She didn’t come as scheduled one day, and I was puzzled, well, a bit pissed-off actually. I tried without success to get in touch with her over the next few days and when I couldn’t, I grew quite concerned. I tracked down some of her maid friends around the Chateau and asked if she was sick or something. No, they told me; she’d been sent back to Indonesia by her employers. Ma’am had apparently found some expensive items stashed in her room: earrings, bracelets, necklaces. The bitch accused Liana of having stolen them from somewhere. Liana insisted that they weren’t stolen, they were presents. “Presents? From who?” asked Ma’am. Liana said they were from her boyfriend and admitted she had a boyfriend she snuck off and saw sometimes.

“Did she, uhh, ever say who this boyfriend was?” I asked. Her friends shrugged. Some guy from the construction site down the hill, they guessed, a Thai or a Bangladeshi. That’s what she told her employers anyway. Of course, this merely confirmed for the couple that Liana was lying, that she had obviously stolen those articles; no foreign construction worker could ever in his wildest dreams have afforded such presents.

The friends went on to tell me that before they repatriated Liana, the couple had confiscated all of her fancy presents. They told the poor girl that since she wouldn’t tell them the truth of where they came from, they were going to donate the gifts to some suitable charity. (Probably the dour bitch’s Office Show-off Charity, I muttered to myself.)

One of the friends had managed to go to the airport with Liana when she was flown back. The poor thing had cried the whole time while waiting to board, according to this friend. She also kept insisting, over and over again, that she really had this boyfriend, really: a real, true boyfriend, kind and generous, cute even, the kind she had always dreamed about meeting. And then she did, and he had become her real boyfriend.

At this, I could only nod and choke out a few words. “Yeah, I believe her. I think she definitely had a real boyfriend. A girl as pretty and sweet as that, she could have had anyone she wanted. Really.” I then thanked them for their help, said I had some things I had to attend to urgently, turned and rushed off. When I got back inside my apartment, I slammed my fist against the wall. And there was something harsh and stinging in my eyes for awhile.

Needless to say, my kitchen floor has never been so clean again. And I have never once since then known such pure, uncluttered happiness. Really.

THE SERVICE PROVIDER

John Burdett, Thailand

1

Penny would never have described herself as a lady of the night, and, since she was white, British, and never walked the streets, neither would anyone else. In her heart, though, she admitted that for quite some time she had lived off men who would not have paid her expenses if she had not rendered a reasonable performance in bed.

She felt no guilt or degradation, only a mild anger. Not toward men.

If anything, it was feminism she blamed for her situation. She adhered to the outdated female archetype who, in past times, settled down with a big-hearted man who forgave incompetence in housekeeping, cooking and the acquisition of money in return for an infinite tolerance combined with an unlimited affection for him and their children. In her dreams, she saw herself in a big untidy house with a big untidy garden (probably Bloomsbury between the wars: she had a fondness for history), a husband with a comfortable beer gut and scruffy kids who chased each other around the house and loved her.

But in the twenty-first century, the chances of meeting any guy with a decent income who was not stressed out of his brain were as remote as winning the lottery.

So, in the way of the English today, she lived for vacations. Through hints and prods, she had induced all of her last five boyfriends to take her on holiday, three times to the Med and twice to Morocco. The ending never changed. She would give him a great time, and through subtle female techniques ensure that he relax, let go, share his heart. She would assure him she was not looking for a marriage that would enable her to grab half his assets. Once he was suitably mellow, she would even allow herself to start to love him. Then the vacation would finish, they would fly back to London and within twenty-four hours he was a stressed-out, insufferable maniac all over again.

The last one had differed only in that she had seen failure coming. It had been her first time in Greece and, despite the excessive tourism, the islands had seduced her like nowhere else. She told him she didn’t want to go back. She just couldn’t face London anymore. She was sorry. He seemed to understand. He even financed her for a couple of months and flew out for a weekend, which she made sure was as dirty as could be-pulled out all the stops, so to speak, rolled, licked, sucked and humped the nights away until she felt as if she’d worked out in a gym; but they both knew it was the end of the affair. Keeping a mistress on a Greek island was almost as financially ruinous as marriage itself

So she hung out first on Crete, then on Mykonos, then on Lesbos for a few months until money started to get really tight. She became almost blatant about her pickups, made it clear that although no way was she on the game she was rather short of the readies if you know what I mean, love… And so made her way slowly west.

She knew that in Gibraltar there were Brits with dough who worked there. It seemed ideal, and only twelve miles from Morocco, where she had had a great holiday with number… Well, she’d stopped counting, but it had been a great vacation.

She was disappointed. The Brits on the Rock were of the yobbish, loutish sort, many of them army or ex-army. Only by chance she made a contact who got her invited to a party given by a man from South London who was a prince of offshore gambling. It was a big, loud party in a big loud mansion in Sotto Grande, which is where rich Gibraltarians invariably live.

The host had little conversation and less manners, but he introduced her to Mike. Mike had no conversation at all and probably no manners—it was hard to say, he was so intense about an Internet game he’d invented that was earning him millions, something to do with dropping virtual balls into virtual boxes. He probably figured he didn’t need any social graces. If she hadn’t been desperate, she would have slapped him, his come-on was so crude. But at the same time, she could see he was honest, as the emotionally retarded can be. He really did think that people were basically computers and would do what you wanted if you clicked on the right spot. He guessed—it wasn’t difficult considering how worn her best jeans and T-shirt were—that in her case he only needed to click on dough.

From the party mansion, it was only a short walk to his mansion, but he drove her in his Porsche. She knew the first night was a test; if she performed right, he would be quite generous. So, feeling like a real whore for the first time in her life, she pulled out all the stops. Next morning, he offered her a contract and left her, open-mouthed, to think about it while he drove over to Gib to make another million.

Sitting in the great big kitchen of the great big mansion, she felt suicidal.

Had she really come to this? Out of sarcasm she wrote down the deal he had offered her in his snappy, take-it-or-leave-it, barrow-boy voice before he’d dashed out of the house without even a peck on the cheek.

She was not of the self-destructive kind, though, and knew very well there was a price to pay for everything. Considering how she’d pretty much sold her body for peanuts up to now, it wasn’t really such a bad deal. Once she accepted the no-frills attitude, she realized he was being quite generous.