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“Tell me what you’d recommend,” I said. “You’re the expert.”
She laughed, delighted. “Oh, I like being called the expert.” She set her glass down and counted on her fingers. “I can be your girlfriend for two hours. I can be very much not your girlfriend. I give a blowjob that has made grown men cry, and I’m not even exaggerating for marketing.” She grinned. “And I sometimes work with a friend. Odette. She’s thirty-one, French, filthy, and she’s free tonight because her eleven o’clock cancelled. She’s at a bar two streets away.”
I must have looked like I’d been hit with a frying pan.
“That’s a lot,” she said kindly. “Here’s another option. Some men book me and don’t actually want sex at all. They want company. Somebody to talk to who isn’t going to judge them or tell their mother.” She tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear. “That’s fine too. It’s your two hours. Truly.”
I looked at her. I looked at the bed. I thought about how tired I was, and how lonely, and how long it had been since anyone had looked at me the way she was looking at me now, which was with patience and something like curiosity.
“Odette,” I said slowly. “Tell me more about Odette.”
Vivienne’s eyes glittered. “Or,” she said, “tell me more about you.”