by Orrie Hitt
She walked on, leaving the vacant lot behind her, and she continued to think. If she had been unlucky she could be carrying Joe’s kid right now. What a horrible thought! Damn, why had he been so stupid and careless?
“Hey,” a cop said as she started across a busy intersection. “You want to get hit?”
“No.”
“Then watch where you’re going.”
She couldn’t help it. She was almost in a trance. In a few minutes she would be disrobing in front of Tom Lester, doing something that she had never done before. Could she go through with it? Was getting out of Northtown so important that she would sink this low? But, then, were the pictures Tom would take worse than the nudes a lot of girls posed for in magazines? Even Joe bought some of those magazines. He had showed them to her, saying that she had a better body than any of the girls.
It was a few minutes before ten when she reached the photo shop. Her mouth was dry and her blood raced. She had to do it. There was no other way, no other answer. She would trade her beauty for the chance that she wanted so desperately. If she didn’t do this she would be trapped in Northtown for the rest of her life. She might even become so discouraged that she would marry Joe. They would have the car to pay for and he would sleep with her every night. He would take the love from her body, giving her his own, and in a matter of months she would be fat and ugly, barely able to move because of the burden she would be carrying inside of her.
The door was unlocked and she entered the shop. A light burned in the back room and she walked in there. Tom was seated at his desk and he looked up and smiled when he saw her.
“I just lost a bet with myself,” he said.
“How come?”
“I had a bet that you’d change your mind.”
“Well, I didn’t.”
He got up from the desk and came toward her.
“I’m glad you wore a skirt and blouse. I meant to tell you to do that.” His glance drifted downward. “But you haven’t got any stockings.”
“Do I need them?”
“It’s better if you wear them. And a garter belt. It makes for a better shot and the guys go for that.”
“I’m sorry,” she murmured.
“Don’t be sorry. We can get along all right tonight. Only the next time put on stockings and a garter belt. Make the belt black and have the stockings a dark shade. I want the stockings to show up on your legs.”
He had a fan running in the back room but it was hot, close and hot.
“I guess I’ve got a lot to learn, Tom.”
“Not much. There isn’t anything to it. I sell sex and that you’ve got. We’ll start you out just undressing so that you get used to it. Later on, if you want to make more money, I can team you with another girl or a man.”
“I don’t know if I could do that.”
“You will. The first time is the hardest. I know how it is. You’re all nerves. You think you’re doing something wrong. But don’t let that bother you. There’s a place in this world for everything and the pics have their place too. The men who buy the sets are lonely and frustrated. If they couldn’t buy the pictures they’d probably go out and buy some woman.”
“Aren’t you afraid of getting caught?”
“Naturally I’m afraid of getting caught. Who wouldn’t be? But I happen to like money so well that I don’t think about it. If I could have made a living in this shop I’d never have gotten into this. But you know what business is like and you know some of the expenses I have. If I had a choice I don’t know what it was.”
She lit a cigarette and she couldn’t keep her hand steady. Lord, she was nervous. She thought briefly about turning back but it was too late for that now.
“Let’s get it over with,” she said, her voice tight.
“Jumpy?”
“That’s no word for it.”
He walked toward the door that led into the rear room.
“This is where we work,” he said, unlocking the door. “It isn’t safe to do it out here.”
She followed him into the room. She noticed a bed and many floodlights standing on the floor.
“How do you like it, Cherry?”
“Not bad.”
If it hadn’t been for the lights it would have looked like a bedroom in some modest home.
“Better put out your cigarette.”
She did.
“What do I do now?”
He went around turning on the lights. A white, hot glare filled the room.
“Stand by the bed. Unbutton your blouse and pull it down off of one shoulder, enough so that I can get a shot of you with your bra on. Try to act as though you were in your own bedroom.”
Her feet felt heavy as she walked to the bed, her hands uncertain as she struggled with the buttons. She was in it now, all the way. There was no turning back.
“All right?” she inquired.
He studied her as she stood there.
“Okay. I don’t expect the first set to be perfect. You’ll learn as you go along. You’ve been out with men, haven’t you?”
“Of course.”
“Then you know what they want from a girl. We try to give them the same thing only we give it to them in photos. A man sees a pretty girl on the street or on the beach and what does he think of? He wonders if what she has is real and how she would look if she were naked. These are the lonely men, Cherry. These are the men who are our customers.”
He moved the camera into position and she held the pose, her breath burning as it shot down into her lungs.
“Put your shoulders back a little. And smile. Smile as though you’re getting ready to take a man to bed and you’re looking forward to it.”
She did as she was told, her head back, hair down over her shoulders, lips parted.
“Good!”
Again and again he instructed her on what she should do, how she should do it, and pretty soon she was down to bra and panties.
