I was pleasantly surprised when my cell rang with the particular ringtone I'd assigned to Sly. Of course, the original idea behind that was to avoid embarrassing conversations in public with my agent He's gotten pretty good about timing his calls, but why take chances? Hmm. Perhaps I'd best explain here. You see, during the day I'm a copy editor for a prestigious law firm in the city. When I'm not working for the law firm, though, I sell sex, and Sly's job is to find and vet clients for me. I'm what the classical Greeks called a 'hetaerae' (look it up, if you don't know it. What am I, your teacher??) You can imagine how awkward a call from Sly might be were it to come at an inopportune time, like maybe when I was working with a colleague at the law firm.
Anyway, that evening I was poring over a brief that I hadn't managed to get through earlier during the day. It was a particularly annoying brief about a copyright infringement in which a large firm was suing some hapless small entrepreneur who had by coincidence named one of her signature coffee blends after a popular panda whose name, it turns out, had been copyrighted by the big corporation. Jesus, the pettiness of corporate lawyers! Did they really have to give a shit about what some small-time barista does? Who cares! But no, they'll spend a couple of thousand dollars to intimidate her and make her life miserable. Between the annoying frivolousness of the suit and wading through the dense, turgid legalese of the brief, I'd dawdled on it during the day and now had to waste my time on it at home, on my own time. So, when Sly's call came, I was very happy to put the brief down.
"Hey, Princess," he said, "you got a minute?"
I sighed.
"For my agent," I said, "I've always got time. What's up?"
He must have heard my sigh.
"'S'matter, Babe. You sound bored. Life too dull for ya?"
I'm always appreciative of Sly's concern and how easily he picks up on my moods. It's really quite genuine, and not just because of the money I make for him. Street-tough that Sly is, he's come to respect me and actually does care about me as a person. I doubt he's ever cared about another person, much less a woman. He'd run escorts before, but they were just impersonal ciphers to him, to be used and discarded. The experience had nonetheless taught him a lot about how to handle women.
He'd never dealt with someone like me, though, from an upper-middle class family and college educated. He'd discovered my sexual talents when he blackmailed me into servicing him and some of his friends. My performance surprised both of us, and afterword he told me that in his expert opinion I was quite good at it. He made me reluctantly face up to that, and also to the fact that I actually liked the work. At his suggestion we formed our little partnership, then, and over the ensuing months have come to respect each other, first for what we each contribute to the enterprise, and later for who we each are.
"No," I said. "It's not that. Just some dull stuff at work."
"Well, then, Princess, I got good news for ya."
Sly used to mockingly call me 'princess' for my silver-spoon upbringing. Now it's just a name. I like it.
"How'd ya like to be a model?"
I smiled. "Sly, every girl at one point or other dreams of being a model. Then we grow up. Anyway, what do you mean here? Like a photographer's model? You know damned well I can't risk the wrong kind of publicity. Hell, it may be boring, but my day job is a lot more reliable than what I do with you. Besides, why would a photographer contact you?"
I'm often amazed at the variety of people that Sly manages to find, or who find him.
"I hear ya, Babe. And it ain't a photographer. It's a real, honest-to-God artist, like with paint and stuff."
"So? Why doesn't he hire a professional model? Surely there are lots of them, and probably cheaper than me. Why go through you?"
"Well, it seems that this guy doesn't paint waddyacallem portraits, at least not how I think of them."
I assumed he meant the sort he'd find in certain magazines.
"Oh? How is his stuff different?"
"He says he paints their souls, not just their 'external bodies', as he put it."
"Whatever. I'm still worried about somebody from my law firm or a client who's seen me at the office recognizing me. I mean, it'd be okay if it was a formal portrait, but what if he wants me to pose nude?"
"Babe, he showed me some of his work. Believe me, nobody's gonna recognize you when he gets done."
"You mean it's impressionist kind of art?"
