The Hyatt hotel, Melbourne
20:13 hrs – Friday
Matthew Crane studied the cordless phone in his hand with suspicion, as if it were an alien artifact and not just a few circuit boards wrapped in a hard plastic casing. It looked futuristic - sleek and evil - and he feared that once placed up to his ear it would suck him into some unimaginable void that he would never return from.
It wasn't just the sleek black phone that unnerved him; it was the entire ultra-modern hotel suite that sent shivers down his spine and spirits dancing over his grave.
A lot of the furniture was truly beautiful. The velvet curtains were a rich red and the plush carpet a deep sea blue - all obviously expensive, yet thrown together it looked too polished, too perfect. That was the problem; there were no flaws in the entire room. There was no dust on the furniture or chipped paint on the walls, the cushions on the couch were perfectly aligned and the bed immaculately made.
Matt enjoyed the odd bouts of perfection as much as the next man, but without chaos, even just a smidgeon of it, life would be ultimately mundane.
Still hanging onto the cordless phone, he walked over to the couch, picked up all four dark blue cushions and threw them to the floor. Now on a mission to manifest his own chaos, he stalked into the bedroom, tore the covers away from the queen-sized bed and tossed them to the carpet with disgust, adding much needed disarray to the bedroom.
He chuckled with delight at his little anti-perfectionism protest, returned to the open phonebook lying on the antique desk and looked at the phone number again.
The number had already been memorised and his memory was faultless, a machine that stored vast amounts of data without a second thought. But he was a man who disliked mistakes and seldom made them. Some may typically call this behaviour perfectionism. Matthew Crane called it survival.
In his line of work if you make a mistake you might die, or worse, you go directly to jail without picking up your $200 for passing Go. Death and jail were not viable options for him, so the alternative was to be meticulous in every aspect of his work, and that meant training and maintaining his mind to memorise everything in minute detail, even in his everyday life.
He entered the appropriate numbers into the keypad and he began to wonder if he really wanted to do what he was about to do. The little angel on his left shoulder was telling him to take a nice hot bath, think about Sally and relieve the tension that way. The little guy on his right shoulder with the pitchfork was being a little more forthcoming and a lot less eloquent. He told Matt that masturbation was for geeks and losers, and that the bitch the angel referred to as Sally was out of the picture, gone for good, that's all she wrote.
"Call the number and get us some pussy," the little red dude ordered, immediately convincing Matt that it was definitely the best course of action available.
"Hello, Marquis Escort Agency, how may we service you?" said a surprisingly young female voice into his ear.
"Uh...hello there, this is actually my first time I've done this, so..." he trailed off. His face flushed red with embarrassment and he was glad the young girl couldn't see him.
"Not a problem, Sir. First of all I need some of your details - name, address, age and your driver's licence number."
The situation left him momentarily stunned because it was so businesslike and not at all as sleazy as he'd imagined. It was as if they were discussing the sale of a shoe-cutting knife from an infomercial, and not the hiring of a high-class escort that was getting paid to fuck him.
He wasn't at all afraid of giving out personal information to a business such as the Marquis Escort Agency. Not only did he lack having a girlfriend to find out about it, he also didn't have any relatives or friends that word could get back to. He was alone. His chosen profession had left little room to form bonds and relationships.
Besides, he was operating under one of six false identities - Matthew Crane was not his real name.
He gave his false - yet they would survive a thorough police check - details to her and heard the tapping of a keyboard at the other end; obviously she was wearing a headset to allow free movent of her arms.
"Okay," she said with a final louder tap of a key, probably the enter button. "Mr. Crane, our service only provides the girls for the night and not by the hour. We're obliged to say that the girls are only there to escort you to dinner. Whatever they choose to do afterwards is by their own accord and in no way pertinent to the money that you pay them for their company."
He gripped the phone with apprehension and momentarily thought he had crossed some wires. But then, almost hearing his brain click, he suddenly realised that they had to say that for legal reasons, for if they didn't they were simply hiring out prostitutes which was against the law.
"Okay," he said, his heart rate easing back into a steadier rhythm.
"So, Mr. Crane, what kind of girls are you interested in?"
"Well..." he hesitated. He hadn't considered this part.
"White, black, oriental?" she asked patiently.
"White."
"How about hair colour?" she asked.
"I guess I'd like a blond thanks, but it doesn't matter if she's natural or not."
"Okay, would you like to specify an age? We can't guarantee that we'll be able to suit your needs exactly, but we'll get as close as possible for you."
Matt was suddenly attacked by a deep sense of shame, which struck him as being ironic because in order to excel in his line of work the fewer the scruples you accrued increased your percentage of success. Morals and ethics had suddenly burst from his blind spot and sideswiped him. Christ, he was in the middle of ordering a girl as if she were a pizza, but this wasn't a fucking supreme with extra pineapple, it was a real live girl that had feelings and people that probably cared about her. And here he was, on the phone, dialling her in like some takeout food so that he could get off, so that he could fuck her and get his kicks.
"Sir," the woman pressed.
"Look, Ma'am...I'm sorry, but I think I've wasted your time. I really don't feel too good about doing this."
He heard a sigh from the other end and he wondered if he'd pissed her off. He felt like a shit for taking up her time, when he of all people was aware of the continual ticking of the clock and that that monotonous sound meant wasted money.
"Sweetie, you sound like a really nice guy," she said, surprising him due to her thus-far utterly formal nature. "If you're feeling lonely then one of our girls will keep you company. And if you decide you don't want you-know-what, that's entirely up to you."
