Emma
Three days after Taylor’s revelation, a Thursday, after listening to Fiona come home every night in a different pair of designer high heels—for she had a whole closetful, made of different colors and materials, which now made perfect sense—Emma freed up a morning to start researching the story, and she started out with the safest, simplest, do-it-in-your-pajamas way she could, by Googling things. She quickly found a couple of the websites Taylor had alluded to, both of which denied her free access—you had to identify as a “daddy” or a “baby” and log in. The baby path asked her to upload a photo and requested a nominal monthly listing fee—a fee that, she was horrified to learn, was discounted 50 percent if you registered with a college email address. Targeted, she thought. And she wondered if there were other ways they recruited.
She quickly exited. She couldn’t sign up without an invented persona, and she’d better not try anything further on her computer, from her room. She ran over to Lenape Library, which wasn’t the closest library—there was a smaller one in the science building—but it was her favorite, because it was quiet. Even the second floor, with its long rows of desks and green lamps, where students often worked in groups, was filled with nothing above whispers. The computers were on the ground floor, in the back. She’d never used them; only the kids with laptops in the shop or no computers of their own spent time here, so she was surprised that you needed a college email address to log on. Shit. She was trying to cover her tracks, after all, be anonymous. She typed in the only other college user name and password she knew: Sarah Franco’s. She’d explain to Sarah later; they’d find a way to laugh about it, she was sure.
Once she was online, she created a fake Gmail account under the name George J. Pigg, then used it for the daddy email path on OurArrangement.com. No photo required, but a monthly fee that was five times higher than the sugar baby’s. On the sidebar of the site was a scroll of college logos, as if they were proudly affiliated. Wasn’t that illegal? One thing was for sure—if she wanted to go undercover as a daddy or a baby, she would need a bit more money than she currently had. This struck her as a serious barrier to entry—wouldn’t anyone desperate enough to want to “baby” to pay off her debts be unable to afford the listing costs plus the clothing that fit the dress code, which was described as “classy” and “perfectly coordinated”? There were YouTube videos full of advice about how to create the perfect profile, how to appeal to just the right daddy by what you wore and how you did your hair. Watching them, even with headphones, even with the screen angled away from the whole world, toward the wall, made Emma gag. Girls helping other girls prostitute themselves with video tutorials? And the founder of OurArrangement.com, with his comb-over hair and pudgy hands wrapped around a champagne glass, was straight-up creepy AF. How the hell was this legal?
She also found a four-year-old Inquirer article claiming that hundreds of Philadelphia college students, male and female, were engaged in a variety of activities to pay off their student loans, one of which was “sugarbabying” or “sugaring.” The highest percentage of participants, they claimed, came from Semper University. The article didn’t mention the websites or a club—maybe this was a newer phenomenon—instead alluding to private networking events by invitation only. The sources were unnamed restaurant workers and a local businessman. The businessman said it wasn’t illegal for friends to meet friends of friends at a restaurant and for them to buy each other presents. That was all that was happening here. When asked by the reporter if he’d ever participated, he’d laughed and said, “I said it was legal. I didn’t say it was moral.”
This struck her as the kind of story that would make a series, but there were no follow-up articles. She looked for the author, Cara Stevens, on the Inquirer website, but she apparently didn’t work there anymore. When she searched the author’s name, a hodgepodge of results came up, so she retyped “Cara Stevens, journalist” and found one, only one, living in Vancouver, working for a tiny magazine. Probably wasn’t her, Emma thought. Maybe she’d married and changed her name. Maybe, after her breakthrough series was shuttered for shoddy reporting—how on earth had she ascertained that the majority of students came from Semper?—she quit and became a teacher.
She walked to the subway and took the first car into Center City. It was only a few stops, but it always freaked her out to go aboveground and see that the planet wasn’t actually covered in yellow banners and completely populated by people all the same age. There were grown businessmen and women, grandparents, moms with babies, kids on field trips. It was jarring, going into the real world, but also a relief. You weren’t surrounded by people looking at you, trying to figure out if they wanted to date you, fuck you, borrow your clothes, use your biology notes, or make fun of you later for something stupid you said. No one cared if you had every flavor of vodka under your bed, had a Free People leather jacket, had pot brownies or cigarettes or any form of currency they needed. College was a lot like prison, Emma decided. It made it a lot harder to adjust to the outside world.
She headed east to Paco’s Thai Palace, passing bright storefronts, smelling the odd mix of wet sidewalk and musty awning and fried onions she’d always associated with the city, with her childhood. Part ruined, part delicious. So different from the manicured spaces on campus.
She walked in, sat at a tiny table in the back, and ordered the lunch special. It was $11.99, which was a lot of money to her but not a lot of money for food in Philadelphia, she’d come to learn. When the other girls ordered from Grubhub or Uber Eats, she always looked at the receipts they’d thrown away, still stapled to the greasy brown or white bags, and tried to calculate how much they were spending, wasting, throwing away, as if she could measure the difference between their lives and hers.
