Sylvia by Wendy Staples
She is sitting at the hotel bar, lost in troubled thought, staring at the empty glass in front of her on the dimpled copper counter, and, beside it, the gentleman’s leather wallet. What has she done? Or, more importantly, what should she do next?
Tucking her feet, in their red and silver high heeled shoes, onto the chrome rail below the tall stool, she leans forward to attract the attention of the barman. At this late hour he is anxious to close up, but cannot, all the time he has a paying customer. She doesn’t speak, just nods to indicate her need for another drink.
That must be her fifth he calculates and she must have already had a few before she arrived. He can’t help but notice how she keeps touching a small cut on her top lip, which seems quite swollen, and fingering an angry graze on her left cheek, already beginning to form into a purple bruise below her eye. And those eyes; such an intense green that she must surely be wearing coloured contact lenses, but clouded with hurt and ringed by smudged mascara. He can’t be sure if those are tiny spots of blood he can see on her scalp, for her long auburn hair is untidy and swings forward as she leans towards him, obscuring them. Besides, he really can’t keep his eyes away from the low cut neckline of her silky, jungle print dress, with its multi coloured palm leaves and exotic flowers, where her breasts are shamelessly revealed in all their smooth skinned, tantalising promise. He pours her another shot of vodka and retreats to a shadowy corner, away from the atmospheric lighting reflected in the mirrored wall, where hangs an eclectic array of alcoholic oblivion.
She reaches for the glass with a well manicured hand, silver glitter nails tapping a light echo on the crystalline surface, and tosses the anaesthetising liquid down in one hasty swallow. From her own purse, lying carelessly in her lap, she extracts a couple of notes and lays them down on the counter, returning her gaze to the leather wallet, as if waiting for it to speak to her.
It’s not the first time she has stolen from a client. Sometimes they get carried away; become too rough, so then, given the opportunity, she will take a few extra notes as recompense. She never takes cards, only cash. What can they say? Or do? Most would have to explain to their wives, or the police, so… Not that she gets much satisfaction from any of it. Neither the money and what it buys, nor the whoring. She can only coax herself to simulate enjoyment with a couple of stiff drinks under her belt. The trouble is, she just doesn’t know what else she could do. Stack shelves in a supermarket? Push old people around in a care home? No. It’s what she fell into at an age when she’d rebelled against parental control and society at large. Odd that; that someone so intent on being her own woman should finish up kowtowing to the whims of any old Tom, Dick or Harry.
What was it her father had sung to her when she was a child? “Who is Sylvia, what is she, that all the swains adore her?” Well, the ‘swains’ had certainly adored her. At first. Now of course she couldn’t pretend to be so naive. Clients expected a lot more, and not all of it was pleasant. And what was she now? Passable in a dim light, but up close and personal, just a middle aged purveyor of sexual fantasies, with the physical signs of the passing years heavily disguised by expensive make up, hair dye and designer clothing. Whatever happened to the fun lover of twenty years ago; the risk taker, the good time girl? Was she gone for ever or was there time to change? But what to? The future seemed nothing but a gaping black void.
She sighs and raises a hand to feel the tender patch on her scalp. The slap across her face she could understand. He had been angry at her refusal, but there were some things even she wouldn’t do for a client. But to drag her by her hair was unforgivable. Of course she should have realised, the minute she saw him arrive at the hotel; drawing up in a blacked out limousine; the sharp suit; the gold jewellery; escorted through the hotel lobby by a great ape of a man, who was quite obviously hired muscle. The agency had just given her the name ‘Eddie’. That wasn’t unusual. Lots of punters only gave one name, and usually it wasn’t their own. It was afterwards, when she had left him, slack and spent, sprawled on the bed like an anaemic jelly fish, and had slipped his wallet from his jacket pocket and retreated down to the bar for some palliative therapy on her physical and emotional wounds, that she had discovered her mistake. The name on the credit card inside the wallet was Edward O’Regan. ‘Mr O’ for short. He was known to run numerous businesses in the town, most of them rumoured to be covers for other highly illegal purposes, but he always managed to stay out of the courts by clever use of slightly crooked lawyers and even more crooked police officers.
Now she can’t make up her mind whether to take the money and run and hope the agency won’t give her away if he should come asking, report his assault to the police and hope the charge will stick, or just leave the wallet where it sits on the counter and hope he accepts that he has dropped it somewhere. On top of her fee the not inconsiderable amount in the wallet would make an enormous difference to her life for months to come; or a chance to break out of the business altogether perhaps, find an ordinary job somewhere, maybe in another town. But, rosy as this picture seems for a moment, she knows that this misjudgement of hers would inevitably come back to bite her.
She slides inelegantly off the bar stool, her tight fitting dress, with its slit from hem to thigh, riding up to reveal the butterfly tattoo on her left buttock. A little unsteadily she pauses for a moment to adjust her clothing and starts to push the wallet away from her across the bar as she turns to leave. But a large, fleshy hand suddenly clamps itself over hers on the wallet, whilst another takes a firm grip on her other arm and the gravel voice of the hired muscle growls in her ear. “Mr O wants to see you.”
