Memoirs of a rich bitch – Richard Berkley

Notice: This is an excerpt from a fictional novel in progress that is being developed exclusively for richbitchitch.com. This work is copyrighted. You may not reprint without permission.

When Richard Berkley first came to the brownstone it was I who answered the door. Madame Sheila had been in with a client negotiating over my virginity which I personally thought she was never going to get an offer for in the price range she was demanding. Not that I did not consider myself as special as Madame Sheila apparently believed I was; but the idea that any man would pay even five thousand dollars for something he could get from a street girl for a few dollars seemed completely incomprehensible to me; but then, at the time, I did not understand the mentality of the kind of men who patronized Madame Sheila’s establishment.

Richard Berkley paid his first visit about three weeks after the Charles Kennedy incident had erupted. Things had quieted down around the brownstone. New developments in the Kennedy case had taken the spotlight off Madame Sheila, shining it instead on a famous fashion model. Jada Kimberly, Madame Sheila’s girl who had been a suspect was no longer under suspicion, and with a famous fashion model as the primary suspect in the killing of a well-known New York politician, Madame Sheila and her brothel were soon forgotten by the media, leaving Madame Sheila free to resume the fun business of trying to command a six-figure offer for my virginity.

When the doorbell rang that afternoon I was in the piano room practicing with Lulu, one of Madame Sheila’s best girls. Lulu was very talented at the piano and was teaching me to play. She was a pretty, bi-racial girl whom Madame Sheila had rescued from the streets when she was seventeen. It was to her that Madame Sheila had assigned me for my observation sessions mainly because Lulu was going to be leaving in pursuit of a music career and Madame Sheila intended that whichever of Lulu’s three regulars would offer to pay what she was asking for me would become my first customer. The fact that Lulu was exceptionally skilled at her bedroom craft was the other reason Madame Sheila made me participate in some of her sessions. She wanted me to learn from watching Lulu, to see why LuLu’s men kept coming back for more. I never interacted with LuLu’s customers. Lulu would play with me to arouse them; but Madame Sheila had given strict orders that the customer was never to be allowed to touch me, though he must be made to want to touch me. Lulu was incredible the way she controlled everything and it was easy to see how she had managed to earn enough money in her four years with Madame Sheila to be able to leave and go pursue her dreams. Madame Sheila had made over four million dollars off of LuLu, and Lulu was going to be moving out with 1.5 million in the bank.

But getting back to Richard Berkley, Lulu heard the doorbell and told me to go answer it. I went to answer the door and found an older white-haired gentleman standing outside. I immediately thought he looked like the guy from the Titanic movie. The actor who played the role of the ship builder who decided to go down with the ship. It wasn’t him of course. He just had a very similar look.

“Can I help you?” I asked, noticing that he was looking at me as if he knew me.

“Hello,” he said.

“Hello,” I said and smiled because Madame Sheila always insisted upon being gracious and charming, kind of like Granny B used to only for a different reason. To Madame Sheila every rich man was a potential customer and any rich man who came ringing the door bell was to be handled gracefully but artfully so that in the event he was not there seeking to patronize the establishment, he was to leave never suspecting he had just been inside a brothel. Even the way we dressed around the house would give no hint as to what went on at the Sheila Davis House in lower Manhattan.

That afternoon I was wearing a gray Pencil skirt with a white long-sleeve flounce shirt and black ankle strap sandals.  My hair was all pulled back in a little bun which was the way I generally wore it. I suppose to most people I was more than a little bit attractive, but being attractive was never something I ever worried about personally. Granny B used to tell me being pretty wasn’t necessarily a good thing.

“Men will want you because you have a pretty face and a nice figure,” she told me. “But don’t be flattered by people telling you how beautiful you are. It’s never a good thing to be valued for your beauty.”

Besides, when you grow up hearing people say things like, “You have such a pretty face…such a lovely figure. It’s a pity you’re so dark-skinned,” you sort of process that to mean that something is wrong with being dark skinned; so you regard this pretty face and lovely figure they talk about as something that’s negated by your dark skin and you don’t exactly come away feel so much fortunate to have a pretty face and a lovely figure as unfortunate to be dark. Even so, I never really worried too much about any of it. It was what it was.

As I stood looking up at him, I asked Richard Berkley again what I could do to help him.

“I’m not quite sure to be honest,” he answered. “I am here to see  you.”

Naturally I was surprised by that.

“Me?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said. “You’re Joy Reynolds am I right?”

“Yes,” I said tentatively. “And you are?”

“Richard Berkley,” he said. “An old friend of your grandmother’s.”

Of course I recognized his name. Granny B had never talked about him nearly as much as she had talked about his wife, but she had spoken about him often enough, always calling him a nice man and saying he was too good for his wife Francis. But what would he be doing at Madame Sheila’s? Why would he come here to see me? How did he know me?

“I saw you on the news,” he said as if reading my mind. “You talked about Beatrice Reynolds. You said your name was Joy Reynolds. I knew a Beatrice Reynolds from Brooklyn with a granddaughter named Joy. My Beatrice was murdered the way your Beatrice was murdered. I figured you must be my Beatrice’s Joy.”

Notice: This is an excerpt from a fictional novel in progress that is being developed exclusively for  richbitchitch.com. This work is copyrighted. You may not reprint without permission.

More from Memoirs of a Rich Bitch

• Memoirs of a Rich Bitch – Money
• Memoirs of a rich bitch – Madame Sheila’s brothel
• Memoirs of a rich bitch – Richard Berkley
• Memoirs of a rich bitch – Virginity