Chapter 2: The basement

Footsteps sounded from the left. A young brunette woman in her early 20s with green eyes, a loose-fitting blue sweater, pink sweatpants, and pink flip-flops came down the hallway with a full laundry basket. Rebecca turned around. “Hi, Fredi!”

The brunette tilted her head. “New blood?” she asked.

Rebecca smiled, but her smile didn’t reach her eyes. “A new tenant, maybe. We’ll find out now.”

The brunette nodded and pushed past me toward the elevator. Suddenly, the laundry basket slipped out of her hands. I quickly bent down to help her pick up the laundry. There were some valuable pieces of underwear among them.

“If I were you, I’d turn around now and forget I was ever here!” she whispered to me, snatched the black silk crotchless panties from my hand, and entered the elevator without looking back.

I stood up and looked at Rebecca, who was waiting for me a few steps away. She waved the papers impatiently and pointed to a door. “Are you coming?” She didn’t seem to have heard me. Hesitantly, I followed her. We entered a small room, sparsely furnished with a table, three chairs, and a TV. Rebecca closed the door. “You can wait here if the laundry isn’t ready yet. However, smoking is strictly prohibited here.” She pointed to the smoke detector on the ceiling.

“I don’t smoke,” I replied curtly.

Rebecca nodded. “Right, I forgot.”

Surprised, I raised an eyebrow. Rebecca pulled up a chair and sat down at the table. With her left hand, she pointed to the seat opposite her. Casually, she explained, “I told you, no one gets an invitation here without being screened. And now comes the point where you can ask the last, crucial questions and also have to answer my questions!”

A thousand questions raced through my mind, and I didn’t know which one to ask first.

“All right, then I’ll ask the questions,” Rebecca began after a short pause. “The most important question first: do you even want to know more? You can just say no, get up, we’ll shake hands, I’ll walk you to the front door, and you’ll forget what I’ve told you for the last five minutes. I never said that, and you’ll never tell anyone about it. Of course, you’re welcome to tell anyone else,” she said, pointing upward with a smile.

“It’s no secret. If you think someone might be interested in an apartment with a ‘basement,’ go ahead.” The emphasis on the word “basement” sounded strange coming from her mouth. “Contact me, give me their name, give us the details, and we’ll check whether you can give a recommendation or not. Of course, there’s a small commission if a lease is signed!”

She tapped her index finger on the papers in front of her.

“This is a brokerage agreement that I am now offering you. It may earn you something, but not much, and certainly not guaranteed.”

“Do they have to be eligible for the Rooms, or can they be ordinary cam girls?”

Rebecca smiled as if I had made a joke.

“Of course, we can also go up to my office, you sign the standard rental agreement for your apartment, do your thing, and that’s it.”

I laughed: “I can’t afford that at all, I’d never be able to earn that much as a camgirl to pay the rent you’re asking for.”

“Difficult, but not impossible,” Rebecca admitted. “You’re popular, pretty, have unusual preferences, and know how to market yourself. With our service, there’s something in it for you.”

She paused briefly and looked me intently in the eyes.

“But of course, no more than you’re already earning. That’s why you’ll hardly want to move here. Although, we do have tenants who don’t do shows in the basement, they only work upstairs. You just happened to meet one.”

“The brunette?”

“Yes, Fredi,” Rebecca confirmed. “She actually makes a living from it, enjoys the full service of our house, but also works up to 16 hours a day.”

“But you don’t do laundry, do you?” I blurted out.

Rebecca laughed.

“We offer that too, but every service has a cost. Laundry is an extra.”

I looked around uncomfortably at the bare basement room with its white-painted concrete walls. I waved my right hand around. “Why are we discussing this here? Why not go upstairs to the cozy office to sort everything else out? The whole thing seems so...”

“Intimidating?” Rebecca prompted me.

“No, dubious, I wanted to say! As if I were supposed to sign a door-to-door sales contract with a pushy salesman.

She looked at me in complete amazement before she started laughing heartily again.

“No one has ever said that to me before, Johanna!” she began when she had regained her composure. Suddenly, she became serious again.

“To answer your question from earlier: No, it’s not usual for me to take over the house management here and give interested applicants the opportunity to perform in the rooms. Normally, the applicants know in advance that we are the rooms! And I really have a lot to do. So I would like you to decide here and now whether you want to sign a contract.”

“For the No-LIMIT Rooms?” I asked cautiously.

“We only call them basements or basement studios internally!” she explained, nodding. She leaned back, waiting.

“How does that work?”

“You will be shown the studios and explained how the shows work. Then you will be put on the list of potential models for the shoots. A rental contract in one of our apartments is not mandatory, but desirable. You can prove yourself in a trial show. If you are popular with the audience, you can earn a lot of money here with us. A lot of money! That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? Or...” She paused dramatically, looked at the agency contract in front of her, pushed it decisively toward me, and smiled inscrutably: “You choose this, forget this unique offer, and go back! Make up your mind, now!”