Sex Work

by Frédérique Delacoste

  “Yeah,” Kathy said and looked around again.

  “Then you might as well come back to the office and I’ll fill you in,” Collette said as she turned and began to walk back. “These are the rooms, you might want this one since it isn’t claimed.” Collette pulled back a curtain, showing a small cubicle with three walls, the curtain making the fourth. The beanbag couch was made of a black, fuzzy material that looked dusty. A small plastic lamp on a plastic table, a box of kleenex, and a wall full of mirrors made up the rest.

  Kathy said sure and looked at the carpeting.

  “Here’s the run-down and house rules,” Collette continued, now seated in the office chair. “Always get him undressed first to make sure he isn’t a cop. You only strip to your bra and pants — no farther — and you can’t show anything. The law says you’re not supposed to touch his parts either. I collect the money before he goes to a room, but you gotta get more from him, and that’s gotta be turned in too. I’ll write everything up and you get twenty-five percent commission off the top. There are no drugs and no booze. If you get into trouble, just yell and I’ll come to the room.” Collette listed it all off quickly, as she had done so often. “You got any questions?” she said, trying to be kind, and smiled at Kathy.

  Kathy said no and looked at the pattern of Collette’s skirt.

  Anna yelled from the front, “Collette, we got customers — and they’re cute.” Collette checked out Kathy once more and went to the salesroom.

  “Evening, gentlemen, I’m Collette, your hostess,” she said, sitting down between the two suited men and looking them over. “This is the Sugar Shop and there are ladies here for you to spend some time with. We charge forty for the half-hour and seventy-five for about an hour. Whatever you do in the privacy of your room is between you and the lady you choose. What’ll it be?” She smiled at them business-like and winked.

  “Wall wadda ya say buddy? This here little lady is laying it on the line. Come on, I’ll treat.” He pulled out two one-hundred dollar bills. “Sounds good, bring ’em on in.”

  Collette held up the curtain and called off the girls’ names as they came in. “This is Anna, Jeri, Candy, Kathy, Chrissy, Sunny, and this is Dawn.”

  The man holding the money got up, gave the two bills to Collette, then put his arm around Anna. “I’ll take her.” Anna, looking at the man, said to Collette, “And he’s going to let me keep the change.”

  Buddy looked at Kathy, then said, “This one,” pointing to Sunny. “Let’s go then,” Sunny said. Grabbing his hand, she led him to the back.

  “Kathy, come with me,” Collette said when they disappeared. “You take this change and receipt in to him and try to get him to take both of you,” she continued, handing Kathy twenty-five dollars and a piece of paper.

  As Collette was writing up the sale, Sunny came in to hang up her sweater. “I’m sending the new girl in with you, she’s got his change.”

  “Okay, Collette.” But Collette didn’t see Sunny raise her hands and drop them, because she was busy with the books.

  Collette lit up a cigarette and listened to the conversations in the rooms. Sunny was arguing half-heartedly with Buddy to let Kathy come in the session. Collette couldn’t hear Kathy say anything, so she went to stand unseen by the room’s curtain. “Well, give her a tip then. Let her keep five dollars, okay?”

  Kathy came out of the room and Collette stopped her. “I’ll write this up,” she said taking the money from Kathy’s hand.

  In the lobby Collette directed Kathy to sit on the stool by the window. Kathy began smiling at everyone who walked by.

  Duffy stuck his head in the door and looked at Kathy. “Hey pretty girl, want some foxy new clothes?” He walked in and opened his dress bag. “Tonight I got some pretty special stuff,” and he pulled out a pantsuit of orange silk. The other girls looked up and few came close to see for themselves.

  Collette let this go on for a minute and then interrupted, “We don’t need any hot stuff in here, Duffy.” Duffy looked at her and into his bag, then began to pull out a green blouse that matched Collette’s skirt. Collette, still sitting in her chair, was amazed at his audacity. She had eighty-sixed him only last week. Duffy caught her look. “Okay, mama, I’ll leave. Too bad though, I got some mighty fine trappings in here.” He snapped his bag shut quickly, and turned to Kathy. “What’s your name? You want to meet me later on?” he said smiling at her.

