A half hour later Claire Winther felt she was ready. It was the only solution, the only way out of this situation, she told herself.
She punched the number again and pressed 4 for personal service.
“This is Bonnie. What can we do for you?”
“My name is Michelle Jensen, and I’m interested in hearing if there’s a possibility of working for you.”
“There’s a decent possibility if you look really good and know what you’re doing. How old are you, and how long have you been in the business? You specialize in anything?”
“I’m thirty-four but I can easily pass for twenty-six, definitely. I have to admit I don’t have a lot of experience, in fact I’m a beginner. But you know how it is, it’s tough out there right now, you need a little extra cash, so why not… if you have a natural talent?”
“We’ll take a look at you and talk about it. Come in around six if you can, and if you have some porny pictures of yourself, bring them along on CD.”
“I don’t.”
“No problem. We’ll figure it out. In fact, we could use a Danish girl right now, so if you’re okay…”
Claire felt calmer. Bonnie had sounded like a normal, everyday person. How hard could it be?
She chose a dark wig and large sunglasses. The oldest pair of jeans she owned, and a red lace top under the black leather jacket that hadn’t been outside the closet for five years. Given her exclusive wardrobe, this was the cheapest she could look, she decided, and she topped it off with crimson-red gloss lipstick and a shot of a much- too-heavy and sweet perfume, a shopping mistake.
Obviously she couldn’t arrive at the brothel in her Jaguar, so she called a cab and asked the driver to drop her off at the main station. It came to eight hundred kroner.
The November murk lay wet and heavy over the city, so she pushed her sunglasses up on her forehead as she walked down Istedgade, first past the row of hotels next to the station, then past all the porn and sex shops decorated for the Christmas season.
It was fascinating, she had to stop and stare through the shop windows. A Christmas manger scene with the tiny baby Jesus-surrounded by dildos. A blow-up sex doll with a silicone pussy wrapped in a chain of red heart- shaped Christmas lights. Handcuffs, leather whips, half-masks, and chastity belts hung on a plastic Christmas tree with a star on top and icicles covering it.
At the shelter, the Men’s Home, the guests for the night had already begun to gather. Hoarse voices, the clinking of bottles, and tubercular coughs rose from the group of ragged, dirty, homeless figures. Claire decided to cross the street to the other sidewalk.
There was more dignity to the slick black kings of the street, who in two-and three-man groups marked off their territories, while the black females busied themselves braiding hair in salons, the walls covered with wigs and hairpieces of all colors.
The African hair salons were something new, thought Claire, who hadn’t sat foot in Vesterbro since she left as an eight-year-old.
A drunk wearing only an open leather vest on his upper body tumbled out from one of the half-basement tattoo shops and knocked into her. His skin was totally and colorfully illustrated from his bald head to his waist.
More sex shops, more Asian grills, more stores with weird combinations of souvenirs, Christmas decorations, porn underwear and sex toys, more bars, more brothels.
At Skelb?kgade, the street prostitutes-the lowest in the pecking order, the most desperate-were already busy. Addicts and Africans, as far as she could tell. Several men walked back and forth, openly sizing them up, while others crept past in their cars.
The nine-to-five shift, they called these early sex customers, when she was a kid.
At the spot on Istedgade where the place begins to look respectable again, she turned right, down a side street.
She stopped when a text message beeped in. It was John, from Rio:
She answered at once:
The fitness center was to be her alibi. She had a membership card in her pocket.
“Wow! You’ve got class!” Bonnie said, looking almost lovingly at her as she pulled her in through the hallway to the reception area.
Ikea, Claire Winther noted. Cheap, but light and clean and less sleazy than she had expected. A beige corner sofa and a coffee table with porn magazines. A counter with a coffee maker and plastic cups. A flatscreen on the wall, fastened to a swinging arm.
“Here’s where we receive customers, who come in only by appointment. They call or book on the net. As a rule, anyway. If it’s totally dead we’ll take them in off the street. I keep track of the shift schedule and the appointments and do the books, and most of the time I’m sitting right there.”
Bonnie pointed at the chair and desk behind the counter.
A madam, Claire thought.
Bonnie was closer to sixty than fifty. She was overweight in the way alcoholics can be, a bulging stomach and thin arms and legs, her face ruddy and spongy with large pores that looked even larger because of her makeup, and she spoke with a hoarse, nasal voice.
She continued: “Five of us are full-time. Take that back, five of us
Claire shook her head. “No, I stick with the supermarket drugs you can get in Brugsen,” she answered.
“Good, because drugs-they’ll just take you farther and farther down!” Bonnie put a protective arm around Claire’s shoulder, looked her right in the eye, and almost whispered: “I can’t count how many I’ve seen kick the bucket with their stilettos on…” Then she continued, more businesslike: “Right now we have two Thais and one Romanian, sweet girls, all of them, but the Thais don’t understand Danish. They’re here on tourist visas-three months at a shot. Theresa from Romania has a residency permit here and speaks pidgin Danish. Problem is, more and more of our customers only want Danish girls. It’s all this talk about trafficking that’s scaring them. God’s sake, the foreign girls beg for a job, and now for example we’re saying no to all the African girls, so they’re on the street-painting the town red, as they say.”
Bonnie smiled at her own wittiness and went on: “I take care of the phones and the cheap net sex, where they can jerk off to the sound and video files I send them, along with some live talk, moans and groans. Ten kroner a minute! Doesn’t sound like much but it actually brings in quite a bit. Then we have a webcam so they can buy direct live shows. Most of them want girl sex, that’s a lot more expensive of course, if it’s direct and interactive, but all this about the money, you just let me take care-”
“How much?”
Claire received a warm smile in return: “You-you can hit the jackpot! You’re exclusive, high-class-and you’re Danish!”
Claire kept quiet, Bonnie became eager: “As a guesstimate, a good day, taking eight or ten customers, you’ll go home with five thousand kroner. Times twenty…”
“But the clinic here takes their cut?”
“The clinic takes 60 percent of your overall earnings. That’s the way it is. The money goes to rent, ads, equipment, supplies, transportation, security. Nothing under the table here. I guarantee you won’t get cheated, and there’ll be plenty of work. We’re counting on a lot of Christmas business, and Copenhagen is the only place left in Scandinavia where it’s still legal to buy sex. The Bangkok of the North, ha ha!”
Bonnie showed her the rooms. Three had double beds, a large bathroom with Jacuzzi and whirlpool bath-also for servicing customers-and a dressing room and wardrobe, complete with everything necessary to the trade.
Bonnie measured her by sight and concluded: “C-cup, 38. We have everything you need, but it’s all right if you bring something along.”
A back stairway led from a kitchenette down to a soundproof S &M room in the basement.
