Superfreakonomics_ global cooling, patri - Steven D. Levitt [24]
But the call also acknowledged that she could reach him at will and, if something were to go wrong, she could storm his office. “Nobody wants to see the ‘crazy ho’ routine,” she says with a smile. To date, Allie has resorted to this tactic only once, after a client paid her in counterfeit cash. When Allie visited his office, he promptly located some real money.
She saw clients in her apartment, mainly during the day. Most of them were middle-aged white men, 80 percent of whom were married, and they found it easier to slip off during work hours than explain an evening absence. Allie loved having her evenings free to read, go to the movies, or just relax. She set her fee at $300 an hour—that’s what most other women of her caliber seemed to be charging—with a few discount options: $500 for two hours or $2,400 for a twelve-hour sleepover. About 60 percent of her appointments were for a single hour.
Her bedroom—“my office,” she calls it with a laugh—is dominated by a massive Victorian four-poster, its carved mahogany pillars draped with an off-white silk crepe. It is not the easiest bed to mount. When asked if any of her clients have difficulty doing so, she confesses that one portly gentleman actually broke the bed not long ago.
What did Allie do?
“I told him that the damn thing was already broken, and I was sorry I hadn’t gotten it fixed.”
She is the kind of person who sees something good in everyone—and this, she believes, has contributed to her entrepreneurial success. She genuinely likes the men who come to her, and the men therefore like Allie even beyond the fact that she will have sex with them. Often, they bring gifts: a $100 gift certificate from Amazon.com; a nice bottle of wine (she Googles the label afterward to determine the value); and, once, a new MacBook. The men sweet-talk her, and compliment her looks or the decor. They treat her, in many ways, as men are expected to treat their wives but often don’t.
Most women of Allie’s pay grade call themselves “escorts.” When Allie discusses her friends in the business, she simply calls them “girls.” But she isn’t fussy. “I like hooker, I like whore, I like them all,” she says. “Come on, I know what I do, so I’m not trying to butter it up.” Allie mentions one friend whose fee is $500 an hour. “She thinks she’s nothing like the girls on the street giving blow jobs for $100, and I’m like, ‘Yes, honey, you’re the same damn thing.’”
About this, Allie is likely wrong. Although she views herself as similar to a street prostitute, she has less in common with that kind of woman than she does with a trophy wife. Allie is essentially a trophy wife who is rented by the hour. She isn’t really selling sex, or at least not sex alone. She sells men the opportunity to trade in their existing wives for a younger, more sexually adventurous version—without the trouble and long-term expense of actually having to go through with it. For an hour or two, she represents the ideal wife: beautiful, attentive, smart, laughing at your jokes and satisfying your lust. She is happy to see you every time you show up at her door. Your favorite music is already playing and your favorite beverage is on ice. She will never ask you to take out the trash.
Allie says she is “a little more liberal” than some prostitutes when it comes to satisfying a client’s unusual request. There was, for instance, the fellow back in Texas who still flew her in regularly and asked her to incorporate some devices he kept in a briefcase in a session most people wouldn’t even recognize as sex per se. But she categorically insists that her clients wear a condom.
What if a client offered her $1 million to have sex without a condom?
Allie pauses to consider this question. Then, exhibiting a keen understanding of what