by J. C. Allen
But that didn’t mean that someone didn’t have ways of keeping eyes on us.
“And what would you be doing if you weren’t?” Crystal asked. “I’ll tell you. Throwing on a sexy tight red dress, doing up your hair, and going out so you can gyrate on a dance floor to remixed European music in the hopes that some suit-wearing stud with a thick wallet will throw down for a bright, sweet-as-Crystal drink? And then doing whatever it took to enjoy a night on the man’s dime? And you think that’s different?”
My sneer at the idea started deep, deep in my gut and found its way soon after to my face. I may have been a whore, but… well, maybe it was beyond stupid to say, but I was a whore with some self-respect remaining.
“Ew! God, no! Ew!” I said. “I’d probably be staying in, watching bad 90’s reruns on Hulu and eating a pizza. And you may call me naive and foolish, but that was much of my younger life, you know. I wasn’t some sorority slut back in the day.”
Crystal regarded me as though I’d just landed a giant saucer in the middle of her bathroom and emerged among a cloud of dense fog as a green-skinned being from Mars. The look on her face was one of utter shock and, honestly, a little contempt.
“And what about a man?” she demanded, as if being reminded of the existence of men might totally obliterate the fantasy I’d just described.
“If one happened to be present then I guess he’d better have had the foresight to order his own pizza.”
It was true. I didn’t need a man, but I did need customers at the moment. That was very different from what Crystal was describing, though.
To be fair, I had some empathy for Crystal. I think if I were trapped in the life of a hooker, I would have wanted a man to rescue me. It wasn’t implausible to think that if this life continued as it had for a few more months, I’d adopt more of her persona.
For now, though? I was good.
“Anyyyyyyway!” Crystal said, stretching the word. “While some other girls might casually go out onto town and flaunt the goods, those doing it professionally—and, by that, I mean those like me and you—know that all that walking, wagging, and… well, all that has a nasty way of chafing the thighs and coochie. And if we don’t account for that, we’re gonna have to account for some other asshole. And even you, new as you are, know this.”
I considered this for a moment, remembering a few of the busier nights where I had, indeed, gotten back with a fair amount of irritation between my legs.
I tried not to think too hard on her second point about answering to someone else.
“But what about… you know, umm… dryness?”
Crystal gave another dismissive shrug.
“That’s what the Vaseline’s for,” she answered.
As if it was as simple as following up that cookie with some milk.
“Baby powder and Vaseline…” I said with an embarrassed chuckle.
Really, I loved Crystal, but sometimes she was just ridiculous.
“I know, right?! I’m like a dirty pharmacy!”
“I was more thinking that it’d be a good inclusion in a starter kit,” I said.
I was completely serious, but Crystal barked out a heavy laugh at that. What she didn’t know is that I’d probably be dead—or at least beaten nearly to death—if I hadn’t had her to guide me in the early days.
“A whore starter kit, huh? Better include mouthwash!”
It was my turn to laugh, and I thought, Funny you should say that.
But there was a dark truth to her, and as crass, silly, and ridiculous as Crystal was, she was right. And we shared the same profession. Which meant no matter how crass, silly, and ridiculous it all seemed, I would do well to listen to her.
I stepped back into the bathroom and retrieved the baby powder.
“At’ta girl,” Crystal sang, patting my shoulder and starting for the door. “Don’t take long.”
I tried my hardest not to, but after what felt like ten minutes to me of some last second touchups, Crystal was banging on the door again—and this time, with much more force than before.
“Come on. Come on! COME ON!” Crystal chanted, the intensity of her words growing with each new repetition. “We’re gonna miss the bus!”
If I could have, I would have mentioned that things like strict schedules, stuffy dress codes, meetings of any kind, and HR rules didn’t apply to being a hooker. If I could have, I would say that the idea of not having to concern myself with a schedule made prostitution relatively appealing compared to some other jobs.
This, however, was made on the basis that I enjoyed this line of work and that I had chosen to be here.
Which I most certainly had not.
“Maybe some whores got it good and don’t gotta worry about stuff like missing the bus,” Crystal said. “But not these whores. No sir-ree, girl; no sir! We have got to keep a tight schedule before the boss sticks something besides cocks up our asses!”
And it was all because of Rock and his “professional” policies.
Because anybody considering picking up a prostitute is taking things like professionalism into consideration, right? Clearly that is the most important consideration above all else. Nothing more!
I didn’t dare mention these thoughts to Crystal, though. I learned that badmouthing Rock—whom I had met in person for all of maybe a couple of hours, my first meeting lasting only about half an hour—would wind me up in the shitter in some fashion. To challenge Rock was to challenge fate in the sense that Rock controlled ours.
