Left No Forwarding Address

by Gerald J. Davis

  The other woman stirred for the first time. There was a kind of lassitude about her, as if she had just woken up. “Who do you want, me or her?” she said. Her words were indistinct. She brushed back some straggly strands of hair that had fallen over her face. Her hair was light brown or dirty blond, depending on where you stood. She wasn’t carrying a pocketbook.

  “I’m not sure,” I said. “You both seem very nice.” That wasn’t true, but I didn’t want to appear impolite. Actually, upon closer inspection, neither one was especially enticing.

  The black woman licked her lips. I suppose that was a come-on gesture, but instead it looked as if she had just finished a meal.

  “Come with me, honey,” she said. “You gonna have a good time.”

  The white girl elbowed the black girl. “Don’t go with that black bitch,” she ordered. Her eyes appeared glazed. There was a pallor to her skin that was apparent, even in the darkness. She leaned back against the door frame for support.

  “I gonna knock you on your ass, bitch,” the black girl said.

  The white girl seemed awake for the first time. “You and your pimp, maybe.”

  This was fast becoming a choice between the better of two unattractive alternatives. “You both seem like very fine ladies,” I said. “It’s just that I’m having a hard time deciding between the two of you.”

  “You better not have a hard time with anything else,” the white girl said. She was fully awake and engaged now. The rush of pecuniary reward had hit her full force.

  The shriek of an urgent car alarm on the next block shattered the quiet of the night. The noise startled me and set me back a half-step. Neither woman turned toward the sound. I tried to make out what was happening, but I couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary. Nothing moved on the street. There was only darkness.

  The black girl put her hands on her hips, the pink plastic handbag slapping against her thigh. “You wastin’ my time, white boy.”

  It would have been unseemly to point out to her that she had been standing in a doorway passing time in a relatively unproductive manner. I let her comment pass unheeded.

  “Well, what do you say, sugar pie?” the white girl said. It was the first sign of affection from her. “You wanna go upstairs or you wanna stay here and shoot the breeze?”

  Maybe it was the words “sugar pie” or maybe it was the black girl’s suddenly aggressive tone, but I made up my mind to go with the white girl.

  “Where do we go?” I asked her like a fool.

  Her mouth opened in a rough approximation of a grin, revealing a missing eyetooth. “We can go to the Plaza or we can go upstairs.” She jerked her head back over her shoulder. “It’s up to you, Mister Rockefeller.”

  “I don’t have enough money for the Plaza, so I guess it’ll have to be here.”

  She shook her head. “Don’t be a jerk. You think they’d let me in the Plaza?”

  So she was kidding me. The whore had a sense of humor. I let out a guffaw to show her I was in on the joke.

  The black girl didn’t like her role as loser in the contest. “Shit, honey,” she said to the white girl, “they wouldn’t let you check into the Roach Motel, trash like you.”

  “Shut your mouth, bitch. I got the customer and you got the shaft,” the white girl said as she nodded toward me. “Mister Rockefeller here picked me ‘cause I’m better looking than you and I smell better.”

  This seemed to infuriate the black girl. “You drug-ass bitch, you. You so strung out you don’t know what good-lookin’ is. Only reason he picked you is ‘cause you white. You ass better lookin’ than you face.”

  I thought that was a clever retort. But I hadn’t known the white girl was a drug addict. Now I was in too deep to pull out. I didn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings, but I didn’t want to have sex with a dope fiend.

  “Don’t start with that racism bullshit again,” the white girl said, her voice rising. “You use that for every excuse you can.”

  “Maybe it would be better if I left so you ladies could sort out your differences,” I said. I took a tentative step backwards.

  “No way, Jose,” the white girl said. She stepped down from the doorway and walked toward me and grabbed me by the arm. Her gait was unsteady in her high-heeled shoes. “You’re coming with me upstairs. A deal is a deal.”

  I didn’t know we’d made a deal. A deal is a meeting of the minds. It wasn’t clear if our minds had met. “But how much is the rate?” I asked.

