Sarah's Education (11 page)

Sarah wondered if he shouted when he came, or did he get
quiet
during sex, the way some men did? She felt the familiar stirring of desire in the pit of her belly. What would it be like to have sex without an agenda? Had she ever? Even the first time, with Jack, she’d wanted to celebrate her birthday by losing her virginity. Since then, she’d either participated in sex for money, or given David the bare minimum to keep him quasi-satisfied.

Christopher grinned at her when their bottles were delivered. He lifted his and tipped it to her in a brief toast, before putting it to his mouth.

He had a beautiful mouth: generous pink lips and a perfect set of gleaming white teeth. He wore a sweater, though the bar was hot. Being from the West Indies, he’d feel the cold. He didn’t look to have much meat on his bones. She wondered if he had hair on his chest, or would it be as smooth and toffee tinted as his hands?

Sarah had to quell the impulse to simply run her hands up the inside of his sweater and find out. She reached for her beer instead, and, imitating Christopher, took a long draught. In truth, it tasted as repulsive as any other beer she’d tried since she’d started drinking. It fizzed up her nose. She swallowed quickly. In answer to Christopher’s questioning look she said gamely, ‘The king of beers.’

‘You got that right!’

Penny grinned at Sarah from the other side of the table, where she’d been deep in conversation with Dan since he’d arrived. Penny, Dan, Christopher – Sarah had known them all for years. Why hadn’t she noticed them before?

‘Where are you from?’ She directed the question to Christopher.

‘I’m Bajan.’

‘I don’t know –’

‘From Barbados.’

‘Oh. Bajan. Neat.’ Should she have known that? She felt dumb, suddenly. Why was she even here, trying to socialise with her classmates for the first time when graduation was imminent?

‘It’s OK. Don’t look so devastated. I’m not vex with you, mon.’

Sarah laughed. She’d only ever heard Christopher speak the most beautiful English, the Queen’s English, until tonight, when most of what he’d said was in a patois she could hardly understand. The combination of the two, spoken in as many sentences, was disarming.

‘Relax,’ murmured Christopher. He rubbed her bare arm, which made the fine hairs on it stand up and sent a shiver travelling through her. ‘I’m not going to eat you, girl.’

‘I should hope not. Not when you can have all the wings you want for thirty-five cents each.’

‘Well said! More wings!’ Christopher waved at their harried waitress, but she had only smiles for him. He was popular, Sarah realised. Probably a regular. But she knew he maintained high grades, at least in the Phil Honours courses they had in common. More than once she’d battled him for first place, and she’d not always won.

She supposed he was well rounded while she – well, she was not. But maybe it wasn’t too late? She was here, wasn’t she, eating wings and drinking beer with her classmates? Surely if she wanted to, there was enough time left for her to feel like ‘one of the gang’. But what would that entail? Time, of course, and lots of conversation. Probably the telling of secrets. She’d never had anything to hide, before, and yet she’d always been so quiet. Now that she definitely had secrets to keep, did it make sense to throw herself into uncharted waters?

‘You are being philosophical,’ Christopher said. He tapped the side of his head, just below his close-cropped hair. ‘Your eyes are as glazed as two Krispy Kremes.’

‘Charming image, Christopher.’

‘Accurate as well.’

‘I was just wondering, if we each suddenly stood up and shouted out our secrets, what would be revealed.’

‘I have only one,’ he said. He pressed his hand to his chest. ‘One I have kept close to my heart for years. I have a crush on you.’

Sarah flushed. ‘I didn’t mean we should, only that if we did –’

‘But I was shy, in the beginning. And before I could approach, that fast-talking historian had scooped you up.’

‘David?’

Christopher nodded. ‘I have waited for you to lose interest in his fusty musings on the past. And finally, you have!’

‘Well we’re still … seeing each other.’

‘You must, like me, prefer musing on the future, else you wouldn’t be a philosophy major.’

‘Is that what we do?’

‘I think it is. We take the events of the day and apply critical thinking so we may separate foolishness from wisdom and, perhaps, prevent the past from repeating itself. It isn’t merely remembering it, as the historians would have you believe. Don’t you agree?’

