“Who will?”
“Who do you think? Ellen.”
“As in one and done? She’s coming here?”
“That’s why she called.” She scurried around the room, picking up garments, putting them on. It can take her a couple of hours to get dressed, or it can take her five minutes.
“If she’d come over a little while ago—”
“Don’t even think it. In fact don’t think anything, get under the shower and then put some clothes on.”
“You know,” I said, “it’s probably just as well if I don’t see her today. Can’t you just take her across the street for coffee?”
“No.”
“Or if she’s tired of the Morning Star, the Flame’s just one block away.” She was shaking her head. “Why not?”
“Because she needs to see you.”
“Me?”
“That why she called, that’s why I told her to come over around eleven. She’s got a problem but you’ll have to wait for her to tell you about it. I know you already took a shower but—”
“I need another.”
I showered, and had the shave I hadn’t bothered with earlier. I got dressed, more for comfort than for style, in a pair of jeans and a plaid flannel shirt from L.L. Bean, the one Elaine says makes me look like a lesbian. Maybe if I wore it they’d let me join the Tarts.
I changed it for a blue button-down from Lands’ End, tucked it in, and wondered why I was stalling for time. Then I took myself to the living room, where a fresh pot of tea sat on a tray in the coffee table. Elaine and her sponsee sat a few feet apart on the couch, each with a cup of tea. There was a third cup waiting for me, and I filled it and walked over to the recliner. When it wasn’t reclining it was just a chair, and I sat in it and took a sip of tea.
Elaine said, “Matt, you remember Ellen.”
All too well, I thought.
“From the Morning Star,” I said.
“That’s right,” she said.
“We have a problem,” Elaine said, “that’s more in your area of expertise than mine.”
Which had to mean young Ellen had come to realize she was an alcoholic, so could I take her to a meeting? And maybe introduce her to some women whose company she might find agreeable? Which would retroactively make her unwitting role in our fantasy equally inappropriate for both of us.
“You were a policeman,” Ellen said. “And then a private detective? Did I get that right?”
And a remarkably skilled one at that, I thought, quick to mistake a police problem for alcoholism.
She started to say something, then looked over at Elaine, as if hoping for assistance. The only help she got was a nod, but evidently that was enough.
“There’s this man,” she said.
“Not a pimp,” Elaine said for clarification.
“No, nothing like that. A client.”
I waited.
“He doesn’t want to take no for an answer,” she said. “I told him I wasn’t seeing guys anymore, and he said he was glad to hear it. I thought he’d be saying what a lot of my johns, my clients—”
“Matt knows the terminology,” Elaine said.
“What a lot of them said, when I told them I was out of the life, was they thought that was good. Oh, they might miss me, but I was too nice a person to earn my living by fucking strangers. Um, they didn’t put it that way, but—”
“But that was what it amounted to.”
“Uh-huh. Anyway, I was ready for that conversation, or some version of it, but what he went on to say was that it had always bothered him a little that I was seeing other men, and how glad he was that I would be seeing him exclusively.”
“What gave him that idea?”
“Nothing. I mean, he pretended that was his understanding of what I’d told him. But what he was doing, he was saying that I could clean up my act all I wanted, just so he could keep coming over and going to bed with me.”
“Did you straighten him out?”
“He didn’t give me the chance. ‘Look, just having this conversation is getting me all hot and bothered, Ell. I’ll be there in fifteen minutes, and anything you’ve got to tell me can wait until then.’ ”
“ ‘Ell,’ ” Elaine said.
“One of the first dates we had, he asked what people called me. I said Ellen, everybody calls me Ellen. ‘Well, I’m gonna call you Ell.’ And that’s what he’s called me ever since.”
I said, “Staking a claim.”
“I guess. Calling me something nobody else called me, so he wasn’t just another John. But it’s not like what he wanted was the Girlfriend Experience.”
Elaine: “That’s really a thing, huh?”
“Uh-huh, but mostly with men under thirty.” I must have looked lost, because she explained it for me. “The guy’s a client, and in fact the fee’s payable in advance, so it won’t spoil the end of the evening. And you go out and have dinner, and maybe hit a couple of clubs, and you’re both putting on an act, like you’re boyfriend and girlfriend.”
“Putting on an act,” I said. “For whose benefit?”
“His, mostly. Or if you go places where they know him, he gets to be seen with this hot-looking chick who’s obviously crazy about him. He’ll introduce you, because why not, you’re boyfriend and girlfriend. But being seen isn’t necessarily a part of it. He may just want you to be his girlfriend and relate to him that way for the evening.”
“And at the end of the evening?”
“You take him home and fuck him. But it’s, you know, romantic, with a lot of kissing along the way, and maybe part of the act is he’s got to work a little to seduce you.”
“But somehow he always manages,” Elaine said.
“Well, duh, of course. I think part of the appeal is he gets to pretend you’re on a date but he doesn’t have to worry about how the evening’s gonna end. He won’t wind up going home and jerking off to PornHub. He’s a cinch to get laid.”
“The Girlfriend Experience,” I said.
“A new wrinkle in the world’s oldest profession,” Elaine said. “I never even heard the phrase until somebody said it at a meeting. I got the impression that it’s mostly something everybody knows about and nobody’s actually done.”
“It’s not that rare,” Ellen said. “I mean, I’ve done it.”
“Oh?”
“A young guy. I think it’s mostly young guys. Unattached, and probably not all that self-confident with women. This one lived in Williamsburg but he was more of a geek than a hipster. Computers, tech stuff. I guess he did okay at it because I told him I’d really love to be his girlfriend but for all those hours I’d need to have a thousand dollars.”
“And he paid it?”
“Without a whimper. And it was fine, really, and he took me to the Gramercy Tavern for a great dinner and bought a nice bottle of wine, and it didn’t bother him when neither of us had a second glass of it. Then we walked a few blocks and talked, and then we got a cab to my place and made out all the way home.”
“Made out,” Elaine said.
“Like kids. And he paid the cab and walked me up the stoop, and I think we held hands on the way, and while I’m getting the key in the door he’s like, ‘You know, Ellen, I’ve had a wonderful time. And if you want the evening to end right here, I want you to know I’m all right with that.’ ”
“And you said, ‘The part of the evening you paid for is over. And now what I want is for you to come upstairs and have sex with me.’ ”
“I don’t think I said ‘paid’. More like ‘the part of the evening we arranged.’ But the rest is just about word for word.”
I asked Elaine how she’d known that.
“Because that’s what I would have done,” she said. “Might as well give the guy the full Girlfriend Experience.”
“If I said I had a great time but I’d prefer it if he left, he’d have gone. I’m pretty sure of it. He’d have been disappointed, but I don’t think he’d have kicked up a fuss. But, you know, he was a nice guy and it was a nice evening, so why ruin it for him? And do you want to know something?”