Once, the boyfriend of a girl named Chast.i.ty got busted buying pills, and she couldn't afford a lawyer. Amber wanted so badly to help that she made an offer: "I'll just dance for the lawyer. How about that?" After Amber walked out of the office, whatever had happened inside, Chast.i.ty's boyfriend had adequate legal representation.

Teresa's parties were getting bigger-so big that they upstaged the business. Where they'd once lasted all weekend, now they started earlier in the week until it seemed like every day offered a chance to cop. Teresa moved seamlessly from pot to acid to ecstasy, then c.o.ke, then crack, then heroin, then meth. She'd order enough for everyone, as if ordering pizza. The ecstasy parties always got a little mystical. Crystal thought ecstasy opened her third eye. Once Crystal was giving Teresa a ma.s.sage and started seeing a flash of light in Teresa's back, and then she started seeing visions of what seemed to be Teresa's life. Teresa went ballistic, screaming, "What the f.u.c.k!" After that, everyone wanted a reading.

Kim's first pull on a crack pipe happened at one of Teresa's parties. Teresa had been the first to try it, as usual. Then she kept taking June's c.o.ke and cooking it into crack, and June-the stuck-up one who used to say, "Crack, that's the poor people's drug"-eventually went all in. Then came Crystal and, finally, Kim, who fell in love. "I could work all the f.u.c.king time," she said. One gram would last Kim for two days. She could work an entire weekend without crashing. The only problem with crack was how miserable you got when you started to come down. All the girls experimented with Xanax and other pills, anything to help them sleep off the hollow feeling.

Whom Teresa liked best often depended on who did the drug she liked at the time. When she was into c.o.ke, she and Kim were best friends. When she moved on to crack, she and June were best friends. And when Teresa started on heroin, it was Amber's turn. Amber wanted only crack at first-like her sister-but heroin snuggled up to her and held her tight. It numbed her, zoned her out. She started when Teresa had made a new connection, a dealer who would go to New York and bring back pills. One day the dealer showed Teresa and Amber how to shoot up. Heroin brought the parties to another level. The dealer went into convulsions once, and they stuck a wallet between his teeth so he wouldn't bite off his tongue. When the dealer's girlfriend started OD'ing once, they had to do the same thing for her; for a little while, as they watched her shake, they considered dumping her at the ER and driving away.

By then the drugs had fully upset the familial atmosphere at Coed Confidential. Kim was scooping up whatever c.o.ke was floating around at the parties and selling it on the side. Crystal left Teresa altogether and started a rival agency called Sensual Pleasure, specializing in happy-ending ma.s.sages. And Amber was forced out by Teresa after too many complaints about her ripping off the johns-taking the payment and any drugs and just walking out.

With nowhere else to go, Amber worked a little for Crystal. One night she went by Crystal's place at the Governours Square Apartments, near Carolina Beach, and they smoked crack. Crystal performed a reading on Amber, looking into her past and seeing that she had been through something terrible. They talked about the rape and cried together. Crystal thought the drugs must have been to help ease the pain. She could relate: She didn't want to deal with the stuff flashing in her head all the time, either.

By dawn, the crack was gone, and they didn't have anything to help them come down. Amber started crying again. She wanted to go out and get more. Crystal said they should stay there. Amber kept crying, so Crystal held her like a baby. Then Crystal started praying for her, telling her it was going to be okay. "Have you ever prayed before?" she asked Amber.

"Yeah," Amber said. "I pray sometimes."

"Well, are you saved? Are you a Christian?"

"I think I am, but I don't know."

"Let's just be sure," Crystal said. She said the Sinner's prayer-Heavenly Father, I know that I have sinned against you and that my sins separate me from you. Amber repeated it after her and received Jesus Christ.

Amber stopped crying. She smiled a big smile and gazed upward, weeping gratefully, praising G.o.d, praising Jesus, praising and praising until her voice was a hollow whisper. Crystal sat and watched her, thinking how f.u.c.ked up it was, coming down off a crack high and praising the Lord.

II.

MARIE.

New Year's had come and gone, and so far, for Sara Karnes, 2007 had been a disaster. The telemarketing job had ended, as had the job at McDonald's. Things with her boyfriend were strained. They fought as much as they slept together, and they hadn't lived together since losing the hotel room. The only bright spot was Maureen.

