Chapter 18
Old blue Monday lived up to its name. The clouds, soggy with rain, hung low overhead and the gray smoke from the mills swirled at my feet when I stepped outside to get the milk and newspapers. I read through them fast, but saw nothing about John. Then I read the headline on the front page.
Joe, the little man who had run his shakedown racket, had been found in the river. He had gone for a swim without taking off his cement overshoes. I remembered how he had smiled at me when they had taken him away, and it gave me the shakes. We had paid off because we were scared, but someone in this town was more scared than we could ever hope to be and I wondered who had done the job.
Thomas? No, not he, he wouldn't take that kind of risk. Bill and Jergens? Perhaps, but more likely Joe had been turned over to a couple of pimps and maybe he had known more than he had let on. According to the paper, it had been a gangland killing, but they had failed to establish any connection between him and any mobsters. Perhaps he had been a witness to some crime, the paper suggested.
I sent Rosie over to the police station to pay our fines, and I settled back in my chair to hustle dates. This was becoming a sixteen to eighteen hour grind and the monotony was beginning to get me. It had been a lot different hustling for a Madame. Here, I had to hustle every date that I possibly could in order to stay in business. Actually, I was earning a lot less than I had when I hustled for Grace. But I didn't have a Madame nagging me all the time and once I had things paid for, I would be O.K.
Bill came around to collect before Rosie got back. I could see that he had been in on the killing. For once, he didn't joke and his jowls shook with fright. I felt sorry for him. Bill wasn't the kind who could go around with a killing on his mind and he had a look in his eyes that made me think that he would soon crack.
"How are things going?" I asked at the door.
"They've gone too far this time-we'll never get away with it," he mumbled. T told them we-we shouldn't-"
He caught himself and went on out. I had the funny feeling that I would never see him again.
For some reason, Monday morning brought me a steady stream of customers. I wasn't rushed nor did any of them have to wait for me, but for the rest of the morning and the early part of the afternoon, I was making two and three trips an hour to my bedroom. I like hustling when I'm not rushed and I don't have to hurry my customers. I judge whether I like a guy or not by his hands on my body. Some are rough and try to hurt me, but others were gentle with me.
I don't know where the trade was coming from nor who the guys were; most of them had never been to me before. The only one I recognized was a guy from the box factory. He had been a steady of mine ever since I came to Green Street.
"You know I'd like to take you home and raise you as a pet," he said while we were sitting on the bed talking. It made me smile at him.
I'm afraid I'd be an awful expensive pet," I answered.
"Oh, I'd let you keep working," he grinned.
His words pleased me and made me feel good. He didn't care if I was a prostitute and maybe Tom wouldn't either. I thought about Lois. She was living the way I hoped Tom and I would live after we were married. Her husband was a square guy and he wasn't a pimp. He had a good job, but he wasn't making enough to buy the things they needed or wanted. They had talked it over and Lois and he had decided that it wouldn't hurt for her to do a little hustling.
She had a nice home in the suburbs of a city near here and as far as her neighbors were concerned, she was just a housewife and a mother, and they didn't know about her little jaunts to Parkville.
Maybe Tom would let me hustle that way for awhile.
About three, I stepped outside to get a breath of fresh air and to watch for the paper boy. Beverly, one of the girls who hustled next door, was standing in the narrow space between the houses. She was smoking a cigarette and was naked beneath her house coat. She was about thirty-five, perhaps older. Once Rosie had commented that Beverly was one of the two whores that Noah put on his ark. There were lines of bitterness around her mouth and sadness lay deep in her eyes. Beverly looked at me and smiled, and we said "hi" to each other.
"You didn't go for Tony? He's a nice guy," she said.
When I shook my head, she looked at me with her funny little smile.
"Are you Tony's girl?" I asked.
