a cause. We have to get people to recognize it as a job. That’s a cause.”
“Each to her own,” I said as Allie handed me a towel. “As long as I know it’s a job, I don’t care what people think.”
And the less people are thinking about my job, the better!
“Tell Roxana to forget she ever met me and to stop talking about me. Did she bring this up at one of your meetings? I don’t want all those NYCOT members to have me on their radar,” I added.
“Don’t worry!” Allie said in a tense voice. “Roxana doesn’t have your number. Or your e-mail.”
“She’d better not.”
In the living room, a pot of ginger tea was brewing and Allison had organized a plate of odd-looking munchies.
“No cookies,” I insisted. “I’m trying to lose six pounds.”
Allison was wearing just her camisole and panties again—with a pair of huge white terry cloth slippers that no client has ever seen.
“Try these! They’re made with soya protein and sugar alcohols. I made them myself! From a recipe on the low-carb vegan site.”
They were like dried sweetened glue.
“Very nice,” I said, midnibble. I washed the cookie down with some ginger tea. “And they’re so filling,” I said strategically.
“Now,” she said, counting our money out. “I have to explain. We aren’t asking you to come to any NYCOT meetings. Roxana knows you can’t come to meetings.”
“Good. But I don’t want her to know why. I want you to promise you won’t discuss my marriage with her.”
Allie looked hurt. “I already promised. Why don’t you trust me?”
“Of course I trust you!” I lied. “I’m just reminding you.”
Bits of soya cookie were lodged in my molars. It was maddening.
“We want you to help us find a lawyer,” she told me. “Roxana—”
“After all these years of running a hookers’ union, Roxana doesn’t have her own lawyer?”
“Her contacts are with Legal Aid. And there’s Reverend Moody at Judson Church—he knows a few people at the Urban Justice Center. But this is different. And it might cost money.”
“I can donate. Anonymously.”
“That’s not it. I have to find a lawyer who can help me get a visa.”
Uh-oh. What is Allie getting into now? She was standing near the window, bent over the computer station. Her camisole slid north and a patch of smooth, fat-free midriff peeked out above her panties.
“Noi is going to be the keynote speaker at the Colloquium on Informal Economies. She’s the Bangkok coordinator of Bad Girls Without Borders.” Allie fiddled with her trackball on a mouse pad that proclaimed safe sex slut in white block letters. “We need a visa so she can attend the conference and we need to find a place for her to stay. If she really has to, she can stay here. But she needs a lawyer. The Legal Aid people can’t help because she’s in Bangkok. They don’t do visas…and this is the BGWB website!”
Against a pistachio-colored background, a series of magenta greetings—Hola…Bonjour…$awadee Kha—wiggled slowly across the screen. When Allie clicked on the dollar sign, hot pink condoms tumbled forth, followed by a montage of dancing girls with long black hair and light brown skin in bikinis and heels. In another picture, a banner was held high on a crowded street: entertainment workers sans frontieres. I could see two slim black-haired girls in sunglasses, T-shirts, and jeans carrying the banner.
“That’s Noi at the International Women’s Day march. And her friend Ying. The bar girls had their own banner!” she explained. “They have a branch in Phuket. And a sister group in Cambodia. But anyway, Noi lives in Bangkok. And I need to find a lawyer who can help her apply for a visa.”
“Can’t Lucho help?”
Allie blushed.
“I can’t ask Lucho.”
“But he must know somebody. These exotic college professors deal with visas and forms all the time.”
“Maybe, but”—Allie’s voice was getting a little squeaky, she looked away from me—“he nominated me for the Colloquium Committee because he thinks I can locate a lawyer. He thinks NYCOT has more resources than we really do and he…he sort of thinks I’ve done this before. When the girls from Ecuador came to that conference in Berkeley.”
“You lied to him? About your activist credentials?”
“No.” Allie looked down at her Safe Sex mouse pad. She tugged nervously on a strand of her long blond hair. “I just—when I realized what he was thinking, I didn’t, you know, say anything different.”
“Allie, it’s good to let a guy think what he needs to think but you’re taking it to extremes. Why don’t you let him help you? Instead of acting so accomplished, let him be the rescuer! Guys love that!”
“It’s too late! And if I did that, I wouldn’t be on all these committees and panels! I’d just be—I want to be on the Colloquium Committee. I don’t want him to save me or have to do things for me. Or feel sorry for me! I’m an activist now and I think Lucho and I could be a power couple. But I have to get more, you know, successful at my activism.”
“A power couple?”
“I told him I would raise the money for Noi’s legal fees and he thinks I’m already interviewing lawyers.”
“How much do you need? I can afford—”
“I want you to help me find a lawyer. What about Jason? Your brother-in-law? He’s a lawyer.”
Allison’s passive-aggressive idealism tries my patience. Is she out of her mind?
“We cannot go there,” I said. “And you know it.”
As I glared at her, she bit her lip, averting her eyes.
“You could say you have a friend from Thailand who—”
“There’s no way! I don’t want my in-laws to start wondering how I know someone who’s in this business.”
“But this isn’t business. It’s about social justice. And it’s my chance to make a difference. For a Bangkok bar girl to be a keynote speaker at an Ivy League school? Do you realize how huge this is?”
Allie was staring at a close-up of Noi. Then she clicked on something and brought up a street scene: working girls in long colorful saris, carrying yellow placards. Three dark brown girls in their twenties appeared to be dancing in the street, in front of a purple banner. The letters, in gold, were in a language I don’t recognize.
“These
