The Call Girl and the Businessman Ch. 02

I did not like to see him like that. It was like I was losing him to the darkness. I quickly walked towards him and I stood behind him.

"Have I displeased you, Matthias?" I asked, rather softly.

I was aware that I could not engage him. This was a professional failure on my part. My body had failed me.

Turning sideways, he planted a light kiss on my forehead.

"I'm sorry that I am not up to it. I thought that if I got a call girl, sex would take my pain away and make me forget myself. But after talking to you, sex doesn't feel right. Could we just talk like yesterday?" He asked me.

His gaze was unwavering on mine. Despite the darkness outside, I saw a light burning in his grey pupils. This light drew me into the grey wolf's lair. There was something empty there.

"Yes, I can talk. I can talk a lot even. But I do not know if I'll make a good conversation partner for you. We barely know each other." I said.

"Oh, Lila, it doesn't matter. You don't have to try too hard. Why do I get the feeling that you're walking on eggshells here? You say you're not frightened of me, but you're not exactly a good actress. To give you credit, you do speak resolutely like you meant it. But it just doesn't work for me." He said.

His voice was utterly deep with some strong emotion. I watched him swear to himself a string of words which I did not fully understand. It was in Dutch and I only caught "godverdomme" and that could not be good. I was not sure who the swearing was aimed at. I thought of calling Pablo. My phone was in my clutch on the settee.

It had been a terrible night. He was a troubled man. He brought trouble with him. He brought up my insecurities. He looked at me like I was a fraud. His piercing eyes knew that at the end of the day, I was a fraud to myself.

"Don't analyse me too much. I am frightened of you but I do try to be honest with you." I said.

This was true. I did articulate half statements of my whole reasoning. Maybe that was why I could not quite get my act together in one piece.

"I'm feeling a bit of a chill. I'll go inside." I said.

He pulled my arm just as soon as I uttered those words.

"I'm sorry. Don't go. I know you're about to head out the door and never to return." He said.

I felt his fingers digging deep onto my skin like a leech.

"I'll stay if you let go of my arm. Please, Matthias, it hurts." I said.

I did not like the way my voice shook. I tried to calm myself down.

"I apologize for my behaviour. Do not be frightened of me, please." He said, releasing his grip on my arm.

He walked into the living room. I followed suit. He did not speak to me when he went straight into the bedroom, slammed the door like yesterday and came out five minutes later, looking a bit calmer than he was.

"I have taken my prescription pills. They will calm me down, I hope." He said.

My mind told me that I should leave but my heart told me to stay. It would be alright. He was not violent; he was just a troubled man. I did not judge people. I had to stay.

He sat at the settee opposite me and started talking again.

"Let's continue from where we left before we became distracted. You said that you're Thai. I believe you but you do not speak with a Thai accent. Where else did you travel?" He asked.

"I left the country when I was eleven. Due to my mother's work, we moved south to Malaysia where we stayed for a few years and eventually to Singapore. Prospects were better there for my mother." I said.

"How did you end up in this suburb here smack right at the other end of the world?" He asked.

I could see that his curiosity was piped.

"We moved to Europe eventually when circumstances changed. My mother's partner travelled quite a bit around Europe due to his job as a researcher. I guess I naturally picked up the accents here as well." I said, but I did not elaborate further.

He seemed satisfied with my explanation for the time being.

"How would you describe me? I have told you how I would describe myself." He asked.

"I cannot know you in just two days. I would need to spend more time with you in order to get more than just a cursory glimpse of your character." I said, honestly, since he did say he appreciated honesty.

Still, it was a rather mild way to put it. I thought that he was rude, bad-tempered, troubled and strange combined with a dramatic flair for arrogance. He possessed a knack for unusual discourse - all this I gathered within two days.

Most of all, I was now ambivalent about him. He was an enigma. I did not know what to make out of him.

"Fair enough Lila. I shall endeavour to talk about why I am the way you see me right now. Scary and troubled; I should think, from what I gather from those expressive eyes of yours..." He said.

"Those are your own words, Mr. Boardmann. Perhaps that is how you see yourself." I said.

I decided to call him Mr. Boardmann instead of Matthias. I did not feel he deserved a more intimate first name. It was all just work, and my work had been stressful the past two nights.

"You're spot on, Lila. I don't have high regard for myself. I am way too far down the road of no return." He said.

"I understand." I said.

"How could you understand when you don't even know what I have done or what has happened to me?" He asked, in a curious voice.

"I take your word for it. You're determined not to return to wherever it is from the road of no return. Your resolution is strong. You're stubborn; you said so yourself. The worst traits inherited from the German side of your family." I replied.

"Why, yes, indeed. Why have I not thought of it from that angle? So you're saying I am the cause of all my misery." He muttered more to himself than to me.