Sara said she hadn't known what her new friend was really doing at the ma.s.sage appointments. Later on, she would chalk that up to gullibility. Even if she had suspected something, Sara might not have brought it up, for fear of ruining a good thing. Maureen was throwing Sara fifty dollars just for driving her to the appointments. Most of the time, she would dart back out in ten or fifteen minutes; if she stayed the full hour, Sara got a hundred. Being paid for sitting and waiting seemed like a good deal to Sara. Moreover, every time Maureen got in the car, she filled the gas tank.

It took a while for Sara to realize that life wasn't going that well for Maureen. The red tape of Maureen's life seemed exhausting: Sara got tired just watching Maureen juggle custody of two different kids with two different dads. Some days she had Aidan, other days Caitlin, other days both, other days neither. If she had the children and a ma.s.sage appointment, the kids went to Missy's, which sometimes prompted an uneasy negotiation. Despite the money she was making, Maureen's life seemed to be closing in on her. She and her roommate had been a month or two behind on rent for a while. By spring, they were being threatened with eviction. She was constantly worried about Steve calling social services and arguing that their boy should live with him. Maureen knew he was waiting for a reason to try.

Maureen couldn't find a regular job, and not for lack of trying. She had answered want ads for receptionist positions, for a job greeting shoppers at Walmart, but wasn't hired. Again and again, she turned to Sara and her car to make enough money to pay the rent. Their lives intertwined. Sara's boyfriend did some dealing, and Maureen became a customer, buying ecstasy and pot and sometimes c.o.ke to stay awake. He was good to Maureen at first, charging just forty dollars for a gram of c.o.ke and allowing her not to pay up front. Maureen would give him her food-stamp Electronic Benefits Transfer card as collateral. That arrangement worked only as long as Sara and her boyfriend were together. As winter turned to spring, Maureen accused him of trying to take extra money off of her EBT card while he waited for her to pay. Sara didn't believe Maureen at first, but he couldn't hide what he had done forever, and when Sara learned the truth, she left him.

That left Sara homeless for real this time. Maureen came to Sara's rescue again, inviting her to stay on the couch at the apartment in Norwich. She didn't charge Sara rent and even paid for all the groceries. Sara couldn't believe it, though she soon learned that being a friend of Maureen's meant being on the receiving end of an almost embarra.s.sing amount of generosity. Turning a blind eye to whatever financial pressures she was under, Maureen had taken in other friends, including a girl named Penny. When Sara started thinking that Penny might be using Maureen, she realized she couldn't talk, since she was freeloading, too.

They all needed money, not just Maureen. As summer approached, no great solution seemed to be presenting itself. Sara wasn't sure how much longer they all could stay together. It took until June for Sara to learn that Maureen had a plan. Both of their birthdays were coming up. Sara turned twenty-five on the eleventh, Maureen three days later. With whatever money she had made from appointments, Maureen booked a hotel room at Foxwoods and threw a party. The room overflowed with friends Maureen had made over the years at the casino. Sara got drunk, and not long before the sun came up, she and Maureen went back to the apartment. They were alone for the first time all night, and Sara noticed how Maureen's expression had changed. She seemed serious-completely sober.

"I need to talk to you. It's important."

"What?" said Sara.

"You like to have s.e.x. Why don't you get paid for it?"

Sara had always liked to think of herself as an operator-someone who could talk anyone into anything. Now she realized that Maureen was in a whole other league. She fell silent as Maureen explained that before Aidan was born, she'd been going to New York for a few days at a time, but only every now and then, when she needed the money. She wanted to start again, with Sara as her partner.

"Do you like it?" Sara asked.

Maureen told her it was fine. In New York, she was a different person.

Maureen had posted her first ads on the Eastern Connecticut/Adult Services page of Craigslist three years earlier, not long after she had showed her friend Jay DuBrule her photos. She had used her mother's name, Marie-a choice that she never explained to anyone who knew enough to ask. The replies had been instantaneous. She asked Jay if he'd come with her. He drove her to a few people's houses. She taught him the procedure: She goes in the house, and Jay calls her five minutes later; no answer means trouble. If she answers and says everything's fine, that means he paid her and she's good. "Then I'll be out within the hour," she said. And out she'd come, a hundred dollars richer.

