opportunity he is contemplating. Whatever dream he is playing with. The truth is, I do not want him to leave and just wish he could make the most of what he has here. If he announces he’s moving, I’ll be broken. He wouldn’t do that to me today, would he? He has to see that timing would suck. I hold my breath, he continues, ‘You know being a trust-fund baby is pretty much a core part of my identity, equal with my sexual orientation and gender?’
‘Yes,’ I reply carefully, unsure where this is going but willing to indulge him. Evan talks about himself a lot this way. My clients talk about themselves a lot too. I’m a good listener. I settle in. Evan is constantly roller-coastering; even though he’s clean now, his moods are still extreme. Sometimes supremely confident, other times beleaguered by self-doubt. It’s because he’s not busy enough. Existential crises are a rich person’s indulgence, along with sourdough pumpkin-seed bread, and fresh-cut flowers being delivered weekly to your home. He often wonders whether he would have been a better person if he’d had to struggle. Should he donate more to charity? Hell, maybe the lot? Should he travel? ‘Experience, you know, more.’ He’s tried to find meaning before. He’s read a lot of self-help manuals, and there was that period when he thought about becoming a Buddhist. I don’t dislike it about him. I hear people say, ‘I don’t know what I believe in’, and I’m jealous of them because they are at least assuming there is something to believe in. It suggests an openness, a malleability. I’m calcified.
‘I think people can’t really understand me fully without knowing that about me – the fact that I’m a trust-fund kid so I have to let people know I’m wealthy. You know. Like it’s not something I can hide.’
‘Rich, you’re rich, not just wealthy,’ I point out. ‘Wealthy suggests a level of restraint and modesty.’
‘Right. Exactly, that’s just it, you get it. You get me. But people find it overwhelming. Most people are jealous.’
‘They are,’ I agree with him.
‘Not you.’
‘I am jealous, I just bury it deeper.’
Evan grins. My eyes are still closed, but I feel it ripple through his body. I know him very well. ‘No. No, you are different,’ he insists.
I am very used to men telling me they know me better than I know myself. Few of them think better of me than I do, so I allow Evan’s misconception to slide.
‘I think we should get married.’
7
Dora
I laugh out loud and wait for his punchline. The air stays still, and the silence vibrates. I realise that was the sucker punch. ‘You are joking.’
‘Nope. Deadly serious,’ replies Evan.
Slowly I open my eyes. He’s staring down at me. It’s not a great angle. Probably I don’t look great either. Someone in my profession is very aware of angles and best sides. I sit up, face him.
‘Hey, I could tell you that you make my heart race the way taking too many uppers does.’
‘Please don’t.’
‘No, I won’t. Look, Dora, I’ve given this a lot of thought. I think it’s the right solution for both of us. None of the women I date interest me the way you do.’
I guess I am quite special. Or at least a novelty. Other than me, the women Evan hangs out with fall into two camps. Beautiful but assetless women who are looking for a rich man to marry so they can spend his money. Or women who, like him, are trust-fund babies with substantial assets who are looking for a rich and handsome man to marry so they can spend money together.
OK, so maybe the same camp.
He has dated lawyers and City bankers in the past, but they were never available to party with him; refusing to do coke through the week was a major inconvenience for Evan at a certain time in his life. As he’s clean now, that’s not an issue any more, but he still needs a woman who can drop everything at a moment’s notice to pack her Fendi sunglasses and a Chanel bikini and hop on a plane to the Caribbean if the mood takes him. Career women can’t do that.
I see his problem.
I can see how he might have concluded I’m the solution. Before I met Evan, I never believed having money could be a problem. But now I acknowledge that the combination of a massive surplus of cash and a dearth of real responsibilities can lead to lack of direction, degeneracy and self-destruction. Added to which, people who grow up obscenely rich might struggle to know which friends are real and which are simply enjoying the benefits of hanging out with incredibly rich people. So now, I do believe having money can be a problem; however I maintain, not as much of a problem as not having it. I mean, Evan hasn’t even had to be fucked from behind to pay the mortgage, so my sympathy is limited.
‘I know what you’re thinking,’ he says.
‘I hope not.’
‘Money is brilliant, Dora, but only if you make good choices. Like choosing the right people to surround yourself with, you know? Proper friends. And treating your body well. You were so there for me when I was getting clean.’
It’s true I sat for hours with him every night; some when he simply swore and sweated, other times when he sank somewhere dark and talked about death a lot. His. I held his hand, made mocktails with Mr Fitzpatrick’s cordials and told him I’d miss him if he was dead. ‘Loads of people would miss you. But I need you more than the others.’
‘You need me?’ he asked, surprised.
‘Obviously.’
‘I thought it was the other way round.’
‘It’s both ways round.’ Being needed is quite the imperative in life.