He had two phrases he expected us to say. “Yes, sir,” and “here’s your money, sir.” Very, very, very, very, very rarely, he might let us say “can we do this, sir?” if we had a suggestion for a way for him to make more money, but that carried the enormous risk of getting fucked up, being fucked up, or fucking up any hope of sticking around.
In short, Rock was the kind of dangerous comic book villain who could transform me, Eve Kellerman, from a soon-to-be college graduate and potential employee in finance to a whore whose life revolved around a few simple rules.
Don’t ask questions.
Don’t talk.
Sure as hell don’t argue.
And kiss the feet upon which Rock walked across.
Right now, those feet pointed to the fact we had to be on our corner by 5 p.m. Early, yeah, but on the streets we patrolled, cops didn’t give a shit. Hell, half the time, the cops struggled with whether to hire us on the down low or just look at us before deciding their careers weren’t worth the risk.
It was that, or get fired. And by fired, I mean Rock would have fired a bullet into my ass and just about every organ that would put me in a grave.
Real charmer, isn’t he?
As it turned out, there was one other rule I had to follow really well.
Run like hell in high heels.
It was a move I got good at, and as Crystal and I sprinted to the bus, I saw it turning the corner to the stop we had to get to.
“Fuckin’ Rock,” I mumbled, confident since no one was around and we weren’t in our rooms I could get away with a bit more. “I’d like to stick a knife up his ass. Show him what it’s like to get penetrated every goddamn night. Fucking prick.”
Just as the bus reached its stop, we arrived. The driver looked annoyed to have to pick up two gals who could not have been less overt about their professions, but he didn’t say anything.
Crystal, on the other hand, looked like she wanted to slap me with her words by the look she’d given me since we’d had the chance to catch our breath.
“What,” I said, but even before she began speak, I knew what she was about to lecture me on.
“The man might be as pleasant as a vinegar-and-razor blade enema and about as dull as a rusted one,” Crystal said “But you’d do well to keep your thoughts about him to yourself. You never know who’s listening, and the Black Falcon’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 cha
nce to earn a pat on the head from him. We might suck cocks for a living, but his cronies would suck his cock for anything.”
I rolled my eyes. Yes, they had us under their spell. Yes, we worked for them.
But they weren’t the fucking mafia. They weren’t the Secret Service. They weren’t fucking omnipotent or omniscient.
“You talk about the Falcons like they’re some sort of global conglomerate,” I said. “They’re just a club! What, are they—”
“Girl, get your brain working!” Crystal hissed, lowering her own voice and elbowing me to do the same.
It was here that I first took notice of the passengers around us. Thankfully, none of them seemed to take too much of an interest in the two hookers gossiping, but… be honest, Eve, they’re not stupid enough to show you up here. You’ll pay for it later if you do.
“club or not, they got power, whether it’s ‘all’ or just some makes no difference 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? Do I need to make it any fucking clearer?”
I flinched at her words, more out of the painful awareness of the truth they held than the shock of being told. I nodded. Idealism had a way of dying when reality could take your life any day.
“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 couldn’t speak my mind. But I sure as hell could think a lot of things.
And one thing that I began to think was how, despite how much I despised Rock, he wasn’t truly the one responsible for this. He wasn’t truly the one who fucked me over as he did. He wasn’t really the one who had led me down this path.
Chuck.
God damn you, Chuck.
God damn you straight to hell, you fucker!
For what you did to me…
“LAST STOP!”
The bus driver boomed his voice over the PA system, a not-so-subtle note to me, Crystal, and the two other passengers on this late afternoon bus. I looked at my watch. 4:50 p.m.
We had about two blocks to go.
We’d make it, but we’d cut it way too close for comfort; no, we’d cut it way too close for our lives.
“I swear to Jesus, if I’m late cuz of your grandpa-driving ass, I’mma haunt you until the end of days,” Crystal said, sneering at the bus driver. I wasn’t sure if I felt it fortunate or a missed opportunity for some levity that the bus driver didn’t respond.
“We’re not gonna be late,” I said, showing her the phone.
“Yeah but one missed stop, one bad traffic light, one—”
“I know, I know,” I said, but I wasn’t sure I truly knew. I’d seen some bad shit, but not nearly on the level that Crystal probably had. Not that I want to see that bad shit.
On the street corner two blocks down, a man wearing a leather vest, sunglasses, and blue cutoffs with his cell phone out leaned against a light pole, looking about as casual as someone could be without wearing headphones. Somebody not paying attention would never have thought twice about this man.
But I knew him as Jose. I knew him by the fact that he had a subtle but nevertheless present patch of the Black Falcon by his shoulder. I knew him because he was looking at his phone, not interacting with it as most people would. The only reason anyone would act in such a way was to keep track of the time.
