‘If I was you,’ resumed She-She, ‘I’d be very excited.’
‘You would, would you.’
‘I’d be just wild.’
‘Well I’m looking forward to it, certainly.’
‘I’ll bet.’
‘Yes, it should be fun.’
‘I’d just be so excited.’
I frowned and said, ‘About what, exactly?’
She-She gave an incredulous pout.
‘I mean, you’re a great-looking chick and everything,’ I said, but—’
‘Not me, God! Your new Princess!’
‘Oh her.’
So for some time She-She and I talked very seriously about the future Princess of Wales. The future Princess of Wales is evidently a big hit with the hookers on Third Avenue. She-She was full of admiration of Lady Diana’s hairstyle, dress-sense and poise. She also had a lot of time for Prince Charles. She liked Prince Andrew. She liked Prince Edward. She even fancied the Duke of Edinburgh. After an increasingly eerie half hour of this I clapped my hands together and said, rather abruptly perhaps, ‘— Right then. So what are you selling?’
‘Oh anything you want,’ she said, with no change in the speed of her voice. ‘What kind of tip you want to give?’
‘Well let’s see now. What’s on offer?’
‘Straight French English Greek Turkish. Or Half’n’Half.’
‘ … What’s Half’n’Half?’
‘Straight with French.’
‘What’s English?’
‘Correction.’
‘What’s Turkish? — No, don’t tell me. Let me have, just give me a — I think I’ll just have a handjob.’
‘A handjob?’ She-She stiffened. ‘Okay. If you want. What kind of tip you want to give?’
Naked as I was, I still had my condom-like moneybag on my lap. I had already coughed up forty bucks at the door. How much is a handjob? Come on, what do you reckon? With a shrug I said, ‘Fifty dollars?’
‘Listen,’ She-She told me. ‘Why don’t you put your clothes on right now and get down to Seventh Avenue or Forty-Second Street. You want to spend fifty dollars, maybe they can help you out. Fifty dollars? Nobody gives me fifty dollars.’
‘Wait a minute — hey, take it easy,’ I said. I confess I was a little shaken by my playmate’s tone. For a moment there she had looked and sounded like a rockhard loan-shark reclaiming an ugly debt. ‘I’m new to all this, I’m sorry. Why don’t you make a suggestion?’
She-She: ‘If you give the fifty cash, then seventy-five on the card plus the credit supplement which is 15 per cent else we lose on the rental or we have a spa-cheque policy which works out the same minus the 15 per cent with a ten-dollar supplement. It makes no difference with a gift this size.’
‘. .. A hundred and seventy-five dollars? For a handjob?’
‘Listen, this is Third Avenue, not Seventh. Why don’t you put on your clothes and —’
‘Yeah yeah.’
Oh, they’ve worked this one out: some male thought has gone into this all right — more, probably, than went into that bamboo shitbox, the birdsong, the lagoon lights. There you are, naked, and tagging your needs with the sex inspector. It’s not that she wants to make you feel cheap. She wants to make you feel the cheapest ever,. . Spryly She-She left the room. But she soon came back again. She bore the sliding brace of a credit-card franker. What was going into that crushing ratchet—my US Approach card, or my Johnson? Now, sir, I’M just take an impression of your penis here … There was some more budget-baJancing over the question of She-She’s underwear. The top came off at once. The pants, she said, had not been part of the deal.
‘You certainly know how to turn a guy on,’ I said, all passion spent, and flicked another twenty into the pool.
To put it at its highest, I was in no more than so-so shape by the time I reached Caduta’s. I’d had a couple of drinks, lapped up some fast food, and jumped into a cab. I only had time for fast food. I’m going to kick fast food too, one day. The time has come to kick fast food. Time to fast from it… That session with She-She had done me no good at all. Although I had tarried in the Happy Isles for well over an hour, the actual handjob was the work of a moment — forty-five seconds, I’d say. I had to rack my brains to remember a worse one. ‘You must have been really excited,’ said She-She quietly, as she started plucking tissues from the box. Yes and no. Between ourselves, it was one of those handjobs where you go straight from limpness to orgasm, skipping the hard-on stage. I think She-She must have activated some secret glandular gimmick, to wrap it up quickly. She then attempted a drowsy recap on the Royal Family but I shouldered my way out of there as soon as I could. The trouble with all this is — it’s so unsatisfactory. Regular handjobs are unsatisfactory too, but they don’t cost five bucks a second. Overheads are generally low. Say what you like about handjobs, they don’t cost eighty-five quid.