by Aya De León
“What press conference?”
“About the shooting yesterday,” Serena said. “One of the girls tweeted that they got shot at, and the tweet went viral. Lily said she assumed we were having a press conference.”
Tyesha took a sip of the coffee and shook her head to clear it. The shooting seemed like a month ago. She’d lost sight of work, between the distress call to pick up her nieces, the drama with Zeus and Jenisse, and her night with Thug Woofer. Just recalling him, she felt a throb between her legs. A press conference? Strippers getting shot at? Viral tweets? She could barely process it.
“Yes,” she said. “Tell them we’ll have a press conference.”
Her phone rang again and it was a Chicago prefix.
Tyesha picked it up.
“Hello?”
“Hey, baby,” her mother’s voice said. The tone was familiar, but it was particularly jarring today.
“Is everything okay?” Tyesha asked. She was afraid that maybe Zeus had come back and killed Jenisse. Or vice versa.
“I just know that God is good all the time,” her mother said. “But I been praying about you and your sister all night long. Ever since Jenisse called last evening, I been worried about the both of you and my grandbabies.”
“Mama,” Tyesha said, “Jenisse musta drunk dialed you after I left the hotel. The girls called me to get them outta there cause their parents were fighting.”
“Jenisse is just worried about those girls,” her mother said.
“Worried?” Tyesha said. “She was throwing brandy glasses at them. Cursing them out. Mama, things with Zeus almost got physical, and Jenisse was plenty abusive with the girls. Then she got vicious again when they tried to leave.”
“I know Jenisse has her faults, but what this family needs is a little more forgiveness,” her mother said.
“Forgive Jenisse?” Tyesha said. “Why? She hasn’t even apologized. Jenisse doesn’t need my forgiveness. It’s those girls that she’s hurt and those girls who are gonna hate her.”
“Jenisse was fifteen when that man came sniffing around,” her mother said. “I know what it’s like to be a young mother. You do your best, but you make mistakes so big because you just don’t know any better. Jesus died on the cross so all our sins could be forgiven.”
“Mama, I’m at the office,” Tyesha said. “I can’t really stay on the phone.”
“I’m just saying,” her mother continued. “Your sister ain’t bad, she just lost. Everybody can’t have two college degrees like you.”
“How do you know I even have those degrees?” Tyesha asked. “It’s not like you came out for the ceremonies. Even after I sent you the tickets.”
“You know I don’t like to fly,” her mother said.
“The second time it was a train ticket.” Tyesha was surprised to feel the prick of tears in her eyes.
“Baby, you’re preparing your crown in the world,” her mother said. “I’m praying to God to prepare your crown in heaven. Your sister, too. I just want both of you to get right while you’re in this world. Get right with God and get right with each other.”
“I gotta go, Mama,” Tyesha said.
“Remember what I told you,” her mother said. “You don’t know the whole story. Jenisse ain’t bad, she’s just lost. Only God can judge.”
“Okay, Mama,” Tyesha said. “I’ll talk to you soon.”
* * *
Three hours later, Tyesha was in the multipurpose room wearing a suit and facing the press. She stood behind one side of the podium with Eva, Kim, and Jody. On the other side stood the union organizers, Giselle and Tara. Lily was at the podium, reading a prepared statement.
“Yesterday afternoon, at approximately two p.m., I was walking down Avenue D to meet the organizers from the other One-Eyed King franchises in the boroughs, and a dark SUV was following them. Then the man in the passenger seat leaned out and shot at them. No one was injured, and the gunman fled. But this illustrates the kind of intimidation that sex workers are up against. Everyone expects to profit from our sexual labor but won’t let us earn a decent living. And our attempts to unionize are not only met with unfair labor practices, but also violent criminal activity. All we want is a safe and fair working environment. But apparently that’s something we’ll have to risk our lives to get. Thank you.”
They hadn’t taken questions at any of the press conferences, but a man from the Daily Clarion raised a hand. “Excuse me,” he said loudly.
