“But what about… hmm, you know, dryness?” I asked.
Candy gave another dismissive shrug. “That’s what the Vaseline’s for,” she answered.
“Baby powder and Vaseline…” I said with an embarrassed chuckle.
“I know, right?” giggled Candy. “I’m like a dirty pharmacy!”
“I was more thinking that it’d be a good inclusion in a starter kit,” I suggested.
Candy barked out a heavy laugh at that. “A whore starter kit, huh? Better include mouthwash!”
It was my turn to laugh, and I thought, Funny you should say that.
Then, deciding that she had a point, I stepped back into the bathroom and retrieved the baby powder.
“At’ta girl,” Candy sang, patting my shoulder and starting for the door. “Don’t take long.”
****
“Come on. Come on! COME ON!” Candy chanted, the intensity of her words growing with each new repetition. “We’re gonna miss the bus!”
Part of me wanted to once again drag up the point that the matter of strict schedules weren’t something to be adhered to in this line of work. Like stuffy dress codes, lengthy PR meetings, and personal hygiene—No, scratch that, I thought, nobody likes a smelly hooker!—the idea of not having to worry about time seemed to be among the few things making prostitution appealing in comparison to other jobs. This, however, was a subject that we’d talked at great lengths about already, and one that I’d been proven wrong on time and time again.
“Maybe some whores got it good and don’t gotta worry about stuff like that,” Candy had said. “But not these whores. No sir-ree, girl; no sir!”
And it was all because of T-Built and his “professional” policies.
Because anybody considering picking up a prostitute is taking things like professionalism into consideration, right? I thought.
That thought, however, was never one of the points that I ever brought up in the past conversations with Candy. I’d known T-Built for a whole forty-five minutes before I even knew that there was a career change in my immediate future, and in that time I learned that he wasn’t the sort of boss you went around challenging. In fact, if any of his girls knew what was good for them, they would do well to keep any sort of comment—anything that wasn’t “yes, sir,” and “here’s the money”—to themselves. One minute I was Mia Chobavich, hopeful college grad and proud applicant to one of the city’s premiere advertising agencies, and the next I was in the service of a man who sounded like a made-for-TV superhero movie’s villain. It was just enough time to teach me a few valuable lessons, lessons that put what my diploma represented to the test:
Don’t ask questions.
Don’t argue.
Don’t talk.
Let it never be said that T-Built wasn’t a charmer…
Provided one was talking about snake charmers and it was clear that, when dealing with him, you might as well be tip-toeing through a pitch-black room filled with P-Oed cobras.
And so, because T-Built said that we had to be on the corner no later than nine every night, it stood to reason that, come nine o’clock, either your ass was at the corner or your ass was fired.
“Fired,” in my case, being a bullet that T-Built would personally fire into my ass (along with most of my major organs).
Like I said: a charmer.
So while a part of me wanted to be bitchy and argue that prostitutes shouldn’t have to worry about keeping a strict schedule, another part of me—the part that liked the idea of staying alive—thought better of it.
This part, as it turned out, was surprisingly good at running in high heels.
****
We made the bus.
Barely.
And, in my aggravation and through labored breaths, I might have said some unpleasant things about T-Built.
“The man might be as pleasant as a vinegar-and-razorblade enema,” Candy said, giving me a stern, “I shouldn’t have to tell you this”-look, “but you’d do well to keep your thoughts about him to yourself. You never know who’s listening, and the Carrion Crew’s got lots of members who’d just love to spill the beans about some mouthy whores talking bad about one of their higher-ups just for a chance to earn a pat on the head from him.”
“You talk about the Carrions like they’re some sort of global conglomerate,” I groaned, shaking my head. “They’re just a gang! It’s not like they’re all-powerful!”
“Girl, get your brain working!” Candy hissed, lowering her own voice and elbowing me to do the same. “Gang or not, they got power, whether it’s ‘all’ or just some makes no nevermind to you—it’s way more power than you or I got. And theirs is the kind of power that can get you dead, you got that?”
