Escort Date: The Hour Before

The confirmation arrives in the early afternoon, terse, in the language the agency and I have developed between us: name of the hotel, time, framework, one sentence about the man. Nothing more is needed, and I do not want to know more anyway.

From that moment a clock is running. Not the one until the appointment — the one until the point where I am ready. Those are two different times, and the second is the more interesting one.

The Ritual

It starts banally. I cook something light, because I never know whether dinner will involve actual food or just conversation with place settings. I put the phone face down.

Then the shower, longer than necessary. Warm water is the only transition this profession knows. You come out of a day in which you bought groceries, answered emails and got annoyed about something, and that day has to go. Not because it was bad. Because it takes up room. That does not happen at the push of a button. It happens under water, drying off slowly, applying lotion with a care nobody will see and everybody will notice.

It took me a long time to understand what this hour actually does. I put nothing on in it except clothes. I do not become someone else, and I do not rehearse a role. I empty myself so that I arrive completely.

Because the only thing that truly counts on these evenings cannot be acted. You notice immediately whether someone is present or merely polite. I can do my make-up, I can dress, I can prepare — but I cannot pretend that a person interests me. That is why the choice beforehand matters so much, and that is why I have few bookings. I only go to evenings where I do not have to pretend anything.

Of course I can never know for certain. I have the enquiry, a few sentences, the tone in them — and my own instinct. Sometimes it is wrong, in both directions. There have been evenings I was not particularly looking forward to that turned out to be the better ones.

The outfit is its own decision, every time. I know the occasion, the house, the season. I lay three options on the bed and then take the first one anyway. Black, because black is never wrong in any lobby in the world. Underneath, what only he will see if the evening goes the way he hopes and I dare to allow: lace I chose for myself, not for him.

That difference matters more than it sounds. Everything about this evening will be shared. The hour before is not. In it I answer to nobody.

Perfume last, two sprays, never more. A scent is the first thing that remains when a door closes, and the last thing you can control.

In the hour before, I am nobody's companion. I am only me, on my way to someone.

The Drive

The drive is the quiet part. I drive myself or let myself be driven, depending on the district, and watch a city preparing for the evening: light in the shop windows, couples in front of restaurants, someone arguing at the kerb.

In these minutes I think astonishingly little about him. I think about small things — whether I will feel the insole in my shoe, whether I have drunk enough, whether my bag holds everything a discreet evening needs.

And then, inevitably, the one question that arrives somewhere between two traffic lights: who will open the door?

Not what he looks like. But how he opens it. Hastily, with a glance over his shoulder, or calmly, as if he had the whole evening. Whether he stays in the doorway or steps aside. Whether he speaks first or looks first. It sounds like nothing, and it says almost everything. You recognise people at doors, not in enquiries.

In the Lobby

In the lobby I slow down. A woman striding purposefully towards the lift is more conspicuous than one who pauses, regards the bar, lets the house have its effect on her. I look like someone who has an appointment here — which is exactly what I am.

Nobody looks. The world is far too busy with itself to notice an evening like this one. At first I did not believe that and felt watched in every foyer. By now I know the invisibility does not come from how I behave, but from the fact that people think about themselves.

In the lift, a last glance in the mirror. Not out of vanity — I am checking whether I have arrived. Usually I have.

In front of the room door I pause briefly. Always, in every house, at every number. One second in which nobody wants anything from me.

The First Seconds

Then I knock. Twice, not too loud.

And here my preparation ends, because everything I have done up to this point decides nothing at all. It is decided in the first seconds, when the door opens and we look at each other. Whether it fits or not I never know beforehand, and I know it immediately afterwards.

When it fits, something happens that I could not name for a long time. The room closes, and everything else with it. No bills, no appointments, no history, no question of what tomorrow holds. For a few hours nothing from outside applies — not for him and not for me. That is the part nobody understands from the outside: it is a world we both enter, not one I build for him.

That is precisely why it can only exist there. What applies in those hours no longer applies the next morning, and that is not harshness but the condition under which such an evening is possible at all. He returns to his life, I to mine, and the evening stays where it took place.

And if it does not fit, that is fine too. Then it becomes a pleasant evening with good food and polite conversation, and nobody has lost anything. I simply have not entered anything.

So what goes on inside me while I wait for the door is not nervousness. It is curiosity — a bright, almost cheerful tension, because in a few seconds I will know what kind of evening this is going to be.

Then the door moves, and the hour before is over.