‘Maybe. If we are heard.’ Sarah felt awkward, as if she’d suddenly doubled in mass. It happened when she was uncomfortable in her surroundings, and suddenly, in this bar, with this gorgeous young man who had just confessed his feelings for her, she felt very uncomfortable. ‘I should go.’

Christopher thudded his forehead on the table. ‘I’ve ruined everything.’

‘No.’ Sarah stood. From what seemed a great height, she touched his head. His hair was incredibly soft, not at all what she’d expected. ‘I’m strange, Christopher. Sorry.’

‘But –’

She threw a few bills onto the table and grabbed her knapsack, ignoring the protests of her tablemates. It was suddenly imperative to her that she get out, quickly, before she became so huge she wouldn’t fit through the doors.

She scurried out into the cold night air, intent on getting home as quickly as possible, given her sudden girth. I’m strange,’ she’d said, to the gorgeous young Bajan man who’d shown an interest in her. How ridiculous! She almost batted her head with her fists in frustration, but she held back, for fear the other pedestrians would see, and think, Oh, how strange.

‘Well, it’s true,’ she muttered. Ah. Talking out loud. She
pressed
her lips together in a thin, exasperated line. She was a call girl. Veronica was her pimp, albeit a bubbly, blonde one. In a few short months her new profession had become as much a part of her as being a philosophy student was, though she’d been the latter for years. Christopher had spoken of critical thinking. Had she ever applied it to her ‘decision’ to trade sex for money?

What if she were found out? How long would it take for the whole campus to be abuzz with the news? What about the legality of what she did with her clients, never mind the morality? She could go to jail!

Sarah’s feet, in their $400 boots, pounded the pavement as she quickened her gait until she was almost running. She’d expected Jack to come back for her but he hadn’t and quite likely never would. He’d enjoyed her virgin schoolgirl ‘act’ and paid handsomely for it and that, in his mind, was that. Over. Meanwhile she’d continued to play the part of the mooning nubile maiden. That is, when she wasn’t hiring herself out to other men. Where was the logic in any of it?

‘It’s not too late,’ she whispered, consoling herself. Again, she pressed her lips resolutely together. But it wasn’t, was it? Nobody knew. Nothing had actually happened. Just a night out with her friends, a few drinks. She could call Veronica (nothing more or less than a pimp!) as soon as she got home and put a quick end to all this. Sure, she’d miss the money, and maybe the excitement. And it was fun to be adored, but Christopher adored her. She could dump David and take up with Christopher if she wanted, but even that seemed dangerous. No, best to get out of the escort business and patch things up with David. Turn up the heat and get a ring. Graduate. Get married. Teach, maybe, have kids.

She rounded the corner. As if her thoughts had summoned him, David was on the porch of the house where she rented a room. Coming? Or going? Sarah ducked behind a bush. David was leaving.

She should call out to him. Run into his arms. Go, she urged herself, go. But she stayed put. Run into his arms and then
what?
Take him upstairs and make love to him and never mind that the thought neither excited her, as the thought of Jack did, nor even stirred her interest, as Christopher had.

He’d called David fusty’. That wasn’t David’s fault, any more than it was her fault that she felt physically huge whenever she was extremely uncomfortable. Nevertheless, she
did
feel that way from time to time and David
was
fusty.

David. Marriage. Teaching. Babies. None of it appealed. Not in the least. So she stayed where she was while David descended the front stairs and slouched into the night.

What was the difference between trading one’s body for a diamond ring and a big party and a lot of stuff, and trading it for cold hard cash? Except that one required a lifetime commitment and the other only a night? God, it was hard to know which thoughts were stupid and which were wise.

When David finally disappeared, Sarah stepped from her hiding space. She no longer felt huge; she was just Sarah, shapely and, if anything, on the skinny side. Weird, maybe, but she’d never really been a pawn in this game called life. She’d been making decisions all along, so it wasn’t all that difficult, now that the coast was clear, to simply acknowledge that and accept it. She was a student, she was an escort, she was a page, and more, a daughter and a sister and a friend. Parts of a whole. She didn’t need Jack and she didn’t love David and she didn’t want Christopher. Not really. Perhaps she did tend to compartmentalise but all the compartments made up a whole, and it was Sarah, and she was just fine with that.