“We said no questions,” Eva explained.
“But how do you know?” the Daily Clarion guy asked loudly.
“Come on, man.” Drew stood up, the geeky black guy from the Village Voice. “They said no questions. Show some respect.”
“How do you know this was a retaliation for union efforts?” the Daily Clarion guy insisted. “I mean, couldn’t it have been one of their boyfriends or something.”
Lily slowly turned around. “Eh-eh? What nastiness is dis? You wouldn’t be asking dat same question to someone from the teachers’ union. But if somebody shoots at some sex workers, they must be to blame? You pissin tail!”
“Lily!” Tyesha said, grabbing her friend’s arm. But not before half of the reporters in the room had tweeted out the video of Lily cursing the reporter.
The crew managed to get Lily quieted down before she could mouth off any more.
“Tyesha, when is enough gonna be enough?” Jody said. “You need to talk to Eva about your stage fright or something. You gotta get on that microphone. This was a disaster.”
* * *
An hour later, Tyesha walked back into the multipurpose room. Most of the reporters had left. The only people who remained were the union reps, as well as Kim and Jody, who were talking to Drew from the Village Voice. However, as Tyesha folded up some of the chairs, she noticed one lone woman sitting on the far end of the room.
“Can I help you?” she asked. The woman was maybe fifty, with a tight but busty figure, obviously the result of hours in a gym. She had brightly lipsticked pouty lips, and was Latina or maybe African American and light-skinned.
“Are you Tyesha Couvillier?” the woman asked. “The executive director?”
Tyesha nodded. “And you are?”
“Etta Hughes,” she said. “My husband owns the One-Eyed King.”
Tyesha blinked. “I’m not sure you should be here. We’re communicating through our attorneys at this point.”
“It doesn’t matter what the lawyers say,” Etta Hughes said. “There’s no way Teddy’s gonna let that union go forward.”
“Excuse me?” Tyesha said. “That could land him in jail.”
“It’s not Teddy’s fault,” the wife said. “It’s the Ukrainian mob.”
“Well, then I guess he shouldn’t have gotten into business with them,” Tyesha said, preparing to walk away.
“Wait,” Etta Hughes said, grabbing her arm. “They’ve got something on him. They’re using it as leverage, and they won’t let him agree to the union terms.”
“Hold on a minute,” Tyesha glanced across at her team, talking to the reporter. “We need to go into my office.”
Ten minutes later, the two of them were sitting at the coffee table in Tyesha’s office with Jody and Kim.
“What do they have on your husband?” Tyesha asked.
“A gun,” Etta Hughes began.
“They’re threatening to kill him?” Jody asked.
“No,” the wife said. “It’s a gun that killed somebody. They say it’s got his DNA or something. If there was any way you girls could get that gun back, I know he’d give your union the green light.”
“You want us to help him get out of a murder charge?” Tyesha asked.
“It wasn’t murder; it was self-defense,” the wife insisted. “The One-Eyed King used to have two owners, and the other guy got in bed with the mob. All of a sudden these Ukrainian thugs were coming around the club. And they’ve been making changes—really awful changes. I used to work there, so I know
what it’s like.”
Jody rolled her eyes.
“My husband didn’t agree with the changes, and he and his partner got into a fight about it. They’d both been drinking. He pulled a gun on my husband, but Teddy wrestled it away from him and the gun went off. Shot the partner in the head. Then Teddy panicked. The mob said they’d take care of it. They had my husband tell the cops a story about a robbery. But then they kept the gun and used it as leverage. So now if they ever turn the gun over to the cops, Teddy will look guilty.”
“We’re not going to cover for a murderer,” Tyesha said.
“I was there. I saw it,” Etta Hughes said. “But nobody will believe my testimony. I’m his wife. They’ll just say I’m lying for him.”
“What makes you think we could get this gun?” Kim asked. “Even assuming we wanted to.”
“Because you’re Marisol’s girls,” the wife said. “She always knew her way around a good hustle.”
