“No,” Tucker lied.
“Then meet me here tomorrow night. And wear old clothes, not this million-dollar shit,” she said, flicking the wide lapel of Tucker’s Goodwill jackpot find, a purple paisley Calvin Klein dress shirt.
When Tucker met Doc Carla the next night, she’d braided her thick, almost mangy hair and rolled it into a bun at the nape of her neck. The van was parked out front. “You know how to drive shift?” she asked.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Don’t call me ma’am. Makes me feel old. And I’m not old. I’m not even forty. Jesus H. Christ.”
“I’m sorry.”
Doc Carla handed him the keys. “Eleventh, Twelfth, and Thirteenth, mostly between Second and Third. Full of IV-drug users.”
“That’s where I live,” Tucker said.
“Bad blocks,” she said. “How’d you end up there?”
“It’s where I ended up,” Tucker said.
“You know any of the girls there?”
“No.”
“They all seem alike when you first meet them—bad makeup, bad skin, neon green or pink high heels, black stretch pants, usually got a hole in ’em. But they’ve all got their own attitudes. They say finding a specific hooker in New York is like finding a needle in a hay factory, but it’s not true. I can find anyone. I’ve got to. Somebody’s got to start keeping track of how many girls this thing kills. They need condoms and doctors and they need food.”
The van was outfitted with a little kitchen and a miniature examining room, separated from the rest of the van by a Peanuts bedsheet tacked to the ceiling. There were venipuncture and butterfly needles, plastic cc vials, stacks of McDonald’s vouchers for free meals, sanitary wipes, tampons, and condoms. Boxes and boxes of condoms.
They pulled up in front of a tenement building on East Eleventh, and within minutes a tiny woman with black hair, half of it in her face, walked up to the side of the van.
“Hey, Doc, you got some tissue or something? I want to get this fuckin’ cum off me.” Tucker almost retched, but Doc Carla didn’t even blink.
“You need to start carrying hygienic supplies, Renata,” Doc Carla said, handing the woman a handful of tissues. Renata ran the tissue down her pant leg, then shoved it into her pocket. “Got any free McDonald’s, Doc?”
“If you got time for a test,” Doc Carla said. Renata sighed, but walked back toward the sliding door and waited for Doc Carla to unlock it. “I give ’em these vouchers and ten bucks if they take an AIDS test. It’s about twice as much as they get for a blow job down here.” She walked to the back of the van and opened the door for Renata. “When was the last time I saw you, beautiful?”
“I don’t know, Doc,” Renata said as she climbed into the van. “The nights all get sort of smushed together. Don’t know what’s a month anymore.”
After Doc Carla drew Renata’s blood, other women began materializing like specters out of darkened doorways. An hour later, Doc Carla had Tucker drive into Brooklyn, to an empty lot near the waterfront, in the industrial badlands around the corner from Bush Terminal. The lot was surrounded by a tall metal fence, with a van-size hole in it.
“I made that hole a year ago,” Doc Carla said. “There’s another one on the other side, but it’s girl-size; that’s how they get in here.” It had recently rained, and the mud was a cesspool of candy wrappers, gloves, scraps of paper, used condoms, and the amber shards of broken beer bottles. Tucker tried to ignore the pins-and-needles feeling taking over the right side of his face.
“See that clump of ailanthus trees?” Doc Carla said. “Pull the van up under those ugly things, by the Dumpsters.”
“The Tree of Heaven,” Tucker said, easing the car forward.
Doc Carla laughed darkly. “Can’t polish a turd, Tucker.”
As they approached the Dumpsters, women began appearing from behind them. A few even came out of the Dumpsters themselves, some of which had been turned on their sides and made into rude shelters. Tucker wanted to put the van into reverse and speed away before he saw any more. Instead, Doc Carla opened the passenger-side door.
“There’s Sandy,” she said. “God, I’ve wanted to test her again for three months. Sandy!” The woman wandered over. “Did you know what I meant last time when I said you tested positive for HIV?”
“I don’t know which one that is,” Sandy said.
“It’s one of the newish ones,” Doc Carla said. She reached into the glove compartment and handed Sandy the same brochure she had given Tucker the day before when she’d sent him home. “You know I never tell you girls to get off the streets. That’s not my call. But Sandy—sweetheart—you gotta stop working, honey, because you’re going to start killing people. And please come see me. I can help you.”
“But I’m feeling good, Doc. I’m getting fat. I don’t think I’m sick anymore.”
“Who’s watching the baby tonight?”
“Oh, the state took her already,” she said.
“What’d you call her?”
“Daphne.” When she saw Doc Carla writing this down in her notebook, she added, “But they probably already changed it, Doc.”
Later, after they finished their rounds, Tucker stole a glance at Doc Carla as he turned the van onto Houston Street. Her bun had come undone, and the braid now lay across her right shoulder.
“Do you do this every night?” Tucker asked.
“Every night.” She looked at him sleepily and reached over to touch his face, half of which now hung slack. “Bell’s palsy. Have you had it before?”
“Yeah,” Tucker choked out. “But not for a long time. Tonight’s the first time in a long time.”
They drove down Houston for a while. As they waited for the light at Avenue A, Doc Carla said, “It’s stress that brings it on, the palsy. It won’t last long. But you probably know that.” She sighed. “This may be too much for your tender sensibilities, honey. It’s almost too much for mine, and mine are damn blunt instruments.”
A sob swelled in Tucker’s throat. All he could manage was a thick, “Please.”
He could see her studying him, and tried to hold it together, but his need at that moment was depthless. “Your parents,” Doc Carla said. “Do they both hate the gay thing, or is it just your dad?” Tucker tightened his grip on the steering wheel, and she noticed. “I’m sorry, honey. I have a bad habit of letting my mouth run.”