The s.e.x itself she insisted she could handle, but the johns were too close for comfort. Many of them were men who lived in Groton and the surrounding towns-guys whom she easily might run into later at ShopRite or Cory's or Wendy's. And the money wasn't quite what she had hoped, or at least not as much as she knew she could make a short distance away, at the casinos. Though Mohegan Sun was out of the question-her mother still worked there-Foxwoods was wide open. Maureen waited until Caitlin wasn't visiting from Mystic and booked a few nights in a hotel room at the casino. Before her first outing, she taught Jay how to freshen her Craigslist ad, editing it every now and then while she was out so the ad would b.u.mp up to the top of the list. The casinos brought Maureen to a different cla.s.s of john-out-of-towners, from all over New England and New York and beyond, with more money and willingness to pay for what they wanted. They treated girls like entertainers, like professionals. This felt more like a business now, and Maureen preferred that. She met a few other girls, including one named Chrissy-a boy dressed as a girl, really. Missy later told friends that it was Chrissy who invited Maureen on her first trip to New York.

Manhattan was the ultimate moneymaker, Chrissy said-filled with tourists and businessmen and bored rich people. If she got a hotel room and posted an ad, she could make a thousand dollars or more every night. Maureen's initial trips there were brief, just a day and a night, with Chrissy at first and then alone. She asked Jay to drive her, but he declined. He had two jobs and custody of his daughter, and truth be told, he didn't feel quite as bold about going to New York as Maureen did. When she came back, Maureen had talked with all her friends in bright, breezy tones about her experiences. She spun it as an adventure: The men she met were all young and good-looking and nice to her. The hotel was luxurious. The city sparkled. She was exaggerating, but the money, at least, was real-piles of bills that she nonchalantly stacked high on her dresser. Some of her closest friends, as well as Missy, would say later that what Maureen was doing didn't satisfy her soul-that the spiritual, cosmically curious Maureen had nothing to do with this. But it wouldn't have been difficult for Maureen to be open to the possibilities. After so many years of depending on others, she could leave responsibilities at home and become another person for a while-all under the pretext of making money so she could be a responsible parent. And the attention: Seen the right way, the job was one where people were so eager to see her that they were willing to pay money. For the length of a call, she would be desired-a star, famous, loved, rich.

The logistics weren't ideal. She had to give Steve a story to explain her time away; since he hated talking to Maureen's family, she said she was staying with them. She managed to keep Will out of the loop, too-that was necessary; he was too volatile and protective to allow it-but not Missy. She needed her sister to know where she was; otherwise, she'd have nowhere for Caitlin to stay when she wasn't with her father in Mystic. By then the sisters' relationship had become tense. Although the trips to New York had upset Missy, there were limits to what she could tell her older sister to do and not do. She was too afraid of alienating Maureen to talk about it. Caitlin was old enough to overhear Maureen making her plans. When she was within earshot, Maureen called them "modeling trips." Around Jay, Maureen was less discreet. The work demanded something other than romance-something sharp-edged and practical. When she talked about the work with Jay-managing Craigslist postings, fielding phone calls, meeting strangers-he thought for the first time that his friend was more than whimsical and mystical and lighthearted. She was tough. Not that she would fight, but that she would never let anything get to her. To do what she did, and in New York, of all places, took a certain fearlessness.

There also were hidden costs-anxieties that Maureen couldn't tamp down. On July 5, 2004, the year she started traveling to New York, Maureen had another premonition, which she dutifully recorded on her Mys.p.a.ce page: Having serial killer dreams again . . . Love is hemorrhaging in my head, fading away with every beat. Maybe all it takes to keep alive is smoking it to death.

For Maureen, the money also promised freedom from Steve. But when she became pregnant with her second child, a boy named Aidan, she and Steve grew closer. Maureen had used condoms as an escort; there was never any doubt in her mind that Aidan was Steve's child. Steve wanted the baby, and part of Maureen did, too-another baby to care for, now that Caitlin was growing up and living mostly with her father.

The pregnancy brought the New York trips to a halt, and when Aidan was born, in 2005, Steve was a devoted father. Maureen went searching for work, never keeping a job for long. It took a year for the relationship to fall apart, and for Maureen to go off on her own with Aidan. By then, Steve was paying all the bills, and Maureen had next to nothing of her own. When the telemarketing job at Atlantic Security didn't pay enough, the ma.s.sage appointments began.

