Location, location, location

"Yes, yes, you do," Allie insisted. "You just don't realize it. We're fortunate to have worked for a madam like Liane because she never had to advertise. But Anabel wasn't so lucky. There's a whole world of other kinds of working girls out there ..."

"You're telling me!" I exclaimed, taking the strap-on apart. "Why do you think I spent 10 years building up my book? So I could avoid that world!"

Allison never worked for an escort service. She doesn't realize that Anabel's is a hi-tech version of the tacky operation I worked for when I first came to New York. Why should I be dragged back into the world of Jeannie's Dream Dates? Cocaine dates that end at 4 in the morning? Johns who scour the Yellow Pages -- or worse -- because they don't have private connections?

"Think about it," Allison urged me. "Sitting in jail for 12 years because you ran an escort service -- that's what they're trying to do to Anabel. You said yourself that you didn't want Liane to go to jail. Is Anabel less of a person than Liane, just because she advertises?"

As I massaged the rubber shaft with liquid soap, I thought not of Liane but of Jeannie. Allison wouldn't have lasted five minutes, let alone one hour, working for Jeannie's Dream Dates. One day, Jeannie just called me to say she was closing down, immediately. The day she left New York, I had to move out of a new apartment into a hotel room and put my brand-new furniture in storage. Jeannie didn't know I was 17. Technically, her star escort was underage. Jeannie was in more trouble than she herself realized. Thank God the police never caught up with me -- or with her. I never found out what happened to her.

"I'll meet Roxana," I said finally. "I don't see how I can help Anabel but if she has any ideas ..."

I'll do it for Jeannie, I thought, after Allison left.

Sunday evening, October 31

This Halloween has been a mini-nightmare. Following a vegetarian dinner at Zen Palate with Roxana and Allison, I struggled my way through the throngs of masked revelers hogging the sidewalk and all the cabs. When I finally got home, I fixed myself a much-needed kir. Just as I was sinking into the latest issue of Vanity Fair, my business phone rang -- twice. Then, my personal line. It was Jasmine.

"Why are you dialing all my numbers?" I asked Jasmine. "I'm hopping around the room here -- "

"Because," she said tersely, "after two rings, I remembered that I was making a personal call, not a business call. I don't like to clutter up a friend's business line with personal matters. But," she said, growing rather shrill, "since you are answering your personal phone, what difference does it make? Why should I have to explain all this? I'm showing some fucking respect for your personal boundaries and you don't even appreciate it!"

"Calm down! What's wrong?" I demanded.

"It's David! That -- that -- "

She seemed to be choking. "Did he hurt you? Do you need an ambulance?"

"Don't be stupid! No! He asked me for money! Can you believe it? Do you know why he goes to Sexaholics Anonymous? That deceitful son of a bitch!" She paused and lowered her voice. "He's trying to meet women for their money!"

"Where were you when he -- "

"In fucking bed!" she yelled. "We were in bed! And he asked me for money!" There was a pause as she collected herself and then, to my surprise, her voice cracked. "After we -- you know."

"Made love?"

"I guess you could call it that. Except that he tried to charge me! And he has the nerve to be insulted because I called him a gigolo!"

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