Page 30 of Personal Disaster

“That’s the problem. I don’t exactly have one. I mean…there are high-end escorts on Twitter. Technology has shifted an industry. It’s an interesting factoid, but beyond that? Dunno.”

“But you feel like there’s a story there.”

“Yeah. I’ve followed a bunch of them on Twitter—”

“What?”

“On a secret account. My research account, it’sfine.”

I fire up another browser window. “Want to bet I can find that before we end this phonecall?”

“There you go again, making me think you’re more than meets theeye.”

I’m already running a couple of scripts, looking for generic Twitter “egg” accounts that followed Poppy’s official account first. There are…more than I expected. “Have you ever had a stalker?”

“Why?”

“No reason. Tell me more about the escorts.”

“Marcus!”

I chuckle. “I’m looking at your followers. You havefans.”

“I’ve had a couple of tweets go low-level viral. I get a burst of followers each time I do that, but it’s pretty low-key.”

For the most part. I see enough Pepe the Frog pictures to worry that she also gets some negative attention, but that’ll have to be looked into in more detail when we’re not on the phone. “Okay.”

She hesitates, but then goes back to her original focus. “So the real question for me is whether or not this shift to social media has had any other significant effects—has it opened sex work up to women who previously didn’t have access to clients, because they didn’t want to work with a service, for example? And those numbers aren’t reported to government agencies, obviously.”

“Are there escort services going out of business? Some of those would have government data you could request. From definitely-not-personal experience, my understanding is that they like to report taxes like good citizens.”

She gasps. “And that might be an angle, too—social media cuts out the middle man, but it also cuts out the taxman.”

“I’m hardly a newspaper expert, but that sounds like a headline.”

“I could kissyou.”

“I’ll take a solid rain check on that. How does Thanksgiving sound?”

“Like it’s a long waysaway.”

Yeah. I know the feeling. “Maybe we’ll have a good excuse to cross paths beforethen.”

“If I can get a good series of in-depth Interior pieces going, maybe.”

I shouldn’t give her any leads on that, but…what the hell. “Find someone in Washington to ask about plans for next year’s entrancefees.”

There’s a long stretch of silence. I wait for her to ask me if they’re going up, but she doesn’t.

Good. I’d have to pretend I don’t know, and I don’t want to have to lie toher.

“Thanks,” she finally says. “I’ll find a way for that to comeup.”

I smile. “Are you going to be just as busy over the next fourdays?”

“Should I make more of an effort to keep in touch?”

“Yes.” Simple as that. “I know we just met, but …” I want you more than I should. I want you more than makes sense.

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