Adventures of the Artificial Woman by Thomas Berger Page A

suspense. Just remember it’s all over once they come, so it’s the reverse of what a hooker does, who gets a guy off as soon as possible, because she’s already collected all the money she’s likely to get.” He frowned and asked, “Why’s somebody looks like you want to work a phone? You ain’t gonna make anywhere near what you could get selling tail.” He immediately answered his own question. “Well, you got your reasons.”
    Phyllis had already learned that if you didn’t volunteer information about yourself, you probably wouldn’t be asked by people in the sex industry. Larry said he paid a girl ten percent of what a caller was charged, which averaged out at around fifty dollars per five minutes, and you could talk a good fifty minutes out of every hour. You could take a break occasionally, go to the toilet or drink something if your throat got dry. You could stay on shift as long as you wanted, but most of his employees did only the four-hour minimum, because they had families to get home to, and anyway there weren’t many who could talk continuously—or in fact listen—much longer than that at one stretch.
    The job sounded ideal to Phyllis, who, as long as her batteries were charged, needed no breaks whatsoever and, having no other life, could work interminably. Though perhaps not exactly show business, it was a close relative, calling as it did for acting at least with the voice.
    The phone-sex shop consisted of a half-dozen shallow cubicles of unpainted plywood, each furnished with a little table that held a telephone, a stopwatch, and a bottle of water. At every table but one sat a “hostess” wearing a headset, and as Larry led Phyllis to the unoccupied booth, all of them were speaking into their respective mouthpieces. Two, spotting her out of the corners of their eyes, waved amiably.
    All these women appeared to be of another kind than either the streetwalkers or the strippers, being overweight with irregular features and dressed for comfort and not for the enticement of men. By what seemed to be human standards, none could be considered young, though Phyllis had no training and little experience in assessing age numerically and was herself, so far as that went, less than a year old.
    When a call came in, the customer was first greeted automatically by an introductory message on audio tape announcing, quickly and not at all clearly, the fees for which he would be responsible if he stayed on the line after the introduction was concluded and he had stated his credit-card number and expiration date. He was then transferred to whichever woman whose line was open. If all the phones were in use, he was put on hold, for which time he was assured he would not be charged, but this was one of the several lies that Larry usually got away with. Few callers actually timed themselves precisely, and the waits were not often very long, for contrary to Larry’s projection, business was not always so brisk that one could earn the fifty dollars per hour of his estimate.
    There were periods in which as few as two lines were in use. After her first three hours, Phyllis estimated her take at only forty dollars, at a rate of $13.33 per hour.
    At off times, the idle women by turns visited the restroom. Having no reason to do so, Phyllis did not go there until her nearest neighbor praised her endurance.
    â€œIf I could hold it, I sure would. The last time that place was cleaned will be the first,” said the woman, whose name was May Bellaver. May had been married for twenty-three years to a man who drove a machine called a backloader for some county department. She had borne three children, of whom the oldest was a college dropout who played guitar in a band that rarely found gigs; the youngest, a girl who had just got her period; and in between a male child of fifteen whom she suspected of computer hacking, though it was too complicated for her to figure