Panties for Sale (2 page)

Alex ducked under the
curtains and relaxed a little as she found herself in a clean, comfortable,
relatively normal sun-room.
 
She sat down
into an easy chair watching as Angela stretched her arms and plunked herself
down onto the large couch.
 
Hauling one
leg and then the other up, Angela tugged at her oversized t-shirt
unsuccessfully trying to cover herself as she shifted until she was properly
comfortable. Her hair was tousled and fell unevenly past her shoulders in a
shade of bottled platinum blonde that Alex knew was definitely not the work of
a stylist.
 
Alex suspected neither was
the hairstyle.
 
It was that 80’s rocker
chick hairstyle with long bangs, half curled under, half curled up and back and
then teased and hair sprayed to the max.
 

Besides her hair which was
stuck in a decidedly lame time warp, Alex thought that Angela could pass as a
pretty regular suburban Toronto housewife; frumpy, chubby and in dire need of a
personal trainer, a house cleaner, a wardrobe consultant and a hair
stylist.
 
But how did that make any
sense?
 
Maybe that was her appeal?
 
She did have lovely doe-shaped eyes of a
brilliant cerulean blue. And she had this charming way of lowering her face
when she looked at you, peering up at you through her long dark eyelashes.
 

As Alex watched Angela pry
open her cigarette case with her shiny red nails, she decided yes, there was a
certain attractiveness about her; she was probably a knockout when she was
younger.
 
And she did have a nice smile.
 
It was warm and friendly, yet mysterious and
beguiling all at the same time.
 
It made
you feel something. Something tingly? Excitement? Perhaps a kind of safe-ness?
Alex wasn’t sure.
 
When Angela smiled at
her, she couldn’t tell if she wanted to rip her clothes off or bake her a batch
of chocolate chip cookies.
 
It was unnerving.

“Man, I needed that.” Angela
sighed after a long deep drag from her cigarette.
 
“So, you want to be an escort?”
 

“Yes,” Alex nodded, “I think
so.”

Angela stared at Alex as she
took another drag.
 
“Ok,” she exhaled,
“let’s start with the red tape. Here, in Toronto, escort services, are still
considered legalized prostitution.”
 
Her
fingers made quotation marks when she said the words prostitution.
 
“It’s partly true.
 
Because it is legal here, we get a lot of
business coming up from the States.
 
Some
escort services take advantage of that. Not us. Here at Angela’s Angels, we
pride ourselves on providing the total escort experience. It doesn’t matter
where you are from. All of my clients are respectable. Completely safe.
 
Very high end. Don’t worry about that. I only
deal with gentlemen. You will probably be asked to go for dinner, or perhaps
the theatre.
 
If you’re lucky, a client
may take you away for the weekend.
 
One
of my girls just went to Niagara Falls.
 
She stayed with her client at the Hilton, in
a suite overlooking the falls.
 
Yes, it
does happen. All the time.” She leaned back and took another drag.

“Now, what we at the Angel’s
offer is a companionship service.
 
If you
are serious about becoming an escort, it’s important for you to know,” she
pointed her cigarette at Alex, “you need to be very careful about which agency
you chose to represent you.”
 

Alex shifted in her
seat.
 
The sun was breaking through the
mist and shining in through the windows into Alex’s eyes, forcing her to squint
to see Angela.
 
“I can tell you honestly,
my business is very fair.
 
I work very
hard to keep it that way.
 
I care about
my girls.
 
Personally.
 
I always check out the client’s addresses,
their phone numbers and their credit cards.
 
My girls are always driven to their appointments by my own drivers, and
always picked up afterwards and taken home.
 
I will always make sure you are comfortable before sending you out, and
either me, or Dora will talk to you about each appointment afterwards.
 
Especially now, in the beginning, you know,
just to make sure that you are ok.”
 

Angela paused to savour her
last drag, then grabbed an open Pepsi can from the table and dropped it in. She
watched through the tiny opening as the Pepsi attacked the cigarette, swirling
the can until it had extinguished the filter with a sizzle. “How many other
agencies have you met with?”

“None.” Alex shook her head.
She
had stumbled upon ‘Angela’s Angels Escort Service’ while reading E -
News late one night.
 
Some big actor was
in town shooting a movie and had been arrested for sexual assault.
 
He had tried to fondle a masseuse. Alex had
been puzzled. Why would you try to fondle a masseuse in a spa?

All the masseuses Alex had ever
gone to hadn’t even been that young or good-looking.
 
And they were always fully clothed, usually
in a high collared white uniform. Very un-fondable.
 
And didn’t you have to lie on a bed on your
stomach with your face in one of those circle pillow rest-things? How would you
manage fondling in that position?
 
Alex
was surprised when she read it hadn’t actually been in a spa, per say, but an
X-rated massage parlour.

She wasn’t surprised they
existed.
 
But she was very surprised that
they existed in Toronto.
 
Toronto was
tame. A nice clean cut Canadian city.
 
Things
like that only happened in those over the top made-up FHM fantasy articles, in
dark alleys in Bangkok or Las Vegas or maybe in Texas, but not, in her quiet
polite Toronto, Canada.

Of course, Toronto had
hookers.
 
Alex wasn’t that naïve.
 
She had seen them, hanging out on the streets
late at night, usually on her way home from the Richmond St. clubs.
 
Hookers were always easy to spot by their
cheap shoes, tight clothing and way too-short skirts, huddled together smoking
in groups or walking up and down the edge of the sidewalk waving down cars.
Alex was amazed at their determination when she saw them out on Jarvis St. in
the middle of winter. Sometimes she felt sorry for them as she passed them by
in her warm taxi.
 