I flinched at her words, more out of the painful awareness of the truth they held than the shock of being told. I nodded.
“Good,” she said, but her hushed voice had taken on a tone of sadness as she did.
Taking her advice and keeping my thoughts to myself, I thought, God damn you, Mack; God damn you straight to Hell!
****
The bus caught a flat two blocks from our corner at ten-minutes-to-nine, and Candy and I had to run the rest of the way. As we shuffled off the bus—pushing and shoving past other grumbling passengers—Candy informed the driver that, should we be made late (and dead) by this inconvenience, she would be certain to haunt him in the worst way possible.
Those, however, were not her exact words. While most of what she’d said was lost amidst the cries and curses of those we were knocking past, I did catch “—float my ethereal form so far up your shit-chute that I’ll be wearing you like a—”
I was torn between utter disgust and absolute hilarity by this, but before I could decide between gagging or laughing her hand had me by the wrist and we were running.
Thomas was already standing at the corner where Lyle Avenue and Church Street convene. To anybody else—which was to say anybody who didn’t know any better—the twig of a man in the acid-wash cutoffs and a leather vest studying his cell phone’s screen was nothing more than another grunger. That his vest had a Carrion Crew patch on its left shoulder or that he was staring intently at the digital clock on his phone’s lock screen likely never occurred to any of those potential “anybody else”s. This, however, only served to reinforce my theory that the only people paying attention to the world beyond their own personal screen anymore were hookers, artists, and criminals. Then again, as a firm believer that all good artists were also prostitutes and a “saleswoman” in a country where prostitution was a crime, I had a hard time convincing myself that all three could be condensed into one lumped filum all their own.
And what a poor, dwindling lot we were…
Candy and I—panting and sweating and looking… well, like a pair of prostitutes who’d just run two blocks—nearly stumbled at Thomas’ feet as we crossed an imaginary finish line to our destination. The man, one of T-Built’s lackeys (who preferred to call himself a “PA”), regarded us like one might regard a bundle of spilled garbage that nearly spilled on their lap, and studied his phone with what could only be described as more drama than necessary.
Like it takes this long to read the time! I thought with irritation, trying to steal a glance at the screen. And it’s even DIGITAL!
Though he pulled the phone away before I could get a decent view, I made out an upside-down and backward eight and five. In the blur that robbed the time from me, I couldn’t be sure if what I was seeing was a six or a nine, but I knew from the glance alone that Candy and I had made it and that Thomas was just being a prick.
Scowling and studying the screen a moment longer—seeming to almost be challenging the digital readout—he offered a disappointed sigh and turned away, muttering that he’d report that we’d made it there on time.
I couldn’t help but feel like he somehow felt like he was doing us a favor.
Once he was gone, I finally allowed myself to take in the sharp, full, and admittedly loud inha
le that my lungs had been screaming for. “Jeez!” I whined between gasping breaths, “T-Built’s PA is a real jerk, huh?”
“Girl, the only ‘PA’ that occupies this here corner are me and you: two fine-as-hell ‘Pieces of Ass,’” she countered with a laugh, seeming totally unphased by the Olympic-level run we’d just completed.
I sighed, finally getting control of my breathing again, and started to lean against a nearby light post. Then, remembering seeing a homeless man who was either very drunk or very indifferent to the ongoings around him relieving himself on that very light post several nights earlier, I thought better of it and opted to stand. Reliving the shuddering, grunting scene, I shivered and took a few extra steps away from the site.
Candy, either not noticing or not questioning my actions, began primping. Working from bottom-to-top, she pulled up her fishnets, pulled down her skirt, and then pulled up the sides of her thong—offering more leg and midriff while relieving onlookers of the burden of trying to guess what color her underwear was. Then, smirking proudly to herself, she undid the bottom half of the buttons on her otherwise modest shirt and tied it off in a fashion that she’d previously called her “slutty Daisy Duke,” which was finished off with her removing her arms from either sleeve and having me tie these behind her back to create a forced and overly revealing tube-top that was more of a dangly bra than an actual shirt.
