Hotelles Read Free Page A

been there before?”
    â€œNo, first time.”
    Sophia was more of a regular at the Hôtel des Charmes than I. Sometimes she’d go as many as two or three times in a month. On principle, never more than once a week, though depending on what else was going on in her life, these rendezvous were her primary source of revenue.
    â€œAnd,” she asked, smiling coyly, “how was it? Good?”
    â€œSophia!” I cried. “You know . . . I can’t.”
    She knew the rules as well as I: the agency that put us in contact with our rich clients strictly prohibited us from talking about them. Nothing was to leave the walls of those quaint and charming bedrooms. Some of the men we met were important and very powerful. Any information related to what they did in their private lives, especially when it came to sexual preferences, could be used against them by their enemies. Their confidentiality was paramount, and secrecy became our dogma.
    To be completely honest, I liked it that way. The agency’s rule put a healthy barrier between me and Sophia’s obsession. For Sophia, talking about sex was as much fun as having sex. It was a natural extension, as though language were an organ like the clitoris that could be stimulated. She considered sex a universal subject and would find any excuse to bring it up in conversation, in any context, with friends and total strangers. “Seriously,” she would say, trying to provoke me, “can you think of anything more interesting than sex? I mean, come on. We’re not going to talk about the stock market or kids, right? We’re both broke. And stop me if I’m wrong, but neither of us is going to have kids any time soon. Thirty-one, that’s the average age of a first-time mom in Paris. Thirty-one!”
    She could go on forever about her favorite topic of conversation, delighting in all the gory details, feeding off anything she could force out of those around her.
    â€œBecause my client tonight, you should have seen the size of his equipment! Monstrous! I mean, crazy! Even bigger than his bank account, which says something.”
    â€œSoph!” I started, trying to keep myself from laughing.
    â€œSeriously, the guy should join a circus.”
    â€œStop!”
    â€œWhat? I didn’t give you his name! I’m just telling you about his penis.”
    â€œAwesome,” I said ironically. “You should make a reality show.”
    â€œNo, but seriously, he was so big I thought I’d choke when I ble—”
    â€œYeah, you’re right.” I cut her off so I wouldn’t have to hear any more. “It’s better not to take forever when you’re giving fellatio. Otherwise, they get addicted to it and that’s all they want.”
    My classic response to Sophia’s tsunami of inconvenient truths: modestly limiting myself to tired clichés and ready-made phrases, most of which I got from sex columns in women’s magazines.
    â€œThat said,” she went on, “it’s hard to beat that guy who wouldn’t touch me and who made me masturbate for two hours while he watched . . . He wore me out.”
    â€œYeah, but at least if he watches while you masturbate, he’ll learn what makes you come. It’s not a total waste of time.”
    I think I got that from Cosmo , July/August 2007. It had to have come from there.
    But what did I, Annabelle Lorand, actually know about sex? Not a lot.
    Truth is, the agency’s rule was a good excuse not to get into too much detail with Sophia. Most of the time it quelled her curiosity or at least put a damper on her shameless logorrhea. I would have been happy keeping my secrets to my little notebook. But there, somebody else’s hand was recording them for me, in the intimacy of those white pages:
    I know it sounds stupid, but I think genitals have soul mates. Every vagina only has one penis in the whole world that’s made