Lost Girls (8 page)

The first order of business in Manhattan was to meet Vips and see about getting Sara onto Craigslist. They left Penn Station and checked in to a hotel on West Thirty-seventh Street, a few blocks away. Maureen, who had posted on Craigslist already, told Sara she had a call. They walked a few blocks to the Marriott Marquis in Times Square and got in one of the glass elevators. Before the doors closed, in walked an Indian guy with a port-wine birthmark that covered a good part of his face. As the elevator glided upward, soaring over the hotel lobby, Maureen introduced Sara to Vips.

The view from up high in the Marriott elevator left Sara spellbound. When it came to a stop, Maureen got off but told Sara to head back down. “Just go with Vips,” she said. “I’ll call you when I get out.”

The two went down and walked around Times Square while Maureen worked. Sara learned a little bit about Vips—that he was indeed from India, and while he wasn’t technically a pimp, it was something to which he aspired.

With Sara, Vips kept things light. “Look, there’s Samuel L. Jackson!” he said, pointing, and Sara, distracted by her first time walking past Madame Tussauds, just nodded. On their second time around the block, she realized he’d been pointing to a statue.

“Ha!” Vips said. “I got you!”

Sara laughed. “Can we go in there?”

“No,” he said. “It’s mad expensive.”

Vips agreed to post Sara’s ads for the usual fee. Later on, through Maureen, Sara met a few of Vips’s associates. There was Tony, a producer of porn movies who worked out of the Film Center Building on Eighth Avenue, and there was Al, a big Italian guy who made noises about being connected but seemed to work mainly as an associate of Tony’s—a “modeling agent” for adult films. Vips was the low man on the totem pole—an Internet troll, a wannabe pimp and porn producer—but he was the only one Maureen seemed to know well. Tony and Al were guys Maureen had been hoping to get to know better, guys who might help her stop doing this one day. She had told her friend Jay DuBrule that porn was legal and safer and easier than what she was doing; it resembled a legitimate entertainment career and was one step closer to the life she dreamed about.

Sara was heavier than Maureen, but she was a definite type—busty and sultry, like Anna Nicole Smith or Jessica Simpson. In need of a working alias, she chose Monroe, a nod to Marilyn. Vips had set up Sara’s ad using someone else’s picture. Sara was appalled when she saw it. The girl looked older, with the same blond hair, but fatter, with her leg propped up all the way in the air near her shoulder. Sara couldn’t believe how little the picture looked like her, though later on she felt like that got her more tips—guys saying, “Oh, you’re so much prettier in person!”

Next, Sara learned Maureen’s rules for security. The person who comes with you—and someone always has to come with you (another important rule)—doesn’t have to stay in the room during the call; too many guys check closets and bathrooms for lookouts. But the chaperone does have to stay on the block. If there’s a restaurant across the street, the chaperone sits and takes a load off for an hour. The escort phones or texts when inside to say all’s well. The calls were all business for Maureen. If a john paid for an hour and he finished in five minutes, Maureen was done, too.

As a trial run, Maureen set Sara up with a regular of hers named Patrick. He was Asian and young, about Sara’s age, and he lived in a pretty apartment not far from the old Studio 54, which blew Sara’s mind. His place was nice, but when he said he was paying a thousand or two a month for the one-bedroom, Sara’s jaw dropped. “It’s location that you pay for,” Patrick told her. They spent the better part of the afternoon together. He’d brought coke, and now he had “coke dick,” so he took a long time to perform. Sara got into it. She was fine with giving head under regular circumstances and didn’t see any reason not to like it now.

Five and a half hours passed before Maureen burst in, furious. “We’re leaving! Now!” Patrick gave them all the cash he had and wrote a check for the rest made out to cash. Maureen said that they normally couldn’t take checks because johns could cancel them (another rule), but Patrick was a regular and a friend. On the way out, Maureen snapped at Sara, “I couldn’t do all these calls, because
you
were too fucking busy.”

The whole train ride home, Maureen was angry, and not just about Patrick. That weekend, nearly all the calls had been for Sara—not for
Marie,
but for
Monroe
. Maureen was a little jealous but mostly indignant. She felt like she had absorbed a financial loss for introducing Sara to the profession. Toward the end of the ride, Maureen asked for a 20 percent commission of everything Sara had earned that weekend.