While she did this, I shrugged out of my own coat, which might, at one time long ago, been considered a professional-looking blazer. Beneath this, feeling less and less like a “too revealing”-move and more and more like a “you’re a genius”-one, was a bikini top that I’d decided on in the last minute after hearing about the heatwave that was hitting the city. Though I’d been dreading the “moment of reveal,” as Candy would have called it, I startled myself by immediately deciding that anything more than this would have been unbearable.
“Starting to wish I’d done the same,” Candy groaned, nodding towards my scantily-clad chest.
“Almost enough to make you wish you were wearing a bra, huh?” I said, figuring I wasn’t crossing any lines in saying so. “Then you could just wear that, instead.”
“Nuts to that!” Candy groaned, shaking her head. “Damn things are uncomfortable, not to mention bad for you—make your tits sag and all. Plus I heard they increase your chances for cancer.”
I wanted to point out that a prostitute working for a murderous pimp was hardly in a position to worry about the subject of healthcare, but it occurred to me that any sort of self-preservation in this line of work was better than none.
“Yeah, well…” I gave a shrug and ignored a shrill whistle that echoed from across the street, “When carrying these monsters”—I nodded down towards my breasts—“stops being such a pain in the back, shoulders, neck, and just about every other part of me, maybe then I’ll decide to go braless.”
“Gotta use muscle to build muscle, girl,” Candy pointed out, throwing a wink to the whistler across the street. “It’s, like, a catch twenty-two or whatever: won’t go braless ‘cause it hurts, but it hurts ‘cause you won’t go braless. Me? I can do jumping jacks with my tig ol’ bitties hanging out all happy and free and they know to behave. It’s all about training the beasts.”
I hummed in response, but looked away as I pulled out my own phone. I’d been “reprimanded”—T-Built’s word for backhanding, as it turned out—for bringing a book with me to the corner on the first night. Apparently a hooker who reads is frowned upon. I still wasn’t sure why that was—who cared if they read so long as their orifices still functioned, right?—but, not wanting any further “reprimanding,” I’d since left my books at home. Lucky for me, staring at a phone wasn’t as much of a turn-off for potential seekers of “a good time,” and, luckier still, the Kindle app was free. I still wasn’t sure whether or not T-Built even knew about eBooks, but neither he nor his (cronies) PAs ever seemed to catch on. A few swipes with the pad of my thumb later and I was immersing myself in sweet, distracting fiction.
Candy sighed, forcing it out as an audible, disgruntled groan, and said, “I take it I’m on lookout then?”
I pouted over my screen at her, working my best “puppy-dog eyes”—as she called them—and quivering my lip.
“Girl,” she hissed, but a grin betrayed her, “you are a manipulative and terrible bitch of a woman. Remind me of my goddam mother, I swear to Christ! Fine! Get your read on, but that shit better be gone quick if somebody starts showing interest, you hear?”
I gave her a wide smile and a salute with two fingers from my free hand.
“Oh! Bitch is a Boy Scout all of a sudden?” she jabbed, but turned away to keep an eye on the streets as she did.
Though our relationship was still young, Candy and I had hit it off surprisingly well. Once T-Built had made it clear that I was going to be working for him—and, by extension, working for a new crime syndicate that called itself the Carrion Crew—he explained that room, board, and whatever money I made after he took the Carrion’s cut would be provided to me. Room and board, as it turned out, was a dank, two-bedroom apartment that shared a second floor with three other dank, two-bedroom apartments. Best as I could tell, these other apartments were all rented by the Carrions, two of which I knew were “home” to another four of T-Built’s hookers. The fourth apartment, as far as I knew, was empty—I’d never seen anybody coming or going from it before, but a few times, on our way back to our place after I long night I thought I smelled something—not sure what—coming from inside. I’d thought about asking Candy about it, but it had been one of those “I’m too sore to talk”-nights for her and I hadn’t felt like bothering her. Chances were it was better that way, and I was certain I’d either be disappointed by the answer or, worse yet, come to find that I was better off not knowing.
