Los Angeles - 22 years old - 1992

Rilke, my little sister, went to LA the day after she graduated high school just like she always said she would. She had already been there a year when I arrived. She was dancing burlesque at The Body Shop on Sunset Boulevard. I took a cab straight from LAX with my two suitcases to see her. Driving down Sunset past forest-green Range Rovers, matte-black Mercedes, Chateau Marmont, The Viper Room. Billboards for Freeze The Fat and Guess Jeans featuring a bronzed woman, hair blowing in all directions, looking over her shoulder at a tiger in the background.

I was let off in front of The Body Shop. ‘Burlesque Review’ on the marquee and flashing pink neon outlines of nude girls with tiny waists in high heels. I walked in and there was Rilke onstage for everyone to see with her glossy red lips and glitter on her boobs. She was always a good dancer and this wasn’t all nude or topless, she had an act, and she even got a part in Forrest Gump as a featured dancer. A casting director had come in and seen her act and told her about the audition. She had five call- backs before she got the part. A famous actor used to come in and watch her too, and then they started dating. She had only slept with two men up until then, and when she didn’t like him enough to make him her third they stopped seeing each other.

I stayed with her in a room she rented in Beachwood Canyon. I needed a car and to come up with money so we could find a place together.

“What about burlesque dancing?” Rilke asked.

I thought of myself up there on the stage dancing and all those people watching and I just couldn’t imagine doing it. I just wanted to be with Rilke but I wasn’t a good dancer. Even though I had grown up taking ballet lessons, and in the summers jazz and tap, I didn’t have much talent and I had no rhythm. But Rilke, she mainly did jazz and in her class she always stood in front and got the solo. In ballet for me, I was usually the dancing tree in pink tights in the background. I was also too shy. The idea of one person seeing me dance almost naked was scary enough, let alone a whole audience.

“Do they have private dances?” I asked.

“It’s burlesque, they don’t have privates,” she said.

I didn’t even look at jobs for waitressing or hostessing. I went straight to the adult classified section of the LA Weekly. ‘Make $1000 a night.’ I’d make more than in Chicago.

“Two months then I’ll quit, and never again,” I told myself.

A week later I was sitting across from Madame Ava at The Silver Spoon on Santa Monica Boulevard.

“Beautiful you are,” she said, looking at my dress.

I was wearing a purple mini dress cut low in the front. I’d worn it all the time when I’d been a call girl in Chicago. All the girls had worn short, tight dresses. It’s what Mr. Ted wanted us to wear.

“My girls, dress only in good black suit,” Madame continued. “Nothing to show too much.”

I had never owned a suit before. How much did a good one cost? She must have guessed what I was thinking.

“Quality takes money,” she said. “I give you money for suit and you go to Beverly Center. We take it out of your first night and you will be Lana. And get your nails done and hair must be straight. Yes, Lana you be.” She opened the gold clasp of her Prada wallet and counted six crisp one-hundred-dollar bills.

How did she know I would not take that money and never see her again?

“My girls, the girls who are smart put away their money,” she said, taking my hand in hers and inspecting my nails. “Some buy house.”

I already knew I wasn’t going to be doing this long. Just enough to get money for a car and a couple months’ rent. I knew I wasn’t the kind of girl who could make this a real business, invest my money and buy a house.

“You see, this, it is business. Now you go, go get the good suit. I call you Friday and you see, you start work.”

She left in her mint-green Jaguar. I wondered how Madame got to be a Madame. I couldn’t imagine that she was a call girl first. If she was, what was her first experience like? I was relieved to have a job and I was scared. Scared of how long I would do this, and the men. Would they be like in Chicago where I didn’t have any men who frightened me? I thought of ballet man and if he had found a girlfriend yet. And Cole in Miami. I could go back to him and we could move to LA together one day.

That afternoon I went to the Beverly Center. Part of the building was covered with a Calvin Klein ad of a girl on all fours, wearing men’s underwear and a white tank. I took the escalator six flights up and walked into Macy’s.

“Would you like to try our new Elizabeth Taylor Escapade scent?” a girl with a high voice and long neck asked me.

“Where is your suit section?” I asked as I held out my wrist and she sprayed it lightly.

“What company?”

“Calvin Klein,” I said but more as a question.

I picked out a few black skirt-suits. Five hundred for a suit?

Would I make that back in a night?

“Would you like to try those on?” a woman with big hoop earrings and hair pulled back into a high ponytail asked. I nodded.

She was about my age. What other kinds of jobs had she had?

“Starting a new job?” she asked, showing me to the dressing room.

I looked at her and didn’t answer.

“I think I need a blouse to try under.”

The lighting in the dressing room was not as fluorescent as the Juniors department or Ross Dress For Less. I undressed, looking at myself in the three-way mirror. I would really need to watch what I eat now. Making money off my naked body. I sucked in my stomach and pulled the skin above my chest up, raising my boobs. I didn’t have my mom’s double Ds but they were natural, and I was never inclined to get fake ones even though I knew they could look and feel super natural because I had touched plastic ones with the girls in Chicago.

“Here’s a couple blouses for you,” the girl said. “I’ll hang them on your door.”

I lied to Rilke.

