Kat wasn't a hooker, she wasn't a prostitute. She didn't charge a fee for sex and she didn't have clients. But sex was what she purveyed. She was a good time girl. A product of the millenium, a promo chick a big business groupie. It was her looks and body, together with sex, which provided her living.
She had flirted with being an actress, but found taking rejection far too daunting. She couldn't put up with the rounds of auditions and beauty parades which are the lot of an aspiring actress. That was the time, though when she found that sex had such a part to play in so many things; wow big deal. What a revelation!
As with many good looking girls in their early twenties in London, Kat wanted more from life than working in an office or a store. She hadn't got the height and looks to be a model, she couldn't crack it as an actress or dancer, she didn't have the qualifications to get into something like advertising or the contacts to wriggle her way into the music business and she simply would not have been able to stand 'serving' customers on planes. So, most of the typical 'glamour' jobs were out of reach.
She had drifted into it, if she was honest. But then nobody chose being a promo girl as a living; it just happened, you just sort of became one, girls, pretty girls, that is, just ended up doing it.
Kat was temping in the events management office of a US investment bank. Nothing clever or complicated, just helping organise a database of customers, but it did pay thirty five pounds and hour and she got to work in the main building at Canary Wharf, right up on the forty fourth floor: very sumptuous surroundings.
"Phone that fucking agency and tell them we need the fucking girls here at three not four, the stupid aresholes," the manager of the department screamed at her.
"Me?" Kat said.
"Who the fuck else is there here, of course you."
That's how she got in. The assistant who should have done that was away from her desk so Kat phoned the promotion agency and organised the eight hostesses. Not only did she do that efficiently to the satisfaction of the foulmouthed Events Manager, but also got the agency off the hook for nearly screwing up.
"Hi I'm Mike Blessed, from the agency," the rather tasty looking, fortyish bloke leaning over the waist high screen round her work station was saying. "You're Kate aren't you?"
"Well Kat actually, I don't like Kate and I will never forgive my parents for that."
"Not even with Ms Blanchett popularising it nowadays."
"Hers is Cate, with a C, not with a bloody K as mine is."
"Ah well," he said beaming her a broad smile "What's in a letter or a spelling?"
Kat smiled, she liked being flirted with and whilst at her age, just twenty two, Mike was rather on the old side for her, she felt very attracted to him. In any case she had always preferred 'older men.'
"Not much really," she replied noting his gaze quite unashamedly running up and down her body as if measuring her up. She felt a little shiver go through her when his intensely blue eyes met and held her green eyed, stare.
"I just wanted to thank you for rescuing us the other day, it was kind of you."
"Well Marcus is a pig, so I was pleased to do it."
"You're a temp here aren't you Kat, with a K."
"Yes Mike with an M, I am."
"Like a proper job?"
"Such as?"
And that's how Kat with a K became a promo girl.
****
The first few jobs were straightforward. Handing out leaflets at a football match, working on a stand at a trade fair and acting as a receptionist at a product launch for a car company. Kat enjoyed it. Although the hours were sometime very long, the pay was good, the work surroundings were generally fine, she got to stay in nice hotels and the people, mostly girls, she worked with were great.
Inevitably, as she knew it was for Mike had warned her, she had to take her turns at the flashtit, as they all called it, stuff. This was usually wearing a bikini and being draped over car bonnets or parading up and down at a trade shows or at outdoor sites handing out leaflets very scantily dressed.
"Rough with the smooth Kat," Mike said when he popped into Earls Court to see the girls after Kat had been working for him for a few weeks.
"What do you mean?" she asked, feeling a little shudder go through her as his forthright gaze swept up and down her nearly bare body lingering, it seemed on her breasts. Although they were full, they were not really large, but they had fairly prominent nipples that always looked as if they were hard.
"You're on corporate for the next few weeks, in London, Paris and Geneva, lucky girl."
Corporate was the plum job. Mike never put newcomers on it, no matter how pretty they were, until they had proved themselves on the less important stuff. Kat had done very well to get on it within a month or so of starting with the Speechley Goodman promotions agency.
The corporate division worked for big companies usually providing hostesses, receptionist and general helpers for company conferences and conventions, product launches, AGMs and the like. Usually they were big gatherings and the agency would provide anywhere between ten and fifty girls. Sometimes, though they were smaller, perhaps a company board meeting or a reception or party. Then there might just be two or three girls present.
****