"One of Tony's girls," she corrected. "I have two sister--laws. That's the only way for women like us to live. Sure, it's rough to share the guy you love with other women, but it's nice to have sister-in-laws too. You've got someone to talk to and who speaks the same language you do-like a family. Tony's a real swell guy-you'd like him."
"No thanks," I shook my head. The paper boy tossed me my paper and he looked surprised when I caught it.
There was nothing about John, but there was a piece about Bill. In a narrow alley uptown, he had been killed by a hit-and-run driver. The driver had escaped in the fog. Joe wasn't even mentioned. The paper said that Bill was a salesman for a typewriter concern and there was mention of his vice connections.
Rosie was primping to go to her party and she was as excited as a girl on her first date. About six, a car pulled up for her and Rosie just laughed when I told her to have a nice time. Monday night was one of the busiest nights that I ever had on Green street and it was seldom that there weren't men waiting in the parlor for me. The fact that they had to wait only seemed to make them more excited. I soon lost count of the number of dates that I had, but when I locked up for the night, I had almost seven hundred dollars. It was almost daylight.
I never did hear Rosie come in. But when I woke up the next morning, I could hear her humming in the kitchen as she fixed breakfast.
"Very hungry?" she asked.
"I could eat a horse," I answered.
She turned, gave me such an odd look that it puzzled me, then gave a funny little laugh. She was pleased with herself, I could tell. While we drank our coffee, she laid a thousand dollars on the table.
"This is what I earned last night," she said. T told you I would bring in the money."
"Yeah, but what does your back look like-hamburger?" I took five hundred and put k in my bra.
"I've got a few marks, not many." She gave her head a toss. "That thousand came pretty easy, easier than your money does. You ought to give it a try."
I gave it a thought. A thousand bucks. I couldn't earn that much on Green street in one night. It wasn't possible.
"I'm willing," I said after a moment. 'They can't do anything to me that hasn't been done before. If they can, I want to see it."
"They'll show you," Rosie's eyes danced with a secret grin. She laughed and almost ran to the phone. In a moment, she returned. "There's one set for tonight. You're on the bill."
Today might not be too bad, but there was a wrestling match tonight at the auditorium and it would keep trade away from Green street. Something like that always does. Rosie told me the Madame's name was Little Bits and she ran a house in Marshal. I had never heard of her.
Little Bits picked me up about six. She was barely five foot tall, with jet black hair and eyes, and a real slender body. She was about twenty-five and already a Madame. She had three girls with her.
The girl sitting with Little Bits in the front seat was a prostitute that I guessed to be about twenty-five or six. I sat in the rear, between the other two. One was about my age, a tall blonde. The other one was a brunette and she couldn't have been more than fourteen or fifteen. She was so excited that I suspected she was on dope.
"Have you ever been to a sex exhibition before?" Dorothy, the teen-ager, asked me.
"No, have your'
"Plenty," she answered and she didn't sound like she was bragging.
She told me that she was in high school at Marshal and that she wasn't a chippy.
"Oh, I take a man on once in a while for dough," she admitted, "but not for no lousy five bucks a throw the way you girls do. That's for the birds."
"Honey, it's easier to find ten men with five bucks apiece than it is one man with fifty," the tall blonde cut in.
"All I want is a few kicks, I'm not interested in the dough," Dorothy answered.
The tall blonde, Mabel, gave me the set-up. Little Bits ran a five dollar house in Marshal, but we were going to a private brothel that she ran on the side. It was so exclusive that the patrons were carefully screened before they were admitted and admission to the party was a thousand bucks.
"The people we cater to can afford it," Mabel explained.
We turned off onto a dirt road and then onto another side road and finally stopped before a high wire gate. The brothel was a lonely farm house way out in the country and far off the road. It was surrounded by high barb wire fence and no one was allowed inside unless they had an invitation.
Cars were thick in the parking lot and I saw almost as many women as I did men entering the house. There was a large dining room and living room downstairs. Upstairs, there were six bedrooms. We were early and Little Bits showed us through the house and the equipment in the bedrooms. She laid out paddles, chains, leather straps, and other instruments of torture.