"Sometimes when you are too occupied with your own thoughts, you cannot see anything else. I view you from a stranger's perspective. I am disinterested. I did not say that you are the cause of all your misery. I'm saying that if you see no way of returning, who am I to dispute that?" I said.

"Blame it on my weakness. I can't move forward because I have willed myself into an abyss. I am weary and tired, both in my body and mind. What an accurate observation, Lila." He said grimly.

"By placing much value in the generalization and stereotypes of traits, one is bound to justify them; for better or worse. Whilst it is true that we are products of our environment, we can rise above it. Deep down inside of us is our soul. It is pure, it has no biasness and it is neutral. If we tap into this source, we find peace, but first we have to be detached from our environment." I said.

"That's really deep. You could moonlight as a new-age self-styled guru with your magic moonstone." He said.

I knew principles of Buddhist meditation in detail. Our village was a Buddhist stronghold and when I was a child, I was sent to study and live with the monks at the temple for periods of time. However now equipped with better knowledge and maturity, when I thought back, it was because the monks acted as babysitters when my mother went to work, first at the fields, and then frequenting the seedier bars where men looked for companionship.

I was able to find peace with myself, until his eyes took away my heavily treasured peace yesterday. Then I knew my peace was not real.

"Have you found that peace, Lila?" He asked me then.

I shook my head.

"I thought I had it but it comes and goes. I guess I am not as detached as I would like to be." I said, noting that his eyes were spiritually lethal for my enlightenment.

"Then there is no hope for me. I refuse to let go, I refuse to reform." He said.

"You don't have to reform. Accept yourself the way you are. If you do not accept yourself, how can you even reform?" I said, in one breath.

Technically it was easy to blurt out these core principles and I must admit I got carried away then. I went on about meditation and the various hand mudras to match them. However the more I spoke, the calmer he became. He seemed to enjoy hearing me talk, or just maybe he saw the truth in the statements. Maybe he saw entertainment in it.

"I am glad you are more open towards me now, Lila." He said.

Our gazes locked and for a few minutes after that, we did not speak.

Gradually, he started talking to me about his ex-girlfriend. His flow was rather inconsistent but I got the gist that he loved her dearly. She left him for another man who was richer than he was. Before she left him, she stole some confidential information and passed it to her lover who was a competitor. He lost millions in the business because of that betrayal. His company was still picking up the pieces of the lost, and the shareholders were very critical of his every move. A vote of no confidence was scheduled for the next month to boot him out as company director.

"All this while, she was so sweet and accommodating. She stayed with me for seven years. How could she do this to me?" He said.

He went back to his ex-girlfriend. She was the turning point of his downward spiral. He had no malicious feelings towards her. In fact I would say that he still loved her and if she waltzed back into his life, he would forgive her for everything.

How strong his feelings of love was! Love had torn this man apart, and destroyed his zest for life. His one-sided feelings strengthened my age-old stance not to go anywhere near love. No men, except for sex.

His voice contained echoes of dejection. He had been replaying this in his mind over and over again. I knew how destructive this could be, to be stuck in a vicious cycle of sadness. It provokes paranoia.

"I hate women. I cannot trust them anymore. No offence to you. You're a call girl. At least you don't pretend to be anything else." He said.

As I was proven not to be much of a conversationalist, I moved towards him and somehow managed to bend both knees in that difficult dress. I lifted his chin so that he looked at me.

"I am so sorry that you had to go through all this." I said.

He was in a sorry state, and I have to admit I softened my stance.

I placed his head on my shoulders and I stroked the curve of his back with my hands. I soothed him with the same constant, reassuring pressure my mother used to employ to tuck me in bed. I felt his body stiffen at my first touch and then I felt him relax in my embrace.

"No offence taken. I am a call girl. I don't pretend to be anything else. You see me as I am." I said softly.

There was no need to speak louder as we were inches apart. He lifted his head from my shoulder and his overly-emotional eyes scrutinized me. His lips parted like he wanted to say something but he could not articulate the words.

When he did not speak, I continued to speak to him, as calmly and non-judgementally as I could.

"You don't have to trust women. You just have to trust yourself." I said.

"I don't trust even myself to do the right thing." He said.

"I trust you." I said.

"You're flattering me again." He said.

"Believe what you want. Even though I was afraid of you, I did not leave. I put my safety in your hands because I trusted you." I said.

Our eyes locked and just as quickly, he turned away.

"May God bless you for being with such a brute." He said.

I looked at his thick, brown, tangled curls. Looking but not really. Perceiving but not too deeply.

"I understand where you're coming from. A betrayal of trust is like a stab in the heart." I continued in as solid a voice I could muster.

