looking so afraid? My gaze flits back to the barman who still eyes Konstandin warily, before finally launching into some complicated-sounding explanation, gesturing at the table where we were sitting then at the door.
Konstandin finally nods and walks away from the bar. I smile at the barman who doesn’t smile back and then I rush after Konstandin.
‘What? What did he say?’ I ask, catching up to him as he moves towards the door. ‘Did he give you their names? Did he tell you who they are?’
It’s not until we’re outside on the street, past the gatekeeper, that Konstandin finally stops and turns to me. ‘The two men you met, you went home with them?’
‘Kate invited them,’ I find myself explaining, like a teenager making excuses to an angry parent. ‘I didn’t want them to come.’
He nods to himself, grimacing a little.
I ignore his grimace. ‘Who are they? Did you find out?’
Konstandin weighs his words, as if trying to find the right ones.
‘Are they drug dealers?’ I ask, because that’s what I’ve guessed, and what I imagine Konstandin was asking the barman. After all, he saw Kate in his Uber snorting coke. Plus, the barman would likely have a good idea of who deals drugs inside the bar, as too would the boy guarding the velvet rope – which could explain their reticence to let me in or to answer my questions, and also would go some way to explaining the looks they were both giving me.
‘No,’ says Konstandin. ‘They aren’t drug dealers. They’re escorts.’
Chapter Eleven
The first thing that comes into my head when Konstandin says the word escort, is that he means prostitutes, but I dismiss that and move on to the second thing that enters my mind. ‘You mean like a Ford Escort? Is that the car they drive?’
Konstandin stares at me blankly, confused, then shakes his head. ‘No,’ he says, ‘I mean they’re escorts. Prostitutes,’ Konstandin clarifies. ‘That’s what the barman told me.’
‘I don’t get it,’ I say, still not understanding.
‘They are men who are paid for sex,’ Konstandin clarifies even further, as though prostitution is something I haven’t ever heard of.
He’s staring at me, studying me, hands on his hips. It dawns on me then he thinks we hired them!
‘But …’ I splutter, my head spinning, ‘we just randomly sat next to them. You can’t think …’ Oh my God … judging from Konstandin’s expression he actually thinks I might be the kind of woman who pays for sex. ‘Do you really think I would pay for sex?!’ I hiss at him.
‘No,’ Konstandin admits, though it takes him a split second too long. ‘I don’t think that, but that is what the barman told me. The men work for an escort company. High end. Expensive.’
I stagger towards the wall, holding out a hand to steady myself. ‘My God, I didn’t even know that was a thing, did you?’
Konstandin gives a non-committal shrug. ‘Prostitution? It’s the oldest job in the world.’
‘But men doing it? Sleeping with women?’ I ask, shaking my head. ‘I mean, it’s easy to have sex if you’re a woman. Why would you need to pay for it?’
‘Same reason I suppose men do. To skip the small talk. To make sure you get what you want. Maybe your friend has a sexual desire she can’t get filled normally.’
‘Oh, gross, no!’ I say, pulling a face. I’m fairly sure Kate would have told me if she was into something kinky. It’s not like she’s shy and she loves to shock.
But what if Konstandin is right and it’s some weird fetish I don’t know about? What if Kate wanted to hire escorts to do some weird threesome involving rubber or … I remember suddenly how hard she was pushing me last night to sleep with Joaquim and how much she wanted to go out. She kept looking at her watch at dinner.
Is it possible that she planned for us to meet them there, at the bar?
‘Also,’ says Konstandin, interrupting these disturbing thoughts, ‘these men, you said they were good-looking, no?’
I nod. Suddenly it’s all starting to make more sense. I mean, I did wonder at the time why they were all over us like rashes.
‘Your friend, maybe she booked them,’ Konstandin says, pulling out a bashed packet of cigarettes and lighting one up.
‘What?’ I say.
He inhales deeply. ‘Apparently they work for an agency. You call, you make a booking.’
I wave the smoke away from my face, though truthfully the smell takes me back to my teenage smoking