"I'll see that they don't mark you or cut you up any," Little Bits promised. "But you might as well expect to get several good butt blisterings before you get out of here."
She gave a funny little laugh. We went downstairs to the dining room. The party started off with a banquet and there were over thirty people seated at the table that was in the shape of a horseshoe. Almost half of the guests were women. I glanced around the table. I could see queers and lesbians quietly making love and I could smell the rope-like odor of marijuana cigarettes. I took a sip of wine and it gave me a wonderful giddy feeling.
The lady next to me was about forty, well upholstered, and her fingers and wrists were loaded with diamonds. I couldn't keep my eyes off of them. She smiled at me and started rubbing my knees with her hand. I couldn't have stopped her if I had wanted to. The place had got hold of me and I felt like I was in a dream.
Two Lesbians and two Homos did a comedy act while we were being served. It was funny to some of the guests and it was suggestive more than it was lewd. I glanced around the table and recognized many of the guests from their photos in the society pages.
The "Queer" act caused the guests to loosen up and they began to call for "Little Bits" and they applauded when she stood up. She smiled and stripped off her clothes. Her flesh wasn't soft and flabby the way most women's is, but it looked to be all muscles and as hard as nails.
She picked up cards off the table and money tossed onto the floor without using her hands. Her face was flushed with pleasure when she returned to her chair.
The next to perform was Dorothy, the little teen-ager. She lay down on a table in the center and I almost screamed when they brought a Shetland pony in to her. Dorothy balanced herself on the table. She kept her face turned towards us and it seemed that she was staring at me. She had a smile on her face, but the smile was a mask, and I could see the pain in her eyes.
This place wasn't real. It didn't exist. It was a nightmare being shared by thirty people at the same time. You lose your fears and inhibitions in a dream and that was what these people were doing. The world and the people outside have a standard that they live by and they expect others to live by it too. They have a thousand rules of conduct and morals for us to obey.
But these people have their own rules too. Outside, they live the way they are required to, but when they came here, they took another set of laws. The laws that the outside world forbids. Here, the abnormal became the normal and degeneration was an accepted form of behavior. Torture and pain became a sexual thrill to receive and to give.
I downed my wine and it hit me. The room swam before my eyes and when I grasped my throat and stood up, I heard them laughing at me. I had been drugged with an aphrodisiac Someone tore my clothes off of me and I think I helped them. I knew what I was doing, partly what I was saying, but I couldn't control myself. They dragged me to the wall and chained my hands above my head. I yelled and screamed and tried to free myself, but the chains only bit deeper into my hands. Suddenly, everything went black and I could no longer hear their laughter.
When I came to, most of the guests were upstairs. Occasionally, some man or women would come by, turn my chains so I faced the wall, and would take a paddle to my fanny. It gave them pleasure to see me laugh and scream and try to get away from the lashes. Yet, I didn't actually feel the pain. At least, not the way I was used to feeling pain. In a crazy way, the pain and the sting of the whips delighted me, and I looked upon the whippings as a punishment that I deserved.
About two, the party started breaking up. Most of the guests were high on liquor and marijuana and some of them were sprawled out unconscious or asleep in the living room. Little Bits gave me a man's overcoat to wear home. My own clothes were in rags.
"Here's two thousand," she whispered, "I pay you a thousand and you made a hit with a certain gentleman and he gave you a thousand for a tip, but don't tell the other girls. He wants to have another session with you sometime-can I expect you to come back?"
"Sure," I answered.
I was too scared to say no and in some ways, I wanted to. The air outside felt clean and cool and I sucked it deep into my lungs. It helped to drive away some of the haze. Part of me said that it had been a dream, but another part of me said it had been real-too real.
I was sure glad to see Green street again. There had been moments at Little Bits' when I hadn't been sure that I would.