Any other day, I wouldn’t have taken him on. But the fog was getting on my nerves, I was tired of standing around, my feet hurt. I wanted to lie down for fifteen minutes, even with a guy on my stomach. Besides, something in his face made me feel I could deal with him easily if he tried any funny business: there was something soft and dreamy about him. Like Ginette’s brother, who paints and bums around and is always wanting to kill himself. (All the same, you can really have a good laugh with him.) So I only said, “Do you even have a hundred francs on you?” And he said, “I thought children and soldiers paid half price. Why do I have to pay double?” I said, “Then take your tube of Alka-Seltzer and shove it up your mother. It’s probably just the right size for her.” But he laughed and said, “I think you’re mistaken. My mother was very beautiful and knew some better sizes. Besides, that’s how she made her living—like you.” I thought to myself, You can talk all you want. Everyone makes up stories for us, and so do we, especially when someone asks What’s a nice girl like you doing in this racket anyway. I’ve got six different versions in stock, all of them very believable. Anyhow, it doesn’t matter much if a guy is bullshitting you or not when he tells you stuff, whether he wants you to believe he’s a baker or a Rothschild. In fact, it doesn’t matter at all. So long as he screws like a baker (fast and honest) and pays like a Rothschild, then everything’s okay. But usually it’s the other way around: they fuck you for hours and then they won’t even treat you to a tisane over and above the fifty francs.

But anyway what he did was press two hundred francs into my hand—and now I was on the alert. ’Cause if a guy starts out like that, there’s a catch somewhere. Then they’ve got some special kink—they want to spank you, or want you to spank them. But he wasn’t English; he had a very slight Russian accent. Probably some Jew from Hungary or Romania—we’ll see, I thought. Anyway, he took my arm like a fiancé, and I tried to shake him off, and he didn’t say, “Ohlala! Are you ever touchy!” but instead held on and said, “Don’t be afraid. I don’t want anything from you that will humiliate you or make you feel ashamed. The first hundred is for the bed and the other one for friendliness, that’s all.”

I’ve heard that line too: “That’s all.” But no john ever thought of saying, “I don’t want anything from you that will humiliate you or make you feel ashamed.” I had to think about how that fitted in with him. Anyway, I let him take my arm, and we walked to the hotel like a married couple going home from a movie, warm and close together and in step.