“And let’s say we give him this gun,” Jody said. “What assurance do we have that he’ll keep up his end of the bargain and greenlight the union?”
“I’ll make sure he does,” Etta said.
“So basically, this all hangs on you,” Kim said. “We gotta believe you that he’s not a murderer and trust you that you can make him do the right thing.”
“That’s right,” the wife said. “Ask Marisol. We go way back. She’ll vouch for me.”
“Marisol is out of town,” Tyesha said.
“Well, when she gets back, tell her what I said,” the woman insisted. “Tell her Etta Lang gave her word.”
* * *
Later that night, Tyesha woke up in Thug Woofer’s bed. As she blinked awake, she saw him propped up on his elbow, looking at her.
“What are you staring at?” she murmured, wiping her eyes. The clock said 2:16.
“You,” he said.
“Damn,” she said. “You could really make a sister feel self-conscious.”
“I just want to know all about you,” he said, putting his arm around her and pulling her into a kiss.
“You’re not the only one who’s curious,” she said, settling in next to him. “I got things I wanna know, too.”
“Like what?” he asked. “Ask me anything.”
“Are we really doing this?” Tyesha asked. “At two seventeen in the morning?”
“Is there a better time?” he asked.
“Okay,” she said. “I wanna know if you’ve paid for sex a lot.”
“No.” He laughed. “I always said only losers paid for sex. But I was secretly just curious as a motherfucker. And you were supposed to be my loophole.”
“Your what?”
“Yeah,” Woof said. “I wasn’t paying, my manager was paying. It wasn’t really for me, it was for my brother’s engagement.”
“But then you got too drunk to do it.”
“I know, and I was pissed off, because you were like, call the office. And I was like, I can’t call the damn office cause then I’d be a fucking loser.”
“But you called anyway.”
“I couldn’t stop thinking about you,” he said. “Who is this fine-ass chick who’s gonna take my money, not fuck me, and then cuss me out.”
Tyesha guffawed.
“Served me right,” he went on. “I got so damn drunk cause I was jealous of my brother.” He lay his head back on the pillow and looked up at the ceiling. “I’ve never admitted that to anyone before.”
“Boy, you admitted it that night,” she scoffed.
“I what?”
“You went on and on about how he had a woman who loved him, but you only had bitches who wanted your money.”
Woof turned over and buried his face in her neck. “I’m never gonna drink again.”
“It was actually kind of sweet,” Tyesha said.
“No, it wasn’t,” he said.
“Maybe not sweet but cute . . . in a kind of pitiful way,” she said.
“Changing the subject,” Woof said. “Can I ask you a question?”
“No, I’ve never paid for sex,” Tyesha said.
“Ha ha,” Woof said. “I wanna know how you ended up with a madam?” he asked. “Did you answer an ad on Craigslist or what?”
Tyesha shook her head. “Nothing like that. I met Marisol when she was on a panel at Columbia about sex work.”
“And she was there as a madam?”
“No way,” Tyesha said. “She was there representing the clinic. I asked to interview her for my senior thesis, and during those interviews we got to know each other.”
Tyesha recalled that day, sitting in Marisol’s office and deciding to confide that some of her information about sex work came from books, and some came from direct experience selling sex.
“You know,” Marisol had said, “sex work wouldn’t have to be as bad as it is if the women and men in the industries could just have a little more choice and protection.”
Tyesha had gotten the idea that Marisol might know about some of it from her own experience, but she never said anything outright. After Tyesha finished with her thesis, they stayed in touch from time to time.
Tyesha graduated, and things went smoothly until the first semester of her public health master’s program, when her sugar daddy’s wife had found out. There was a ton of drama, and the sugar daddy had dumped her. Tyesha didn’t know who else to talk to about it, so she came by Marisol’s office to vent.
“I really liked him, you know?” Tyesha said. “But I can’t even get to any feelings about the breakup, because I’m so busy tripping about the money.”
“This is one of the problems with the single-patron arrangement,” Marisol said. “One guy has a lot of economic power in your life.”