“Now the bra,” he said.
“Must I?”
“You must. This is what the men pay to see.”
Tears clouded her eyes. She was as bad as a whore, just as bad. Her mother had been a tramp and now she was doing this. Numbly she reached for the snap, freed it and pulled the straps down over her arms.
“Cripes!” Tom Lester breathed.
She dropped the bra on top of the bed.
“Is there something wrong?”
“Wrong? No, there’s nothing wrong. I have a lot of girls but none of them are built like you.”
He took several shots of her naked breasts and once he made her cup them with her hands.
“Now a final one,” he said after a while. “Without anything on.”
“I — ”
“Without anything on.”
Her mind was a blank as she stripped herself, showing him all the wonderful flesh of her body. She stood there under the lights and wanted to cry. How could she be doing such a thing? Bad blood, Rita had told her. She had bad blood.
“Okay,” he said. “You can dress.”
She knew that he watched her as she did so, followed every movement that she made. She had trouble with the snap on the bra and, without saying anything, he helped her with that. For a second his arms came around her, lifting her, and then he let her go.
“I shouldn’t touch the merchandise,” he said. “But in this case I couldn’t resist.”
“I didn’t know that went with our deal.”
“It doesn’t.”
“Then don’t.”
She buttoned her blouse and he turned off the lights. They left the room together. He locked it behind him.
“How are you going to get home?” he asked.
“Cab.”
“I can drop you off.”
“Thanks.”
“Do you want some money now or should I pay you at the end of the week?”
“The end of the week is fine.”
He didn’t speak to her again until they were on their way uptown in his C
addy.
“There’s a way you can pick up an extra hundred dollars now and then,” he said.
“How?”
“I’ll pay you a hundred bucks for every girl you find that I can use.”
“I thought you had a lot of girls.”
“I have enough now, yes, but they come and go. Those who aren’t prostitutes now often drift into the profession eventually.”
“Are many of them prostitutes?”
“Quite a few. Prostitutes and lesbians. It’s easy money for them and they don’t mind undressing for anybody. I use them mostly in the movies and they’re pretty hot stuff. They go through their sex acts and I photograph the whole thing. The film prints bring big money and I can pay them more.”
It was disgusting, she thought; the depths of a sewer. How could men and women act that way? Sex was a private matter, not one for the whole world to see. She knew that such things existed, of course, and she had heard of stag parties, but understanding it was beyond her.
“I don’t know of anybody,” she said.
“You might run into somebody.”
“Maybe.”
“There are a few requirements. They have to have a pretty face and they have to have a good shape. Oh, I don’t mean as good as yours — that’s asking too much — but a face and a shape that can pass.”
He knew that she lived on Orange Street but he didn’t make a left turn as he should have.
“Buy you a drink,” he said. “This is one of my short nights and I don’t have anything else to do.”
There was no harm in having a drink with him, none at all. And she needed one. She was still on edge, still remembering the hot lights and her nakedness.
“All right,” she said. “I could use one.”
“Any place in particular?”
“Downing’s Café is a nice place.”
“That on Mercer Street?”
“Yes.”
“I used to know Carl. Read about him in the paper. Crazy thing, that. You take a mixed crowd and you can get away with just so much. If a girl sticks to a G-string and a little bra the cops won’t bother none. But when they take it all off, and move around between the tables, that’s carrying it too far. You have women in the audience and you can imagine how some of them must feel. All it takes is one complaint and the roof falls in.”
“Isn’t what you do as dangerous?”
“Yes, it’s dangerous. But I get paid very well for the danger. What can a café owner make? Peanuts-compared to my take. He has a huge investment, a big place, and he can be destroyed. All I have are some lights and a couple of cameras. Once I have the stuff out of my hands I don’t have any worries. That’s up to the distributor and the stores that sell the pics.”
Mercer Street was paved with cobblestones but the Caddy rode over them easily.
“Feel better?” he asked.
“Some.”
“Don’t worry. You’ll get used to it. Even the tough girls are a little ashamed at first. You reach the point where you accept it as a business. And it is a business. Sex — the biggest business of all.”
There were quite a few people in the bar and Harry nodded to her as they came in. They sat near one end of the bar and ordered the same drink, tall ginger ale with a double shot of rye.
“Luck,” he said when the drinks arrived.
“Luck.”
The drink tasted good, warming her stomach. She had just put the glass down when she noticed Millie Cain sitting at the other end of the bar. Millie appeared to be alone and she had a bottle of beer in front of her. Her dress was one of those off-the-shoulder things and even at that distance Cherry could see the warm cleavage between Millie’s breasts.
“I told you I didn’t know of anybody,” she said to Tom, “but maybe I do. Would you excuse me for a minute?”
