“What the hell is this? It was sixty if I fucked you,” I snapped as I pulled down my skirt. He plopped in the high-back gaudy floral chair next to the door and sucked a short breath through his shit-eating smirk, before he smacked his lips together as if he had caught the smell of sex in his mouth. He dragged his filthy work boots over, pulled them on as he answered my demand.
“Is that what you call it? Laying there like a dead fish? You didn’t fuck me. I fucked you . . . as a matter of fact, you should be paying me,” he snarled before he meandered toward the door.
“That’s bullshit and you know it,” I hissed.
“I can’t say you weren’t a tight lay. I’ll tell you what I’ll do for you . . . I’ll tell my buddies down at the shop what you’re willing to do for sixty bones and let’s see how many run down here to bang at your door. You want sixty for a fuck, at least make it worth it. Roll your hips against my cock or give up a little whimper every once in a while. If I wanted a dead lay, I would fuck my wife.” He tossed me the same shit-eating smirk from earlier, like it was the only one in his arsenal, before he walked out, leaving the bedroom door wide open.
“I’m the best lay you’ve ever had and you know it, mother-fucker,” I hollered after him.
Every muscle in my body quaked; that dirty bastard shorted me and there was nothing I could do, absolutely nothing. Who was I gonna tell? I was a twenty-year-old prostitute who fucked guys almost twice her age for money. As long as they filled the rubber separating them from all the worthless fucks that had come before, nobody would ever give two shits about it.
I learned a long time ago, nobody was willing to help the broken; they swept us under the asphalt of cracked streets and piss-drenched darkened alleys forever. Besides, most prostitutes were the unmentionable leftovers wired on crack or strung out on heroin. But not me, even with all the demons I fought every second of my life, I’d managed to keep off that shit. I stuck to pot and always slammed a couple of fists full of throat-burning-gut-ripping-whiskey before I punched the clock and sold my body. Damaged was one thing, even broken, but to become a prisoner of that shit other girls were shooting or snorting? No fucking thank you, I stuck to the joint and the bottle.
Sex was my vice and it didn’t take someone with a degree plastered behind a thin sheet of glass to tell me. It was fucked up and crazy and nobody understood it, not even the nut job psychologists could explain it. I was playing Russian roulette and every spin of the cylinder, every pull of the trigger and every time the hammer slammed against an empty chamber and a bullet didn’t pierce my skull, I had another day and another reason to numb myself. Every time I had gained that much more control of my fucked up existence, but I knew it was only a matter of time before I took a bullet. Only a matter of time before my card was pulled and my past would catch up to me.
“Rose, we’re heading downtown, you in?” Sybil said as she poked her head into the room. Her fire-engine-red broom-bristle hair swayed across her face. Her ocher vamp-style eyes narrowed, exaggerating her thick black eyeliner and clumpy mascara. She didn’t wait for my answer before she released a smile that would turn anyone into a paying customer.
“Who’s going?” I asked, knowing the only thing we had in common at the moment was spreading our legs.
“You, me and the two new girls, Crystal and Brie. I was thinking me and you could teach them a couple of things. You know?” Sybil tapped her hand on the door, pushing it open a little wider before she lengthened out her leg wrapped in fishnet stockings.
I didn’t come into this business with bells on and a party hat strapped to my dome. The idea that I had to fuck gross old men so I could eat and put a roof over my head had never crossed my mind, not until I was forced to. Although, I knew how to disconnect, fuck them before they ever had a chance to fuck me over. I was always in control and kept it business as I had administered the moment with a look, a smirk, a hum, or a whimper. It had become the way I controlled these fucks. When my body was numb, my mind would check out; it tended to dull the sharp edge of what I had to do.
“Sure, give me a minute.”
I wedged my toes into my four-inch black stiletto heels, adjusted my thin, red spandex skirt and pulled my fingers through my lengthy black hair. I spent a little extra time to make sure the back of my hair wasn’t natty or flattened from my last lay. I freshened up my makeup, lipstick—candy apple red—black mascara.