The bulk of McMahon’s money had always come from dealing drugs and running brothels. McMahon had made a small fortune in the heroin trade, using the old Prohibition routes to bring the drug into the United States. He had about twenty-five brothels operated by madams. He was more hands-off about those. The madams sometimes just paid him to have a building in their names, as they weren’t allowed to legally own anything themselves. And, of course, he gave his brothels a heads-up when the police were going to raid them.
All that was underground, but he was openly the owner of the Roxy and several other clubs. If he hadn’t been a greedy man, he could have lived well just off his clubs, because they generally did very well. Montreal had never had Prohibition, so it had become a party town for Americans. There were cars full of people looking to drink at piano bars. Since it was also a port town, it was filled with sailors. They wore white hats at the backs of their heads, and they howled away at the moon. The sailors took Montreal clap all over the world.
Because it was a sin city, there was money in entertainment, and McMahon could afford to make his clubs lavish places. He hired out-of-town acts. He even had burlesque stars. They had big asses, with ostrich feathers on them. And eyelashes so long there was nothing much they could do other than blink wistfully. They breathed fire. They spun hoops around their hips.
Rose started going to see McMahon at work. She would read a book in the corner of his office because she didn’t want to spend the day alone. A girl named Poppy showed up once when Rose was over. She had curly red hair and a missing front tooth. She was a prostitute at one of the lower-end brothels that McMahon owned. She had no chest at all and was wearing a transparent shirt with no bra, as though having only two raised nipples were a selling point. She had a thin brown mustache above her lip that made it look like she’d just been drinking chocolate milk. Maybe God hadn’t quite decided what sex she was going to be. She was swinging her arms around and spinning the globe in the office. When McMahon asked what the hell she wanted, she said she needed a lawyer because she’d been arrested four times in the past six months.
“It’s not fair. Madame makes me go to prison for everyone.”
McMahon told her that the brothels were run entirely by their madams and not him. But he’d see what he could do, if she got lost right away. She nodded at him, did a quick about-face and hurried back out the door. McMahon didn’t mention Poppy again—he pretended no one had walked into his office. But she had made an impression on Rose. She went to find the curly-haired whore for advice on how to not get pregnant again.
When Rose went out, she would button up her coat over her maid’s outfit. It was still the only dress she had. When McMahon told her that he would buy her a dress, she got on her knees and grabbed his collar and begged him not to. She still felt much too guilty. If he bought her a dress, she would be indebted to him; she would have to do something in return and would be trapped in that life forever. Although she couldn’t really put all that in words.
? ? ?
THE BIG CLUBS WERE ON Saint Laurent Boulevard, which had an alley running behind it, where gentlemen could leave quietly out the back door in search of a brothel. Rose went down to the side streets that shared the alley.
All the dwellings looked more or less the same. They were two-storied squat duplexes made of red bricks. They had different-colored doors. Every now and then there would be a prettier house with a balcony or a tin molding with maple leaves along the roof. Some had concrete squares next to their door, the Virgin Mary leaning forward out of them with supplicating hands.
A young mother wearing a red kerchief on her head and carrying a baby on one hip and a big cloth bag with groceries in it on the other passed Rose. There was a look of women who breast-fed while they themselves were hungry. Their skin was gray and their teeth were rotten and wiggly. A little girl trailing behind her wore a gray cotton dress with pink flowers. She wore only one sock as, presumably, there just hadn’t been time to put on her second one. The child was carrying a bag of onions like it was a war buddy she was going to have to leave behind eventually. The family smelled like urine, probably because of the baby’s diaper.
The women in the brothel were the only ones without children. But Rose realized, looking at their slow mannerisms, that they all seemed to be addicted to heroin. Being a woman was a trap. Something would bring you down before you turned twenty-three. The only time the world shows you any favor, or cuts you any slack, is during that very brief period of courtship where the world is trying to fuck you for the first time.
? ? ?
THE DUPLEXES FOR THE WHORES were usually nicer. They could afford pretty curtains and a doormat. The whores in the windows were like chocolates in an Advent calendar. The madam let Rose in. She pointed the way to Poppy’s room. Rose walked down the hall and knocked on a door. It swung open and there was Poppy, wearing an undershirt and nothing else. She had a great big strawberry-blond bush and scabs on both of her knees. Rose wondered what odd sexual practice caused her to skin both her knees. Poppy looked at her visitor, trying to place her.
“Oh yeah, you’re with Mac.”