  “No she doesn’t. You trying to pimp on the side these days too?” Duffy spun around and looked at Collette. As she began to laugh at him, he turned and walked out the door, winking at Kathy in the window as he went up the street.

  Collette shouted out to Doorman, “Keep that hustler outa here!”

  “Yes ma’am. Hey, hey sirs, You oughta see what we got here for you. Come-on-in-and-take-a-look. There’s-one-here-for-everybody!”

  Collette was watching the street from where she sat doing her nails. Cars rolled by and the riders looked at the neon flashing Girls Girls Girls. Doorman watched the cars and if they stopped he walked out and gave a rap. He was also listening to the street whores who strutted, looked sharp, and called to men on the sidewalk. The girls were quick that night, leaving for only fifteen minutes at a time and then walking back down O’Farrell to Powell Street. On the sidewalk was the usual assortment of people who came out with the night: the dealers, the pimps, and other hustlers, all calling to one another and to their women. The Commodores wailed through the parlor doors and spilled onto the sidewalk, crashing with the honking taxis and screeching delivery trucks. The sound was electrifying to accustomed ears, overpowering to the uninitiated.

  Collette remembered her first day on this street, searching for the door marked Entertainment Industries. She was surprised at the number of businesses on that block. The office door was next to the massage parlor and contrasted with the Arab-run corner grocery, the Greek coffee shop, and the antiques stores specializing in Oriental and European furniture. Farther down, there was a piano lounge, a four-star Italian restaurant, import shops catering to foreign tourists, a hot dog stand where young punks hung out at 3:00 in the morning, and a cigar and magazine shop with a shoeshine stand where the men stopped in the early evening to get hand-done shines. In the upper stories of the buildings were run-down rooming houses, dentists’ offices, and better hotels. A few blocks up, this street turned into the outskirts of the Tenderloin, and a few blocks down began the richest stores: Saks Fifth Avenue, Brooks Brothers, and Gump’s. This street was not the heart of the city, but merely one of many such arteries in a place where one couldn’t go any farther west: San Francisco.

  Collette sighed and blew on her nails. It was a long way from New York, the end of the Greyhound route, the end of Interstate 80. The bus took five days to get here, dropping her off at the station on Market Street, vulnerable to the men who wait in such places, looking for runaway girls like Collette was. She had escaped them; in fact, she hadn’t known they existed until others had told her of them and told her the stories of girls who hadn’t gotten away, who had ended up dead of heroin overdoses or beaten to death by the walking sticks of their pimps. She wondered where she would be if one of them had found her. Now though, because she had been able to turn the old man’s head and through her own sheer luck, she sat arrogantly above those others. Collette yelled time to Sunny and Anna and lit a cigarette.

  “Never-have-you-seen-so-many! girls girls girls! That’s what the sign says, that’s what we got. Yes, sir! Step-inside-and-try-one-out-for-size! You-can-have-her-here, you-can-have-her-there. So how about it gentlemen? Why not check it out?”

  Collette watched Maluda walk down the street. A gang of sailor boys whistled at her, but Maluda looked back at the Girls Girls Girls sign. The boys picked up the hint and Doorman ushered them inside. Collette herded them all into the salesroom.

  “Evenin’. Twenty dollars for fifteen minutes and fifty for the half-hour. Okay?” Collette brought in the girls who were playing older woman to their v
irgin male. “Which one’s your pick?”

  “Got myself a fifty,” Dawn said, smiling at her boy.

  “Come on son, give her the cash — I don’t take no traveler’s checks!” Sunny bossed her sailor.

  Kathy smiled at her man and took his hand shyly.

  Collette watched as all the girls were chosen. She counted their money as she walked back to the office. As she dropped the cash into the safe and started writing down the figures, she listened to bits of conversations. Anna came in and gave her twenty dollars more. “He wants to stay longer.”

  “Thanks, he and Anna? Listen in on Kathy, willya?” Collette said, giving Anna a quick kiss. Anna returned the kiss and went back to her sailor.