Since moving in, Candy, who T-Built assured me would take me under her wing, had become my mentor, my sister, and my best friend all in a single liquor-filled night of conversation that had started off innocent and spiraled into her nearly choking herself while trying to illustrate the finer points of fellatio on a Schnapps bottle. She’d been on the streets long enough to pick up all the typical mannerisms I would have expected, but, as I quickly found out, there was a depth and wisdom to her that quickly put her on the short-yet-impressive list of the smartest people I’d ever met. Since then, however, she’d only gone on to climb that list until I was certain that, despite being a high school dropout, she would have managed to stump even the most stubborn of college professors. And, only serving to add to her bizarre charm, she either refused to wave her intelligence over others’ heads or she actually didn’t realize how smart she was.
And if I was actually making any sort of money from working for T-Built and the Carrion Crew, I might’ve been willing to part with some of it to bet that Candy was too smart to think she was dumb.
On that first night, suddenly breaking away from her drunken ramblings and illustrating a sobering moment of clarity, she’d said, “You can tell a lot about a John by the way they talk; whether they’re good tippers, the schmoozing sort, or if they’re the sort to short-change you and spit on you once you’re done with them. Everyone acts like it’s impossible to read a John at a glance, but it can be the easiest thing in the world if you know to look past the promise of a dollar and consider the value of who’s holding the wallet.”
Though it had been sound advice for my new job, the depth of it had since proved itself just as effective even when I wasn’t hooking. It was then that I’d decided not to allow myself to lump Candy into some simple and ugly classification. It was also the moment I’d come to realize that I might not come out of the whole mess hating myself.
But then I had to look at my reflection in the mirror each night and hate myself for looking sexy…
And—oh!—how I envied Candy for managing to take it all in stride in that matter. She had the looks, knew she had the looks, and showed no shame or remorse for knowing exactly how to sell th
e looks. It was embarrassing for me to admit that, while I’d been the one to study advertising and marketing in college, Candy would’ve easily overqualified for any of the jobs that I’d have killed to get. Even her name—title?—was a cleverly constructed layer of her ingenious profile:
“Because ‘of course’-Candy!” she’d said with a bark of laughter after confessing that her real name was Nancy. “What else would I call myself in this line of work? Peppermint? Because I’m sweet at first but then leave ‘em cold! HA!”
And, as if to prove herself even further, she never had a problem with my reading. Sure, I’d be in for a lecture if I let it distract me from the job—the sort of thing that would motivate T-Built to “reprimand” both of us, me for the distraction and her for letting it happen—but, though I’d never seen her read anything that wasn’t instructions on how to cook something, she seemed to appreciate the value of a good book to an avid reader.
“What’chu reading, anyway?” her voice rose up again after a little while. “Must be pretty good to keep you going back to it night-after-night.”
I looked up from my screen, considering how best to answer her question. Though I wanted nothing more than to get into a deep and meaningful conversation about it, I knew that Candy, a “keep it in the here-and-now”-sort of person and an all-around “business”-focused woman, was only asking to be nice. As “social” as the job was, it left one craving genuine company; it was the sort of job that would make a pair of complete strangers eager to talk at great lengths about the joys to be had chewing on ice chips.
The silence between us stretched on a moment longer, and we both jumped as a big, blue motorcycle adorned with a realistic flaming paintjob and sporting a long, jutting front tire roared by. The rider, a serious looking man, seemed to glance our way without actually seeing us—if I didn’t know any better I’d almost say that it looked like he was avoiding any prolonged glances at the road ahead of him; his face sweeping here-and-there as he wove between cars and banked a turn at our corner.
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