Thirty - Jill Emerson [54]
He finished, and then he huffed and puffed a little—I still can’t help always expecting these old farts to drop dead at the crucial moment, and I know sooner or later it has to happen—and then he chatted embarrassingly with us about what sweet girls we were and how much he enjoyed being able to talk with us, and then he got dressed and handed us each an envelope. Fifty bucks for each of us, as she had said. And then he went away.
We were in Liz’s apartment, on East Fifty-fourth. Small but very comfortable, and a building with a doorman and an elevator and such things to keep burglars from taking a poor girl’s life savings. Two small rooms, a living room and a bedroom, and a sort of kitchen. We were in the bedroom, logically enough, and about half-dressed.
“He’s a character,” Liz said.
“You know something. They all are. Every one I meet is at least a little bit nuts.”
“That’s for sure. You going out again?”
“I don’t know. What time is it?”
“Almost six.”
“I made a hundred dollars already. A couple of quarter tricks earlier, and now this. I suppose I should make a few more dollars. I really should, I could hustle and make another hundred but I just don’t feel like it.”
“I know what you mean.”
“But I really should.”
“You got a money problem, Jan?”
“That says it, all right.”
“An emergency or something? Or have you got a man who expects a lot?”
I considered and rejected the West Indian pimp. “No man,” I said.
“Thank God for that. I didn’t think you were the type. Some of these girls are crazy. I mean they’re really crazy. What they go through to earn money, and then they give it all to some son of a bitch who what does he give them but abuse. I’m sorry but I don’t see the point.”
“Neither do I.”
“You take a girl like Barbara Jo, she’s the little red-haired kid who sometimes calls herself Barbara Jo and sometimes BJ?” I nodded, knowing who she meant. “She gives me a lot of shit about how I don’t know what love is. Now nobody should have to listen to lines like that, right? I don’t know what love is. But she, she’s the authority. She ever talk to you about her man?”
“She wanted me to meet him. I told her I had a man of my own.”
“Very intelligent, Jan. Very smart. I happen to know a little about this man of hers. His name is Maurice. He’s a shriveled-up little spade about the height of a fireplug with this comical wrinkled-up face. I swear what he looks like is a monkey. It’s comical to see him with Barbara Jo, who’s little herself, but when you see him walking down the street with a pair of six-foot blonds it’s too much. He looks as though he’s walking a pair of Great Danes on leashes.
“I’ll tell you something about her Maurice. He has I think it’s eight girls now, all of them hustling like mad and dealing back every time to Maurice. And in return for this Maurice doesn’t even throw them a friendly fuck from time to time, pardon the language.” Pardon the language! “Because he can’t, the little brown jerk. He can’t get hard, this top stud. He can come if you suck him for a month or so, but without getting hard. That’s what BJ gets for her money. That’s how come she knows all about love, and I don’t.”
“Well, girls like that are crazy.”
“Yeah. But you’ve got a money hangup where you don’t know if you should quit after you make a hundred dollars in a day. What’s the problem?”
“Oh, I don’t know.”
“Right, and I’m too nosy.”
“No, it’s not that.”
“Whatever you say.”
Why keep it a secret? For what? I put out one cigarette and lit another and started talking about it. It all came out in a flood. Diarrhea of the mouth, once I started. I couldn’t stop. She was the right kind of listener, not getting in the way or anything.
When I was done she said, “Well, the important thing is to get you an abortion. I know this doctor, he’s really a doctor, not a butcher.