‘Onwards,’ she ordered herself.

8

THERE WAS AN
article in the
Toledo Blade
about GeoMancy having to lay off twenty per cent of its employees. Perhaps that was why that George had wanted to appear at his company’s function in a wheelchair. It’s harder to fire the handicapped.

Sarah was getting more comfortable with her new popularity at the university. She didn’t, after all, have to join in every pub night or study session in order to be a part of the gang; she just had to pay a little more attention to her fellow Phil. Honours classmates. Christopher, likely humiliated by his confession of a crush, kept his distance. Sarah was fine with that. She didn’t need the complication.

Sometimes she idly wondered what exactly had happened to cause this surge in popularity. Hair and make-up could only be credited with so much. Part of it must be from her new confidence. Each date she went on reconfirmed her power to please men and nurtured her blossoming sensuality. That made her approachable by both sexes. Interesting.

She’d upgraded her wardrobe as well, but subtly. Her fellow students would have been shocked if they’d known what she’d paid for her flared shortie boots, stretch-fit jeans and scarlet kid-leather bomber jacket. Sarah had also splurged on a $2,000 laptop that she’d distressed so she could pass it off as second-hand. For the first time, she had money. That made her more confident, too.

Though she was still a loner by nature she’d become more at ease with other people, as well as in her own skin. Since her night out at the student pub she’d not felt that strange ‘hugeness’ that came over her when she was outside her
comfort
zone. She hadn’t been back to the pub but she’d found other ways to spend time with new friends. Even loners need study partners and someone to eat lunch with or argue philosophy with or sit with in lectures. It became easier for her to greet a guy or wave a girl over to the lunch table or scrunch along a study bench to make room for one more.

David had preferred her as an outsider. Well, she’d preferred him then, too. Perhaps he suspected that the one date a week she allowed him, always climaxed by a perfunctory handjob, was charity on her part. She knew she had to do something about him but she held back for fear of hurting him. One day, Sarah had decided, she’d let him fuck her and then she’d let him go. If she played her cards right he’d be riding high on his sexual abilities and eager to test them on other girls. He’d barely notice she was gone. That was the plan anyway. David was a nice guy, but she’d outgrown him, pure and simple.

Sarah’s newly elevated self-esteem took a knock when she found herself in Veronica’s waiting room with two other escorts. They looked to be in their mid- to late-twenties. One had geometric-cut glossy black hair, the other an upsweep in molten honey. They wore more make-up than Sarah, but carried it well, as if they were in a beauty-related business. In a way, they were.

One’s suit was charcoal with a faint chalk stripe; the other’s two-piece was emerald, worn over a yellow silk blouse. Both suits had to be by famous designers, Chanel or Givenchy or the like. Sarah didn’t know style well enough to recognise them. Perhaps she should start reading
Vogue?

The women ignored her. She eavesdropped on their chatter. The blonde had flown in on a private jet the previous night, from a party in Montreal where there’d been a number of Hollywood celebrities whose names she managed to drop into every sentence. The raven-haired one had spent the weekend at a ‘simply fabulous’ house party that’d been thrown by a mysterious someone ‘in oil’.

Neither mentioned getting fucked, as far as Sarah could tell. They sprinkled their conversations with foreign words and phrases, so she couldn’t understand it all. What she could follow was about five-star restaurants, movie premieres, the latest exhibitions at art galleries and so on.

By the time the two of them went in to see Veronica, Sarah felt like a junior apprentice in a profession she’d begun to think herself a mistress of. She’d had a few memorable experiences with kinky guys and a few forgettable fucks with regular guys, but nothing swanky or sophisticated. She’d never actually been an escort, except with George, and then she’d been dressed as a nurse. Nothing fancy about that.

When she got her turn with Veronica, Sarah blurted, How come I never get the glamorous dates?’

Veronica smiled. ‘Patience, my dear. Do you remember how you got into this business, and why?’

‘Um …’

‘Because you look so young and innocent. There’s a demand for that. Don’t rush yourself. As time goes by you will become more sophisticated. At your age and experience, do you really think you could hold your end up in a conversation about politics, art or literature, with politicians, artists and writers? Besides, you’ve sampled some of my best clients. Peter was a real peach, don’t you think?’