Free Eleven Minutes by Paulo Coelho Page B

largely made up of executives, who had permission to get home late because they were out 'having supper with clients', but these 'suppers' could never last
     longer than eleven o'clock at night. Most of the prostitutes
     who worked there were aged between eighteen and twentytwo and
     they stayed, on average, for two years, when they would be replaced by newer recruits. They then moved to the Neon, then
     to the Xenium, and the price went down as the woman's age went up, and the hours of work grew fewer and fewer. They almost all ended up in the Tropical Extasy, who accepted
     women over thirty; but once they were there, they could only just earn enough to pay for their lunch and their rent by going with one or two students a day (the average fee per client was just about enough to buy a bottle of cheap wine). She went to bed with many men. She didn't care how old
     they were or how they were dressed, but whether she said yes or no depended on how they smelled. She had nothing against cigarettes, but she hated cheap aftershave or those who
     didn't wash or whose clothes stank of booze.
    The Copacabana was a quiet place, and Switzerland was
     possibly the best country in the world in which to work as a prostitute, as long as you had a residence permit and a work permit, kept all your papers in order and paid your social security; Milan was always saying that he didn't want his children to see his name in the tabloid newspapers, and so he was as strict as a policeman when it came to keeping an eye
     on his 'employees'.
    Once you had got past the barrier of the first or second
     night, it was a profession much like any other, in which you worked hard, fought off the competition, tried to maintain standards, put in the necessary hours, got a bit stressed
     out, complained about your workload, and rested on Sundays.
    Most of the prostitutes had some kind of religious faith, and attended their respective churches and masses, said their prayers and had their encounters with God.
    Maria, however, was struggling in the pages of her diary
     not to lose her soul. She discovered, to her surprise, that one in every five clients didn't want her in order to have sex, but simply to talk a little. They paid for the bar tab
     and the hotel room, and when the moment came for them both to take off their clothes, the man would say, no, that won't be necessary. They wanted to talk about the pressures of work, about their unfaithful wife, about how lonely they felt, how they had no one to talk to (something she knew about all too well).
    At first, she found this very odd. Then, one night, she
     went to the hotel with an arrogant Frenchman, a headhunter for top executive jobs (he told her this as if he
     were telling her the most fascinating thing in the world), and this is what he said:
    'Do you know who the loneliest person in the world is? The executive with a successful career, earning an enormous salary, trusted by those above and below him, with a family to go on holiday with and children who he helps out with
     their homework, but who is then approached by someone like me and asked the following question: “How would you like to
     change your job and earn twice as much?”
    'The executive, who has every reason to feel wanted and happy, becomes the most miserable creature on the planet. Why? Because he has no one to talk to. He is tempted to accept my offer, but he can't talk about it to his work colleagues because they would do everything they could to
     persuade him to stay. He can't talk about it to his wife, who has been his companion in his rise up the ladder of success
     and understands a great deal about security, but nothing about taking risks. He can't talk to anyone about it and there he is confronted by the biggest decision of his life. Can you imagine how that man feels?'
    No, that man wasn't the loneliest person in the world.
    Maria knew the loneliest person on the face of this Earth: herself. Nevertheless, she agreed with her