The Treachery of Russian Nesting Dolls

CHAPTER 2

Window prostitutes disliked being gawked at by tourists because they interfered with the seduction of the self-conscious but real buyer. Personally, I didn’t mind the tourists. Nor did I mind the solitary Asian, Nigerian, or German-looking men walking back and forth along the same street as though they were on their way to the Anne Frank museum but got lost. What unnerved me were the occasional gangs of burly men who looked mean and angry. They didn’t smile, laugh, or appear to be having fun of any kind. Hate, not lust, shone in their eyes. They didn’t look like men who wanted me. They looked like men who wanted to kill me.

And as that thought flitted through my mind, someone cast a shadow against my window and I heard a knock on my door. To the other women in my newfound trade, it would have been the sound of opportunity. But to me it was the sound of reckoning, for even without seeing his face, I knew who’d come a-calling.

My pulse pounded. I took a breath and cracked the door open.

But where I expected to see the Turk’s nausea-inducing face, I saw nothing but air. In fact, I had to look down to waist-level to see my first customer. A man in his mid-twenties with tousled brown hair sat overflowing a wheelchair. He gazed at me with a heart-wrenching innocence made all the more earnest by the round spectacles that made his eyes look like saucers.

He cracked his lips to speak but couldn’t manage any words. He gave a little croak instead, as though either my physique or ensemble had taken his breath away. I preferred to think it was the former though I wasn’t one to discriminate between compliments.

I searched for something to say myself but did no better. In fact, a bolt of anxiety wracked me. I hadn’t contemplated a scenario where a sympathetic-looking man tried to engage my services. I hadn’t considered the prospect of feeling a little bit guilty for saying no. Yet here I was, standing in front of a young man who probably couldn’t get sex any other way. And out of four hundred or so window prostitutes in Amsterdam, he’d chosen me.

Another unexpected emotion hit me. Not only had I experienced a stab of guilt, I was a bit flush from flattery.

We both stood there looking at each other until he finally took his eyes off the ripples in my abdomen and looked beyond me into my dimly lit office. His head began bobbing up and down slightly, and I was reminded that there was music playing in the background.

“Scorpions,” he said, with a lovely English accent. “That’s very nice.” His eyes drifted to my torso before he pulled them back up. “There’s no one like you.”

If I hadn’t been tanned, he might have seen me blush. “That’s very sweet of you…”

“No. I mean the Scorpions song. There’s No One Like You. That’s my favorite—wait, you’re American?” He frowned as though this was a shocking observation, which of course, I was sure it was.

“I’m a citizen of the world,” I said.

“Don’t think I saw any American women on my last trip. Can I come in and listen to the Scorpions with you?”

“I’m sorry, honey,” I said. “I don’t think that’s realistic.”

“Just kidding. I had something in mind along your usual line of business. How much for half an hour? I know the standard time is fifteen minutes, but it takes me a little longer… “

“I’m sorry, really I am…”

“No, no. My John Thomas works. You don’t have to worry about that. All I want is a little rumpy-pumpy. Nothing kinky. Just a little ride on my motorbike will do. Look…” He fumbled with a fanny pack. “I’m minted. I can show you.”

I bent down, put my hand on his, and gave it a sympathetic squeeze. “You need to find another girl.”

“Oh. I understand.”

His eyes turned to slits. He maneuvered a lever. The motor attached to his wheelchair whirred. The wheels rolled backward.

“No,” I said. “It’s not that. This has nothing to do with your handicap.”

He stopped the wheelchair mid-turn and glanced at me one last time. “Then what does it have to do with?”

I couldn’t be honest with him and to lie would have been an even bigger insult. I shook my head. “I’m sorry. I can’t explain.”

The young man in the wheelchair considered my words and nodded. “Yeah. I like that one, too.”

I had no idea what he was talking about. “Excuse me?”

He measured me head-to-toe once more, this time with a look of disgust appropriate for a fraud. “I Can’t Explain. It’s a song. Do you even like the Scorpions?” He shook his head. “Bloody Yanks. Can’t trust them. Can’t shag them, either.” He wheeled himself away.

I closed the door and headed straight for the water, wishing it were wine instead. Every De Wallen window girl has the legal right to quote any price for any service and to turn away any potential customer for no reason whatsoever. That’s what gave me the audacity to set up shop in the first place. I figured I needed to open my door and appear to be congenial, lest someone start rapping on my window and create a scene. But I didn’t need to even quote a price to anyone for any kind of service if I didn’t want to. And I sure as hell didn’t want to.

I thought posing as a window prostitute would be deceptively straightforward, but like most enterprises that came with such expectations, it was obviously going to be the opposite.

I returned to my post five feet from the window, smiling and flashing my teeth to the occasional solitary passer-by, swaying my hips a barely perceptible amount to the beat, trying not to look as preposterous as I felt.

If only the faithful from my childhood church could have seen me now. I pictured them gasping collectively and covering their mouths with shock and dismay. I imagined my mother shaking her head, criticizing my figure, the clothes, and the wig. The thought of my deceased father seeing me caused my face to burn. There were no circumstances under which he would have accepted my standing in this window. He would have told me I was too intelligent and educated for such a masquerade. He would have expected me to be making a living in a more elegant fashion. In fact, all enterprises that promote elegance have roots in the gutter.

