I was at home catching up with the newspapers. Simon was an avid reader of newspapers. “For all their biases, their hypocrisy, and their remorseless conservatism, it’s your world they’re writing about. We have an obligation to care about it, and you’re really not going to learn anything from television news,” he’d told me. Kelly said she’d known a lot of men in her time but never one who gave his girlfriend homework. But I didn’t mind. It helped me to understand what he was talking about, and I felt good that it mattered to him that I knew what was going on. He would ask me what I thought about something and in this way he got me to think about things I had never thought about before and I got him to talk about the world, important things, and not just her.
“Have a close look at the sort of things that get into the paper,” he told me. “What does it tell you about newspapers, or the media more generally?”
“I don’t know. What does it tell you?”
“Think about it. What gets into the newspapers?”
“I don’t know, stories, news. Things the papers think are important.”
“Or things they think will sell papers. Or things they think will swing public opinion in a certain direction. And who are the newspapers?”
“I don’t know, journalists, editors?”
“And who employs them?”
“The owners of the newspapers?”
“Exactly. But do you see what that means? The selection, the headlining, placement and length of items, and the way they are slanted are ultimately influenced, albeit sometimes only indirectly and subtly, by the commercial and political concerns of the proprietors.
“That this is true in general, at least to some degree, is indubitable. But of course it is not always true. There are certain defiant journalists who tell it free of the party line. They’re usually featured on the op-ed page, which most readers never reach. If you want an instant incisive fix on the headline news, stick with the cartoonists.”
“So why do you spend so much time reading newspapers?”
“Look, it’s not that you can’t learn a lot from them. You can. You just have to know how to navigate between the lines.”
It was very hot and I was in my underwear reading the newspaper and having a cup of coffee. Kelly wasn’t home, not at first. She worked more shifts than I did. Sometimes she would work a full day in the brothel, have an hour and a half off, then start a night of escorting. She said you could still escort if you were tired because it didn’t matter, within reason, how you looked. Once they had waited for you to knock at the door, they were very unlikely to send you away because underneath your make-up you looked a little tired. They were too polite to mention it, if they noticed. There were things Kelly would do in a booking that distracted the client from her make-up, things I never used to do.
I had been thinking that my eyes were getting worse. I owned reading glasses I hardly ever wore, but that day I was having trouble focusing. I went to my bedroom and got the glasses to make it easier to read. There was an item with the headline BEIJING CONSIDERS BAN AS POOR SELL BODY PARTS. It claimed that advertisements from poverty-stricken people trying to sell their own body parts were appearing on Chinese Web sites. The article cited some of them: “Cornea from healthy person with sight: 1.5 million yuan—urgent sale because of poverty.” I squinted as I read it. I remembered that months before I’d had trouble reading in bed. I’d mentioned it in passing to a pharmacist and when he’d asked me which eye was the problem, I found that I couldn’t remember. It hadn’t been the purpose of my visit to the pharmacy.
“Well, it can’t be too much of a problem then, can it?” the pharmacist had said.
I remember feeling embarrassed and angry at his response. He had spoken in that supercilious patronizing manner that older men affect either to cover a clumsy attempt to flirt with you or to punish you for being young and out of reach and prettier than any of the women they had ever had more to do with than pass the time of day. You were an attractive young woman. Was there any malice you did not deserve?
Another advertisement, this one apparently from a place called Yangchen, read “A kidney from living human body—two million yuan.” The newspaper said this was equivalent to $50,000. Human marrow was going for $10,000.
The blurriness was not going away. I went to the bathroom and got some eyedrops, which the old bastard had sold me for my sins. They stung and were past their expiration date. Anyway, the blurriness was not the same as the problem I had experienced before. It was, as Alex Klima would say, qualitatively different.
Trade in human organs had previously been monopolized by the Chinese Communist Party. The medical system had made huge profits from selling the organs of executed prisoners to well-educated Party officials who would then in turn sell them on the open market to people in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Singapore. Two thousand prisoners were executed each year for harvest. The state wanted to crack down on the impoverished entrepreneurs who were driving down the price with their Web site advertisements.
“The triumph of e-commerce!” Simon had said later when we discussed it. “See, Angel, it’s bringing democracy.” But that day I couldn’t finish the article. The light was dazzling my eyes. I was physically unable to. When Kelly came home I was lying on the couch with my eyes closed. She was preoccupied with the day she’d had.
“You don’t want to know about the day I’ve had,” she said.
She was right. I was distressed about my eyes, but she told me anyway.
“You know they still won’t give me a loan.”
“Who, the bank?”
“Yes. The bank.”
“Have you told them what you do?”
“No. Why should I?”
“Because they’re not going to lend you money if they don’t know whether you’re going to be able to pay it back.”
“Angelique, I’ve got sixty thousand dollars for a deposit. I’ve told them I just want a home loan. Nothing else. It’s not for a boat, for fuck’s sake. Why do they have to give me such a hard time about it?”
“Kelly, you can’t seriously think they’re going to give you a home loan when you won’t tell them what you do for a living?”