  Collette walked slowly to the lobby, still listening to the murmurs in the rooms. When she sat in the window, Maluda came by, going toward the Hilton. A sheepish-looking man was following her. The juke box was silent so Collette yelled for more quarters. Everyone was showing good on the books, ‘cept Kathy and she was so new so it didn’t matter, unless, Collette thought suddenly, she was already stealing from the house. Damn, watch her. No one was fucked up yet either. No cops, good money, and a smooth-running house; it was going to be okay for once. Collette lit a cigarette and waved to someone Doorman was trying to get in the door. No good. On the other side of the street, an engineer was picking up a whore. Collette cursed, then didn’t care; he probably didn’t have any money and was all trouble anyway. Let her deal with the drunk, she thought, looks like she needs the money for dope. Collette flicked her cigarette through the door. It arched over the sidewalk and landed in the gutter.

  Collette’s thoughts swung back to Maluda. She always wondered how anyone could stand pounding the pavement in high heels all night long. ‘Course, Maluda wore good shoes, the kind you paid two hundred dollars for at Saks, that helped. Tonight Maluda had on a blouse of gold that glimmered against fine wool pants, all looking rich and tailored and somehow exotic at the same time. The gold reflected up onto her face making its tawny color even lighter. Her hair seemed to shine too — it wasn’t nappy, nor did it look like it’d been processed, it looked like it was always just curly. Her face held eyes the color of the street when the neon went off. Maluda was classy, always stepping high.

  A man stuck his head in the door and said, “I gotta wife, what do I need this place for?”

  “Asshole,” Collette said as he disappeared.

  Sunny came out, running a pick through her hair.

  “Why are you out here? I haven’t called time yet.”

  “He’s done, got no more money. He ain’t mad, he’s gettin’ dressed. Hey Collette, why you sticking that new girl on me? You know I hate training the new ones, and this one is real dumb.”

  ‘“Cause you been around here longer than anyone else. And besides, if she’s that dumb, you can make her do anything,” Collette said, rising from the stool. “Sit here, willya? I wanna go hear what’s going on in there.”

  A blue pin striped suit followed Maluda to the Hilton.

  “Hey Mister Papa-san,” Doorman called and moved his forefinger in and out of a circle of other fingers and thumb. “In here too, papa-san,” he winked as the man walked on.

  “Damn! That Japs got money,” he said to Sunny. “I been trying to get him in here all fucking night and there he goes with that bitch.” Sunny nodded for she too had seen. “Nigger with a Jap and we got three blondes in here,” Doorman continued to cuss.

  “Who you talking nigger?” Sunny said. “Keep putting us in front, no wonder he never come in.”

  Doorman stepped inside quickly to talk with Sunny in private. “Hey babe, you want any ludes tonight? My man out there got some. He’ll sell the whole script, or just a couple.”

  “You know I do. Collette stuck that new bitch on me tonight. She’s so good she don’t know a trick from a dick.”

  “You got it sugar,” Doorman disappeared into the side alley.

  When he came back, Sunny swallowed two and hid the rest with her stolen tips in her bra. Then she took a drink from the bottle she kept hidden away from Collette.

  Collette hadn’t told Kathy that the particular room she’d been assigned was the one closest to the office, where Collette could hear most everything from her desk.

  “I don’t believe it,” Collette said to herself. “That girl is giving him her life story and he’s eating it up. Guess you gotta believe those new ones’ll do anything.” Collette held her lighter to a Dunhill cigarette and blew the smoke toward the ceiling. Checking her watch and the time on the log sheet, she saw that there were only a couple of minutes left in the sessions. She closed her eyes and leaned back in the chair, shutting out the sounds around her. I need some coffee, she thought, or something. The phone rang; it was the old man asking to see how much they had in.

  “Five thirty-five.” The old man cursed her and went on about how it was almost midnight. “You damn well better get going down there, it’s late and you ain’t got half what you’re supposed to by now!” He slammed the phone down. Collette told him to fuck off because she knew he couldn’t hear her, and then yelled “Time!” as she went out to the lobby.

  The sailor boys were getting dressed as the girls came into the lobby. Collette followed behind them.

  “Bye y’all,” Sunny called as her boy left.

  “Stop in again next time,” Dawn said to hers after she had kissed him good-bye.