I knew that when dealing with emotional people, the best way is to behave in a very calm manner whilst providing support.

"But don't you see that you owe a responsibility to yourself to rise above this? You have to try to make it work. You are worth every single bit of it." I said.

"Why am I worth it, Lila? How can you, a stranger, know my worth when I do not know my own worth?" He asked, in a broken voice.

"Because I think, deep down, by your very questions aimed at me, they show you to be a man who is full of life and passion. This is your strength but it is also your downfall. You're that man who questions and gets his answers no matter what. If the answers are difficult to come by, you keep pushing for them, being loggerheads with me. Is that fighting spirit not worth even a tiny bit to you?" I answered.

He looked at me, torn and passionate. Then he sobbed softly on my shoulders. I let him cry himself out. I tried to concentrate on that messy clump of hair of his when I felt tears glistening at my eyelids again. After a while, his sobs subsided. I then led him to the bedroom and got him into a change of striped linen pyjamas from the cupboard drawer. He seemed to have many of those in different shades of blue and grey. In another drawer, I also chanced upon all the pill prescriptions which I assume he had taken he slammed the door. I wondered at the necessity of all those pills. Did he really need to take all of them? The pill bottles were strewn carelessly amongst many spotless white linen handkerchiefs. Had I not known better, I would think that he had a fetish for all things linen.

I tucked him into bed, placed his head on my lap, and started stroking his head like I did yesterday. We were both silent. Before he lay on my lap, he gazed at me intensely. He whispered again that he was sorry for everything. I shook my head, and placed my fingers on his lips. He sighed deeply, and took my fingers in his. He then turned around. A few minutes later, I knew that he was asleep when his body loosened up and lines of tension left his forehead.

I caught a whiff of a scent in the room. As it was yesterday, it seemed vaguely familiar, but I could not quite pinpoint when I had scented it. The whiff lingered on in the room on and off. Sometimes I caught it and sometimes I lost it. Until came the moment that I decided I had better leave now that he was asleep. I only prayed that he did not have nightmares for I would not be around until dawn like yesterday. I wondered if it were hard-hearted for me to leave like that. Against my better or worst judgment (I did not know anymore how to think objectively), I took the whiff as my cue to leave for home.

I reapplied my makeup on my tear-stained face. His emotional episode had affected me. Quietly I made my way out. I chose not to stay the night. He had wanted me to speak my mind, and I have spoken. I felt bad about it though, but if I stayed, I would have pitied him more, and I did not want to pity him. He was a man full of life and passion before, and I would have liked to see him in his prime. I would never have that opportunity but at least I have known him. It was an experience I would never forget. I learnt that I was a wreck on my own emotions. I learnt that my standard answers were useless if the right questions were not asked. All those years of preparation only to be shot down by this one man.

I thought again, trying to give myself some credit for all the hard work. He was not a standard man. It was hardly my fault not to be able to predict his standard questions. I had considered him an enigma, so it should not have surprised me.

What a night! I needed to meditate once I reached home. I needed to get back to my peaceful physical and spiritual abode. All that was possible before he came into the picture.

Men who requested escort services lacked something in their lives and he lacked it the most. Those piercing eyes and horrible questions drained me emotionally. Yet as far as I was concerned, he did not deserve to be in despair because of one woman; the same way I would never despair because of one man. I hoped that he would find peace somehow, now that we were done with each other. I touched my moonstone under my neck and made a little wish for him to be able to move on. He should be able to, having all that passion in him, if he channelled it to good use. I wondered if we would bump into each other someday.

I called Pablo, and he drove me home. Driving out of the carpark, I looked up to see whether I could catch a glimpse of his penthouse. I saw nothing but reigning darkness. As the car was turning into the junction, a small speck of light from the fortieth floor glowed. I was quite sure that it was his suite, for the rest of the suites were not yet taken. Henry had told me so. His suite brightened my view as the car drove towards the main road.

Pablo saw me looking up and asked if the speck of light was from my client's suite. I answered in the affirmative. It was the orangey shaded light in the living room which we had forgotten to switch off because of the nature of his bizarre conversation, and perhaps answers which he did not expect to hear uttered from my lips. I then thought it ironic that I should concentrate on a tiny speck of light just like he did with an erratic fervour towards his office building. Instinctively I turned my head away, and looked at the darkness ahead. Except for the few street lights lining up the road, the sea was devoid of any light. The boulevard was now quiet as restaurants and malls were closed; all past the hustle and bustle of their peak hours.

It was a starless night and the wind was blowing heavily. I was seated at the passenger seat beside Pablo. Throughout the short ten minute drive, my mind drifted to the vaguely familiar scent in the room, and then out of the blue, towards Mr. Boardmann. Alas, never had I thought about a client more.