I took his phone off him so he couldn’t contact his dealer or any of the people who would give him what he wanted; definitely not what he needed. He was furious with me for that. He smashed plates in his kitchen, one after another. I watched him thrash about with futility and frustration, and when he’d finished, I told him, ‘I’m not clearing up that shit, Evan. It’s your mess.’ It killed me to watch him down on his hands and knees, sweeping the smithereens into a dustpan; he was so ineffectual and unpractised, he cut his hand twice. It took an age, but when he’d finished, I made us hot chocolate and cracked open a new jigsaw. Sorting the pieces into edges, corners and centres was therapeutic. It was a manageable task and offered a sense of progress. I told him I was proud of him.
‘Proud of me? You’ve just watched me obliterate an entire fine-bone-china dinner set.’ He looked sheepish.
‘Cold turkey sucks. Clearly,’ I replied. ‘But fuck yeah, I’m proud of you. We both know you can buy a new dinner service tomorrow.’ I didn’t need to articulate that some things couldn’t be bought no matter how much cash he had. Things like health, life.
I skipped a lot of jobs during this time because I didn’t dare leave him alone. I hid from him the fact I was stony broke. It was important that I stayed by his side.
He might have been following a similar line of thought to mine, because he says now, ‘Money is not the magic spell that fixes everything, but it does buy freedom from stress and worry. I have that. Well, almost. I still worry about you. That man last night, he could have killed you.’
He could have. Any of them could. I never really know what I’m walking into, despite the checks Elspeth runs. It’s terrifying if you dwell on it. I try not to. But it’s there, the threat. The fear. Ever present.
Evan looks pained, which I’m almost certain isn’t how you are supposed to look when you propose. He adds, ‘I’d like to give you the safety I have.’
‘Marriage, though? You’re not even going to start with an offer to pay me a salary. Keep me.’
‘No.’ Has he thought this through or is he acting on impulse? I mean, I know he says he has given this a lot of thought, but with Evan, that might mean he thought about it whilst I was queuing for the coffee.
‘Why not?’
An unfamiliar awkwardness swells between us, tasking the air with challenge and, perhaps, hope. ‘You know why not, Dora.’
Yeah, true, I do. I’ve known for a while. The reason he’s never tried it on, I worked it out. He’s not gay, or indifferent to my many charms, or even disgusted by how thinly I spread those many charms. He is in love with me.
It’s the weirdest thing, believing yourself to be in love. The most complex fantasy humans have developed. Yeah, I said fantasy. I don’t believe that being in love lasts. You see, it’s a chemical thing (oxytocin or dopamine), or a social conditioning thing (all those novels, movies, love songs. Please!), or maybe an evolution thing (bringing up a baby on your own, that’s hard. Human babies are dependent for so long; unlike giraffes, we’re programmed to find someone who will stick around and help out – well, at least in an ideal world). You won’t believe me when I say this – even though in the land of the blind the one-eyed fool should be right, and I am the professional when it comes to all matters sexual – but newsflash: that giddy feeling you get at the beginning, the I can’t live without them thing, I need to be with them every minute of the day, I resent having to sleep, etc., etc., it goes away. It fades.
Every. Single. Time.
In fact, you are blessed if it fades. In the worst cases, you are betrayed, deceived, tricked and misled. The rug is pulled from beneath your feet with such violence that you fall and break both your legs, you struggle to ever stand up again, and even if you do, you always walk with a limp.
I’ve seen what believing yourself to be in love can do. I’ve watched perfectly sensible, composed people tear themselves apart with doubt and insecurity. I’ve seen them run up debts, deny their friends and family, steal, blackmail, commit arson, kill. Yup, in my line of work, you meet all sorts.
I once fell in love. It was a total shit show.
I almost feel sorry for Evan for believing himself to be in love with me. It leaves him very vulnerable, and when he stops thinking himself in love with me, I’ll be very vulnerable. I consider the offer.
‘You have to give it up, though, Dora. I can’t bear it. Not just the thought of the other men having you – although honestly that’s not great – but all the danger. That’s what I want to stop. So if we are doing this, you have to call Elspeth straight away and tell her you won’t be taking any more jobs.’
People have choices in life. They think they don’t, but they do, and that’s possibly why so many of the human race are terrified or depressed. We know we’ve chosen to be where we are. Even the lucky ones, like Evan, who have many options sometimes feel paralysed. Too much choice is overwhelming. All those beautiful heiresses must have merged into one for him, since he’s been unable to pick his way through them. It is difficult knowing if the paths we have set off on are the right ones or not. And if they are wrong, have we anyone to blame but ourselves? Can we pick a better one? Are we capable of that? Few know what to do in the face of splendid choice. There was a time in my life when the choices were extremely limited. Limited to just two options. But I still made a choice, and I live with that every day. More, I make the choice again, every day.
It’s tiring. So tiring that some days it’s hard to tell whether it’s choice or whim that dictates my day. Sometimes, in the middle of the night, I hear the wind blowing and I think I ought to get up to check the bins haven’t tumbled over and that my rubbish is not spreading across the road: vodka bottles smashed on the pavement, empty packets of stockings and Tampax blowing down the street, exposing my life to random strangers. So, on a whim, I might decide to get up, go downstairs and check the bins; clear up if needs be. Other times, the wind blows, and I decide to pull the duvet closer around me and not get out of bed.