Now, with Sara as her new protegee, Maureen was ready to go back to New York. The city presented the solution to everything all at once. The money would help Maureen support both Caitlin and Aidan, prevent her eviction and keep a roof over her head, and maybe even liberate her from Steve once and for all.

They hadn't even left for New York yet, and Maureen had become a different person-all business. "I'm gonna hook you up with Vips," she told Sara. He was her guy in New York, the one who could almost guarantee a successful and profitable trip to the city.

While Craigslist was still free-the website wouldn't start charging five dollars per Adult Services listing until 2008-Vips, or Vipple, had a JavaScript program that would keep posting and reposting your ad so it stayed at the top of the list, never getting lost in the shuffle. Vips charged a flat fee of $150 a day for his services, and he spent a good chunk of his spare time trolling modeling websites to offer his services to girls thinking of getting into the game. That, Maureen said, was how she met Vips. From the start, she had built Vips's fee in to her overhead, along with a hotel room. Even with those expenses, Maureen told Sara that if she did anywhere from five to seven calls a day, she could walk away with one to two thousand dollars for every day she worked.

Sara called Vips from Groton. He had an Indian English accent. He told Sara he wanted to meet her. She and Maureen were talking about going down to the city that weekend anyway. They left the next day, taking the train instead of Sara's car. Maureen said Manhattan parking-garage fees would be an added expense-sixty dollars a day to park was money they could be spending on cabs for outcalls.

Maureen was seasoned enough to have developed some rules. She started sharing them with Sara on the Amtrak ride into the city. Rule number one was always follow your instincts: If it doesn't feel right, don't do it. Maureen said some of the johns were cool, but some of them were s.h.i.tty. No amount of money can save your life. Rule number two was to view all outcalls suspiciously, but if she ever agreed to one, stay in Manhattan. Don't go to Queens. Don't go to Brooklyn, even if it's just over the bridge in Williamsburg. Staten Island, no. The Bronx, no. Only some parts of Manhattan were allowed. Unless it was a regular call, Morningside Heights was a no, as were Washington Heights, Harlem, and Alphabet City. Sara spent a lot of those first days with a city map in front of her.

The Maureen issuing all these directives was different from the carefree girl Sara had met six months earlier at the telemarketing company. This new sense of seriousness seemed to Sara like an unintended consequence of the escort life. Maureen would explain that, too: You got onto Craigslist to make more money than you could ever make at a real job, but sooner or later even that started to feel like a grind.

The first order of business in Manhattan was to meet Vips and see about getting Sara onto Craigslist. They left Penn Station and checked in to a hotel on West Thirty-seventh Street, a few blocks away. Maureen, who had posted on Craigslist already, told Sara she had a call. They walked a few blocks to the Marriott Marquis in Times Square and got in one of the gla.s.s elevators. Before the doors closed, in walked an Indian guy with a port-wine birthmark that covered a good part of his face. As the elevator glided upward, soaring over the hotel lobby, Maureen introduced Sara to Vips.

The view from up high in the Marriott elevator left Sara spellbound. When it came to a stop, Maureen got off but told Sara to head back down. "Just go with Vips," she said. "I'll call you when I get out."

The two went down and walked around Times Square while Maureen worked. Sara learned a little bit about Vips-that he was indeed from India, and while he wasn't technically a pimp, it was something to which he aspired.

With Sara, Vips kept things light. "Look, there's Samuel L. Jackson!" he said, pointing, and Sara, distracted by her first time walking past Madame Tussauds, just nodded. On their second time around the block, she realized he'd been pointing to a statue.

"Ha!" Vips said. "I got you!"

Sara laughed. "Can we go in there?"

"No," he said. "It's mad expensive."

Vips agreed to post Sara's ads for the usual fee. Later on, through Maureen, Sara met a few of Vips's a.s.sociates. There was Tony, a producer of p.o.r.n movies who worked out of the Film Center Building on Eighth Avenue, and there was Al, a big Italian guy who made noises about being connected but seemed to work mainly as an a.s.sociate of Tony's-a "modeling agent" for adult films. Vips was the low man on the totem pole-an Internet troll, a wannabe pimp and p.o.r.n producer-but he was the only one Maureen seemed to know well. Tony and Al were guys Maureen had been hoping to get to know better, guys who might help her stop doing this one day. She had told her friend Jay DuBrule that p.o.r.n was legal and safer and easier than what she was doing; it resembled a legitimate entertainment career and was one step closer to the life she dreamed about.

