Lost Girls by Robert Kolker Page B

at a time, but only every now and then, when she needed the money. She wanted to start again, with Sara as her partner.
    “Do you like it?” Sara asked.
    Maureen told her it was fine. In New York, she was a different person.
     
    Maureen had posted her first ads on the Eastern Connecticut/Adult Services page of Craigslist three years earlier, not long after she had showed her friend Jay DuBrule her photos. She had used her mother’s name, Marie—a choice that she never explained to anyone who knew enough to ask. The replies had been instantaneous. She asked Jay if he’d come with her. He drove her to a few people’s houses. She taught him the procedure: She goes in the house, and Jay calls her five minutes later; no answer means trouble. If she answers and says everything’s fine, that means he paid her and she’s good. “Then I’ll be out within the hour,” she said. And out she’d come, a hundred dollars richer.
    The sex itself she insisted she could handle, but the johns were too close for comfort. Many of them were men who lived in Groton and the surrounding towns—guys whom she easily might run into later at ShopRite or Cory’s or Wendy’s. And the money wasn’t quite what she had hoped, or at least not as much as she knew she could make a short distance away, at the casinos. Though Mohegan Sun was out of the question—her mother still worked there—Foxwoods was wide open. Maureen waited until Caitlin wasn’t visiting from Mystic and booked a few nights in a hotel room at the casino. Before her first outing, she taught Jay how to freshen her Craigslist ad, editing it every now and then while she was out so the ad would bump up to the top of the list. The casinos brought Maureen to a different class of john—out-of-towners, from all over New England and New York and beyond, with more money and willingness to pay for what they wanted. They treated girls like entertainers, like professionals. This felt more like a business now, and Maureen preferred that. She met a few other girls, including one named Chrissy—a boy dressed as a girl, really. Missy later told friends that it was Chrissy who invited Maureen on her first trip to New York.
    Manhattan was the ultimate moneymaker, Chrissy said—filled with tourists and businessmen and bored rich people. If she got a hotel room and posted an ad, she could make a thousand dollars or more every night. Maureen’s initial trips there were brief, just a day and a night, with Chrissy at first and then alone. She asked Jay to drive her, but he declined. He had two jobs and custody of his daughter, and truth be told, he didn’t feel quite as bold about going to New York as Maureen did. When she came back, Maureen had talked with all her friends in bright, breezy tones about her experiences. She spun it as an adventure: The men she met were all young and good-looking and nice to her. The hotel was luxurious. The city sparkled. She was exaggerating, but the money, at least, was real—piles of bills that she nonchalantly stacked high on her dresser. Some of her closest friends, as well as Missy, would say later that what Maureen was doing didn’t satisfy her soul—that the spiritual, cosmically curious Maureen had nothing to do with this. But it wouldn’t have been difficult for Maureen to be open to the possibilities. After so many years of depending on others, she could leave responsibilities at home and become another person for a while—all under the pretext of making money so she could be a responsible parent. And the attention: Seen the right way, the job was one where people were so eager to see her that they were willing to pay money. For the length of a call, she would be desired—a star, famous, loved, rich.
    The logistics weren’t ideal. She had to give Steve a story to explain her time away; since he hated talking to Maureen’s family, she said she was staying with them. She managed to keep Will out of the loop, too—that was necessary; he was too