Night bait, page 21
It was quarter past midnight now. Cherry looked up and down the street with an impatient frown. Her eyes combed the area for signs of prospective customers.
No one.
Unconsciously, she tapped one of her spike-heels to the beat of some freaky new wave tune pounding out of the entrance of The Rockwork Club. She couldn't imagine girls dancing to that kind of music. It sounded like someone was starting up a lawnmower. But she continued to tap her foot to the sound, and she soon became aware of what the singer was saying. Through the grinding mishmash of phase-shifted guitar riffs, she made out the repetitious, monotone lyrics: "Saturday night in the city of the dead," over and over. The song seemed perfect for that particular night.
Her thoughts drifted. The fish aren't biting tonight. Ain't this the pits? The dress she wore was the best looking one she had, a sexy, green print, which hung loosely at her knees, yet stuck to everything above her waist like paint. She wasn't wearing anything underneath, and the material of the dress was so thin that the tight circle of her navel, the pink outlines of her nipples, and the shaded triangle of her pubic hair could be discerned effortlessly by any who passed her. Her chestnut hair had been cut shorter than most of the girls'; it gave her a youthful, schoolgirl kind of look, which always seemed to be a turn-on for a lot of the old geezers with money. Probably makes them think they're fucking their daughters, she thought.
The muscles of her thin legs flexed as she stood atop her high heels. She liked the way the shoes brought out the sharp definition of her legs and the tight curvature of her calves. She turned to the plate-glass window in front of The Rockwork Club and adjusted her hair in the reflection, ignoring the ghost grins of the customers inside who had noticed her. I should get a trophy for having the highest cheekbones in D.C, she complimented herself while she examined her face in the glass, scrutinizing her big bright eyes and long lashes, her perfect European nose, the glossy red lips, and the gleaming, evenly-spaced white teeth like rows of polished ivory. Can't look much better than this. She was pleased with her appearance, but disgusted with the night's take so far. Inside The Rockwork, she noticed one of the patrons staring at her with eyes that could only mean one thing. She puckered and made a sweet kissing gesture at him, ran her tongue over her upper lip, then curled her finger, beckoning him. But he turned away.
Yep, the bait's good, but the fish aren't biting.
She hung around there for another fifteen minutes before she decided to move on. She'd been in front of The Rockwork for over an hour, and she thought she might as well have been standing on her head for all the good it would have done. It was time to go on the prowl again, time to get moving.
She turned and bolted away from The Rockwork, jaywalked to the other side of 14th, and continued up the sidewalk to the corner at Κ Street. Passing the landmark McDonald's on the corner, she began her circuit of the block, on the look-out for anything that might be considered john-prospectus. A CLOSED sign hung on the door of Adam and Eve's Massage Parlor. Even the inside girls are in hiding, Cherry surmised. Fear of The Electrocutionist was pushing everyone away, even the insulated massage jockies. It looked to her like she was the only girl in town with balls enough to defy the fear of a murderer and to keep trying. The Electrocutionist had already killed-seven girls, picking up five of them right here on the block. That was cutting it thin. He'd have to be more than just crazy to ever come back here again; for that, he'd have to be plain dumb. Anyway, even if he did come back to the block, Cherry wasn't scared. She could tell a crazy when she saw one.
When she turned the corner at L Street, a fierce wind caught her in the face and blasted her cheeks. Usually, the cold didn't bother her, even when she was wearing her sheer dresses. It wasn't that cold yet, and there was no point in covering up her body, her only commodity, until fall started changing into winter. That's when she'd have to bundle up, but until then she would do her best to resist the weather. She could tolerate the cold. But what she couldn't tolerate was rain. Nothing could put a damper on a night of trick-turning like rain. Things were fucked up enough as it was. Rain would put an end to the night for good.
The entire length of L Street between 14th and Vermont was unoccupied save for Cherry. The garish lights behind her, her slinky shadow grew longer and less defined as she moved down the sidewalk, and when she was midpoint on L Street, her shadow vanished entirely in the smothering darkness.
Still, no one in sight.