Not sorry enough to
make eye contact or stop the taxi and lend them a few bucks to help them out.
But then how would that help, really?
 

She had thought a shady hand job
in a dark alley or a blow job in the back of someone’s car was usually the
extent of it. Ok, maybe, a few hours in a cheap motel.
 
But this illicit ‘massage’ community, this
underground world so well organized, and apparently so well-known even Mr.
Hollywood knew where to go.
 

That this was happening in her
city, right under her nose fascinated Alex and she had clicked from site to
site.
 
As she skimmed through pictures of
the girls currently available, she was surprised at how young and normal they
were.
 
They didn’t wear too much makeup,
most had natural coloured hair; not the stereotypical peroxide blonde, and only
a few had fake boobs.
 
Most looked like
someone she could see any day walking down Yonge street.
 
Some were Asian, some Filipino, some were
even Russian.
 
Some were too skinny, some
were fat, others looked really rough.
 
How did men choose which one they wanted? And how sleazy and desperate
were these guys to pay so much for a hand job when there were girls like her,
dressed to the nines, getting tipsy in night clubs every weekend looking to
hook up for free?
 

Alex knew that she should be
horrified by seeing women so blatantly objectified and up for sale, but she
found herself strangely interested as she read how clients could choose
‘masseuses’ to be topless, naked, with shaved, or with ‘natural’ pubic
fashions. They could also choose the service: regular, full, VIP.
 
Regular was a shower and a massage with hand
job, a full was a blow job. The VIP?
 
Well that was undisclosed, but Alex could easily imagine what would be
offered there.
 

It seemed the only rule that the
parlours were adamant about was that masseuses were not to be touched unless it
was ‘specifically arranged before the appointment and fees were adjusted’;
which would explain why the celeb got himself into trouble.
 
Why didn’t he just pay for the VIP?

Transfixed (and perhaps slightly
aroused), Alex clicked on a banner advertisement looking for new, attractive,
intelligent ladies to earn extra cash as an escort.
 
Alex remembered watching an episode of
Designing Women
where Suzanne had been
persuaded to be an escort for a bald, but very rich geek.
 
She was paid to accompany him to his school
reunion as a piece of eye candy in an effort to make him look more
popular.
 
Sure she had watched it when
she was still a kid, but damn, what had she been thinking?
 
Eye candy, my ass.
 
Of course, it was all about sex.
 

“How many escort services are
there in Toronto?”
 
she asked Angela.

“Oh god, many. Too many.
 
And they are always changing their location,
their names, their owners.
 
Usually an
agency gets into trouble with the police or they don’t look after their girls.
Then they get a bad reputation so they have to change.”
 
Angela slid closer to the edge of the couch
and leaned forward. “Before I started my own agency, I was with this other
one.
 
I’m not going to name any
names.
 
But they were awful.
 
They only cared about money and how much I
could make them.
 
They would book me
whenever they could.
 
2 or 3 times a
day.
 
They would send me out to places
that they never even checked out, dirty apartments, sketchy hotels.
 
Mostly out on the east side. And they didn’t arrange
my transportation.
 
Sometimes I had to
take a taxi to my appointments. Out of my own pocket!”

“Why didn’t you just
quit?”
 

“I did,” Angela tried to run
her fingers through her hair but they got stuck in a tangle and she yanked at
the mess, ripping out many strands of hair before freeing her fingers.
 
Alex watched in horror as Angela flicked the
loose hair strands haphazardly onto the sofa. “I quit eventually.
 
Fuck them.”
 
Angela paused and looked closely at Alex.
 
“I didn’t want to get into this today, but
you need to hear this.”
 
Pulling her
t-shirt down over her knees, Angela wiggled herself forward until she was at
the edge of the sofa.

“It had seemed like just any
other appointment.
 
My manager,” she
twisted her gold rings around her finger, “he was a bastard. He was constantly
double booking me, sending me out twice a day. He never called ahead to confirm
that the clients were actually at the location before I left.
 
One time, I took a cab all the way out to the
airport and the client wasn’t even there.
 
I had to pay for that cab fare.”
 
Reaching across the table, she pushed aside the Pepsi can and grabbed a
white coffee mug.
 
‘Best Mom’ was
emblazoned in bright red and framed with yellow stars. Angela swirled the
liquid around in the bottom and gulped it down.
 

“That day,” Angela coughed,
“I had to take a cab.
 
And that
appointment was out in the east end, you know, in Scarborough.
I don’t know why I went.
 
I didn’t want
to.
 
I hated calls out in Scarborough.
 
Too
far. I called my manager that day, like 10 times and he never called me
back.
 
All I knew was the hotel name and
room number.
 
I was pissed off.
 
I didn’t want another wild goose chase. I
really shouldn’t have gone, you know?
 
But,” she shrugged, “I needed the money.”

She drained the cup and put
it back down on the table. “When I got to the hotel room, the door was open a
crack.
 
I knocked, but no one
answered.
 
I totally thought I had been
screwed again, so I pushed the door open and walked in.
 
There wasn’t anyone there.
 
I was so pissed off at my manager.
 
That was it.
 
The last straw.
 
Fuck him, I
thought.
 
I was going to call him and
quit as soon as I got home. But as I turned to leave, the door slammed shut in
my face. Out of nowhere, this guy grabbed me and threw me down on the bed.”