  “The rate?” She turned to the black girl. “He wants to know how much the rate is.”

  The black girl laughed. “The rate. White boy wants to know the rate.” She laughed again.

  The white girl pulled me by the arm into the doorway. “You come with me. I’ll tell you what the rate is.”

  It seemed useless to protest. I went with the white girl into the vestibule. As I passed the black girl she stepped aside to let me through. I could smell her odor. It wasn’t unpleasant, but it was a pungent female scent. She looked deep into my eyes. Her look said You should have chosen me.

  But it was too late for that.

  The white girl took my arm and pushed me toward the stairs. The hallway was dimly lit. The walls were a light brown stucco and the floor had those small hexagonal white tiles. There was a strong smell of disinfectant in the air.

  “Up the stairs,” she said.

  “Certainly,” I said. “But shouldn’t you lead the way?”

  “You go first. I’ll follow you.”

  I had the feeling she wanted to stay behind me to cut off any avenue of escape. I started up the stairs. There was a small bare light bulb on the first landing.

  When I reached the landing I turned and watched her slowly climbing the stairs. She had taken off her high-heeled shoes and was holding them in her hands. Her hair appeared dirty and uncombed. “Well, how much is the rate?” I asked her.

  She was out of breath as she approached me. “What do you want?”

  I thought that was apparent. You don’t go to a hooker for a home-cooked meal and a discussion of the policy of containment.

  She came up to me and nudged me, so I continued climbing the stairs. “I want sexual intercourse,” I said. “Isn’t that what you provide?”

  “What?” She was having difficulty breathing.

  I couldn’t believe she didn’t know what I wanted. Perhaps it was simply a question of refining the need further. “I want, you know, …sex.”

  We reached the second landing. She paused to catch her breath. “Oh,” she said. “You mean straight sex.”

  “If that’s what you call it.” I guessed she called it straight sex to differentiate it from gay sex.

  She put her hand on the banister to steady herself. “OK,” she said quickly. “That’s good. Straight sex. One hundred bucks.”

  “That’s a little more than I wanted to pay.” I had no idea what the price was, but I thought I could bargain with her. After all, she didn’t have to pay income taxes or FICA or the Medicare tax. I mean, she should have paid it, but there was no pay stub on which to make the deductions.

  She leaned forward and squinted at me in the dim light. Her gray pupils were dilated. “Oh, really,” she said. “A little more than you wanted to pay. That’s very nice. Trying to gyp me out of an honest day’s work.”

  “Well, there’s no rate card posted. How do I know that’s the actual price? How do I know you didn’t just pluck a number out of thin air because you think I can afford it?”

  She looked exasperated. “Listen, buddy. That’s what all the girls charge. There’s no haggling here. That’s the going rate.”

  It was my turn to say, “Oh, really.” Maybe she was trying to squeeze more money out of me so she would have enough to get a false tooth. But I wasn’t going to be the sucker who would pay for a whore’s dental work. “Listen…what’s your name?”

  “My name’s Misty. What’s yours?”

  “Tony, Tony Mendes.”

  She sho
ok her head abruptly. “No last names. Working girls and Johns don’t have last names.”

  “OK, listen, Misty. This will take no more than fifteen or twenty minutes, if we stop all this amiable conversation. At that rate you’ll be making three hundred or four hundred bucks an hour. Now I ask you, isn’t that a little unreasonable?”

  Her eyes flashed. “That’s not the way it works. You pay for a service. People want this service. That’s the price they’re willing to pay to get this service.”

  All this was becoming a little ridiculous. Here I was, standing on the second-floor landing of a run-down tenement discussing microeconomics with a crack whore. Did Lord Keynes have to go through fleshy negotiations like this? Then I realized of course not because he was homosexual and it was probably very casual and very quick.

  “OK, Misty,” I said. “I’ll tell you what. I’ll give you fifty bucks. Cash.”

  She snorted. “Everybody pays cash, buddy. We don’t take American Express.” She put both shoes in her left hand and put her hands on her hips. The soles of the shoes read Ferragamo. “Don’t insult me with your picayune offer.”