“And you can’t seriously think they’re going to give me one if I do. Jesus, Angelique, sometimes you’re so—”
“Kelly, be really careful with the next word you choose to utter.”
“That’s right, we can’t go upsetting the princess as she gets her beauty sleep on the couch.”
“Kelly, take it easy. I’ve got something weird going on with my eyes.”
“You’re just reading too much of that poetry shit your boyfriend gives you.”
“No, really, Kelly. I’m serious. There’s something wrong with me. I don’t know what.”
“You want to hear something wrong?”
“No, not really. Not right now.”
“So, I’m at the bank, right, and they’re showing me into the office of one manager after another and it’s taking forever. I’m there much longer than I thought I’d be. I stay till they’re finally finished getting each one of their managers to tell me that I’m not a suitable candidate. Can you believe that? Candidate. It’s a bank, not a fucking popularity contest. I just want to be a customer like all their other deadbeat customers who take it up the ass from the bank and quietly pay for it every month regular as clockwork with all those hidden fees and charges and that . . . what is it? Financial institutions duty. You ever see that on your statement?”
“That’s a tax.” She was stopping me from cooling down. My eyes had gotten worse.
“What did you say?”
“Financial institutions duty—it’s a tax. It’s the government, not the bank.”
“You’re not defending the banks now, are you?”
“No, I’m just saying . . . I’ve actually asked about it and—”
“Well, shut the fuck up and listen to the rest of my day. So I’m kept at the bank completely forever, and by the time the last dickh
ead has said no, I’m late for Radji—”
“Who’s Radji?”
“You know, Radji, one of my regulars.”
“Don’t know him.”
“Oh, Angelique, don’t be difficult. You do. Radji, Radji Radjadurai, the stocky dark guy, face like the wet end of a cigar.”
“What kind of name is that?”
“I don’t know—who the fuck cares? Indian, Sri Lankan, Afghani, it’s not the point of the story.”
“You are in a bad mood.”
“Listen and I’ll tell you why. So, because of the bank I’m late for Radji and nobody thinks to tell him to just sit in the corner with a magazine like a good little Indian. No, nobody tells him I won’t be long. Nobody ever watches out for you.”
“Maybe they didn’t know when you’d be back.”
“Well, maybe, but listen to this. The new girl—”
“Who, Chantal?”
“Chantal, the new girl, she tells Radji that she’ll take care of him—”
“Kelly, she’s new. Maybe she didn’t know—”
“Will you listen to the story and you’ll know why I’m so upset.”
“Okay, I’m listening. But my eyes are weird.”
“You don’t need your eyes to listen. What you need to know about Radji is that for the last year and a half he’s been after me for a—”
“Don’t say it. You’ve told me. It’s disgusting.”
“Yeah, he’s wanted to do it to me ever since—”
“Kelly, I can’t listen to this right now.”
“You have to. We live together. You see, I use these stilettos and dildos on him.”
“What do you mean on him?”
“He’s straight, but he likes things up him and he’s always asking for a—”
“Stop, will you!”
“It gets worse. He wants to do it on me, to me, and I keep saying no.”
“Like the bank.”
“That’s not funny, Angelique, and anyway, unlike the bank, I don’t give a blanket no. I just keep putting the price up and up and he just keeps asking for it. I even thought maybe that was all he wanted, just the thrill of negotiating. So, over the last year and a half, I’d gotten him up to twenty-five hundred dollars.”
“You’re kidding!”
“No, for twenty-five hundred plus my usual hourly rate he could do it.”
“Oh, Kelly, that’s really disgusting!”
“Will you listen? It gets worse. So Chantal, the new girl, sees I’m not there and she offers to show him a good time. They go upstairs and, surprise, surprise, he starts in on her for his fetish.”
“What a creep.”
“Listen, Angelique, he asks her—and she lets him!”
“Oh my God, that’s horrible.”
“For fifty dollars.”
“What?”
“She only charges him an extra fifty dollars.”
“You must be joking.”
“I’m not joking. I don’t know what the world’s coming to. I really don’t. I’ve been working this guy for a year and a half, and this new girl . . . I’m sent on a wild-goose chase at the bank, and when I get back the new girl has stolen thousands of dollars from me. Of course he won’t come back to me now. You know that, don’t you?”
“I hate to say it but . . .”
“You’re not actually going to defend that grasping little whore?”
“No, but . . . the whole thing is disgusting, Kelly, and there are worse things going on in the world than having the new girl out-deprave you.”
“This is really not a good day to give me a lecture.”
“I’m not giving you a lecture but . . . I just read an article, Kelly, in the newspaper, about people in China who are so poor they try to sell their own body parts to get the money to survive.”
“What’s your point, Angelique? That’s in China.”
“The other day I read something in the paper about these African refugees who’ve been living in tent cities for ten years.”
“So? Why don’t they do something about it? You make your own luck.”
“They fled wars and hostile governments and armies and teenage militias only to live in tents for ten years.”
“Well, why doesn’t the UN or somebody do something about it?”
“The article said the UN is investigating a people-trafficking racket run by some of its own officials. It said they take ten thousand dollars per person to resettle them somewhere else.”
“Ten thousand? That’s a high-roughage week with Radji.”