We stood near Jose, waiting for him to give some kind of reaction. He looked to us, then stared back at his phone, as if dramatizing a point. I didn’t pull out my phone yet, not near Jose, but I knew for damn certain we had not taken ten minutes from the bus stop. Hell, the fucker had come into vision before we’d even crossed the second block—only willful ignorance would have allowed him to say he didn’t see us before.
Finally, he gave a “hmm” and then walked away, saying something about “you’re good” before continuing to the next corner, undoubtedly on a quest to ensure the rest of Rock’s hookers showed up as scheduled.
You’d think the way he moved, he was doing us a favor. Fucker.
“Goddamn,” I mumbled, making sure Jose had moved beyond the block and well out of earshot. “Rock’s got some PA jerks, 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.
“If you say so,” I said, a bit too frustrated with my “managers” to laugh too hard.
I leaned against the same lamp post Jose had been on just seconds before. Crystal began primping herself, pulling up fishnets, pulling down her skirt, and then the sides of her red thong up, leaving onlookers with little space or need to guess what color her underwear was. She undid the bottom half of her buttons and tied it in a fashion that she had called “Dick Loving Daisy Duke.” She finished by removing her arms from either sleeve and having me tie it behind her back to pump up the size of her breasts.
“Girl, you gonna get ready, or you just gonna assume it’s that easy?”
I knew what she meant. I just hated every step of this process and tried to delay it as long as I could. I removed my once-professional blazer, revealing a bikini top that, interestingly enough, fit rather well with the heat wave. I felt like a whore’s whore at first, but considering the sweat-inducing heat, I couldn’t help but feel anything but relief when this happened.
“Starting to wish I’d done the same,” Crystal 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. Pretty sure Crystal has no lines, at least not when it comes to sex and the job. “Then you could just wear that, instead.”
“Hell no to that, you outta your damn mind woman?!” Crystal said. “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. And I know my tits may sag some day, but I ain’t doing that until I’m old enough to be a veteran cougar.”
I wanted to point out that a prostitute working for a murderous pimp was hardly in a position to worry about the subject of health care or longevity, and that there was a decent chance that we’d be dead before we ever hit the early stages of cougardom…
But it occurred to me that any sort of self-preservation in this line of work was better than none. And if that meant believing Buzzfeed articles describing the ten ways bras gave you cancer, well, who the hell was I to judge?
“Yeah, well…” I gave a shrug and ignored a shrill whistle that echoed from across the street, looking down at my chest. “When carrying these monsters 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,” Crystal 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 boobs hanging out all happy and free and they know to behave. It’s all about training the beasts.”
I loved Crystal, but some conversations just felt too stupid to have. I missed the days of actual intellectual conversation, and while I had way more humor with Crystal than I ever did back in school, let’s just say it wasn’t difficult to think about which trade I would have made.
I pulled out my phone and instead decided what I imagined very few other hookers did on their “shifts”—read.
Early in my tenure, I’d brought a book to the corner to pass the time, only to receive a “reprimand”—aka a slap from Rock—for what I had done. Apparently, in keeping the idea of whores being saleswomen, bringing a book to the corner was not a good pitch. I guess men liked to think of their prostitutes as stupid and easy?
In any case, valuing my life over the latest evolutionary psychology book, I left the paperbacks for home and traded it for the Kindle app on my phone. Rock never said
anything and none of his cronies did either—I guess convincing hookers not to use cell phones was a real pain in the ass and not worth it. Either way, getting the chance to read some work from Richard Dawkins provided me the brain challenges that Crystal or anyone else around me could ever provide.
“I guess I’m on lookout, huh?”
I looked up at Crystal, surprised to hear her speak again, and then gave the soft, pleading eyes that worked wonders in college but not quite as well here.
“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?”
“Of course,” I said. “Scout Kellerman reporting for duty, ma’am!”
Crystal could only shake her head, as if she had to play the big sister role to the naive little girl who didn’t know any better.
It was a damn shame that that assessment was much more on point than I ever wanted it to.
In some ways, we were even like sisters. We shared an apartment. We worked for the same man, Rock, and by extension the same group, the black Falcons. We shared much of our own pasts with each other, as I learned from one night when Crystal, drunk off vodka, wound up showing me how to suck dick off of a giant Coke bottle.
Strangely, in a very bizarre way, there was a certain intelligence to the way she approached prostitution. I could never say that I got that much mental enjoyment out of speaking with Crystal, but it could also never be said that the girl hadn’t given a ton of thought to her work.
If she became an entrepreneur with that kind of drive, she’d probably crush it. Damn shame she’ll never get that so long as Rock lives.
She would’ve been a hoot in my college classes too. Nothing more confusing to liberal arts types than a woman who speaks silly and ridiculous and yet makes oddly compelling and impenetrable points.