  So the hooker liked expensive shoes. But it didn’t make sense. She spent her money on overpriced shoes but didn’t fix a missing tooth. Maybe she was working on her image from the bottom up.

  “All right,” I said. “I didn’t mean to insult you.” Even a prostitute has a certain self-image to maintain. It’s tough enough when your profession doesn’t generate much respect from the public in opinion polls. “I’ll pay you seventy dollars.”

  She smiled for the first time, but her eyes narrowed. She came closer to me, so close that our bodies touched and she put her fingertips on my cheek. “Tony,” she said softly. “Honey, what’s another thirty bucks in the grand scheme of things?”

  She had a point there. How much did it cost Flaubert? He never mentioned that detail in his narrative. But I’d be damned if I’d let a whore get the best of me. “All right,” I said. “I’ll tell you what. Let’s split the difference. I’ll give you eighty-five.”

  Her smile vanished. It was the last time I saw her smile. She exhaled slowly. “OK, buddy. Up the stairs.” Her tone had turned very cold.

  I started up the stairs and turned back to look at her. “How many flights?” I asked over my shoulder.

  “Keep walking,” she said.

  “How many flights?” I repeated. This was becoming an endurance climb. I felt the way Sir Edmund Hillary must have felt as he approached the crest. A baby’s cries issued forth from behind one of the apartment doors, followed by a woman’s shouts of “Shut up. Shut up. I can’t take this anymore.”

  Misty didn’t answer me. She was having trouble climbing the stairs. She just looked up and jabbed her finger upward several times. The girl was obviously out of shape. She probably smoked, didn’t exercise or eat much and took some noxious substances into her system. What chance did she have for a long, healthy and productive life span? But, then again, it was probably society’s fault.

  I finally reached the fifth floor landing. There was nowhere else to go. A rusty metal door barred the way to the roof. I waited, catching my breath, until she climbed the last steps and approached me. Her sallow complexion was now flushed and there were beads of sweat on her forehead.

  “Do you do this every time you have a customer?” I asked her. It seemed like a real ordeal. What if she forgot something like mouthwash and had to go back downstairs?

  She just glared at me and didn’t say anything. Then she turned and walked down the hallway to the last door on the right, took a key out of a pocket in her mini-skirt and unlocked the door. I entered the apartment. She followed me in and locked the door behind us.

  The apartment was small, but not as small as mine. It was very sparsely furnished. There was an old ratty brown sofa and two worn upholstered armchairs in the living room and a TV on a table against the far wall. The TV was playing a black and white movie with Bette Davis and George Sanders and the volume was turned down low. The floors were bare wood. On the wall above the TV was a framed bullfight poster featuring a matador named Manuel Benitez, known as “El Cordobes”.

  There was a kitchen on one side of the living room and a bedroom and bathroom on the other. The door to the kitchen was half closed, but I could see the back of a little old gray-haired lady in a black dress as she shuffled about, putting dishes into cabinets. There was a robust smell of garlic and tomato sauce in the air. If it weren’t so late at night, the aroma would have stimulated your appetite.

  Misty turned to face me. “Are you a cop?” she asked in a perfunctory manner.

  “Why do you ask?” Was she just making idle conversation or was this part of her standard repartee?

  She sighed. “Listen, buddy. Are you a cop?”

  “No,” I said. “I’m not.”

  “Are you a member of any law-enforcement agency?”

  “What is this? A background check? I didn’t know you were going to ask for my mother’s maiden name.”

  She looked at me closely. “Don’t be a wiseguy. Just answer the question.”

  Her attitude left a lot to be desired. A whore wasn’t supposed to make you fill out a questionnaire listing your blood type and your preferences concerning easy-listening music. A whore wasn’t supposed to issue ultimatums. There was only one function a whore was supposed to perform.

  I spread my hands, palms facing her. “No, I’m not a member of any law-enforcement agency. But I really resent your conduct. This is not the way it’s supposed to be.”

