Beatrice

Beatrice treats an evening like a long table: nothing rushed, nothing skipped, everything in its course, and the second hour better than the first.

Fashion taught her the value of appearances and Amsterdam taught her the value of dropping them, and Beatrice works the seam between the two. She favours the erotic oil session above the rest of her list, built in courses like a dinner: substance first, sweetness later, no clock on the table. Oud-Zuid is her quarter, wide streets, tall windows, the museum district's after-hours hush, and she moves through its grand hotels as if she had always been expected. Her Italian is for emphasis, her English for everything else, and her weight in a stroke is heavier than her frame admits. At twenty-six she has stopped auditioning and it shows.

Beatrice decides which bookings she takes and may decline any of them; she sets the limits for what a session includes, says what they are, and may end a visit at any point, as the terms set out.