"Can't Buy Me Love"

The Booming Escort Business

They say a man's toilet is his throne, and at the hotel this expression holds a special relevance. Arriving in a fluster a few minutes before my shift begins, I take a trip to the bathroom, somewhere I see as an indicator of the hotel's luxuriousness. White cotton towels bearing the hotel's signature, neatly rolled up and stacked in pyramids, sit alongside marble basins, lined with expensive hand lotions and soaps. Grand mahogany mirrors hang on the walls, interspersed with lifeless black and white photographs of waterfalls and brooks, carefully chosen to suit the ambience of this luxurious restroom. (Curiously, a pair of armchairs sit by the hand-dryers, but I am yet to see anybody relocate here for the evening.) I check my tie in the mirror next to a man whose small stature is more than made up for by his excess weight. He has been rearranging his hair since I arrived. Between us lies a small stack of business cards, one of which he has picked up. They belong to the escorts, one whom is about to make another lucrative friend.

The business cards in the bathroom would soon be removed by management, but they had clearly raked in a lot of custom so far; tonight, the escort business was booming, and I could see at a glance that the majority of couples in the room had exchanged a great deal of money. I begin to play, and a few heads turn before returning to their conversations. Some of the escorts, sitting in complete silence with their wealthy partners who use them more as an ego-boosting image than as sociable company, watch for a little longer. After all, they have nothing better to do, as their dates for the evening stare into the space behind them.

After a while, two figures appear at the doorway, shadows lined by the bright light of the corridor. I recognise the shorter figure as the man from the bathroom. Like a perfectly rounded dough ball, he stands there with his arm around the waist of a tall, slender blonde lady, who seems to nearly double his height. As he walks through the room to the far corner of the bar, every head turns to see the woman he is with; her beauty a source of fascination equalled only by the evident wealth of the man paying her. Nothing else warrants such an unlikely couple.  As they walk past the piano and I see her from close up, I too am slightly stunned, and for a moment I forget the words of the song. Fortunately, nobody had been listening, and the little stumble goes unnoticed.

I take a break, and whisper with the bar staff to learn a little more about this gloriously mismatched couple. The lady is, of course, the top end of the escort price range, and would be costing him a small fortune. But I learn that the man in question is among the most wealthy of the hotel's guests, rumoured to have once tipped a pianist here with a one thousand pound cheque. My ears prick up, and I return to the piano, armed with a new incentive to play my best.

Later that evening I look up to see an attractive girl with olive skin and long dark hair, strutting across the bar towards the piano, holding a glass of white wine in her hand. Reaching my stool she whispers in my ear, telling me that I am 'very good', elongating the latter word in a slight whine - an internation I hear a lot in this environment. But I am flattered - not at her routine compliment but at the seemingly interested attention from a girl close to my own age, an unusual phenomenon in this bar. We talk for a few minutes, giving me a chance to practice the essential art of playing something convincing while holding a conversation; unfortunately, both suffer a significant drop in standards as I try to multitask. Yet it seems that the girl is easily impressed, and asks if I would like a drink. Intrigued, I oblige and tell her I'll join her on my next break.

She lingers, leaning on the piano and sipping her wine as I sing my next song:

L is for the way you look at me
O is for the only one I see
V is very, very extraordinary,

E is even more that anyone that you adore...

It happened to be the next song on my list, but her smile suggests I have impressed with this 'carefully chosen' song, with its apparently intentional message. She winks and spins on her heel, walking back to the bar, swaying in a self-conciously provocative fashion like Jobim's girl from Ipanema. It all feels a bit unreal, and I wonder what will come of this. My initial suspicion of her, being a customer at this hotel, is supressed for a minute, and I start to daydream, attaching wonderful and imagined attributes to this girl I hardly know. But after a few moments I look back up and see her, standing in the far corner of the bar. Suddenly it dawns on me. I recognise the crowd she is with, and the men who are lingering around her, and I realise I may have just initiated the most expensive date of my life. 

Meanwhile, the fat man and his escort sit side by side on the sofa next to the piano. Over the curve of her tactically and precarious propped up breast, I see him bending over the table, munching on a chicken wing. She sits back and stares straight ahead, expressionless. I can fathom little from the look on her face. It is not boredom, not sadness, but something else, something rehearsed and deliberate that betrays nothing to the man paying her so well.

I continue to work through my Beatles songbook, practicing different ways of playing familiar songs; Hey Jude with a swing, Come Together in a bossa nova, Lady Madonna as an old-fashioned boogie-woogie... Not impartial to the idea of a tip from the legendary wealthy tycoon, I try to give a worthy performance. But after some time, they get up to leave, without saying a word. Of course, I am used to this. But my thirst for even just a fraction of the legendary tip makes me curious, and I begin to question why they have left with such a seemingly intentional lack of acknowledgement.

Then I realise the implications of the song I'm singing:

I don’t care too much for money
Money can’t buy me love...
Can’t buy me love
Everybody tells me so
Can’t buy me love
No, no, no!

I hadn't realised quite how inappropriate the song was. My systematic churning out of Beatles classics had simply led me to this one. But in a room full of couples who cared a great deal for money and were well aware that it would not buy them love, it was an unwise choice.


I notice that the girl I was talking to earlier has also left, the message of the song no doubt hitting her like a bombshell.

We never did have that drink. And, not surprisingly, I didn't get a penny in tips that night.