Sara flipped out. “Fuck that!”

“Well, I introduced you to Vips,” Maureen said.

“You shouldn’t have taught me how to post, then! I can break off from you right now, and you can’t say shit to me! I’m not giving you shit!”

Maureen dropped it. But Sara, fully empowered, went back to New York the following weekend. She brought a friend with her, a guy named Matt, as a chaperone. Vips, noticing that Maureen wasn’t with her, took the liberty of squeezing her for more money, raising his rate to $250. Sara decided to post her ads herself. To avoid Vips, she changed her Craigslist name from Monroe to Lacey. She switched hotels, too, to the Super 8 on Forty-sixth Street.

The following week, Friday, July 6, 2007, Maureen was back in town. All was forgiven. Sara and Maureen were friends again.

Keeping New York Plan B and not Plan A was another one of Maureen’s rules. “You don’t want to make it a full-time job,” she said. Maureen had told Sara that she’d worked as an escort practically full-time before she got pregnant with Aidan. That was when she learned that you needed the break. Otherwise, the sex could make you jaded. Ninety percent of her clients were married. Some of them didn’t take off their rings. The calls could feel like an assembly line to Maureen—like work. That was the worst. That was why Maureen’s demeanor changed in New York. She was on guard.

But Sara was still infatuated. Everything about the work was fun for her—the sex, New York, and especially the money. While Maureen was gone, Sara made twelve hundred dollars over just a few days—more money than she had ever made in such a short time—and she held the bills in the air and told Matt, “See? Take a picture.” Then she saw the look on his face, his eyes blazing, and Sara felt something shift—in him and in her—that she liked. “I’m never coming back to Connecticut!” she said.

By now, she knew almost as much as Maureen did. In her weeks at the Super 8, working independently of Maureen, she had seen a lot of ethnic men with heavy accents—straight off the boat, it seemed to her; Asians and Middle Eastern men—waving lots of money around. They came in seconds. Hiring an escort was less about sex, she thought, than the chance to show some power. She also saw three police officers, all of whom swore they were off-duty, and to whom Sara refused service as politely as she could. (That was yet another Maureen rule: Always ask if they’re cops. They can’t lie, because that would be entrapment.)

The problem was that the money never lasted. After weeks in the city doing calls, Sara had held on to practically none of what she’d made. It went to hotel bills, shoes, and clothes. It went to makeup from Sephora, including twenty-three dollars for what turned out to be, essentially, ChapStick. It went to Sara’s new prized possession—a $160 fitted Yankees cap from Lids in Times Square, decorated with sterling silver and cubic zirconium.

When Sara and Matt went to meet Maureen at Penn Station, they saw that she had brought a chaperone: Brett, her roommate. While Brett was friends with Maureen’s ex, Steve, he had a vested interest in Maureen making money. In just a few days, they were due to appear in eviction court—on Tuesday, July 10. Maureen knew if she couldn’t pay their back rent and the eviction went through, Steve would make a play for custody of Aidan. That weekend Maureen had come to New York on a mission. She needed eleven hundred dollars or she would lose her home and her son.

Sara and Maureen tried posting together, without the assistance of Vips, on Matt’s laptop—
two girls, snow buddies,
which meant they did coke. From the start, they ran into a problem. Almost as soon as they posted the ads, they were flagged as “offensive content” and pulled from the site. They tried it once more, and the same thing happened again and again. Someone had to be monitoring the Adult Services page and flagging the ads. Clearly, Vips was being vindictive.

All through Friday night, Maureen and Sara couldn’t make a dime. They hung out in one of the hotel rooms and smoked a blunt and started talking about what Maureen might do if she did get kicked out of her apartment in Norwich. Maybe fate was telling her to stay in New York. With nothing better to do, they fantasized about a whole summer in the city as business partners, doing incalls and outcalls from their own apartment. Maureen surfed a different corner of Craigslist, responding to an ad for a sublet on the Upper West Side. The rate was $749 a week, a bargain compared to the Super 8. Maureen smiled dreamily just talking about it. Sara felt she saw her friend coming back—the real, warm Maureen shining through.

