I returned to my hotel. I worked out at the gym, tanned in the solarium, and ate two egg whites with a side of spinach, which would be my only meal of the day. I’d deprived myself of carbohydrates for the last four days and had rinsed most of the water out from under my skin. At nine o’clock I packed my tote bag and marched back to my new office. I’d decided to open up at ten o’clock, two hours before their ritual meeting. If the mystery lover didn’t come at midnight, I’d stay open until two in the morning. I’d allow a four-hour window just in case this was the one time that circumstances made him early or late.
I walked to work dreaming of unlimited carbohydrate consumption. But this gnawing yearning for relief was accompanied by a sense of exultation. For the first time in my life I didn’t loathe or dislike my naked body. My nutritional deprivation had also left me with an eerie high. This hyper-awareness kept me nimble and helped me avoid the onslaught of bicyclists along the roads. It was a steady flow of gorgeous and fit people of all ages speeding to their destinations in pursuit of constant fulfillment, and seemingly indifferent to any pedestrian casualties that might ensue. I loathed the perpetual impediment they posed while fantasizing about their quality of life.
When I arrived at my office, I went into the bathroom and began to transform myself. I slipped into a caramel-colored wig with a ponytail. Then I put on a fluorescent green bikini, strapped on a pair of matching three-inch pumps, and wrapped a pair of lime-colored Revo sunglasses around my head. When I was done, I looked like the product of a deviant affair between an independent urban woman and a praying mantis.
I opened a half liter bottle of still water and put it on the high chair beside me. The prior tenant had liked to stay hydrated. Then I affixed my MP3 player onto a portable dock with two small speakers and placed it beside the water. The prior tenant also had been a heavy metal girl who liked the eighties even though she hadn’t been born until the nineties. Her favorite group was a German rock band called the Scorpions, and she listened to their greatest hits in a continuous loop while she worked.
I pressed play. A guitar screamed, drums pounded. One of my brother’s favorite rock anthems started up.
My transformation was complete. I now resembled the prior tenant, the girl whose murder I’d been hired to investigate. According to my client, the dead girl was a bit narrower in the shoulders and hips, but one had to be looking to really notice it. All I wanted was for her lover to knock on the door at midnight the way he always did on Saturdays. All I needed was to see him face-to-face and ask him some questions. There was a risk he knew she was dead and wouldn’t come, but my client doubted it. They’d only met at her office and only on Saturday nights. The eccentricity of their meetings had fueled their passion for the last two months. According to my client, they were falling in love when the girl was killed.
I was more than a bit apprehensive as I approached the floor-to-ceiling window. I imagined yanking the curtain aside and making myself visible. Initially I would feel hopelessly conspicuous. That much was certain, but I had experienced enough adversity in life to know that I would quickly get used to my new circumstances. I wondered if I would feel empowered or humiliated and the effect on my self-esteem if no buyers knocked on my door. It would crush my fragile female ego. The only thing worse would be a steady flow of customers.
I shrugged my insecurity aside. My concerns were to be expected. They were also irrelevant. The only thing that mattered was the job. The mystery lover was out there. Tonight he would come looking for his girl. I had become his girl. Hence, tonight he would come looking for me.
The song’s refrain poured from the speakers:
Here I am, rock you like a hurricane.
I felt as ridiculous as the lyrics sounded. But looking and sounding authentic were prerequisites to completing the assignment I’d accepted. Contrary to the popular saying, failure was an option—it was always an option. But if I failed to complete this assignment, I’d be deeply disappointed because I was working for my most important client. So I pushed aside my self-consciousness, took a final deep breath, exhaled, and pulled the curtain open.
Dark shadows enveloped the Oude Kerk. The oldest section of Amsterdam, named De Wallen after the retaining walls that once stood here, was also Amsterdam’s best known red-light district. Tourists were still ambling by, but the chocolate shop had closed, a pair of creepy men with turned-up collars sat drinking beer outside the café, and a rowdy group of Englishmen was approaching. I sensed a passive form of aggression in the air, though admittedly, I was wearing sunglasses and everything seemed dark to me. I walked over to the second door, the one that would open my office to the men trolling De Wallen tonight, and flicked a switch on the wall. Two incandescent red lights came alive above the exterior of my window. I stood five feet back from the window, the prior tenant’s preferred position, and sipped from the giant water bottle.
Here I am, rock you like a hurricane.
I was now legally employed as a sex worker in Amsterdam. I was a window prostitute. I was as far from the Ukrainian Catholic altar girl I’d been as a child as a woman could get.
Nadia Tesla was open for business.
CHAPTER 2
Window prostitutes disliked being gawked at by tourists because they interfered with the seduction of the self-conscious but real buyer. Personally, I didn’t mind the tourists. Nor did I mind the solitary Asian, Nigerian, or German-looking men walking back and forth along the same street as though they were on their way to the Anne Frank museum but got lost. What unnerved me were the occasional gangs of burly men who looked mean and angry. They didn’t smile, laugh, or appear to be having fun of any kind. Hate, not lust, shone in their eyes. They didn’t look like men who wanted me. They looked like men who wanted to kill me.
And as that thought flitted through my mind, someone cast a shadow against my window and I heard a knock on my door. To the other women in my newfound trade, it would have been the sound of opportunity. But to me it was the sound of reckoning, for even without seeing his face, I knew who’d come a-calling.
My pulse pounded. I took a breath and cracked the door open.
But where I expected to see the Turk’s nausea-inducing face, I saw nothing but air. In fact, I had to look down to waist-level to see my first customer. A man in his mid-twenties with tousled brown hair sat overflowing a wheelchair. He gazed at me with a heart-wrenching innocence made all the more earnest by the round spectacles that made his eyes look like saucers.
He cracked his lips to speak but couldn’t manage any words. He gave a little croak instead, as though either my physique or ensemble had taken his breath away. I preferred to think it was the former though I wasn’t one to discriminate between compliments.
I searched for something to say myself but did no better. In fact, a bolt of anxiety wracked me. I hadn’t contemplated a scenario where a sympathetic-looking man tried to engage my services. I hadn’t considered the prospect of feeling a little bit guilty for saying no. Yet here I was, standing in front of a young man who probably couldn’t get sex any other way. And out of four hundred or so window prostitutes in Amsterdam, he’d chosen me.
Another unexpected emotion hit me. Not only had I experienced a stab of guilt, I was a bit flush from flattery.
We both stood there looking at each other until he finally took his eyes off the ripples in my abdomen and looked beyond me into my dimly lit office. His head began bobbing up and down slightly, and I was reminded that there was music playing in the background.