Sara was heavier than Maureen, but she was a definite type-busty and sultry, like Anna Nicole Smith or Jessica Simpson. In need of a working alias, she chose Monroe, a nod to Marilyn. Vips had set up Sara's ad using someone else's picture. Sara was appalled when she saw it. The girl looked older, with the same blond hair, but fatter, with her leg propped up all the way in the air near her shoulder. Sara couldn't believe how little the picture looked like her, though later on she felt like that got her more tips-guys saying, "Oh, you're so much prettier in person!"

Next, Sara learned Maureen's rules for security. The person who comes with you-and someone always has to come with you (another important rule)-doesn't have to stay in the room during the call; too many guys check closets and bathrooms for lookouts. But the chaperone does have to stay on the block. If there's a restaurant across the street, the chaperone sits and takes a load off for an hour. The escort phones or texts when inside to say all's well. The calls were all business for Maureen. If a john paid for an hour and he finished in five minutes, Maureen was done, too.

As a trial run, Maureen set Sara up with a regular of hers named Patrick. He was Asian and young, about Sara's age, and he lived in a pretty apartment not far from the old Studio 54, which blew Sara's mind. His place was nice, but when he said he was paying a thousand or two a month for the one-bedroom, Sara's jaw dropped. "It's location that you pay for," Patrick told her. They spent the better part of the afternoon together. He'd brought c.o.ke, and now he had "c.o.ke d.i.c.k," so he took a long time to perform. Sara got into it. She was fine with giving head under regular circ.u.mstances and didn't see any reason not to like it now.

Five and a half hours pa.s.sed before Maureen burst in, furious. "We're leaving! Now!" Patrick gave them all the cash he had and wrote a check for the rest made out to cash. Maureen said that they normally couldn't take checks because johns could cancel them (another rule), but Patrick was a regular and a friend. On the way out, Maureen snapped at Sara, "I couldn't do all these calls, because you were too f.u.c.king busy."

The whole train ride home, Maureen was angry, and not just about Patrick. That weekend, nearly all the calls had been for Sara-not for Marie, but for Monroe. Maureen was a little jealous but mostly indignant. She felt like she had absorbed a financial loss for introducing Sara to the profession. Toward the end of the ride, Maureen asked for a 20 percent commission of everything Sara had earned that weekend.

Sara flipped out. "f.u.c.k that!"

"Well, I introduced you to Vips," Maureen said.

"You shouldn't have taught me how to post, then! I can break off from you right now, and you can't say s.h.i.t to me! I'm not giving you s.h.i.t!"

Maureen dropped it. But Sara, fully empowered, went back to New York the following weekend. She brought a friend with her, a guy named Matt, as a chaperone. Vips, noticing that Maureen wasn't with her, took the liberty of squeezing her for more money, raising his rate to $250. Sara decided to post her ads herself. To avoid Vips, she changed her Craigslist name from Monroe to Lacey. She switched hotels, too, to the Super 8 on Forty-sixth Street.

The following week, Friday, July 6, 2007, Maureen was back in town. All was forgiven. Sara and Maureen were friends again.

Keeping New York Plan B and not Plan A was another one of Maureen's rules. "You don't want to make it a full-time job," she said. Maureen had told Sara that she'd worked as an escort practically full-time before she got pregnant with Aidan. That was when she learned that you needed the break. Otherwise, the s.e.x could make you jaded. Ninety percent of her clients were married. Some of them didn't take off their rings. The calls could feel like an a.s.sembly line to Maureen-like work. That was the worst. That was why Maureen's demeanor changed in New York. She was on guard.

But Sara was still infatuated. Everything about the work was fun for her-the s.e.x, New York, and especially the money. While Maureen was gone, Sara made twelve hundred dollars over just a few days-more money than she had ever made in such a short time-and she held the bills in the air and told Matt, "See? Take a picture." Then she saw the look on his face, his eyes blazing, and Sara felt something shift-in him and in her-that she liked. "I'm never coming back to Connecticut!" she said.

