Sadie settled in with George. She handed over a dress to the madam for rent, who promptly gave it to a beautiful fourteen-year-old prostitute.
The cold was so much more violent and temperamental in the Squalid Mile than it was in the Golden one. The inhabitants of the Squalid Mile brought out the worst of the winter’s personality. It bullied the poor because it could. It cracked windows and blew open doors. It forced its way into homes and gave people chills and pneumonia. It twisted old people into pretzels, it aged young people by making them cranky and sore, and it murdered sweet children in their sleep. It pushed against residents as they tried to walk down the street. Drunks slipped on the ice and broke their necks. The frost bit and ruined many a nose. And factory girls coughed as though they smoked cigars. People were so covered in layers, they looked like they were books that had been soaked and bloated by the rain. When you saw the homeless sleeping on the church steps under all their coats and thin blankets, they looked like piles of newspapers.
But inside the brothel, the stove was pumped full of coal and the building was warm, as though you were naked and curled up in the belly of your mother, unaware that you would be shoved out one day. Sadie liked the feeling of hibernating, as she could concentrate on the dreamlike realm of her book undistracted. Sadie wrote for hours and hours. Her fingertips were always covered in ink. Sadie filled pages in a wonderful, unstoppable way. Watching her handwriting was like watching a cat playing with a string. She was a girl who had been born inspired.
George was fascinated with books. They were magical things. She had somehow never really considered the obvious fact that they had been written by actual human beings. And human beings who had all the same flaws and needs as any other. They sat at desks with their underwear on and their cats on windowsills and their pots of coffee getting cold. And they wrote down their ideas. They paused to eat soup, take a dump in the bathroom, look out the window, and masturbate, and then they sat down and continued to write.
“I notice you’ve been writing in a notebook. What are you writing about?” George asked.
“It’s my novel that I mentioned. Would you like to read it?”
“Yes!”
George had believed from the instant she read the book that it was something of genius. She very much liked that the two main characters were passionate women. Neither were married to men. They seemed like pioneers in fiction to her. They were going off on an adventure. They were like Don Quixote and Sancho Panza. It was picaresque and funny. But George also knew that humorous books were often the most subversive ones. People became free in literature first. It was through books that new ideas entered the general population.
“The book is brilliant! Truly.”
“I’m at a loss though,” said Sadie. “I don’t know how to finish it at all.”
Sadie had looked up from her writing desk to discover she was in a deep forest. There was nowhere to grow. There was no pathway out. Every time she picked up the pen, new trees grew like beanstalks, wrapping around one another, growing so dense they would block out the sky. George sat down with her and they discussed the book.
It was as though George had a compass. She described the entire forest to Sadie. All its nooks and crannies. There were clearings with wildflowers growing in them. There were huge trees with roots that could reach out and trip you in order to get a look up your dress. She knew the way out of the forest. A path opened up before her feet.
Afterward, Sadie moved the tip of her pen like a sailboat over the waves on a most perfectly windy day. Her editing pen was making notes and slashes like a seabird dipping for fish.
* * *
George fell quite naturally into helping Sadie craft the novel. They sat at opposite sides of the desk they had pulled to the center of the room. Sadie scribbled away. When she was done with a page, George would read it and add comments. She gave her notes and crossed out paragraphs even though Sadie shouted in dismay.
* * *
When they were done working, George enjoyed pulling Sadie’s boots off. The sound the shoelaces made as they were coming out was swift, like a pen writing on the page. She had one pair with buttons. She had a tiny tool for them. There was something so delicious about feeling the button pop out of the hole. Then George loved to hold Sadie’s feet and massage them. This was something all women loved. The heels and pointed toes of their boots always caused their feet to be in a perpetual state of agony.
She liked when Sadie was in various states of disrobe too.
Sadie liked wearing corsets. They held up her large breasts. She was wearing a dark-pink corset with a slip that was made out of several layers of lace, some of which had been torn at the bottom. George loved untying Sadie’s corset. She loved the little gasp she let out when she was finished. And the great inhale she took before she pulled in the laces of the corset to tie it up. She had a white silk pair of underwear that she stepped into, pulled up over her shoulders and buttoned up. When she undid her corset, it was as though her breasts were free. She couldn’t stand to have anything touching her breasts when she was ovulating because they were so sensitive.
Sadie had a pillow of sorts that protruded from the back of her crinoline. George would unbutton it. She would put it in Sadie’s trousseau of clothes. But she longed to use it as a pillow. She wanted to inhale it and sit on it herself.
But she never saw anything more wonderful than when Sadie slept on top of the covers completely nude. She had a magnificent figure. She had large hips and a small waist and huge, full breasts. George had had her own bed for a while, but once Sadie moved in and she had gotten used to sleeping next to her, she felt she could never go back to sleeping in a bed alone again. She never woke up with a chill in the middle of the night. Sadie’s body radiated so much wonderful, tender heat.
* * *
On Saturday mornings, especially on cold days, all the girls liked to get together to smoke opium. They passed the pipe back and forth as though they were each trying to get a pretty tune out of a flute. The smoke from the pipes rose up in swirls around them, making them look like they were in an Impressionist painting.