I didn’t have to take the extra job last night. I chose to.
My choice right now is to marry a kind, rich man who loves me and have sex with him exclusively until he stops wanting it, until he changes his mind about this choice he has made. Because he might change his mind. He probably will. Or I can keep putting myself in danger and have sex with a number of different men, some of whom are very unkind, cruel even, until I am too old to appeal to them.
It seems like a no-brainer. ‘OK.’
‘You’re saying yes?’
‘I am.’
‘You’ll be my wife?’
‘I will.’
He looks delighted. He reaches for my face and cups it in both hands, kisses me with determination, excitement and expertise. I kiss him back. There’s no embarrassment between us. It’s not awkward switching from friends to lovers. I’m too good at my job to allow that to happen.
We go back to my place and have sex without discussing it. We’re both adult enough to be curious, and also to know if left any length of time, it will become a big deal. He’s gentle with me because I’m bruised and battered. It’s good sex. As we fall asleep side by side but not entangled with one another, I think to myself: good choice.
8
Dora
Elspeth is surprised to hear I’m getting married. ‘Is he a client?’ she asks. I can hear suspicion and scepticism in her voice.
‘No.’ I wonder, if he were, might she believe she is entitled to a commission? Thirty per cent of the wedding gifts, perhaps? I’m surprised she asked. We both know life is far from a Pretty Woman movie. I’ve encountered hundreds of sex workers throughout my lifetime, and we’ve had thousands of clients between us, maybe tens of thousands. I’ve never heard of a single client proposing to their sex worker. It doesn’t happen. ‘So, you’ll cancel all my appointments?’
She sighs dramatically. Elspeth doesn’t like having to rearrange clients; it unnerves them. She may lose business. My regulars are not going to be happy that I’ve resigned. None of this is my concern. ‘All of them? Straight away? No notice?’
‘Yes please,’ I reply politely.
‘Well, congratulations, darling. I’ll send your final accounts once I know whether these late cancellations are going to mean I lose deposits or not. Don’t delete my number.’ She hangs up.
We’ve been working together for years, yet we are done. Just like that. Mine is not an overly sentimental world. As I carefully rub arnica cream onto my ribs, I ponder for a moment. What did she mean, ‘don’t delete my number’? Does she think I’ll need to crawl back to her at some point? She’s wrong. I won’t let that happen.
In the following week, Evan comes to my flat every day, sometimes more than once. He doesn’t have a regular time, which I like. Sometimes he pops around before work, or at lunchtime; usually he arrives here after work. He’s stayed over twice. Evan is the only person I have slept with in the past decade; I mean actually slept with. Sleeping is such a risk. Being unconscious is agreeing to down tools, strip off the armour that we so carefully construct throughout our waking day. I’ve never agreed to it with clients. Even when I took jobs that spanned across a weekend in a villa or a hotel, I always asked for a separate room. Men who can afford to take me away for a weekend never blink at this request. They want to preserve the mystery too. When Evan sleeps, I feel his breath on my back, warm and rhythmic. It’s nice.
I gave him a set of keys to my place a couple of years ago; it’s usual for him to knock, and if I am not fast enough about getting to the door, he will let himself in. In the past, he would humorously shout, ‘Make yourself decent, I’m coming in.’ He doesn’t knock any more, and he doesn’t want me to make myself decent; he starts undressing at the door. He shouts, ‘Honey, I’m home’, a parody of a 1950s housewife and husband that has permeated our culture, although even our parents weren’t born when those roles were played out for real. Eager, he comes straight through to the bedroom and joins me in bed, where I am spending most of my days, recuperating. After sex, we order something from Uber Eats and he languidly stumbles to the door in a post-coital haze that is no doubt obvious and embarrassing for the delivery guy. I’m taken aback by how like every other couple in the early, delicious stage of a relationship we are. Infatuated. Insatiable. Engrossed. I don’t understand it, but yeah, it’s good.
It also surprises me how quickly I become used to Evan being in bed with me, and I find it isn’t easy to sleep peacefully when he isn’t here. When I am alone, thick hands chase into my dreams. Fists pummel down on me. I writhe in the sweat-soaked sheets to avoid the thumps and punches, the pain and degradation. I move too quickly, and then the actual agony of my real injuries wakes me. I open my eyes and listen to my shallow breathing. Alert for unfamiliar sounds. Relieved that there are no other signs of life in my flat. I miss my childhood, when my parents would run into the room if I had a night terror, rub my back and say, over and over again, ‘It’s OK, there there, it’s just a dream.’ I’m not generally the jittery, scared-of-my-own-shadow sort, but since the beating, I am inconveniently edgy. We have suddenly been thrust into a heatwave, and my flat is insufferably hot, so I keep all the windows open through the day. However, someone slamming a car door or shouting to a mate in the street makes me jump as though a doctor has tapped my knee to check my reflexes. I close the windows at night, even though the room is airless. Even though no one has my address. I tell myself I’m safe. People who have to tell themselves they are safe rarely are.