It seemed to her that Washington's red light district was like a square moon. One side, the 14th Street parallel, was always burning with a sickly yellow haze from the streetlamps, which created its own artificial daylight during the evening hours. But the other side of the block, the Vermont Avenue side, was perpetually dark, like the other side of the moon. For reasons no one knew, there weren't any places of business on the Vermont side. There weren't even any streetlights—nothing to provide a source of illumination. It was like walking down a black tunnel from some slow-motion nightmare. The only way she could keep her sense of direction was to follow the dim beacon all the way at the end at the corner of Vermont and K, where stood a lone lightpost. Unlike 14th Street, which was jammed with bookstores, theaters, and go-go joints, the murky passage of Vermont Avenue was flanked only with high columns of office buildings full of black windows. No bars, no massage parlors, no bookstores, no nothing. But still, the hookers regarded this darker half as just as legitimate a place to pick up Johns as the 14th Street side. However, the clientele weren't usually of the same breed. Johns who sought straight sex would look for hookers on 14th Street, while the ones with more diverted desires ventured to Vermont Avenue. Perhaps the constant darkness was why the more liberal hookers made themselves available there. Vermont Avenue was Anything You Want Street, where any conceivable kind of sex could be bought. Provided he had the money, a guy could get anything he could think of on Vermont: kinks, golden showers, S & M, tie 'em ups, anything. It wasn't unusual for a loaded John to pay to watch two hookers get it on with themselves; and sometimes they would pay big bucks to have a girl get balled by his pet German Shepherd. Periodically, even gay hookers would hand out on Vermont, those notorious guy-girls whose gender remained a mystery until they lifted their skirts. In short, Vermont Avenue was the kink capital of the world. Cherry stayed away from it. She didn't like to do kinks unless she had to, not that she cared about the intensified degradation, but because it was easier and less time-consuming to do a straight lay or to give some quick lip. The less time a John took, the more time she had to get back on the street and turn another trick. But of course, the option didn't hold true on that night. If she wanted business, she would have to look for it anywhere she could, including Anything You Want Street.
As she rounded the corner of L Street onto Vermont Avenue, two other hookers almost ran into her. They seemed to materialize right out of the shadows; Cherry hadn't even heard their footsteps.
"Jesus, honey, you best watch where you're goin'," one of them mouthed.
It took Cherry several seconds to realize that the other two hookers were black and looking meaner than a pair of mad rats. Cherry felt tempted to tell them to stuff it, but then she remembered the last time she had shit-mouthed a black hooker—Cherry had gotten her ass kicked but good. So, instead, she kept silent and let the black hookers stride away, their butts jiggling, and mounds of fake blonde hair tossing on their heads. That always amused her, the way lots of the black girls would wear huge, ridiculous wigs piled high with gobs of bleached blonde hair that made their heads look like Dairy Queen ice cream cones. Drop dead, fuckin' nigger whores, she thought, repressed by the lack of courage to say it out loud. Go play in traffic.
Vermont Avenue was darker than she expected it to be. She had to practically hold her hands out in front of her to make sure she wouldn't walk into something. But even though she couldn't see a whole lot, she sensed the same feeling of isolation that dominated the block tonight, only to a greater degree. At least on the other side of the block there were bars and bookstores with people in them. But here there was nothing, not even traffic. Just Cherry, walking in an aimless search for someone who wanted to pay to use her body.
All she could hear was the sound of her own footsteps bouncing off the concrete walls of the adjacent office buildings, and echoing down the empty space of the street. She walked with almost mechanical rhythm, the pause between each measured step identical to the previous, like a mindless robot programmed only to react to the presence of the specific kind of person. She followed the dark course of the sidewalk, keeping an eye on the faraway streetlight on the corner of Κ Street to set her bearing in an aligned path. As she came nearer to the end of the street, she thought that she detected a trace of movement under the weak glow of the streetlamp. She focused her gaze for details, and when she had traversed three-quarters of the street, she made out the form of a person. The details hardened as she approached. It was another hooker, with light brown hair, wearing a blue dress, nylons, and heels. Then she recognized the girl; someone had pointed her out to Cherry a few days back, but then she had been wearing pants. This girl was new on the streets; she had only been hustling since the beginning of the week, but Cherry sensed that she was vaguely familiar from somewhere, like maybe she had worked the streets a long time ago and had now returned. For the past couple of nights, this girl had been standing in the same spot from sundown to dawn, never budging. Anyone who was halfway familiar with the way things worked on the streets knew that it was best to move around so to be seen by as many Johns as possible. But this girl was just standing there. Maybe it's a good pick-up spot, Cherry thought. Maybe she knows something I don't.
Cherry had heard through the grapevine that some new girl was working the streets, and that three other hookers had kicked the shit out of her in the back of Hogart's because the girl supposedly didn't have a pimp. But she must have had a pimp because after the three girls were through working her over, some guy rushed into the place and beat the hell out of all three of them. At least that's what Cherry had heard, so she guessed that this might be the same girl.
The girl in the blue dress lit a cigarette and looked up when Cherry came forward out of the shadows and stepped into the circle of light on the corner. She stood for a moment with her hand on her hip, looking the new girl up and down.
"Any action?" Cherry asked in an objectionable tone of voice.
The other girl leveled her eyes on Cherry. "No."
"How come you stand in the same place every night?"
"Because I feel like it."
"What, is this corner special or something?"
"Yeah."
"Why?"
"Because I'm on it."
Cherry stepped back and mockingly held out her palms in front of her. "Woooo, ain't you something. Well maybe I don't like you standing here."
"Good," the girl in the blue dress replied. "All the more reason for me to stay here."
"You got a lot of balls for a pipsqueak, you know? I think maybe I'll throw your ass off this corner and find out what's so special about it myself."
"Go ahead." In a split-second, the girl flicked her burning cigarette at Cherry's chest. She ducked just in enough time to avoid being hit by it.
"Bitch," Cherry grunted, and looked back at the girl hatefully. "You could've burned a hole in my dress."
