Brazen Virtue

nearing thirty, she still bore the pits and scars. She’d gotten into the habit of plastering her skin with heavy pancake foundation, and in the warm weather, when her sweat glands opened, her makeup cracked and ran like the face of a melting rubber doll.
    She’d gone through high school and college without a date. Her personality had been such that she hadn’t even been able to attain the position of friend and confidante. Food had again come to the rescue. Whenever her feelings were hurt or her sex drive hummed, Mary would stuff a double cheeseburger or a plate of fudge brownies into her mouth.
    She’d lost sight of her neck at twenty. It had simply vanished in a riot of flabby folds. She wore her hair long and straight, clipped back with a barrette. There were too many mirrors in the beauty parlor. She did, occasionally, go with a whim and dye it herself, a siren red, a raven black, and once, a flashy Harlow blond. Each change had made her feel like a different person. Anyone would do, as long as she wasn’t herself.

    When her doctor warned her about her rising blood pressure and the strain on her heart, she fixed her scale so that she weighed in ten pounds lighter. She’d enjoyed that illusion so much she’d soon put on another ten and had considered herself back to normal.
    Then she invented Roxanne.
    Roxanne was sultry. Roxanne was, God bless her, a tramp. Roxanne was a size four. Roxanne could turn an iceberg into a mass of steam, as long as the iceberg was male. No inhibitions, no pretensions, and no morals; that was Roxanne.
    Roxanne liked sex, anytime, anywhere, anyhow. If a man wanted to talk sex, the hard, fast, and dirty kind, Roxanne was his girl.
    Mary had gone to Fantasy on a whim. She didn’t need the extra money. She’d gotten a lot of studying done over plates of roast beef and Cheez Whiz in college. She’d majored in economics and now worked for one of the top brokerage houses in the country. To most of her clients, she was just a voice over the phone. And that’s what had triggered the idea.
    Perhaps it had been one of nature’s little jokes to gift her with a beautiful voice. It was soft and sweetly pitched. It had a tendency to grow breathy when she became excited, so that it projected the image of a small, delicate woman of breeding. The thought of using it to do more than sell tax-exempt bonds and mutual-fund shares had been too tempting to resist.
    Mary considered herself a phone whore. She was aware that Eileen thought of the business as a social service, but Mary liked the very idea of being a whore. She was in the business of sex for hire, and her pistols were hot and smoking. Every frustration, every desire, every sweat-soaked dream she’d ever had could be eased by a seven-minute conversation.

    In her mind she’d been to bed with every man she’d ever spoken to. In reality she’d never had sex. The conversations she had with faceless men were the release valves to the pressure cooker of her own desires. She fulfilled the fantasies of her clients for a buck a minute, and got more than her own money’s worth.
    By day, she watched the stock index, sold T-bills, and bought commodities futures. At night, she traded her full-figured suit for her best Frederick’s of Hollywood and became Roxanne.
    And she loved it.
    Mary, or Roxanne, was one of the few employees of Fantasy, Incorporated who took calls seven nights a week. If one of the other women found a man too intense, or his tastes too odd, Roxanne was more than willing to take up the slack. The money she made went to red silk lingerie, vanilla incense, and food. Especially food. Between calls, Mary could wolf down a jumbo tin of potato chips with a pint of garlic and sour cream dip.
    She knew Lawrence’s voice and his preferences very well. Though he wasn’t one of her kinkier clients, he enjoyed being surprised occasionally with images of leather and handcuffs. He’d been honest with her about his appearance. No one would lie about an overbite and astigmatism. She talked to him three times a week. One three-minute quickie and two seven-minute regulars. He was an accountant, so besides sex, they had a professional rapport.
    Roxanne had candles flickering all over her bedroom. Red ones. She liked to set the mood for herself as she sprawled over her queen-size bed with a two-liter bottle of Classic Coke. She’d splurged on satin pillows and had propped herself up against them. As she spoke, she wound the phone cord