By now, she knew almost as much as Maureen did. In her weeks at the Super 8, working independently of Maureen, she had seen a lot of ethnic men with heavy accents-straight off the boat, it seemed to her; Asians and Middle Eastern men-waving lots of money around. They came in seconds. Hiring an escort was less about s.e.x, she thought, than the chance to show some power. She also saw three police officers, all of whom swore they were off-duty, and to whom Sara refused service as politely as she could. (That was yet another Maureen rule: Always ask if they're cops. They can't lie, because that would be entrapment.) The problem was that the money never lasted. After weeks in the city doing calls, Sara had held on to practically none of what she'd made. It went to hotel bills, shoes, and clothes. It went to makeup from Sephora, including twenty-three dollars for what turned out to be, essentially, ChapStick. It went to Sara's new prized possession-a $160 fitted Yankees cap from Lids in Times Square, decorated with sterling silver and cubic zirconium.

When Sara and Matt went to meet Maureen at Penn Station, they saw that she had brought a chaperone: Brett, her roommate. While Brett was friends with Maureen's ex, Steve, he had a vested interest in Maureen making money. In just a few days, they were due to appear in eviction court-on Tuesday, July 10. Maureen knew if she couldn't pay their back rent and the eviction went through, Steve would make a play for custody of Aidan. That weekend Maureen had come to New York on a mission. She needed eleven hundred dollars or she would lose her home and her son.

Sara and Maureen tried posting together, without the a.s.sistance of Vips, on Matt's laptop-two girls, snow buddies, which meant they did c.o.ke. From the start, they ran into a problem. Almost as soon as they posted the ads, they were flagged as "offensive content" and pulled from the site. They tried it once more, and the same thing happened again and again. Someone had to be monitoring the Adult Services page and flagging the ads. Clearly, Vips was being vindictive.

All through Friday night, Maureen and Sara couldn't make a dime. They hung out in one of the hotel rooms and smoked a blunt and started talking about what Maureen might do if she did get kicked out of her apartment in Norwich. Maybe fate was telling her to stay in New York. With nothing better to do, they fantasized about a whole summer in the city as business partners, doing incalls and outcalls from their own apartment. Maureen surfed a different corner of Craigslist, responding to an ad for a sublet on the Upper West Side. The rate was $749 a week, a bargain compared to the Super 8. Maureen smiled dreamily just talking about it. Sara felt she saw her friend coming back-the real, warm Maureen shining through.

Vips must have grown bored flagging the ads. They got a few calls the next day, so they didn't really see each other. They worked Sunday, too. But later that day, their ads were getting booted again. They'd made just $700. Maureen was $400 short. There was nothing left to do but have some fun. They decided they needed new pictures for their ads. Sara needed a fresh look to go with her new name, and Maureen hadn't changed her photo in three years. The occasion called for a full makeover. Sara got her nails done and her eyebrows waxed. She went back to Sephora and spent two hundred dollars in an hour, buying all kinds of colors that would look good with her eyes, plus glitter. Sara also sprang for outfits. Maureen came with her to Macy's, on Thirty-fourth Street, and all Sara could think as they walked in and went up the narrow wooden escalators was Oh my G.o.d, I'm in Mecca. When she saw the women's shoe department, Sara practically collapsed.

For decent photography, Maureen called a friend she'd made in the city, a graffiti artist of some renown. When they arrived at his place, Maureen and Sara told him they wanted him to do their makeup, too. Maureen had her face done up as an old Hollywood glamour queen, and Sara had hers done all crazy, with green, blue, and purple eye shadow and some sparkles. Their hair was done to match, sprayed in place to fend off the smallest imperfections. He took Sara's photos first, then Maureen's. They hung out there for a while and then walked back to their hotel through Times Square, the city lit up on a hot summer night. They had on jeans and T-shirts, but from the neck up, they were impossible to ignore. Random guys in the street were hitting on them both. Sara's original makeup design got a lot of attention. "Is that a tattoo on your face?" someone asked. Sara snorted. "No, it's not a tattoo-it sparkles."

The longer they stayed out on Broadway, the more exhilarated they felt. Sara imagined they were supermodels, or princesses, or G.o.ddesses. She felt like nothing and no one could touch them. Maureen seemed happy, too-lighter, for once. Of all the moments Sara shared with Maureen, this was the one she would revisit the most-spending all night walking through Times Square, the center of attention, not a care in the world, the rest of the summer laid out just for them. For years afterward, she wouldn't remember a happier time in her life.

Back at the hotel, they saw that they weren't the only call girls staying there. Standing outside smoking a cigarette, they met a guy with dreads. "Are you guys working?" he asked. "Where's your pimp?"

