In the Shadow of Sadd

“So your mother was a businesswoman?” says Cream-puss, as he brushes some imaginary lint off his elegant suit jacket. “And you’re following in your mother’s footsteps? What does a pretty girl like you dream about? A husband and children? A little house on the prairie? Exotic travel destinations?”

She is on her guard. She knows she isn’t pretty, and she can hear the obsequiousness in his voice. He’s trying to pump her, that’s what he’s doing.

“As long as I have my good health, I’m not complaining. My friend Lulu died when she was seventeen, and I know someone with AIDS, and a guy who’s paralyzed from the neck down …”

“Yeah, but when you’re young, you dream about more than just being healthy,” he objects.

“I hope I have enough money soon to get the windows insulated, and maybe – in a couple of years – I could get an apartment that’s a little bigger,” she answers in a subdued voice.

“Oh, sweetheart, you know what? I’ll talk to Jimmy Sadd about that right away. He owns so many apartment buildings. And like I say, he’s very thankful for what you’ve done. And you know how Jimmy Sadd is: behind that hard exterior beats a heart of stone.”

They both laugh at the joke, though it’s been said of Jimmy Sadd many times before.

***

Of course she had dreams. Of course one’s life is changed when one suddenly comes into possession of a great fortune.

Her fist move would be to get herself and the money out of Sadd’s reach. Then she would consider whether she should pay a hit man to get both Sadd and Bruno out of the way – she’d have to think it through thoroughly, from under the palm trees. There were complications. What about Cream-puss, for instance?

And what would she do then?

Five-star hotels, expensive cars, good restaurants and non-stop power shopping! That’s what she dreamed of.

Men? No, never again! That was the best thing about being rich.

She was so tired of her profession. Ever since they had legalized prostitution, the business had, in her opinion, gone to shit. Now there were two pimps who got a piece of the pie: first Sadd, and then the tax man. There was less and less for the woman on the bed – or on the phone.

And it wasn’t only the finances – now they had to have a state license, whether they worked in a house or on the phone.

In order to get this license they had to receive a certain number of clients referred by government institutions.

Some of these were men with physical handicaps. And they were okay. It was usually their nurse or home-care professional who brought them to the bordello, and for phone girls like Victoria, it obviously didn’t matter that the guy on the phone didn’t have any legs or arms, or weighed four hundred pounds, or was just ugly as sin.

The worst ones were the men who were referred by government rehabilitation programs.

In the ministries of Justice, Welfare and Public Health, some experts had decided that prostitution was a good societal safety valve. Instead of men directing their rampant sex drives at children and helpless women, they could simply get relief by going to whores.

She herself had serviced a man referred by a rehab center. He was in treatment for his extreme contempt for women, which he had expressed by beating his wife, as well as random women on the street.

As a phase of the treatment and prevention processes, he would be allowed to vent to a prostitute over the phone. There was no danger to anyone, according to the experts.

“You sleazy bitch, you cheap whore,” he began his phone session. “Am I right that you’re a cheap little whore?”

“Yes,” she answered. “I’m a cheap little whore.” After all, the customer is always right, and the service itself was based on satisfying the customer.

“Dirty cunt! Pig!” he shouted, and she could deduce from his breathing that he was hard at work on himself.

“I’m a cunt and a pig,” she said.

“I’m gonna beat the shit out of you. I got a belt in my hand.”

“Ow, ow, not so hard,” she whimpered. She knew it would excite him, and she wanted him to finish as quickly as possible.

“I got a cord here too. I’m putting it around your throat, and I’m squeezing it …”

“Oh, no,” she gasped. She could then hear by his moan that he had ejaculated.

And that’s all, folks.

There had actually been a good deal of public discussion about how much of a burden should be placed on the ears and bodies of the prostitutes.

The winning argument went like this:

‘It’s better for these men to unload their aggressions on the phone, or under controlled circumstances in a bordello, as opposed to them killing innocent women and children.’

***

She sat on the sofa, entirely lost in her own thoughts. That was no big deal. It wouldn’t hurt her cause if Cream-puss thought she was sad.

He cleared his throat in a cultivated way, as if to herald the continuation of the conversation:

“What happened right before you notified Bruno Hanson?” he asked.

She cast the attorney a mournful and resigned glance and began to speak:

“Well, I was home alone. Paul said he was going to a seminar on reptiles. Two days and one night. Reptiles are really in right now, as pets, and Paul didn’t feel he knew enough about them to give the customers sufficient guidance. It was really important for him to be well-informed and thorough. He went to several seminars over the last month, where you spend the night …”

She paused reflectively.

“… but now I’m not all that sure. It could all have been a lie! What the hell was he doing when he wasn’t home at night?