The girl looked back at her, blank-faced and casual. "That's right, lambpit. And next time I'll burn a hole in one of your tits."
Cherry fumed and bobbed her head arrogantly. "Oh, you bitch. I could take you. I could take you so easy."
"Then shut up and do it, slit. You're all talk."
"Eat me."
"No thanks. I don't eat shit. ... Go on, get out of here. If you don't get out of here right now, I'll kick you in the cunt so hard your eyes will pop out."
That does it, Cherry said to herself. She made a fist and took a quick step forward, but before she had time to take a swing, the girl unsnapped her purse and reached in, keeping her hand inside.
"Come on, baby doll," the girl in the blue dress goaded. "Come and get it."
Unsure of herself, Cherry backed off in retreat. "Cocksucker."
The girl grinned broadly. Cherry cast her a final glare and then tromped away, disgusted. Crazy bitch, she thought. Probably has a gun or a knife in her purse. She'll get hers.
With nothing else to do, Cherry made her way into the all-night McDonald's on 14th and K. Ordinarily, lots of the other hookers would stop in there to get something to drink between tricks, but tonight there were only two other people inside, an old man in a faded green overcoat who sat huddled over a cup of coffee, and one of the fool-suited employees on break. Cherry clip-clopped up to the counter and withdrew some change from her wrist purse. She ordered a medium Dr. Pepper and slid the coins across to the middle-aged black man at the cash register.
"Man, where is everybody tonight?" she asked him. "I've never seen the block so dead before."
"Ain't nobody wants to come here," the man said, shaking his head and dropping the coins in the register drawer. "Not with that 'Lectrocutionist guy runnin' around burnin' girls up."
"Aww, that's a lot of shit. The whole world's gone chicken."
"Yeah, well you better watch yourself, struttin' your behind out there. Else I be hearin' about you on the radio next time."
"Don't worry about me. I've been hustling too long to let myself get picked up by a psycho."
"Just you be careful anyhow. Things wouldn't be the same around here without you."
Cherry smiled at him. "I'll be careful. See ya around."
Sipping her soda, she stepped back out onto 14th Street and glanced all the way down to the end with hopes of spying an oncoming John. If I don't find someone in an hour, she thought, I'm packing it up for the night. Why should I stand around in the cold for nothing?
In front of Hogart's, she saw a fire-engine-red coin-op newspaper rack. Behind the wire-covered door, she could read the headline: NUMBER SEVEN FOR THE ELECTROCUTIONIST, and she sputtered angrily at the effect that one man was having upon her efforts to make money. Prick, she thought. I wish you'd just leave town so I could make a living. How can I turn any tricks with you terrorizing everyone?
And to makes matters worse, when she had cat-walked up to the corner of 14th and L, she felt a few raindrops pelting the top of her head. Just a few drops, but in that part of the country, just a few drops usually led to torrents. The clouds had moved in over the clear sky with the quickness of a commando unit.
Fuck it.
At the corner, she turned around and started back the way she came, deciding to call it quits. The rain would spoil all chances of making a pick-up tonight. Better to just forget it, and go get on the subway, go back to the stable, and get some sleep. Start all over again tomorrow. She retraced her steps back down 14th toward the metro terminal two blocks away.
Just as she had repassed Hogart's, she saw him.
A man turned the corner of 14th and K, and he walked in a semi-hasty gait straight up her alley. The light drizzle of rain no longer bothered her. She dropped her soda cup in the trash can next to the bus stop, then came to a halt and waited, her eyes glued to him as he neared. Definitely john-prospectus, she mused with an inner smile. Looks like he might be in the big money.
The man was rather short, dressed in a fox-brown business suit, white shirt, dark brown tie with a diamond stick-pin, and snappy-looking brown shoes. His slacks were streamlined, tailored to fit, with a crease in the legs sharp as an ax blade. He had a dark complexion, like a Greek's, a lean face, and a crown of dark, coily hair.
His eyes took to hers. Cherry immediately assumed her whore's stance, one hand at her waistline, the other leaning against the post of the bus stop, her feet spread apart, and her hips cocked forward so to press the nap of her pubic hair against the front of her dress where he was sure not to miss it. The way she was leaning against the bus stop, with her arm parallel to the sidewalk, gave her otherwise small breasts the perfect uplift, and they protruded through the material of her top, tight and firm, nipples erect from the cold. The fine spray of rain had covered her now, slightly dampening her gown, bringing out her nude body beneath; it left nothing to the imagination, as though the dress were made out of clear green plastic. Come on, man, she thought in a huff. Hurry up. I'm getting wet. Don't walk so fuckin' slow;
As the man approached, his pace slowed noticeably; he shifted and angled toward her. Then he stopped. They were face to face.
She looked right into his eyes and ran her finger along his zipper. "Looking for a good time?"
"Yes, exactly."
His voice sounded strange, a trace of an accent, though she had no idea what kind. But by the looks of him, he definitely wasn't an American. Jesus, she thought, what boat did you get off of? "What do you want?"
