Calendar Girl by Stella Duffy

was simple. So far.
    The other girls had shown her the ropes. How to talk to the New York businessmen like an intelligent bimbo – that is, always understanding what they were talking about, but never knowing more about it than them. How to spotthe ones who wanted more than just champagne and cards – and how to fend them off politely. Finally and most importantly, though the least lucrative – how to deal with the ones who actually brought their wives or mistresses with them – act like a waitress.
    Saz, well practised in lying and quick witted, took to it like a debutante to champagne. She’d been relieved when James had told her that he positively demanded a “friendly but celibate interaction between members and staff”. And when she checked it out with the other staff she’d found that he actually meant it – a girl had been fired in the summer for having an affair with one of the members – and no, she didn’t have an English accent. The rates of pay weren’t great – a mere $90 for a six day week, or just $12 a day if you couldn’t make all six – but then the tips were outrageous – one man had given her a $100 note for directing him to the bathroom, another gave her $50 for helping him on with his coat, and there was also a $20 commission to be made on each bottle of champagne sold. In two nights Saz had made over $600, what with that and the money owing from John Clark, she’d be able to afford half a dozen answerphones.
    She was just starting to get into the swing of things, playing the gamblers off against each other, laughing at their unwillingness to buy more drinks when Mr James called her from the door,
    “September, can I have a word?”
    She’d frozen a little when he first said he thought she should be called September – she’d told him her name was Mary but he didn’t want to check it out. He wasn’t interested in references or the fake ID Saz had spent Wednesday arranging. “September” seemed a little tooclose for comfort, but then she remembered it was only she who’d called the missing woman September, Charlie had called her June and of the five other girls she’d met, only one remembered an Englishwoman and she had called her April, “because she was English and England always makes me think of spring – you know, like the Romantic poets?”
    Saz chose not to tell her about T.S. Eliot and the dead land lilacs.
    Actually, the other girls had been extraordinarily unhelpful. Not because they didn’t want to talk, gossip was their mainstay, but because it seemed like hardly anyone worked every one of their six nights per week, and anyway, most of them hadn’t been at Calendar Girls longer than six months. The turnover was fast, most of the girls were doing the work because it could pay well – cash in hand and no question of needing a green card – and, as Saz was finding out, it wasn’t even too difficult. Most of them seemed to keep a friendly distance from Mr James, either because they were scared of him or he was just disinterested – Saz had yet to find out. What did seem to be well known was that he was singularly uninterested in American women, and that if he ever did date any of the girls it was always those from “elsewhere” – Europe, England, Asia – definitely not those just arrived in town from the West Coast. True, most of the women admitted that he was attractive, but then most of the women were also in the work solely for the money and very glad to get out the door as soon as their shifts ended.
    She pocketed her receipt for another sale of champagne and made two mental notes – one, now that she knew September might have been faking her appearance, she’dhave to go back and check all the other women she’d eliminated because of wrong hair or eye colour – another forty at least, and two, if September could earn so much doing this four times a year why had she needed John Clark’s money? The thought of the first September broke her daydream and