Sara sneered. "We don't have one," she said. "We aren't owned. We're each other's."

Midtown Manhattan. July 9, 2007.

Monday morning arrived sooner than they'd hoped. The plan had been for them to go back to Connecticut-Sara to see a friend, Maureen to face the music in eviction court. But they were still thinking of changing the plan and staying another day. It was only Monday; an extra night would give Maureen more time to make the money she needed. Maybe she could wire it to Brett in time for court on Tuesday. She had heard back about the Upper West Side sublet and had made an appointment to see it the next day, a.s.suming they were in town.

Sara went up to the sixth floor to tell their chaperones to head back without them. Brett couldn't believe it, and neither could Matt. As the three of them argued, Matt was especially persuasive-he simply didn't want to leave them alone. It wasn't safe. Sara saw the look of concern on his face and went back down to the fourth floor.

Maureen was lying in bed, the TV on, the curtains drawn. They both had been up all night, and Maureen was finally crashing. She looked up at Sara. "Where's your stuff?"

"Matt doesn't want us to stay," Sara said. "I'm going back. You need to come back, too."

Maureen shook her head. "I'll just stay here in the hotel room."

Their roles had reversed. Sara was the responsible one now. She'd feel guilty about going back alone.

"Please stay," Maureen said. "Please."

Sara went back up to Matt's room on the sixth floor. "I'm gonna stay. We're just gonna stay in the hotel room."

Matt flipped out. He wanted Sara to come with him, with or without Maureen. Sara pushed back. "I'm not your girl," she said.

Matt softened. "Yes, I know," he said. "You're my friend. And as a friend, I'm telling you I do not like that idea."

Sara thought of Maureen's first little rule: Always follow your instincts. If it doesn't feel right, don't do it. She went back to Maureen. "Look, man, I'm not trying to have this argument. Get your s.h.i.t, and let's go."

Maureen didn't move. "No," she said, "I'm just gonna stay here. I'll wait for you." She looked at Sara and tilted her head. "You are coming back on Wednesday, right?"

Sara said yes.

Maureen smiled and stretched out. "I'll keep the room for us."

CHLOE.

The girls grab at the arms or shoulders first. It's best to start by touching them. They've spent all night at a strip club, where the women can't go too far.

Hey, sweetie, what's your name? Where are you from?

They answer: Oh, I'm just visiting . . . This is my vacation . . . I just came here on business. They're almost always from out of town.

Really? Yeah? Would you like a nice ma.s.sage-a nice back ma.s.sage? Hot towels? Lotion?

Sometimes they're interested. Sometimes they're disgusted. Sometimes they smile. Some guys play along smugly: "Oh, but why do I have to pay when I can give you the best night of your life?" Melissa and Kritzia would look at them and be like, Oh, please, f.u.c.k you.

But some guys get excited. That's when you say you'll give them a b.l.o.w. .j.o.b. Then you touch them again. Then you make the deal.

Kritzia Lugo was small and round, with lush lips and big eyes and a gift for gab. In Times Square, she was known as Mariah, a salute to her idol, Mariah Carey. Melissa Barthelemy was known as Chloe. Friday and Sat.u.r.day nights were slow, too many families clogging up the sidewalks. But almost every other night, Melissa and Kritzia would hang outside Lace, the strip club on Seventh Avenue north of Forty-eighth Street-Melissa with a cigarette and Kritzia with some weed; their pimps, Blaze and Mel, standing a safe distance away, across the street or around the corner-waiting for men to come out.

Their workday began long after the Broadway theaters went dark, just as the few strip clubs left in Times Square were getting ready to close. In the new New York-after mayors Rudy Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg helped make over the p.o.r.n palaces into a family-friendly tourist hub, as safe and secure, almost, as a theme park-the escorts and their pimps have to be discreet. The girls dress a little more modestly. They're a little quieter. They walk longer lengths up and down the block so that, technically, they can't be accused of loitering. The pimps are still there, but at a remove, able to watch the girls work and to bolt if need be.

