Marina

Her hands are warm before the gel is, and she begins with them flat and still on the back for longer than seems necessary. She came for one winter that turned into four, and her flat looks over a broad, tree-lined Oud-Zuid street that goes silent well before nine. English she speaks quickly and idiomatically, and once the work begins she uses remarkably little of it. Her bookings run from ninety minutes to the whole night, and the ones that begin at a table are the ones she would choose.

Marina 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.