Camille

The distant click of my apartment door signals Araminta’s return for the evening. I click my pen and shut my journal after having spent the better part of the last hour chronicling last night’s evening with my mystery John.

Everything I do, every detail, every rendezvous, is logged in my books. I consider them an insurance policy in case any of my clients were to ever do anything extreme, and if something morbid were ever to happen to me, I imagine the police would search my place, find my journals, and narrow down their suspects based on the information they might find.

I’m not naïve enough to think that the very same men who adorn me in diamonds and lingerie wouldn’t put a hit on me if it meant keeping their names clean. It’s happened to women like me before, and it’ll happen again.

None of them want to be caught screwing women who look young enough to be their daughters or, in the regrettable case of Senator Bancroft, women who aren’t their wives.

In a locked suitcase under my bed rest dozens of filled journals, some of which date back to the beginning. If anyone knew these existed, I’d be a walking dead woman. Not even Araminta knows about them. It’s safer that way–for both of us.

I shove my most recent journal between my mattress and box spring and head out to the living room where Araminta steps out of the sexiest pair of patent leather Louboutins I’ve ever seen.

“Those are new.” I smirk, arms folded.

“You like?” She hands one to me for careful inspection, and I run a finger down the spiked metal heel. It’s heart-stoppingly lavish and carelessly extravagant. “They were a gift.”

“Clearly.”

Her blonde waves bounce as she carefully peels away her cashmere jacket in the most appropriate shade of autumnal plum and hangs it in our coat closet.

“I’m dying to hear about your night,” she says with a mischievous glint in her baby blue eyes. “But let me change first. I’m dying to get this thing off.”

She unzips the back of her sheath dress and exhales, hurrying to her room, and I take a moment to appreciate her bombshell beauty as one woman to another. Her hourglass curves are equal parts genetic lottery and hundreds of hours spent in waist trainers. I couldn’t look like Araminta no matter how hard I tried.

I find a spot on our linen sofa and grab a Vogue to pass the time. Flipping to a spread in the middle, an up-and-coming actress models a gold Tom Ford dress covered in Swarovski crystals: the very same one hanging in my closet right now. Growing up in Oakdale, Tennessee, I never dreamt that one day I’d be wearing these lovelies. I can only hope that someday I’ll be gracing these pages as well, forever immortalized.

Returning in head to toe designer gym clothes, Araminta saunters my way and sinks into the club chair in front of our fireplace.

“Okay,” Araminta says. “So how was it?”

Butterflies ignite in my belly as sensory memories of last night’s romp return. My mouth curls. For a second, I can’t find my words, and I need a moment.

“Whoa.” She leans forward, her ovular face scrunched. “We’re smiling. Why are we smiling?”

Her piqued interest is fully warranted. None of my other clients have sent me home wearing a satisfied smile that lasts well into the next day.

I lift a shoulder, burying my grin behind it as best I can. “I don’t know, Minty. It was just . . . different.”

“What’d he look like?”

I shake my head. “I never saw his face.”

“What?”

“He made me put on a blindfold the second I stepped in.”

Her brows meet. “That’s really weird. I mean, I knew it was going to be super-secret, and my contact mentioned the room being dark, but that’s just taking it to a whole level beyond.”

My heart flutters, remembering the way it felt to see nothing while the rest of my senses were heightened.

“Weren’t you scared?” she asks.

“It didn’t feel scary after a while,” I say. “I didn’t have that twisted feeling I get sometimes, you know?”

The two of us have learned over the years to pay attention to our intuition. That inner voice we hear when something doesn’t feel right is seldom ever wrong, and it has saved us both on separate occasions.

“Still.” Her head tilts, and she hasn’t taken her round baby blues off me for two seconds. “I can’t imagine having sex with a complete stranger and not knowing what he looked like.”

“I knew what he sounded like,” I say. “And what he felt like. I think he’s younger. He sounded handsome.”

“Psh,” she huffs. “I can make myself sound like an old lady. Doesn’t mean anything. People can change their voices.”

“He had a nice body,” I add. “He was in shape. His hands were soft. He smelled good.”

I’m listing off all the reasons I’m convinced the man who fucked me under the shield of blackness was some kind of Adonis.

“Oh, my God.” Her face falls. “What if it was really Trey?”

My heart drops.

And then she laughs.

“Don’t do that to me, Minty. God, you almost made me have a heart attack.” I grab a throw pillow and chuck it at her. “I trust you, and I know you trust your contact. For one million dollars and three months of my time, I’ll screw pretty much anyone.”

Except Trey. Naturally.

She rises, trekking to the kitchen on her tiptoes, a subtle homage to the decade of ballet lessons under her belt at her mother’s insistence.

“That’s why you’re my best friend and partner in crime,” she says, grabbing a bottle of artisanal water from the refrigerator.

“Literally.”

“You’re the only girl I know who’s not afraid of the hustle.” She takes a sip and glances out the picture window on the far wall, toward the cityscape beyond. “We’re special, Camille. You know that, right? No one else can do what we do as good as we do it.”

Araminta rests her elbows against the kitchen island. She looks tired, and I’m sure it’s because her current client has the sex drive of an insatiable sheikh. Part of me can’t help but wonder how much longer this can last for her. How much more of herself can she give away before it’s all gone?

Me? I have dreams that go well beyond the short-term accumulation of wealth and fancy clothes. This is nothing but a stepping-stone for me. Minty, on the other hand, lives and breathes for this life, living it one glamorous day at a time.

“Are you really leaving in three months?” Her gaze is fixed outside. “I just don’t understand how anyone could walk away from all this and dive headfirst into that. You know you have greater odds of winning the lottery than becoming some famous movie star?”

“We’re not going to be young and beautiful forever,” I say. “And the way I see it, we have two choices. We can stick around here, spending our nights with older men and living as human sex toys until we’re inevitably replaced by a younger, hotter generation of girls just like us . . . or we can get the hell off this crazy little rollercoaster and pursue our passions while the world is still kind to us.”

“A million dollars won’t go far out there,” she says. “You know that, right?”

“Maybe. But it’s enough to get me started.”

“Hollywood is just as corrupt as DC.” She takes another sip of her water before smiling. “But I guess at least the men are better looking.”

Araminta doesn’t want me to leave. It’s been the two of us since the day we hatched out our five-year plan on the floor of our dorm room as we took shots of cheap vodka and listened to cheesy pop music designed to make young women like us feel invincible. I’d just returned from a life-changing drama class, and feeling dangerously inspired, I proposed my master plan.

We’ve come a long ways since then. And I’d like to believe that if two young women, who knew nothing about anything, could design a life like this out of thin air, my ambitions of making a name for myself aren’t that out of touch with reality.

Plus I’m too damn stubborn to ever give up on my aspirations. I dare someone to try and stop me.

Mark my words: I’m going to be unforgettable someday.