Vips must have grown bored flagging the ads. They got a few calls the next day, so they didn’t really see each other. They worked Sunday, too. But later that day, their ads were getting booted again. They’d made just $700. Maureen was $400 short. There was nothing left to do but have some fun. They decided they needed new pictures for their ads. Sara needed a fresh look to go with her new name, and Maureen hadn’t changed her photo in three years. The occasion called for a full makeover. Sara got her nails done and her eyebrows waxed. She went back to Sephora and spent two hundred dollars in an hour, buying all kinds of colors that would look good with her eyes, plus glitter. Sara also sprang for outfits. Maureen came with her to Macy’s, on Thirty-fourth Street, and all Sara could think as they walked in and went up the narrow wooden escalators was
Oh my God, I’m in Mecca
. When she saw the women’s shoe department, Sara practically collapsed.

For decent photography, Maureen called a friend she’d made in the city, a graffiti artist of some renown. When they arrived at his place, Maureen and Sara told him they wanted him to do their makeup, too. Maureen had her face done up as an old Hollywood glamour queen, and Sara had hers done all crazy, with green, blue, and purple eye shadow and some sparkles. Their hair was done to match, sprayed in place to fend off the smallest imperfections. He took Sara’s photos first, then Maureen’s. They hung out there for a while and then walked back to their hotel through Times Square, the city lit up on a hot summer night. They had on jeans and T-shirts, but from the neck up, they were impossible to ignore. Random guys in the street were hitting on them both. Sara’s original makeup design got a lot of attention. “Is that a tattoo on your face?” someone asked. Sara snorted. “No, it’s not a tattoo—it
sparkles
.”

The longer they stayed out on Broadway, the more exhilarated they felt. Sara imagined they were supermodels, or princesses, or goddesses. She felt like nothing and no one could touch them. Maureen seemed happy, too—lighter, for once. Of all the moments Sara shared with Maureen, this was the one she would revisit the most—spending all night walking through Times Square, the center of attention, not a care in the world, the rest of the summer laid out just for them. For years afterward, she wouldn’t remember a happier time in her life.

Back at the hotel, they saw that they weren’t the only call girls staying there. Standing outside smoking a cigarette, they met a guy with dreads. “Are you guys working?” he asked. “Where’s your pimp?”

Sara sneered. “We don’t
have
one,” she said. “We aren’t owned. We’re each other’s.”

Midtown Manhattan. July 9, 2007.

Monday morning arrived sooner than they’d hoped. The plan had been for them to go back to Connecticut—Sara to see a friend, Maureen to face the music in eviction court. But they were still thinking of changing the plan and staying another day. It was only Monday; an extra night would give Maureen more time to make the money she needed. Maybe she could wire it to Brett in time for court on Tuesday. She had heard back about the Upper West Side sublet and had made an appointment to see it the next day, assuming they were in town.

Sara went up to the sixth floor to tell their chaperones to head back without them. Brett couldn’t believe it, and neither could Matt. As the three of them argued, Matt was especially persuasive—he simply didn’t want to leave them alone. It wasn’t safe. Sara saw the look of concern on his face and went back down to the fourth floor.

Maureen was lying in bed, the TV on, the curtains drawn. They both had been up all night, and Maureen was finally crashing. She looked up at Sara. “Where’s your stuff?”

“Matt doesn’t want us to stay,” Sara said. “I’m going back. You need to come back, too.”

Maureen shook her head. “I’ll just stay here in the hotel room.”

Their roles had reversed. Sara was the responsible one now. She’d feel guilty about going back alone.

“Please stay,” Maureen said. “Please.”

Sara went back up to Matt’s room on the sixth floor. “I’m gonna stay. We’re just gonna stay in the hotel room.”

Matt flipped out. He wanted Sara to come with him, with or without Maureen. Sara pushed back. “I’m not your
girl,
” she said.

Matt softened. “Yes, I know,” he said. “You’re my friend. And as a friend, I’m telling you I do not like that idea.”

Sara thought of Maureen’s first little rule: Always follow your instincts. If it doesn’t feel right, don’t do it. She went back to Maureen. “Look, man, I’m not trying to have this argument. Get your shit, and let’s go.”

Maureen didn’t move. “No,” she said, “I’m just gonna stay here. I’ll wait for you.” She looked at Sara and tilted her head. “You
are
coming back on Wednesday,
right
?”