Massage, Zuidas hotel, high above the ring road

Amsterdam's business quarter grew up around Station Zuid, on both sides of the A10 ring road, from the late 1990s onward. Law firms, bank headquarters and consultancies fill the office towers along Gustav Mahlerlaan and around Mahlerplein, the RAI convention centre sits a short walk to the east, and the university campus closes the district to the west. The hotels followed the offices, so almost everything here was built this century and built for weekday corporate travel: tall stacks of identical rooms, conference levels, club lounges, gyms that open at six. From Monday to Thursday the district is full and busy until late. On Friday afternoon it empties, the weekend is strangely calm, and on Sunday evening the wheeled cases return. For bodywork upstairs this is good ground: heating that responds in minutes, soundproofed glass, walk-in showers, and beds with clear space along both sides.

The one puzzle a tower poses is the lift. Most Zuidas hotels restrict the guest floors to keycard holders, some all day and nearly all of them late at night, and a few place reception on a podium level above the street entrance rather than beside it. None of this is difficult once it is known in advance. Tell the house the floor when you book, or at least whether the lifts need a card. The therapist messages as she enters the building; you ride down, meet her at the lift bank, and ride back up together, which takes under two minutes and looks like exactly what it is, a guest collecting a visitor. Never send a photograph of your keycard or ask reception to release a lift for somebody else. Where a building keeps a separate security desk at street level, she gives your first name if asked and waits by the lifts for you.

Rooms built for business travel tend to be standardised, and the standard suits bodywork well. A king bed with a nightstand on each side leaves both flanks open, which is all four-hand work needs. The walk-in shower and a heating system that reaches temperature quickly make nuru straightforward: set the thermostat two or three degrees higher when you send the booking, and the room is ready when she is. A junior suite or a corner room gives a couples session its second station without anyone moving a chair. Sensual and tantra need only the lamp dimmed and the blackout curtains drawn, and high in a tower even the curtains are optional, since the nearest window opposite may be a hundred metres away. The one limitation is the wall between rooms, which is thinner than the glass outside suggests; keep voices and music at hotel volume and the neighbours are left undisturbed.

Tower guests rarely have an empty evening, so bookings here fit around a diary rather than filling one. A client dinner in the district usually finishes by half past ten. Calls with New York run through the Amsterdam evening, since the East Coast sits six hours behind, and calls with Singapore or Tokyo wake guests before seven. The window the house sees booked most often is therefore late, from about eleven at night to one in the morning, placed after the last call and before the early alarm. Delegates at the RAI keep a different rhythm: released at six, out to dinner, back upstairs by ten with sore feet and a free hour. Whatever the diary, write with the end time you need to protect and the session will be placed backward from it. A message can go out between two calls, and a late booking after the last one is an ordinary request rather than an imposition.

Vanessa, Karolina and Nancy all live in the Zuidas, which puts three of the fifteen within a few minutes of the towers at almost any hour. From confirmation the standard window here is forty to sixty minutes, and late at night it sits at the near end. Rosa in De Pijp and Sonya in Oud-Zuid live just north of the district. All three Zuidas women work four-hand sessions, and Vanessa and Karolina have shared that booking many times, so a pair can reach a tower suite without anyone crossing the city. All three also take the eight-hour overnight, which in this district is usually booked on a Thursday, the last night before a flight home. If you have a name in mind, give it; if not, describe the evening and the reply will say who lives nearest and works that form.

The Zuidas pays the same rates as the rest of the city: for a guest alone, the hour with two therapists costs twice the hour with one, an entire eight-hour night with one therapist is a single block, and couples pay double each of those, with the figures themselves waiting on every woman's profile. There is no weekday premium in the business district and no weekend discount when it empties. What the deposit has not covered is paid in the room as the session starts, in cash, by card or in crypto, with the exact sum in any currency other than euro confirmed in writing before she sets out. If you intend to pay by card, mention it in the first message so the session starts without a search for the right method.

A hotel tower at one in the morning is a long carpeted silence, broken now and then by the ice machine. Corridors are wide and well lit, cameras cover the lift lobbies, and room service trolleys are the only traffic. Hang the do-not-disturb card before she arrives so that a late turndown or a minibar check never knocks during the session. Keep the television off rather than low; its sound passes through the connecting doors that many business rooms share with the room beside them. When the session ends, walk her to the lift if the floor needs a card to leave, as some towers do, and otherwise say goodnight at the door. Every woman on the roster is twenty-one or over, and every guest she visits must be twenty-one or over as well.