That was nice.

Chloe Manguedrine’s career choice required a uniform.
This uniform was a tiny red dress.
         
Well, the ‘red’ part wasn’t mandatory. Chloe elected red, although she didn’t particularly like the colour. She just picked it to please the men of Paris, on whose dime she dined. She needed to please from the moment they saw her to the moment she walked away, usually adjusting her underwear. Protocol also dictated that she wear high-heeled shoes of a minimum of twelve and a half centimeters, or five inches. As if the job hadn’t promised enough blisters. The fur coat and exaggerated string of pearls were Chloe’s touch. She wanted to give off chic, expensive, unattainable. She did not appear chic and her job description was proof enough that she was unattainable.

However - expensive she was. Expensive as hell, really.

Chloe reeked of the street. She thought she smelled putrid, like sin. But the smell made the men of Paris mad, mad enough to empty their wallets into her purse.

It was a cold, cold night when Chloe met Nicolas.

She was walking her regular spot, watching the cars go by. For each ten cars that passed, three would slow down dramatically. The driver would open the window. Chloe would look inside and size him up. If she didn’t want to get in, she would gesture for him to move along. If not, off they’d go.

Unlike most of her coworkers, Chloe had the luck of being able to cherry pick her clients. To have standards, low as they may be. Most of her coworkers were just damp sacs of disease, bobbing blindly for a buck.

Chloe was tall. Taller than most women. Plus she was mostly leg. Leg and breast. Her breasts were bountiful mounds of flesh and fat. Heavy, plump, appetizing.

So yes, on the particularly frigid night when Chloe met Nicholas, she had been walking her usual street, smoking a Vogue, waiting for a decent man to cruise past. Nicolas rolled by and, unlike most, came to a dead stop. He got out of the car, walked around to the other side of it and opened the passenger door. He even held Chloe’s hand as she got in.

“I’m unaware of the etiquette of this game, this is my first time. Umm… I’m Nicolas.”

Chloe did not speak English.

She knew only a few phrases: “My name is Chloe,” “five-hundred euros,” “what would you like to do first,” “oh… oh… fuck me,” and “that was nice.”

Men didn’t want to hear her say, “That was hot.” As a beginner, a prostitoddler, she would provide an operatic finale, roll over and say: “that was hot.” But her clients knew better. They knew her orgasm was just an “orgasm.” Before their climax, Chloe’s howls of feigned pleasure electrified them. After emptying themselves, they had no sexual thirst left to quench and all they felt was guilt, self-hatred and the profound anxiety of contracting some dick-shriveling disease. They interpreted Chloe’s theatrics as mockery that insinuated they were incompetent losers, which most of them were.

Once it dawned on Chloe that her screams retroactively put-off men, and her slogan made the scowls on their faces deepen, she switched to humble moans, grunts, and some light scratching. She changed her tagline to “that was nice.” It made men feel like it hadn’t been too repugnant for her and that she might’ve even enjoyed it just a little bit.

She found that after her switch she encountered far more familiar faces.

“Euh… je m’appelle Chloe.”

“Oh… I should’ve known you wouldn’t speak English. Ummm… how much per hour?” He rubbed his left-hand thumb across the back of his left-hand index and ring finger as in money.

“Five-hundred Euros.”

“Ho-ly hell… alright, I suppose that can be my gift. A gorgeous Parisian hooker.”

Chloe just nodded. Then she stopped nodding and for a while, no one did anything.

“Do you want to go back to my hotel? Ummm… hotel… De Crillon.”

Chloe’s eyes sprang up.

“De Crillon? Putain… de Crillon. Oui, oui.” She nodded her head. Yes, yes.

The car jerked into motion. Warm, new-car smell blew steadily out of the vents. Chloe so badly wanted to sit on her hands and press her face against the sprout of heat. She instead burrowed into her coat, keeping her poise.

“Are you cold? Oh Christ… you must be. Here let me put the heating up.”

Nicolas tapped a button a few times and a stronger gush of warmth poured out of them. Over Chloe’s lap, between her legs and onto her face.

Goosebumps tickled over her skin.

“Would you like to listen to music?” Nicolas gestured towards the radio.

Chloe shook her hands like a little girl does to greet her dad when he comes home from a business trip. From left to right, out of synch. ‘Non, non...’

Nicolas took off his lined, leather gloves. His hands were clammy.

Chloe tensed in preparation for the grope.

She knew the places men tended to grab at. Some went for the inner thigh. They would brush their hand over it, give it a gentle squeeze and then let their hand roam. They never creeped up between her legs. That was a moment to savor; they needed to be fully concentrated when they took the first dive. Others would turn towards her when the car was idle and cup one of, or both her breasts and and try to justify their lapse in self-control by saying “What a beauty,” or  “great rack,” or “amazing.” Some men just grabbed her hand. Many men, actually. A lot of men who buy hookers just crave human contact. Those are the men whose sexual desire, instead of growing inside them like a tumor, had just dissolved into their blood stream and escaped through their urine, or their sweat. The men who just want to feel the weight and warmth of someone on top of them.

She pegged Nicolas as the type to grab her hand even though he was in his mid-thirties. Most of the hand-grabbers were older men. The kind of men who could only get laid by their wives. And even those women required at least two bottles of wine.

But Nicolas didn’t touch her at all. He took off his gloves, looked at Chloe, and then put his hands right back on the wheel. Ten and two.

He was a very responsible man.

He wore his seatbelt. He carried two appropriately sized prophylactics in his pocket, just in case one broke His shirt was ironed and pressed. His cufflinks and aglets were shined.

The car pulled up in front of the hotel and Chloe and Nicolas got out. Nicolas left the key in the ignition and grabbed the pink ticket handed to him by the valet. He jogged up ahead to open the door for his escort. She thanked him. Merci. Mercy? His mind filled with guilt, but as quickly as it had been filled, it was flushed by his augmenting arousal. Chloe was positively tantalizing.

They took the elevator to the room. Nick opened the door and flipped on the lights.

“That was nice.” Said Chloe moments after Nick rolled off of her, his body slick.

He smiled.

They just lay there for a while but then Nick remembered he was paying for every minute he spent with her and gently jostled her out of the room.

Chloe knew the formula. She could always sense her muted expulsion coming.

She extended her hand. Three hours, fifteen hundred Euros.

Nicolas broke open his wallet. Out came five crisp five-hundred Euro bills. He counted them, folded them and handed them to Chloe.

She looked at the money and then looked at him.

“Thank you, Chloe. And joyeux noel.”

From somewhere in the distance, Chloe heard the church bells ring in midnight.

Nicolas was right.
It was twelve a.m., December twenty fifth.
Christmas morning.