Roxy’s Story (9 page)

Mrs. Brittany smiled and nodded. “Good.” She looked at Mr. Bob. “She’s got fire in
her.”

“I told you.”

“Don’t congratulate yourself just yet, Bob.” He lost his smile. She turned back to
me. “Why are you so
certain that your father won’t have the police looking for you?”

“When my father makes a decision the way he made this one, he usually doesn’t back
down, and he knows that even if I were forcibly brought back, I’d surely run away
again. We have an understanding. He orders and threatens, and I ignore him. It’s a
game we’ve played all my life. He got tired of playing it. Besides, I’m going to be
eighteen in a few weeks.”

She widened her smile. “That’s good, but what about the rest of your family, uncles,
aunts? Why didn’t you run to them?”

“I have little or nothing to do with anyone on my father’s side. They’re military
people, and my mother’s family is in France.”

She continued to smile, as if I had given her the answers she had hoped to hear. “Yes,
I understand you speak French fluently.”

“
Tout à fait
.”

She nodded. “So you’re on your own?”

“Yes.”

“What do you fear the most right now?” she asked.

“You mean while I’m here?”

“No, of course not. I mean in general. What’s your biggest fear?”

I didn’t have to think too hard about it. “Being dependent on other people,” I replied.

She held her gaze on me, but I saw the way her eyes brightened. “Why don’t you go
get yourself a drink in the bar, Bob? Roxy and I have a lot to discuss,
and your standing there looking like an expectant father is disconcerting.”

Mr. Bob laughed. “If there is one thing I don’t want to be, it’s an expectant father.”

He winked at me and left. She waited until he was completely gone and then turned
back to me.

“If you join my organization, you’ll be dependent on only one person,” she said.

I tightened my lips and nodded. “I guess that’s you,” I said.

“No, my dear. You’ll be dependent only on yourself.”

“I don’t understand what that means,” I said. “If I’m working for you, how am I only
dependent on myself?”

She smiled. “If I think you’re right for us, I’ll do my best to get you where you
should be to be a success, Roxy, but whether you are or not is up to you. You have
to have the ambition, the attitude, and the determination, not me. I’m already a success.
What’s the matter?” she asked when I didn’t respond. “Do I sound too much like your
teachers?”

“Yes, you do.”

“Let me clue you in. They’re not speaking in platitudes, telling you what they are
told to tell you. They’re not giving you advice that’s not useful. What you do with
it is your choice. Apparently, you’ve decided to ignore it. No one gets along well
in this world without something of value to offer other people—a talent, an education,
some skill. What did you expect to find when you left your home? Some sugar daddy
to replace your father?”

“No, and he was far from a sugar daddy.”

“You don’t have much of a formal education, apparently, and it remains to be seen
if you have any talent. Your looks can get you just so far on their own, and there
are many girls your age who are just as attractive, if not more so. You probably have
fifty cents in your pocket, no friends or, according to you, close relatives to turn
to for some sort of assistance. You’re as close to being a homeless creature as can
be. Have I summed you up correctly? Well? What do you say about all this?”

No one, not even my father, could bring tears into my eyes this quickly, but when
I thought about what was outside her door for me and how right she was, I did feel
sorry for myself.

“I don’t know what to say,” I said. “You seem to have said it all.”

“Well, I do know what you should say,” she said, her nostrils flaring. “I’ve seen
girls like you all my life, and I know what happens to you. You’ll either go home
or become a street prostitute and eventually a drug addict and die in some alley like
the butterfly who died on the water and thought he had died on the moon.”

“What?”

“Can’t you imagine why he thought he had died on the moon?” she asked, smiling. It
had the ring of a teacher testing to see if a student had read her homework assignment.

“Yes, I know why he would think that. He died on the reflection on the water.”

“Exactly. Not real, an illusion. Here we deal only
in reality. I want to know more about you,” she said, folding her hands over each
other on her lap and changing her tone to a more officious-sounding one. “I want to
know about your family, what sort of things you have been doing, what you like and
don’t like. But before I waste my time learning about you, I want to see if you can
fit in here. My time is very valuable to me and to those who depend on me.”

“I still don’t really understand what being here means. Mr. Bob told me you train
girls to be escorts. He said it’s something like geisha girls.”

“Geishas are probably more artistic, more talented, and more intelligent,” she said
dryly, “but we’re something like that.”

“What about sex?” I said, convinced that Mr. Bob hadn’t told me the whole truth.

She bristled. “My girls are not prostitutes. You’ll never see any one of my girls
on the street, and no one, and I mean no one, gets to any of my girls without first
going through me and a highly selective process. In all the years I’ve been in business,
I’m proud to say I have never had a single one of my girls harmed. They know how to
handle themselves in just about every situation they might confront. More important,
however, is the fact that the men they escort respect them, know they are bright and
resourceful women. We have no bimbos here. My girls are refined, educated, and full
of poise and self-confidence. You’re full of defiance. There’s a difference.”

“If you see so much wrong with me, why don’t
you just ask Mr. Bob to bring me back to the city?” I shot back at her. I was tired
of hearing how dreadful I was and how helpless.

She shrugged, undisturbed by the sharpness in my voice or the fury in my eyes. “Well,
I haven’t seen enough of you yet, nor have my people, who will give you an honest
assessment. Besides, Bob raved about you, and when Bob raves about a girl, I listen.
Don’t tell him I said so. I don’t want his head to swell up, but he has an eye for
just the sort of young woman who can be a success in my company.”

“Company?”

“Business. Don’t act thick,” she shot back, her eyes now taking on a blazing fury.
I remembered what Bob had told me about her not suffering fools gladly. “This isn’t
some hobby of mine. I’d think even someone like you, in your state of mind and with
your background, could realize it.”

