We're sitting at a table in a nondescript hotel room, on a nondescript night, and we're wearing nondescript clothes.
Our nondescript client sighs, nondescriptly, and says:
"I only pay for one whore," in a very descript way.
I bite my lip. I'm somewhat offended, but I roll with it.
"I'm not an escort," I say, looking at the bourbon in my glass instead of his eyes, "Milla is." I nod towards my colleague, sitting next to me, and she smiles and waves.
Our client chuckles. "She'd better be," he says, then gobbles down his drink.
I've know this sorry fat sack of shit for a whole six minutes and I'm already counting how many bones he'd break if I threw him out the window.
I look at Milla. She's laughing. Well, fuck her. Literally. She's the one with the dubious honor of getting fucked by mister Wild Turkey breath.
Our client recovers from the alcohol. He points watery eyes at me, then a finger. His glass slips and falls and the ice rolls all over the carpet. He doesn't care.
"And you?" he says, "what are you for?"
Milla is playing Candy Crush on her phone all innocent like. You could paint a halo on her redhead and call her saint. You could swear she's gonna sprout wings any second now.
If only you knew.
"My name is Nadia, and I'm here for... oversight," I say, still not looking him in the eye. It's not quite the truth but also not a lie. I like to think of my job as damage control, of sorts. The unsightly sort.
"I don't need no oversight," he says, "I'm no goddamn rapist."
Milla almost chokes on her drink, then says: "So you're a virgin?"
He cocks his head. "Excuse me?"
I laugh. Not because it's funny, and it's fucking not, but I force it out to cover up Milla's rant.
"You know I don't do virgins!" she's yelling at me, "they get attached and stuff. That faggot from last year still sends me Valentine's day cards! In October!"
I'm almost out of breath when she finally shuts up.
"What Milla meant is," I say, breathless, "that you look quite young for your age."
"Yeah!" Milla nods and smiles, "'cause you're like eighty-two, right?"
I throw my drink at her and she yelps. She's drenched in whiskey and she's dancing around and whimpering curses as she tries to fish an ice cube out of her cleavage.
The client looks at me, expressionless.
I say: "Whops."
He checks his watch.
I say: "I must have slipped."
He sighs. I look at Milla. That ice cube really took a trip down lingerie town.
I say: "I'm so sorry."
The client says: "Look, I only have two hours. I'm not paying for overshit or whatever it is that you do."
I nod: "Oversight is free."
"Good," he says, "I need to take a shit." He stands up and heads for the bathroom. "Our time starts once I get out."
I smile at him until he disappears past the bathroom door. Meanwhile, Milla won her battle on cold, hard waters. She sits back on the chair next to mine and resumes her Candy Crush game.
"Shouldn't you be getting ready?" I tell her.
She replies with a middle finger.
Fine. I'll be the professional, today. Again.
I stand up and look around the room. Ugly green wallpaper with some ugly yellow motif. On the window, the brown blinders, which I'm pretty sure must have been white at some point, are rolled all the way down. I don't think it's a matter of privacy, more like hygiene.
There's a brown carpet on the brown floor. A double bed wrapped in yellow covers. At first I think it's got some kind of polka-dot thing going on but oh Christ those are sex stains aren't they. Just looking at it I get itchy. Can you get crabs at a distance?
There's a ceiling fan spinning lazily over our heads. It's doing nothing for the stench of cabbage.
I drop my purse on the table and pull two scented candles out of it. I lay them on the bedside table and light them on. Immediately, the orchid perfume makes the room more livable.
A cellphone rings. Milla answers it: "Hello," she says, "no, not right now. We're about to, why?"
Next, a bright green velvet sheet. I drape it over the bed so Milla won't get STDs. Not from the bed at least. You might think a red velvet sheet might have been best, but I disagree. This shade of green is a perfect compliment to Milla's skin -- she'll look sexy and enticing on it, and hopefully he won't notice that she's possessed by the devil.
"Oh, I see," Milla says at the phone, "but... Pine Tree Hotel. Room 403. No, not really."
I spread rose petals all over the bed, then start setting up the sex toys. A couple vibrators, bullets, butt plugs. A magic wand, that one's always a hit. Lube. A fleshlight. Why not?
"I know, right?" she's still on the phone. I hear a female voice on the other end but I can't hear what she's saying. "Wait, what? No, fuck you. First off, I'm an escort, not a whore! Second, that's really not my problem."
I turn the lights off and my job is done. Now it's all up to Milla. She'll just milk him a few times, we'll get paid and call it a night.
Easy peasy.
"You know what?" Milla says, still on the phone, "Why don't you go fuck yourself with an eggplant?" then she throws the phone away and it breaks on the window sill.
"Damn," I say, "who was that?"
"I dunno," Milla says, then shrugs and resumes her game. On her iPhone.
The phone on the ground isn't hers.
I grab her shoulders. She's still wet from the whiskey.
"Whose cellphone was that?"
"Let go of me!"
"Tell me!"
"Fuck, how should I know?! It was here on the table, what was I supposed to do, let it ring?!"
"Yes! Yes, you were!"
One hand on my forehead, I start frantically looking around for all the pieces of the phone. It wasn't hers, it wasn't mine. It could only be...
"Well, excuse me," Milla says, taking off her coat. She throws it on the bed and half the rose petals fall off. "But they never taught me not to answer phones back in bitch school. Then again, I wasn't top of the class like you, Nadia."