Times Square at three A.M. is a complicated place: volatile and dangerous but also, in its way, like any other workplace, with protocols and procedures, a social hierarchy, and intra-staff dramas. The McDonald's on Broadway, south of Forty-seventh, was like the company commissary. Melissa knew that many of the drunkest guys stumbling out of the strip clubs ended up there. Even some of the homeless guys were part of the social hierarchy, rounding up guys and bringing them to the girls in exchange for a finder's fee. Melissa and Kritzia would throw them a big tip so they would come back. Around the corner, on Forty-seventh between Sixth and Seventh, was the break room: a tiny open-air public plaza with a few metal tables and chairs and some slate decor. The girls called it the Batcave. One time Melissa braided Kritzia's hair while they sat there talking, helping her tighten her extensions and curl them at the bottom with a curling iron. She often boasted about her beauty-school training, like a physician boasting about medical school, and then she'd laugh and threaten to cover Kritzia's head with bald spots, chasing her around the Batcave with the curling iron.

When she first saw Melissa in Times Square sometime in 2006, Kritzia didn't talk to her. This skinny white girl, always laughing at something. What's so funny to you? Kritzia thought. But when Kritzia stared her down, Melissa gave as well as she got. That broke the spell, and they became close friends, sharing the same irreverence and att.i.tude. Then Kritzia saw the risks Melissa took-she'd go with anyone who would rent a room-and she thought that Melissa wasn't built to last, not even a year.

Melissa proved her wrong. She was in New York for three years, until 2009. When Kritzia heard about her family in Buffalo, ready and waiting to take her home, she would wonder why she was here at all. Melissa would say only, "I'm here because I want to be here." In those moments, Kritzia thought maybe she and Melissa weren't such kindred spirits. She figured Melissa had been this wild since she was a little girl, and when she got that taste of something else, she wanted more.

Where you worked in Manhattan depended on how you looked. The fast-track girls-the ones on Ninth Avenue or the West Side Highway, waiting for guys to pull over-were usually the hard-luck cases, strung out and ragged. The girls who ran around Times Square were average, like Melissa and Kritzia. Prettier ones-tall, skinny girls-had better luck on the East Side. Within each of those worlds, there was a pecking order: The girls with pimps hated the girls who worked for escort services; the girls who worked for escort services couldn't stand the girls who worked solo on Craigslist. If you had a pimp, your money wasn't your own, but you had protection. If you were with a service, you were often working harder than a lot of hos who had pimps, and you were making a lot less. Strippers were at the bottom, mere geishas, catering to the vanity of any man who walked through the door, and the men are not permitted to touch. The streetwalkers like Melissa and Kritzia played such games for only the briefest of moments, as long as it took to get a client to say yes. They had s.e.x as soon as they could and as fast as they could, and they moved on. It always annoyed them that the strippers had the more dishonest job-they were the biggest teases-and yet were the ones on the right side of the law.

From Kritzia and some of the others, Melissa had learned the parameters of the stroll. You couldn't look at other pimps. You couldn't talk to other pimps. When there was a pimp on the sidewalk, you had to walk in the street; if you stayed on the sidewalk, they could touch you. If they touched you, that meant you were out of pocket, and if you were out of pocket, the code dictated that they could take your money.

You weren't supposed to talk with other pimps' girls, which was obviously a rule they broke every day. It was insubordination, pure and simple, but Melissa had nerve. She had swag. The big entertainment of the evening sometimes was waiting to see what nasty things came out of that little white girl's mouth. She would make fun of strippers: Dance, dance, dance, dance all night long, for next to no money; who would waste their time like that? She would even make fun of her pimp. Like the time she said, "I don't give Blaze all my money, I keep my money," and pulled out her credit card to show them all. Blaze thought he controlled Melissa, but for as long as she could remember, Melissa answered to no one but herself.

When Melissa would come home to Buffalo for a visit-not often, but never less than once a year-she and her mother, Lynn, Lynn's boyfriend, Jeff, and her aunt Dawn would all go out to a club or a corner bar where they could talk and drink. When the bar closed, they'd come back to Jeff's parents' house, where Melissa would sit up on the kitchen counter and keep talking. There was none of the old friction. Melissa was a grown woman, making her own decisions.

They would laugh about old times, and whenever her current situation came up, Melissa would be guarded about how things were in the city. Jeff thought that she wasn't making as much money as she wanted to-not enough to afford to start a business, not nearly. That didn't stop her from coming back with gifts: She sent Amanda five hundred dollars to shop for new clothes for school when all she needed was a hundred. Several months after moving, Melissa told Lynn and Jeff that the hair salon had closed. Now, she said, she was dancing in a nightclub. They struggled with how to react. No one they knew in Buffalo had ever done anything like that.