“I resent being anyone’s punching bag. Maybe I should leave,” I said.

“Maybe you should. I can see why you couldn’t stand being told what to do, whether
it was your father or your teachers. Believe me, Roxy, as good as it might make you
feel, being headstrong is not an advantage. Nine times out of ten, you’ll just hit
a wall and land on your derrière. Here, obedience and following orders are not a disadvantage.”

“I didn’t check out of my father’s house just to enlist in another army,” I replied.

She held her gaze and then surprised me with a smile. “Army. I don’t think we’d fit
any definition of
that, but we have rules, discipline, and, most of all, expectations.”

She fixed her eyes on me and tightened the corners of her mouth. I could see her patience
was wearing thin.

“Do you want to know more about all this, or don’t you?” she demanded.

I stared at her a few moments and thought. Nowhere in Mama’s or Papa’s imagination
could either envision me sitting here in this mansion talking to this obviously very
successful woman about becoming a high-class escort. How confident Papa must have
been that first night and even days afterward that I would come running back, desperately
pleading for his forgiveness. I was tempted to do this just to spite him, but even
more so now, I was intrigued. Were those two beautiful young women in here when I
arrived once just like me? How could I look at all this and not want to be part of
it, especially with all that was promised to me?

“Yes,” I said. “I would.”

She nodded, and then a woman appeared, as if she had been waiting and listening to
our conversation just outside the door. She was older than Mrs. Brittany, probably
in her sixties, about my height, with beautiful gray hair pulled into a basic chignon.
Mama often wore her hair that way. She told me “chignon” came from the French phrase
chignon du cou
, which means “nape of the neck,” but this woman looked more English than French.
She stood so perfectly straight that I thought she must have a steel rod for a spine.

“Ah, Mrs. Pratt, just in time,” Mrs. Brittany said. “I’d like you to give our guest
a little tour of the house and then bring her to my office when you’re finished.”

“Very good, madam,” Mrs. Pratt said. She had a very educated-sounding accent, reminding
me of Mrs. Roster, who made her consonants so sharp she could cut your earlobes. This
woman had a narrow face with thin lips and grayish-brown eyes beneath a pair of very
stylish eyeglasses. I was up enough on women’s fashion to recognize a St. John dress.
She was wearing one. Mama had two.

Mrs. Pratt nodded at me.

I looked at Mrs. Brittany. Either she wasn’t going to give this woman any more information
about me or she already had told her what she knew thanks to Mr. Bob.

“Well, go on,” she said. “You don’t need my permission to breathe.” She laughed and
then said, “At least, not yet.”

I rose quickly and followed Mrs. Pratt out of the sitting room and down the long,
wide hallway.

“I hope it’s cooler out here,” I muttered. She looked at me but didn’t react to that.

“You can’t tell from the front of the house,” Mrs. Pratt began instead, speaking like
a guide in a museum, “but Mrs. Brittany has added considerably to the original structure,
which was considerable at the start.”

She looked at me in anticipation of some response. All I could think to say was, “Yes,
considerable.”

We turned to the right and paused. She opened a door and flipped the light switch
to reveal a fitness center as complete as any I had seen.

“Lance Martin is the fitness trainer,” she said. “He was on an Olympic swimming team.
Mrs. Brittany insists that all her women be in the best possible shape. If you become
part of the organization, you will undergo fitness training immediately and be put
on dietary supplements. Mrs. Brittany’s chef, Gordon Leceister, is a registered dietitian,
so you will be eating right most of the time.

“Now, if you look off to the right,” she added, nodding toward the fitness room, “you
will see the tanning salon and spa. Olga Swensen is our masseuse. At one time, she
had her own very famous spa in Stockholm.”

When I didn’t react, she added, “You know that Stockholm is in Sweden?”

“Of course,” I said.

“While the Swedes didn’t invent massage, their techniques are highly regarded. You
will have a massage daily in the beginning and then eventually weekly.”

“Weekly?” I asked. How long was I going to be there? She ignored me and flipped off
the light. Across the hall were double doors that opened onto an indoor pool. It was
lit, and I saw Camelia and Portia swimming with a good-looking young man who looked
as if he didn’t have an inch of fat on his body.

“That’s Lance Martin,” Mrs. Pratt said.

Camelia and Portia, both in abbreviated bikinis, waved. I nodded. Mrs. Pratt saw the
way I was staring at the three of them.

“Any relationships between Mrs. Brittany’s women
and the staff are strictly forbidden,” she said. “That goes for relationships with
men or women.”

I looked at her as if she was nuts, but she just turned and led me farther down the
hallway. She opened a door on the left and again turned on the lights, this time to
reveal a full beauty salon.

“Mrs. Brittany likes to rotate her beauticians and stylists periodically. This month,
we have Claudine Laffette from Paris. She’s an expert at both cosmetics and hairstyling.”

“Does everyone come here to be made up and stuff?”

“Stuff?” she replied.

“I mean get their hair and makeup done.”

“This is a training facility. Our girls are first remade here, and then they return
periodically, but those who are out in the field have their own fitness centers, salons,
and favorite boutiques.”

“How long is the training?” I asked, this time more firmly.

She looked me up and down. “That depends on the candidate, of course. Suffice it to
say, no one is brought here who doesn’t already have a great deal to recommend her.
You have a beautiful figure, but you’re young. If you are not taught how to maintain
it, it won’t service you for long.”

“Service me?”

“Everything we have, everything we do, is meant to service us, my dear. That’s something
you have to realize as soon as possible. Unfortunately, most realize it too late,”
she added.