  She snorted. “You can file your complaint with the management if you don’t like my conduct. There’s a suggestion box on your way out.”

  I suspected there was no suggestion box. And there was probably no management either.

  She held out her hand. “That’ll be eighty-five bucks. Cash,” she added, somewhat unnecessarily.

  I gave her the money.

  She counted it carefully and put it in the pocket of her mini-skirt. Then she pointed toward the bedroom. “Go in there and take off your clothes. I’ll be there in a minute.”

  She turned abruptly and went into the bathroom. So there I was at the end of the trail, left alone in the living room of a cat house. I knew the name of the Bette Davis movie on the TV, but I couldn’t remember it at the moment. It would probably come back to me in the middle of making love. I did as Misty said and went into the bedroom and shut the door behind me.

  There was a large bed in the middle of the room. The bed was covered with a pink sheet. A small lamp sat on a night table next to the bed. That was the only light in the room. There were heavy drapes over the window and a dresser against the wall by the foot of the bed.

  I didn’t want to get undressed and be standing there naked when she walked in, so I didn’t do anything. I just stood there studying the bed and contemplating the wrinkles in the sheet.

  How many sexual struggles had been fought on this little patch of coils and springs and padding? And for what reasons? What quarter was given or refused? And who won?

  All About Eve. That was it. The Bette Davis movie. I shook my head. We carried so much trivial nonsense in our skull cavities. All the detritus accumulated over a lifetime of wasted hours.

  After a couple of minutes the door opened and Misty walked in. She had taken off her clothes and was wearing a dark silk robe. She was barefoot.

  “Why the hell are you still dressed?” she said. “Don’t you want to get laid?”

  I gave her what I thought was a perfectly reasonable answer. “I didn’t want to just be standing here alone, naked.” And defenseless, I didn’t have to add.

  She frowned. “You have to get undressed before I do. That’s the way it works.”

  “But why?”

  “Listen, buddy. I’m not here to give you an education. I don’t even have to talk to you.”

  In a way, I suppose she was right. She must have had her reasons for all these little procedures. This wasn’t a new
occupation like webmasters, for example. Her profession had a long and proud history of heroines and villainesses dating back to the dawn of civilization. They must have worked out the kinks many years ago.

  So I got undressed. When I was completely naked, she shrugged off her robe. It fell to the floor around her feet. I looked at her body. There was the adrenaline shock of that moment when you know you are going to have sex with a new person. I hadn’t felt such a sense of exhilaration since the day I left home.

  Her body was very thin. Her breasts were small. Her pubic hair was darker than the hair on her head. She had an appendix scar on the right side of her abdomen. There were also track marks on the insides of her arms, but I didn’t want to look at them.

  Her eyes didn’t meet mine. She stared at the floor.

  “OK, big boy,” she said. “That’s enough looking. Let’s get to work.”

  She lay on the bed and spread her legs. The moment of truth. I reached down to the floor and fumbled in my pants pocket until I found what I was looking for. A French letter, as the English called it. Or an English letter, as the French called it. A capote. With a reservoir end.

  I tore open the foil and slipped it on. She didn’t seem to notice or care. I rolled on top of her.

  As soon as I had penetrated her I knew it was a mistake. I should have chosen the black girl instead. There was entirely too much traction. My wife had always flowed like a torrent. This was like plowing a dry riverbed. These weren’t rolls of velvet. They were more like rolls of Velcro.

  I continued to plow away dutifully, without much enthusiasm or pleasure.

  It must have been painful for her but she gave no sign of it. She just lay there completely removed from the process. Her eyes stared ahead, unfocussed.

  I continued to plow ahead, rapidly losing whatever enthusiasm I had once had for this project. It was becoming too much like an unpleasant chore. I hoped it would come to an end before too long.

  But nothing happened.

  We were locked in an eternal intimate embrace that neither of us wanted any longer. There was a continual plowing that seemed to go on forever. But it wasn’t me any more. And it certainly wasn’t her. It was simply a disembodied pair of genitals that couldn’t disengage.