“I wouldn’t even mind having more than one patron,” Tyesha said. “I mean, as long as they were clean and, you know, a guy I would consider fucking without the cash.”
Marisol nodded.
“But I’m a graduate student. I don’t have time to coordinate some complicated situation for myself.”
Marisol opened her mouth and took a breath as if to speak, but then stopped.
“What?” Tyesha asked.
“Nothing,” Marisol said.
“What were you gonna say, Marisol?”
“You walk in more than one world, Tyesha,” Marisol said. “So do I. I’m a public health administrator, but I also hear a lot about what’s going on out there from women who know—what’s going on out there, and what’s more and less safe at any given time. And I’m not always sure when it’s appropriate to color outside the lines and when it’s best to keep everything inside the safe little boundaries. Whatever you’ve shared with me about your personal life, I still think of you as a student I’m sort of mentoring in my capacity as a public health administrator.”
“What would you say to me if I came to you as a sex worker looking for a quality hookup?” Tyesha asked. “If I wasn’t a student?”
Marisol studied Tyesha for a minute. “If a young woman as smart and sophisticated as you came and asked me about a hookup, I would tell her that I do know of a possible opportunity in the escort business.”
“Like a call girl?” Tyesha asked.
“The preferred industry term these days is ‘escort,’ ” Marisol said. “A situation with management.”
“Who’s the manager?” Tyesha asked. “Is he cool?”
“It’s a woman,” Marisol said. “But she keeps a very low profile.”
“It’s you,” Tyesha broke into a smile. “Isn’t it?”
“Let’s talk,” Marisol said, and cancelled her next appointment.
* * *
When she told Thug Woofer about it, he laughed. “I told you, that woman is a straight-up pimp. I could feel it when I went to her office.”
“She is not a pimp,” Tyesha said, smacking him playfully. “Pimps hate women and exploit the workers. Marisol donated all her profits to the clinic.”
“Okay, fine,” Woof said. “Then no
t a pimp, but straight up ruthless in doing business. She’s like a ghetto Puerto Rican Olivia Pope—‘it’s handled.’”
“What you know about getting something handled?” Tyesha asked.
“I think I might be about to handle something serious right now,” he said, reaching for her hip. “At two thirty-three in the morning, no less.”
Tyesha laughed and rolled on top of him.
* * *
Marisol Rivera walked the three blocks from her boyfriend’s house to the Maria de la Vega clinic building. She had a studio apartment on the top floor. She’d been back in town since noon, but had spent the afternoon making love with Raul.
She had returned from Cuba relieved. Her sister Cristina would be fine, just needed to be on bed rest. Which would be hard, because the Rivera women liked to keep it moving. Cristina had insisted that Marisol come back to New York. After all, weren’t Cristina and her boyfriend, Juan, both doctors?
But when Marisol had first gotten the summons, she had imagined months without her boyfriend, Raul. Just the thought of being apart fueled a ravenous hunger inside of her. And so when she came back, she made love to him as if she’d been gone months instead of days. She could have stayed another few days in his bed, but duty called.
She’d gotten several cryptic messages from Tyesha, her successor as clinic executive director. Tyesha said she had an urgent matter, something she refused to discuss on the phone.
Marisol walked up to the health center and was glad to see everything in order. No fires, no bomb threats. The clinic waiting room was full of young women in tight clothes with brightly colored weaves and dye jobs.
A few floors up, she entered her old office—now Tyesha’s.
Tyesha sat on the couch next to Eva and looked up as Marisol came in.
“Thank goodness Cristina’s okay,” Eva said, hugging Marisol.
“Things seemed to go well on this end, too,” Marisol said. She hugged Tyesha. “I didn’t think Lily cussing out that reporter was such a disaster,” Marisol said, as she sat down on the couch. “He deserved it. But what’s this thing you can’t ask me on the phone?”
Tyesha leaned forward in her chair. “Etta Lang,” Tyesha said. “Can we trust her?”