Some Girls: My Life in a Harem by Jillian Lauren Read Free Book Online Page A

underneath.
    “You must be Elizabeth. Can I get you a drink, sweetheart?”
    I readily accepted his offer for a drink, totally ignoring Taylor’s suggestion to stay sober. I wanted to be classy and in control like her, but I’d have to work up to it. Nothing sounded better than the comforting burn of a drink. I followed him into his apartment, where he took my coat, threw it over the back of a chair, and indicated a black leather sofa. I sat while he freshened his vodka tonic and poured mine.
    The apartment was a classic bachelor pad with an elaborate entertainment center, five tall CD towers, and a panoramic view of the city. His back still turned, the radio host fired questions at me. Habit, I guess. He asked me how old I was and what I did when I wasn’t doing “this.” I told him I was an eighteen-year-old theater student at NYU.
    “You’re older than eighteen, sweetheart. I can tell. It’s my job to read people.” His eyes sparkled with self-satisfaction as he sat down next to me and handed me my drink, his hand resting on my thigh. “You don’t have to lie to me. Now, how old are you really?”
    He seemed so pleased with his intuitive gifts that I thought it best not to argue.
    “You’re right. I’m twenty. I’m graduating next year.”
    It occurred to me as we chatted more that I was going to be good at this. I was discovering a new talent. I had spent all this time in my acting training trying to uncover the authenticity in every moment, trying to lay myself bare. Here, I was going for pure artifice, the exact opposite result, but I was using the same skills of listening and improvisation.
    I had been a good stripper—a natural, everyone always told me. I was never the prettiest or the girl with the best body, but I had that something that made people want to look at me. More important, I had that something that makes people feel seen themselves. Lonely guys couldn’t get enough of it. It was easy for me; it was acting, which was my thing, after all. And I suspected that I was going to be the same way as a call girl. A natural.
    The radio host was very impressed that I was a theater student, which I had actually ceased to be six months before.
    “I went to Yale drama,” he told me. “You should consider it.”
    “Good idea. I’ll definitely consider it.”
    “You like Sam Shepard?”
    “I love Sam Shepard.”
    “I’m a close personal friend of Sam Shepard. I could get you an audition one day.”
    He gave me the tour of his hallway gallery, which consisted of black-and-white pictures of a younger him in Off-Broadway productions. All of them hung slightly crooked, as if someone had banged into the wall hard enough to shake it—maybe he himself, staggering from the bedroom to the bar.
    He grabbed my hand and led me toward the bedroom.
    “There’s something really cool I want to show you in here.”
    Please don’t let it be a bottle of chloroform and a set of antique surgical instruments, I thought. I started to ask for another drink, but he didn’t give me a chance. With a flourish, he opened the door of one of his bedroom closets and yanked me inside. It was a walk-in, lined floor to ceiling with cowboy boots of all kinds.
    “Wow. Cool.”
    “I’m famous for wearing cowboy boots,” he said. “It’s my trademark. Would you like to undress?”
    I reached behind me for my zipper and a chill shot up the back of my legs, the kind you get when you’re caught doing something wrong.
    “No, in here,” he said, and indicated the bedroom. The bedroom had gray walls and gray berber carpeting. A garnet-red bed was the only furnishing, and it faced a set of mirrored closet doors. He sat on the edge of it and watched as I took off my dress and stockings and folded them, dropping them in a pile in the corner. The fishnets had embossed a pink honeycomb pattern in the flesh of my thighs. I put my heels back on and left my thong in place, planning to hold on to it until the last possible moment.
    I