“Sure.”
She got down from the stool and walked the length of the bar. There was a vacant stool next to Millie and she sat down on it.
“Hi,” she said.
Millie turned to look at her.
“Well, if it isn’t the singer. Say kid, you got out just in time. The cops really busted things up.”
“Is it serious?”
Millie shrugged and the dress dipped lower.
“Just a big stink but nothing will come of it. Not for me, anyway. Carl is another story and I feel sorry for him. I got out there and I went wild.” She smiled. “I guess a carney is the place for me after all. In a carney you do those things and nobody cares.”
“But you told me you didn’t go that far.”
“I lied to you. Or I was lying to myself. Once in a while you want to think that you’re somebody decent, that you’re a different person than you really are.”
“What are you going to do now?”
“What can I do? I expect it’s back to the carney.”
“I think I can help you.”
“Help me? How?”
“Have you ever posed for nude photos?”
Millie drank some of her beer.
“That’s one thing I haven’t done.”
“You could make a couple of hundred a week.”
“Now you’ve got me listening. For two hundred a week I’d sleep in a back alley with a fat man.”
Briefly, Cherry told the girl about Tom and how she could make that much money. Millie finished her beer and ordered another one.
“I wouldn’t have thought you would do that,” Millie said.
“Well, money is important to me, too.”
“And do you know where this kind of stuff leads?”
“I won’t be in it long.”
“That’s what you think now but you’ll go deeper and deeper. First it’s still shots and then it’s sex movies. You fight against it but you can’t help yourself. Some night you’ll go to bed with a strange man and the whole thing will be photographed. You can ruin yourself quicker if you take a gun and put it to your head.”
“Then you’re not interested?”
Millie laughed, a harsh, brutal laugh.
“I didn’t say that, did I? I was just telling you where the road ends. As for myself I don’t care. What have I got to lose? But you seem like a nice kid and it’s a shame for you to throw yourself away. You could have stripped here and you wouldn’t. What made you change your mind?”
“Oh-things.”
“They must have been important.”
“They are.”
A few minutes later she took Millie down the bar to meet Tom. Yes, he liked Millie’s looks and he would be glad to have her.
“If you’re a stripper I can work you into something good,” he said. “With another girl.”
“Suits me.”
“You know what it means?”
“Hell, I wasn’t born the day before yesterday. I know what it means.”
The conversation was strange to Cherry and she didn’t understand. But in time, she felt, she would find out. She had many things to learn and this was merely one of them.
It was after one when they left the bar and Millie refused a ride to her hotel.
“I’ll stick around,” she said. “You never can tell what might develop.”
“A chippie,” Tom said as they got into the car. “She’d take on any man for twenty bucks.”
“I don’t believe it.”
“Believe it or not it’s true. But it’s no skin off my back. She’ll make a good prop and that’s all I care about. What she does in bed is her own business.”
On the way to Orange Street he gave Cherry a hundred dollars and she thanked him for it.
“I should thank you,” he said. “Two of my best girls, both married, are in a family way — and not by their husbands. They won’t be able to work again for several months.”
“Even married girls do this?”
“They need money, too.”
When they neared the vacant lot he tried to stop the car but she wouldn’t let him.
“You don’t know the power of t
hat body of yours,” he said. “It drives me a little insane. Who is the lucky guy?”
“Nobody.”
“Don’t give me that. You didn’t get to be this old and not know what a man is like.” Again he slowed down. “I won’t keep you long.”
“No.”
“Fussy?”
She was sitting as far away from him as she could get.
“It isn’t that,” she said. “We have a business arrangement and let’s keep it that way.”
“Okay. Can you make it at nine tomorrow night?”
“I can make it.”
“Fine.”
He took her directly home and as she walked toward the house she began to shudder slightly.
She knew she had become a sin girl.
Chapter Seven
CHERRY DIDN’T go to work the next morning. It was after ten before she woke up.
“I called you and called you,” Rita said when Cherry appeared in the kitchen. “It didn’t do me any good.”
Oscar was having his mid-morning coffee. He drank about ten or twelve cups of coffee a day and then wondered why his stomach bothered him.
“You can’t hold down two jobs,” he said. “I tried it once and it doesn’t work. One job is enough. You take one job, do it well and you’re further ahead. But I was young, like you, and I couldn’t see it. I did both jobs for about six months and then paid out half of what I had made to some doctor.”
Cherry poured a glass of milk and sat down at the table. It had been a terrible night and she hadn’t been able to sleep. For one thing it had been hot in her room and for another she had been thinking about what she had done. It wasn’t right to pose for such pictures and she knew it. Maybe the money was good but there must be another way to make money.
“You didn’t get in until late,” Rita said.
“Quite late.”