The restaurant was a few blocks off Rittenhouse Square, clearly designed to appeal to millennials, with pink and blue cocktails, chairs that swung from the ceiling, a roof deck. But it had gotten great Yelp reviews for the food, too, despite its goofy name, and from the comfort of her padded booth, Emma watched a parade of young office workers line up for takeout. No one in the restaurant looked remotely like a sugar daddy or a daddy of any kind. Babies, yes; daddies, no. A hunting ground, maybe, but not during the day. She’d have to come back at night to judge it properly. The shrimp pad thai special was delicious, and despite its huge proportions, Emma ate most of it. She didn’t want to be seen bringing it home and didn’t want to waste it. She vowed to skip dinner, paid the bill, and went outside.
She looked up and down the block, considering her original hypothesis—that the restaurant wasn’t the club itself but near the club. She headed west, passing a shoe store and a high-end baby clothing store, which she found ironic. A nice detail that might fit into the story. An office supply and repair store had a filmy, yellowing window and locked door, and she wondered if it was a front for something. I mean come on, she thought. Who needs typewriter repair?
The rest of the block was more upscale, a mix of dentists and lawyers with residences above. When Emma looked up, she saw a guy watering a fiddle fern on a balcony and a woman talking on her phone and drinking coffee from an oversized cup. People home in the middle of the day, rich people with trust funds, people who didn’t have to pay off student loans. Had they seen anything from those windows?
She shielded her eyes against the sun and looked across the street—a cheese shop, a gift shop, a CVS. She crossed the street, kept walking. An upscale men’s store, Beck’s, took up most of the next block, a store so bougie, it had valet parking. On the corner, a bar/restaurant with a coat of arms on the door and a one-word name: London. She tugged on the door, but it was locked. Open for dinner only, she assumed, until she saw the small type etched below: a private supper club. Holy shit, she thought. Maybe her hypothesis was correct. You drew in the men from the store and the girls from the bars. Who needed advertising? Who needed a website or an app or listing? Still, the club didn’t look very big. She stared up at the windows above street level. Offices? Residences? Massage rooms? That seemed sleazy, and everything she’d heard about this phenomenon had led her to believe that it was high-end, classy. And God knows there were plenty of hotels around to serve that need. She walked over the men’s store and smiled at the valet, who smiled back. She was glad she’d worn a dress, washed her hair.
“Hey there,” she said. “Can I ask you a question?”
“Sure,” he said.
She felt confident now, practiced from all her introductions and questions aimed at strangers at school.
“Is Beck’s open at night?”
“Wednesdays it is.”
“You ever work Wednesdays?”
“I alternate, yeah.”
“So, I was wondering if there’s also valet for the supper club?”
“Oh, no,” he said suddenly, his face falling. “You’re going there?” The disappointment dragging down the corners of his mouth, the slight blush across his lightly freckled cheeks, said everything to her.
“No, no,” she said, and he brightened. “I…my boss asked me to check it out. For a, uh, client visiting. For dinner.”
His face brightened. “Well, we usually handle valet for them.”
“You do?”
“Sure. Same owner.”
“Same owner,” she repeated. She wanted to ask who that was but was certain that wasn’t necessary. She could find that out easily. She hesitated, wasn’t sure the right question to ask next.
“So…how long you work for your boss? How well you know him?” He was asking her questions now, too.
She had to be careful. She was not as good at lying as she was at asking.
“I…just started.”
“Ah, well. I hope he’s good to you. And he doesn’t get any ideas.”
“What do you mean?”
“Like sending you to that club or something.”
She frowned. “So…you don’t like that club?”
“That’s an understatement.”
“Is it a young crowd, then?”
He laughed. “Half of it is.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, when they drop off their car here with me, it’s not. But when they pick it up, it is. If you catch my drift.”
Of course, Emma the journalist caught the drift just fine. But undercover Emma running errands for the boss, would she catch it?
She frowned, screwed up her face in a way she knew looked childish, and that was the point. “Half old, half young? In the car?”
“Yup.”
“Oh!” she said, feigning surprise.
“Yeah. Gorgeous girls, too. Kinda makes you sick.”
“So the cars must be nice? For you, at least. To drive.”
“Most of them, but not all. You’d be surprised.”
I bet I would, Emma thought. Since the world was starting to seem incredibly surprising.
“Wow. Well, thanks for the info.”
“You’re welcome. I’m Michael, by the way.”
“Mary,” she said, extending her hand, the fake name rolling off her tongue quickly, easily, more easily than she thought possible.
“You be careful with that boss of yours,” he added.
“I will.”
“Maybe I’ll see you again,” he added. “But not on a Wednesday.”
“Thanks, Michael.”
He’d given her a lot to think about, and she was confident he would remember her if she needed him again. Her first source, after her roommates!
She walked to the corner and opened Snapchat, just to see where her roommates were. She wasn’t sure how often Fiona checked the app, but it could prove helpful. She could follow Fiona and test her hypothesis. She stared at the map, squinting. Annie, Morgan, and Fiona were all at the same location, and it wasn’t the dorm. Wasn’t even on campus. When did Annie and Morgan ever do anything with Fiona, who kept to herself? She scrolled in and saw that they were at a boutique clothing store on Walnut Street. Shopping? For what?
She stood there a few minutes, trying to decide if this was meaningful. Or if she should go there, since it was eight blocks away. Then it struck her, with horror. If I know where they are, they know where I am. Here, next to the private club that might be a freaking whorehouse.
She turned off her phone, then headed back to the subway along Chestnut Street. She went into the first electronic store she saw and bought a new burner phone.