Page 9 of The Deer and the Dragon
I hedged before opting for honesty. “I’ve been teaching English to preschoolers in Colombia. I just thought I’d pop over here see what all the fuss was about. Plus, it’s only, like, two and a half hours in the air. It turns out it’s equally hot, and fifty times more expensive. And I’ll deny it if you ever tell an Argentinian I said this, but the food is nowhere near as good.”
Her lower lip lifted as she considered. “You like kids, then?”
I stared at her for a moment before giving the first honest answer about my job in six months. “Not at all. Don’t get me wrong, I care about my students. They’re a delight. And working with them has made my Spanish excellent. But I don’t like being around children. Definitely pounded the final nail in the ‘motherhood is not for me’ coffin. But college was wrapping up and I had no plan for my life, so, might as well go make memories, right?”
I chewed my lip uncertainly. I wasn’t good at knowing when I’d overshared.
She frowned. She looked me up and down a final time before saying, “I like your vibe. Give me your cell.” She stretched out her hand, wiggling her fingers expectantly.
I didn’t know why I complied, but I did. I handed the beautiful stranger my phone. She punched in her contact information just as a glossy black town car pulled up. With a hand on the door, she said, “A preschool teacher doesn’t need to spend Christmas alone in a big city; she needs a beach day and a drink. Come to Rio. Hang out at my villa. Sing Christmas carols with a pitcher of sangria in your hand. You’llonly be responsible for the airfare to get yourself there. Just text me when you land. I’ll give you directions.”
“What’s your name?” I shouted at her, but she was already gone.
Taylor. That’s what she had typed in my phone. And for all I knew, Taylor was a smooth-talking kidnapper and I was being set up to have my organs harvested. But that didn’t feel like the case. I’m not sure why I did it, but I took her up on her offer.
I’d taken ten days from teaching, intent on using the entirety of my time off on exploring Buenos Aires, but it had taken me roughly three days to learn that I couldn’t afford to breathe the city’s air, let alone do anything fun. I went back to my hotel, showered, and popped four sleeping pills to avoid Caliban confronting me to talk me out of going. A budget airline had me on a flight the next morning, leaving one of the most expensive cities on the continent and heading toward what would either be paradise or a story that ended with me waking up in a bathtub full of ice and missing a kidney.
It was just shy of a three-hour flight, followed by forty-five minutes in the customs line, thirty minutes waiting for my bag, and a two-hour cab ride to the small beach town south of the capital. I was sweaty, disoriented, and nervous and questioned the wisdom of my impulsivity every twenty seconds.
I remained glued to the window in the back seat of the cab, fixed on the dreamy landscape as I fretted. The buildings reminded me a lot of my home in Colombia, as did the scooters, the heat, the narrow alleys, and the markets. The cityscape slowly gave way to greenery. Tall clusters of trees and thick, tropical grasses populated one side of the car. Through the other window, the ocean broke in large, tube-like waves as it washed up on long, sandy beaches. Before long, I was in a six-bedroom villa on the beach. Taylor was the friendliest, perkiest, most generous person I’d ever met. Two of the bedrooms were occupied by unnaturally beautiful friends, Ivyand Quinn, both of whom oozed similar compassion and support. They were so kind that, at first, I was convinced they were insincere. My hackles went up, terrified that my naivety had lured me into a trap. I wondered how long it would be before the organ harvesters showed.
But no. Instead, it was something far rarer.
They were just really good people.
Taylor, Ivy, and Quinn were escorts.
Taylor was exceedingly open about her life. She dangled her feet in the pool, holding a sangria in one hand and snapping pictures of her friends with the phone in her other. She told her stories with a happy face, whether discussing backpacking down the Chilean coast or being the arm candy at a red-carpet event. She told the tale of how she’d started escorting, her pitfalls, her mistakes, and how she’d gotten to where she was now. She and her friends were exclusively word-of-mouth, she said. They only worked with elite, prescreened clientele.
And I didn’t want to teach preschoolers. I didn’t particularly want to talk to men, either, but I did want to pay my bills. I wanted to be able to move out of the basement apartment. I wanted to pay off my student loans, to take vacations on the Yucatán Peninsula, and to escape the cycle of intergenerational poverty that had kept me under its thumb.
By the end of the day, she’d help me pick a new name, set up a covert profile, and book my first client—a weekend in Montevideo scheduled for the end of the month. Taylor connected me with a few of her old patrons whose schedules conflicted with her own, saying she didn’t mind passing them off on me. Community over competition and all that.
Quinn made a comment about how I was fortunate that I had only two tattoos—both of which could be covered with chunky rings—as it would make it easier for me to fly under the radar. Ivy and I were similarly gifted—or cursed—with ample chests, and she gave me several pairs of strappy lingerie with the tags still on. She made a comment about her shopping problem and how she was happy they’d be gettingsome use. Taylor was thrilled that I could speak Spanish, as there’d been a few clients who had passed the screening but needed a bilingual provider, which only Quinn was.
The ones she’d selected for me were good starter clients, Taylor said, as they’d already been vetted and gone through the appropriate background checks. She promised she’d walk me through it before I started booking on my own and told me never to meet someone without exercising my due diligence.
“That said,” she amended, “the world is not a scary place. In the hundreds of cities I’ve traveled and the thousands of people I’ve met, I’ve only had two bad experiences. And both of those happened in my hometown. People like to comfort themselves by believing the scary things are out in the world. It keeps them from living. It’s often the danger out your front door that blinds you.”
“Are you…” I looked between the drink in my hand and my toes as they dangled in the water. “I don’t know how to ask this. Do you…get something out of this?”
She giggled. “Are you asking if I’m a pimp? No. We all work exclusively for ourselves. And if anyone ever approaches you with offers to hook you up with clients for a fee, run for the hills. Pick a cover industry, pay your taxes, and start living large.”
“A cover industry?”
Ivy smiled. “If anyone asks, I’m a model.”
Quinn raised a finger. “Translator.”
Taylor explained, “And I’m a tour guide. The cover helps with explaining your life to your family, but it’s more about the law. As long as your income is taxable, the government doesn’t care what you do.”
The first day in Brazil was a beautiful, confusing, colorful, dazzling dream. We’d eaten fruit, drank innumerable pitchers of sangria, relaxed, and genuinely laughed. Taylor was right. Her life was a party. But it wasn’t the drugs and rave music and bandage-tight dresses that I’d pictured whenenvisioning a party. It was the relaxation of a life spent without worry.
I left the windows wide open that first night, listening to the tropical birds and watching the shadows of curious macaques jump from branch to branch. I’d been warned that the cute little monkeys might steal your things, but I’d never been so close to one, and it was a lesson I wanted to learn for myself. I hated being sweaty and typically despised sleeping without the air conditioner, but the wind off the water was deliciously cooling. I soaked in the wind, the waves, and the tropics as I let both the stress of my job and the financial nightmare of this trip wash away.
“Starting a new career, are we?” came a voice from an unseen speaker in the shadows.
I looked into the gloom where I knew he’d be leaning against a wall. A spike of defensiveness worked through me as I feigned nonchalance. I’d hoped he might show up, though I never knew for sure if he’d come. Of course, I’d gotten on the plane to get away from him. I’d hoped to be set free from my hallucinations. My hopes had been lies that I’d been unwilling to admit until the red-eye flight to South America and the relief that had flooded me when the rush of gin and moss had filled the space beside me. I wanted him here. I wanted him in my life. I just hated myself for it.