  “Hey, I can’t go out with you. You ain’t got no hotel room, honey. Quit your rapping about it. I know you ain’t got no more money either. I checked,” Anna said to hers as he looked back at her hopefully.

  “Hey Jack, give me a couple of quarters for the juke box before you leave — make me think about you,” Chrissy said as her sailor put on his coat.

  The sailor boys left smiling. Collette looked over the girls in various stages of renewing their make-up. The street was quiet now, except for a few of the less successful street girls. The juke box was playing slow hold-me-in-your-arms songs. Kathy was sitting in the window again; Sunny was standing near her, talking about the street. They watched Maluda pass by.

  “She got those two street girls following her, too bad,” Sunny was saying. As if hearing her, Maluda turned around and started walking back toward Powell Street. “See those two other girls? Bet they’re new around here. They probably roll their tricks when they’re asleep, and take anything they can fence down on Market Street.”

  “Why would they do that?” Kathy asked.

  “Most likely their old man just put em out on the street and they being pushed to get the most they can,” Sunny answered.

  From where she sat, Collette could see the two. They were both brassy-looking, like they had just come over from Oakland. Their pimp was most likely hanging out in some doorway, watching to make sure his girls weren’t keeping any money from him.

  “Yeah, well, this place is a lot of shit too. Here all you do is clean them out of their money and then they get mad at you,” Chrissy said, adjusting her Foxy Lady t-shirt.

  “But out there you just got one price and you don’t get anything more. They don’t get mad either,” Dawn said. “Besides, here you always got someone to back you up if you get in trouble. It’s better here.”

  “Here it’s all a game; you keep pretending you’re going to give it to them and then you make them do it,” Candy said, laughing at the joke of it all. “And you ain’t got to be out there all night.”

  “Yeah, but you got to put up with that old man all the time,” Jeri said. “Always comin’ in here and putting his hands all over you, trying to make you fuck him in the back room. I swear to god, if he ever try to do that to me again, I’m going to knife that motherfucker.”

  “He get you yet Kathy?” Collette asked, knowing he had, because he never hired anyone until he’d fucked them once.

  Kathy didn’t answer. She was still trying to figure out what Candy had said earlier. “Then how come it don’t work like that for me then? You all g
ot lots of money on the books and I hardly got any.”

  “Kathy, you heifer, you give it too easy. That crotch of yours is gold, you hear? And unless they pay gold, don’t take no green!” Sunny said to her.

  “It ain’t much better out there either,” Anna said. “Yeah, you got one price, and if they got it, they get it, or else they gotta walk on down.”

  “But sometimes you can play it, though you’ve got to know your trick. Shoes, pockets, and the look. Don’t take them hungry ones or you won’t make it back,” Chrissy said.

  “The cops’ll bust you just the same, whether you’re laying your rap on them in here or out there,” Sunny said. “Them shoes is the clue: always look down before you look up.”

  “But not if you’re like some of them out there,” Collette put in. “Some of them know exactly how to do it. They ask just what they think the guy’ll pay, and then hit ’em up for more before everything happens. Like Maluda. She’s street-wise. Knows exactly how much and she can spot those rubber soles from a block away. She ain’t gonna get her ass landed in jail, she’d just gonna keep walking these streets. I mean, like how you think she got so much anyway?”

  “Fuck Maluda! Who give a damn ‘bout her? She ain’t nothin’. I been walking the streets since she was just a baby girl in Oakland. She think she so good,” Sunny sucked her teeth and spat. “She fuck anything, no matter if they got money or they her mama.”

  Collette snapped back at Sunny, “What’s the matter, gal? She steal your man one night?”

  “Fuck off,” Sunny said quietly. She flopped down on the couch and crossed her arms over her chest.

  “Step right in here and the hostess will take care of you, sir,” Doorman said as he opened the door and a man came in.

  “Hold on! I know what this is, and no thank you!” The man turned to walk out.

  “Wait a minute,” Kathy said, grabbing the man’s hand. “Whatcha leaving for? You don’t know us, why not stick around a minute?”

  The man started sweating. He wrenched his hand from Kathy’s and raised it to strike her. Sunny jumped up and blocked the slap.