“But what about last night ... before you called Bruno Hanson?” The attorney was determined to keep her on track.

“Well, I was alone and I couldn’t sleep. Müsli – that’s the mouse over there – kept on spinning his wheel, and I wanted Paul ...”

She wiped a tear from the corner of her eye and gathered herself.

“Then all of a sudden I heard this clattering noise from inside Jimmy Sadd’s place. So I’m thinking that Jimmy Sadd must have come back, but I hadn’t heard anything about that. So I think, like, maybe he loaned the apartment to one of his friends. Or that maybe it was Bruno ... At first I wasn’t thinking anything like a burglary at all.

“But nothing changes, and I’m thinking, it sucks that Paul’s not here, ‘cause I’m not going over there in the middle of the night. So I’m thinking that the most likely thing is that Bruno’s pretending the place is his, to impress some bimbo. And then it hits me that I can just call Bruno on his cell.”

“Where are you, Bruno?” I ask him, and it turns out that he’s at home in bed. So I tell him that someone’s in Sadd’s apartment.”

“Stay where you are. I’ll get dressed and be right over,” he said.

***

The story comes easily to her, and she hasn’t even practiced. Lying is easy when you’ve done it professionally from the age of ten. Lying, acting, pretending.

She and Lulu had often laughed themselves to tears after convincing tricks of ridiculous things. They could convince a man with a half-inch stub for a penis that he had a giant cock; they could fake sexual excitement, or an orgasm, with the most cynical man – with any man, Victoria would assert.

In reality, tricks could be boiled down to a few main types:

Tricks that went to hookers because they couldn’t get sex anywhere else. They were ecstatic over a straight f*ck. They’re easy to deal with and thankful, but not physically attractive.

Tricks that went to whores because it gave them a special kind of pleasure to combine sex with something they considered ‘dirty’ and ‘forbidden.’ They wanted confirmation that sex was sinful and filthy. You had to watch out for this type. They were the ones who, in the worst case scenario, could turn violent – when they wanted to punish the prostitute for dragging them into the muck.

Tricks that went in for the romantic angle. Often young students or intellectuals who invented unhappy stories about the whores, and in some cases offered to save them. Girls could sometimes squeeze a little extra cash out of these romantics simply by playing along with their stories, for example, by saying they wanted to take some courses and start a new and better life. The guy reaches into his pocket, and the girl gets enough for an extra fix.

Tricks that practiced a variation of the romance angle, fabricating a story of the whore as a good-hearted and giving person who truly enjoyed pleasuring men: the happy hooker. These men were just dumb-asses, according to Victoria – self-satisfied men who couldn’t distinguish between emotions and business.

Tricks that had some perversion their women wouldn’t accept. It often had something to do with piss and shit, but there were so many other possibilities ...

As a whore, it was part of the job to play along with the tricks’ self-deception and their many different stories, and Victoria was good at her job. So good, that she could make do with satisfying them by phone.

Paul had almost been too receptive to her lies. He had never suspected anything. Did she have a guilty conscience? No, that was just the onset of the withdrawal. When is this Cream-puss gonna say ‘uncle’ and take a hike? She had to take one of her pills.

“Excuse me for a second. I just have to use the bathroom,” she said to the attorney Christian Berg.

She felt a little buzz, as she sat on the toilet, just from knowing that the pill was in her stomach. Relaxing, she recalled the events of the night:

***

She’d been sitting in the window with her cell phone, staring out into the rainy night and feeling by and large satisfied – if also anxious and nervous. Up to that point, everything had gone precisely according to plan:

She had succeeded in getting Paul to live in her apartment, take care of the fish and find the secret room.

Paul had never suspected his fiancée, which was how – so old-fashioned and pathetic – he referred to her.

Now he was busy packing the fortune into moving boxes. Just two of those boxes, full, would provide her with a rich and carefree lifestyle. And what do you need beyond being rich and carefree? She didn’t want to be greedy. Greed had destroyed many a plan before hers.

She was now ready for the next phase. She called Bruno, the bear, the baby.

“It’s me, Victoria. Where are you, Bruno?”

“I’m where I can sometimes be found in the middle of the night – in my bed.”

“Oh God, Bruno. I thought it was you, so it must be somebody else inside Jimmy’s apartment. I’m scared! Should I call the cops, or what should I do?”

“Don’t do anything, sweetheart – whatever you do, don’t call the cops! What are you thinking? I’ll just get dressed and I’ll be there in five minutes.”

Eight minutes passed before she saw Bruno’s van turn into the street. When she heard the elevator on its way up, she pressed ‘send.’

She had actually written, and saved, the text message to Paul many hours earlier: ‘Someone coming.’

***