“Kelly, what’s wrong with you?”
“What’s wrong with me? You’re the one lying on the couch in your underwear with your arm over your eyes bringing me the news from the Third World. Is this the sort of shit your boyfriend makes you talk about? I spent half the day being patronized by these dickhead bank managers who knew, who must’ve figured out, how I get my money, but they wanted to make me say it. They wanted to humiliate me within the offices of a bank, and that was the only way they were going to give me the money. They wanted to be able to go home and tell their wives they had a whore come and see them today. I wouldn’t do it, and they wouldn’t give me the money.
“Fuck them! What I’m going to do is lend what I’ve got to the brothel at ten percent. Fran says they’ve got huge problems with the Tax Office. Ten percent is better than you can get from the bank. The bank can go fuck itself.
“And then, after all this, when I finally get back to work, one of my regulars has been stolen by the fucking new girl and nobody, none of my esteemed colleagues, says anything. Nobody does anything to stop her, and this is just the thin end of the wedge. Where will it stop? A regular is a cash cow because some of the money you’ll get next week comes from the work you did last week and all the weeks before, from all the times you got him to believe that you look forward to his visits and only to his visits, that you miss him between visits, that you’re thinking of him and that he’s the only one you enjoy it with. That’s the bulk of what they pay for, the illusion that they matter and that they’re desirable to a pretty young woman. And if you can get them to believe that, then you don’t have to do much in the room with them. You’re like a brand name. A loser buys a T-shirt with a fashion logo on it and even though, other than the logo, it’s just a crappy old T-shirt, it makes him feel better about himself when he wears it. Well, a regular’s whore is the logo he wears when he’s with all the untouchable women who see him the way the mirror sees him. We are to him the logo on the T-shirt. We make him feel better about himself. It’s all smoke and mirrors. It’s marketing and once you’ve reached a certain level, the brand keeps selling itself. I’d reached that level with Radji, and she undercut me. And for what? For fifty lousy dollars. I mean . . . it’s not even a thousand. She’s only hurting herself in the end. She’s hurting all of us, not just me. But does anybody say anything? Does anybody explain things to her? No, no, it’s everyone for herself. And when I get home I’ve got the princess from the Adelaide private-school system giving me a fucking lecture on everything her boyfriend taught her about the Third World.”
“Kelly, I know you don’t want to live with me forever, but why do you need the money so badly?”
“I don’t need it so badly. It’s just . . . it’s the principle of the thing. You’re really on your own. You never stop having to defend what you’ve got, never stop having to look over your shoulder. You see, a regular is like an asset, the way a bank would see it if they weren’t so hypocritical. And I just lost an asset today . . . but I suppose you’re right. I don’t really need the money so badly. I know what to do if I ever needed a lot of money in a hurry.”
“Oh, you’re talking about another tour of duty as part of the Sultan of Brunei’s harem?”
“No, those days are over. Miss America fucked that up for everyone.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, she pretended she didn’t know why he was paying for her to go over there, and then sh
e sued him. It’s a shame because they always wanted new girls and you could earn great money for just being there on call. You didn’t have to do anything. A white girl can always make pretty good money in Asia and the Middle East, though not with the good old Sultan anymore. But it’s still possible to make great money fast if you’re really desperate and you know where to go. I’ve never been that desperate.”
“Here or overseas?”
“I mean here, but you can probably do it anywhere, any city in the world I’d imagine.”
“You’re talking drugs, trafficking, right?”
“No, nothing to do with drugs.”
“Well, are you going to explain what you’re talking about or are you just going to—”
“What’s your problem, Angelique? Did you have a fight with Simon?”
“No, I’m sorry. I just . . . my eyes are . . . they’re strange.”
“Honey, you’ve got lovely eyes.”
“Thank you, Kelly. Now, how do you earn great money fast, short of trafficking or letting some freak use you as a toilet? What scheme have you got in mind this time?”
“Oh, it’s not my scheme. I wouldn’t do it. It’s really dangerous. But I know where to go if I ever change my mind.”
“Maybe I don’t want to know.”
“Believe me, you don’t.”
I told Simon the stories Kelly had told me. He seemed either skeptical or uninterested in most of what Kelly had to say. I don’t think he believed much of it. He had always thought Kelly a dubious source of any information.
“Your roommate gives prostitution a bad name,” he once told me.
10. I didn’t mention the trouble with my eyes to Simon and, looking back, I can only guess why. I was, even then, a little afraid that it might be serious. To cope I told myself that it was probably nothing. So what if the letters on a page sometimes got a little blurry around the edges? I didn’t want to think about it, and telling Simon meant thinking about it. He would have asked me a million questions and then chastised me for not paying enough attention to my health. Perhaps I had another reason, although this one sounds like something Alex Klima would have come up with. Simon had known from the beginning that I was neither highly educated nor particularly well read, not like him anyway. What if he found out that it might even be a waste of time trying to teach me anything because I was visually impaired as well? Perhaps I could not bring myself to tell him that reading, the activity which he believed was the way to the stars, could become physically difficult for me. Whatever the reason, I didn’t tell him.