CHLOIE: THE MISERLY MADEMOISELLE

SECTION TWO
THE GIRLS. . .
AND OTHER FERAL CHILDREN

For the lips of a strange woman drop as an honeycomb, And her mouth is smoother than oil, But her end is bitter as wormwood . . . Her ways are moveable, that thou canst not know them. —Proverbs 5:3-6

CHLOIE:

The Miserly Mademoiselle

Nationality: French Age: Late twenties/ early thirties Hair: Strawberry blonde Goal: Buy Melrose restaurant Lesson I learned: When customers throw large sums of money at you all night long, you begin to think it’s your birthright, to consider it the height of rudeness and incivility when everybody else doesn’t.

It was dark outside already when I got the call.

“James,” Lynnie rasped over the phone in his usual cigarette-stained, crusty, Lon Chaney voice, “whatryadoon tonight?”

“Usual stuff,” I answered carefully, “Bikini parade is over. No more girls out at the pool for you to hit on if that’s why you’re calling. Maybe a poker game over at Kathy’s. Why?”

“You remember I told you about my job driving hookers?”

I remembered. He spent half the summer telling me about his discovery of call girls as the solution to his sexual frustrations and the other half about how he had finagled a job driving them to support this new habit of his. I halfway didn’t believe him. Lynnie’s been known to misplace a glaring fact or two, especially when he’s talking about sex.

I had to hand it to the guy if it was true, though. Driving call girls around L.A. to make enough money to pay for having sex with other call girls in the same agency had a certain symmetry to it.

“Can you do me a favor and drive one of my girls tonight?” he asked, “I’ve got an acting class at 9 that I just can’t miss.”

“I don’t know, Lynnie.” I was trying to picture a fancy high-priced L.A. call girl riding around in my battered old ‘hoopdee’ car. High-priced L.A. call girls ride around in stretch limos drinking champagne and snorting coke off their girlfriends’ bare breasts, don’t they?

“C’mon, man. My acting coach will kill me if I miss another session. It’s EASY, man. You make about $100 and you don’t have to DO anything. Really.”

“Alright,” I sighed with resignation, “What time does this shindig start?” It sounded okay to me. I didn’t want Lynnie to miss his movie extra acting lessons and I was getting curious to see what a big city call girl looked like.

It was no big deal, Lynnie promised. Just show up at the Park LaBrea apartments on Hauser at 8 and she’ll tell you what to do . . . mostly waiting outside Beverly Hills mansions, listening to the car radio, nap if I wanted. He would call ahead to let her know I was coming and he gave me her phone number to call if I wanted to verify things myself.

Everything was set. Within the hour I would be on my way to the Park LaBrea apartments to meet my first L.A. call girl: Chloie. .Lynnie just forgot to mention anything about this gal’s boss, the evil firebreathing Dragon Lady.

“Look at me,” I told Lynnie, “I left Texas a B52 pylon sander and now I’m hobknobbing with L.A. call girls at Beverly Hills mansions.”

“Yeah,” Lynnie laughed, “It’s pretty cool, man.”

I called the number Lynnie gave me and left a message on Chloie’s answering machine. I tried to sound reliable and professional.

“Who was that?” my son asked as I hung up the phone. He wasn’t used to my reliable and professional phone voice.

“Some high-priced L.A. call girl who needs a ride over to Beverly Hills,” I answered as I walked out the door, “Don’t wait up.”