The same could have been said about my dead husband, who’d been a professor of religion at Yale. He would have called me trash and dashed off into the arms of his adoring graduate assistant. Given that assessment, you’d think my ex-husband was the one who mattered to me the least. But life is not that logical. It was, in fact, he who mattered the most. It was the image of his car wrapped around an oak tree a mile from my mother’s house and his subsequent funeral that still persecuted me.

The next hour and forty-five minutes went by slowly. The only action came courtesy of a Spanish-looking man in his sixties. He pretended to be taking pictures of his wife but he’d positioned her so that he could zoom in on the three African girls in the windows around the bend from me.

Taking pictures of the working girls in De Wallen is a no-no. The Turk appeared out of nowhere, barked something at him, ripped the camera from his hands and confiscated its memory card. Then he disappeared. The tourist and his wife looked around for help, but even if they’d found the police, they would have gotten little sympathy from the law on this matter.

At first, the sight of the Turk unsettled me, his earlier promise to be my first customer still fresh in my mind. But then I took comfort in knowing that someone was manning the panic button and that he obviously took his responsibility seriously.

I thought I was going to get to midnight without having to open the door again, but at eleven-thirty my neighborhood began to bustle with drunken activity. A group of six Welshmen on a stag party wanted the prospective groom to enjoy a final fling with the “mullato devil woman.” I guessed the combination of my tan, the dim lighting, and their drunken state had turned me into an exotic creature, and I was quite flattered by the description. They were less flattered when I turned them away on account of my alleged allergy to alcohol. One of them questioned my choice of occupation, but by then the others had spied the African girls around the bend and they continued onward without major incident.

I turned away two more drunken men in their thirties who spoke French, and a polite Japanese salary man in his fifties. None of them gave me any trouble. I had one eye on my watch at 11:55 and butterflies were swirling in my stomach when someone knocked on the door yet again. I stepped closer to the window and glanced to my left.

It was the Turk. He motioned for me to open-up.

I considered ignoring him but I knew that wouldn’t work. He would step in front of my window and demand that I open the door. If he became persistent, he might scare away the mystery lover.

A fist pounded on the door. I heard something that sounded like English but I couldn’t make out the words.

I hit the panic button three times rapidly, took a deep breath, and ran to the door. I whipped it open and stood nose-to-chest with the Turk.

“Where the hell have you been?” I said.

A slight grin crossed his lips. “You’ve been wanting me from the moment you saw me—”

“Not exactly—”

“Relax. The Turk is going to give you satisfaction.”

“I hit the panic button three times. Three times. And where were you?”

He’d started to push past me but my words made him freeze. “Panic button? When?”

“Just now, a minute ago, constantly. What does it matter? Where were you? Is anyone looking out for me? Anyone at all?”

“I have a colleague—”

“Who’s obviously incompetent.”

The Turk blinked twice and looked me over again, this time with concern. “What happened?”

“A man tried to force himself on me. We agreed on a price and took care of some business, but then he wanted something extra. When I refused, he stole his money back and said if I tried to do anything about it he’d follow me home after work some day and beat me.”

“He said this?”

“How can you expect me to take care of you if you don’t take care of me? Is this the Dutch way? Is this the Turkish way?”

“I am not Turkish,” he said slowly, as though simultaneously thinking about the matter at hand. “I’m Greek.”

I heard a ruckus behind me and then the sound of footsteps clattering toward my office. A man arrived in a huff from the inside of the building. He looked like the Turk’s younger cousin. He said something in Dutch that included the words “panic button” in English. The Turk replied sharply, his protégé gave him some lip in return, and the Turk barked what sounded like a final order at him. The younger bodyguard lowered his head and disappeared from my office the same way he’d arrived.

I checked my watch. It was midnight. The mystery lover might be arriving any second.

“What did this man look like?” the Turk said.

“He was in his mid-twenties. Tall, thin, blonde hair and blue eyes. He was American. Can you believe that? From Los Angeles.”

“Really.” The Turk sounded as though I’d just whetted his appetite for combat. “Did you see which way he went?’

“To the right. When he first came in he said he was making a pit stop before going to the Bulldog Café.”

“Cannabis,” the Turk said with disgust. “But there are several Bulldog Cafes.”

“Then why are you still here?”

The Turk muttered something under his breath, started to leave, and then turned back and devoured me with a final look. “Don’t close before you see me tonight.” His words sounded way too much like an order for my liking, but he took off before I could say anything.

Just as the Turk vanished out of sight, a young man stopped near my door. His eyes met mine. I knew right away this was my mark. I knew it because he was wearing a hoodie. No one in Amsterdam wore a hoodie. It was a silly disguise, the kind that made one stand out even more. I also knew he was the one because he was so gorgeous. Raised cheekbones, skin so smooth a woman might be afraid to touch it, and aquamarine eyes that mesmerized and weakened the knees.

A sinking feeling washed over me. I’d blown it. If I’d been in the office, standing five feet back from the window in the semi-darkness, he wouldn’t have seen me clearly. He wouldn’t have realized I wasn’t his girl until he came inside and saw me in person. But I wasn’t in my office, I was in the doorway three feet away from him.

His eyes widened, his lips parted. He took a step back—

“Wait,” I said.

But he didn’t wait.

He turned and hurried away.