“It’s an escort service where the girls don’t sleep with the men, you’re just supposed to lead them on and talk and let them massage you, but that’s it.”

I think she believed me. That Saturday night, Madame sent me to The Peninsula hotel. I dressed in a black pencil skirt, stockings, and a black, fitted blazer. The cab dropped me off in front of the hotel and I walked through the lobby, past the bar, couples drinking glasses of wine and martinis. In an hour I could stop at the 7-Eleven near my place for a dark chocolate Dove Bar and a packaged ham sandwich on honey wheat with American cheese, and then go home.

I walked past another woman wearing a suit. She was pretty, was she a call girl too? But she had a briefcase, she must have had a real job, but maybe she was a dominatrix and that briefcase had whips and restraints in it. Every time I saw a woman in a suit I wondered, lawyer or sex worker? The girls with platinum hair wearing cleavage dresses sitting at the bar with an older man, maybe they were just out on a normal date.

I took the elevator to the eighth floor, walked down the gold- and burgundy-wallpapered hallway. 803, 804, 805. I looked at the zigzag on the carpet. 806, 807. There was a silver tray outside 808. I looked down at my reflection in the tray. I was distorted. My blonde hair looked dry and frizzy. I stared down at my black heels. Maybe I’d get a milk chocolate Dove Bar instead of dark.

I hoped this man was not too unattractive.

Two knocks. He answered. He had light brown curly hair and was wearing a white robe with the initials BR embroidered in navy blue above his heart. His eyes were pale blue and real beady like some kind of bird and his lashes, they were so light it looked like he had none. He opened the door just enough to let me in. He didn’t smile.

It was a big room opening onto a private patio with a Jacuzzi. On top of the TV in front of the bed was an envelope. He looked at me, moved the envelope in my direction. I put the envelope in the black sequined purse my mother sent to me. It was my grandma’s, or maybe it was the one she got me from the Hadassah. I wondered how much was in the sealed envelope.

The man walked toward the Jacuzzi, untied his robe. There was something womanly about the way it fell to the floor and the way he stood there naked, one toe testing the water, then the other. He slid himself in, closed his eyes with his head tilted up as if the patio lights were real sunlight.

Those lashless eyes of his were still closed. “When you’re ready.”

I undressed. Looked at my pale naked self in the mirror. I was glad his eyes were closed. Right then he opened them and looked at me. A shiver went down my spine. I wanted to put my clothes on, go home. I didn’t like this man. He waved me over. I walked towards him. He stared. My hands, my arms didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know where to look.

Then I was in the Jacuzzi next to him. He stroked himself. He stopped, took my hand and placed it on his dick. I don’t know how but after that I was on the floor, lying there face-down with my nails digging into the carpet. He was on my back and his dick, he pierced himself into my ass and it was something terrible.

The quicker it was over the better, even if that meant pain. If I stopped him it would just prolong it. He was thrusting in and out fast, and I could feel he would cum soon.

I felt like I was six again with the old man and his floppy fish of a dick. I couldn’t get out of the car then but I could leave now. I could walk out the door. But thing of it was, I didn’t stop him, and I was ashamed of myself for it. And after, I didn’t even ask him for more money, I just left. No girl does that. No girl doesn’t ask for more money.

Years later I saw him again. Not in real life but on TV. He was taking an award at the Oscars. It wasn’t until he held the gold statue in his hand, the camera zooming in on his face that I remembered those beady lashless eyes of his. His thin lips moved as he thanked the Academy, but I didn’t hear any words, I only felt a pit in my stomach so deep. I just stared at this man knowing I would never forget him.

I walked down the hallway. I stood in front of the gold-plated elevator, pressed the white “down” button. It lit up red. My fingers were pruned. The elevator opened, I stepped inside. I saw a reflection of myself in the speckled mirrored doors as they closed. Before I pressed the button the elevator opened and a dark-haired mother in a coral dress and matching button-up sweater and her little girl in monkey pajamas walked in. The little girl, her hand was in her mother’s. I wanted to follow them back to their room and sleep on the floor near them. I wondered what this little girl would be when she grew up. She looked at me. My hair dripping onto my white button up, I stared down at her monkey slippers, furry cozy ones that matched her pajamas. Her mother looked at me. My eyes watered. The mom tugged at her daughter’s hand as the elevator door opened.

The little girl looked back at me as they walked away. I tried to smile.

I got a taxi, he drove down Santa Monica Boulevard. Before dropping me off at home I had him stop at the 7-Eleven across the street from House of Pies, next to India’s Kitchen. The cab driver parked in front of a payphone booth with no phone in it. The fluorescents in the 7-Eleven were extra bright. The man be- hind the counter, wearing a white turban and faded jeans, took money from a kid with a skateboard under his arm. The boy’s armpit covered the middle of the skateboard but on one end of the skateboard it read, Live or Die. The boy walked out with an extra-large pink Slurpee.

There were tuna sandwiches on whole wheat, turkey with orange cheese. I chose the tuna. Mint chip, s’mores, coffee ice- cream. I wanted chocolate.

“We are out of chocolate,” the man said.

I felt like crying, I did cry. I saw a Dove Bar, the tears stopped. I thought of bringing one home to Rilke but she wouldn’t be home yet. If I bought two, I’d eat two.

I wished Rilke would be home.