Robbing Hookers
On the Bowery, in the heat.
The cab struck us, and Mecca smashed into Seventh Avenue South headfirst without a helmet. Mecca was a nickname for a first-generation guy whose parents worked night and day to build a life in Queens so their boy could enjoy the freedom that China refused. Mecca worried about the high life more than freedom, saying his name and family money meant that any woman would make the journey for his love. His journey for relevance ended when his head hit the ground. Even dead, he looked like a heart attack waiting to happen. Overeaters should not be getaway drivers. Traffic halted. Horns blared. I gasped against the pain, and my eyes settled on the St. Vincent’s fence full of 9/11 tiles.
A siren wailed. Mecca was past that siren’s help, and I didn’t want it. I picked up the backpack of money, ignored the gathering crowd, and limped toward the Bowery.
A thousand sucker punches would’ve felt better than climbing the stairs I usually took with ease. I struggled getting the key inside the door, went to the fridge and downed two tallboys. In the hot box bathroom, I dripped sweat while washing the gashes on my knees and hands. The last thing I needed was an infection that prevented me from leaving town. I stumbled to the main room, really the only room besides the bathroom, and opened the window for air and sat down to catch my breath, swatting a sudden swarm of gnats. Flies soon followed. The smell of garbage wafted through the window; everything surrendered to summer in the city. Instead of leaving for Port Authority, exhaustion and alcohol lured me to the futon.
The sound of a garbage truck jolted me awake. The moment I opened my eyes, the bruises and aches taunted me worse than any hangover. I moved from the bed to the shower, with a detour for some Tylenol and a beer I slugged while showering. I wondered if Mecca’s parents knew he was dead. I wondered if I should take a bus to California, or stick to the East Coast. Heading toward a new horizon always involves so much drama, even in the movies. No one ever reaches a new horizon without someone else dying.
When I got out of the shower, I remembered that Mecca left some coke here and I did just the tiniest line to keep myself awake, not realizing how much I would need it later. Mecca was always good for stuff like that.
About a year after 9/11, I needed someone to buy me drinks, so I let Mecca buy me one at Puck Faire, a place that attracted men who liked to buy drinks then complain about it when they didn’t get laid. He said he’d buy me dinner, too, and though I only wanted to drink, I wrapped my arms around his waist as he maneuvered his motorcycle to a beige West Village cafe. Actors served us. Models chewed before spitting their orders into napkins. The DJ dealt coke while spinning. Mecca slurped fettuccine. I sipped chianti. He was buying, so I pretended to care about what he was saying.
“My parents gave me money to invest in a loft space. They own laundromats in Flushing so they’re swimming in that regular cash flow, yo. After the dot.com, they gave me money to open a skate shop in the East Village. It’s baller. I ball. I’m a first-generation baller, baby.”
“You skate?”
“Fuck no, not with this gut-butt. But I don’t have to. I just have to make sure others do. What does your sexy self do all day?”
“Temp. I cater sometimes. Work at a restaurant. I studied art. A few years ago, I was part of a show at a gallery. Then 9/11 happened... the gallery closed.”
“Are you sure you’re not hungry?”
I raised my glass. “To not eating or remembering.”
He pointed his fork, ignoring the sauce that splattered my nose.
“Hey, maybe you can draw some designs for the shop. You need to draw and shit. Be an artist and shit. Let’s make you one and shit.”
A few months later, Mecca’s shop closed. Mecca, a baller no more, depended on his parents so got to keep his Tribeca loft. He insisted on buying me groceries, struggling up six flights of stairs with the bags while I rearranged cabinets to make room for all the things he liked to eat while hanging out at my place.
“You like these? God, I love the creamy center. Have one,” he said, ripping a plastic-wrapped snack cake with his teeth.
I shook my head no. Not eating meant not keeping up with time or when I last left the apartment. No work meant no reason to leave. After ninety-seven years of feeding the neighborhood, the restaurant where I worked succumbed to two planes that didn’t hit it. Catering dried up. Temp jobs ceased. The second 9/11 death toll loomed over the city like the ghost of a terrorist intent on killing the economy. I had no way to pay the rent I already struggled to pay.
Mecca took his snack cake toward the bathroom.
“Seriously?” I said, rolling my eyes.
“I’m about to lay some serious cable, baby. Hard work deserves a reward. Besides, it’s too good to put down.” I opened the window and flicked ash onto the Bowery, a street that blended the best of hipsters with the worst of times.
In the 1700s, the Bowery sprawled green, a wild frontier waiting for nothing and ready for everything. Giant bugs swam through the marshland. Natives hunted. Europeans came to see what’s what. The natives became savages; the Dutch became colonizers. Everyone saw the colors of the faces instead of the colors of the land. The swamps dried, and the buildings rose. At the turn of the 20th century, the gangs and mobs built music halls and criminal empires. Flophouses cultivated like weeds, and the bums took sanctuary.
After WWII, the supply shops opened. In the 1960s, city policy paved the way for real estate professionals and flophouse owners to kick and burn the bums out a few decades later. Eventually, dance club kids decided they deserved sanctuary that included underground parties thrown in the remnants of old bars and lofts. Never forget that neon makes everything and everyone look good. Now, restaurant supply shops and lighting stores thrive during the day, and at night, clubbers line up outside nondescript buildings, insisting they are on the list. Through it all, people lived; people died. Bugs survived. I flicked one of them from the windowsill into the frontier.
The toilet flushed. Mecca approached from behind, sniffing my hair. I moved to the futon. He walked to the counter and ripped open another cake with his teeth.
“Hey, so, do you remember how I told you that sometimes I go to that place in Midtown? The owner needs help.”
“Help at the poker game? Like serving drinks? I don’t know how to deal cards.”
“Yeah, well, the thing is, there’s no poker. It’s an in-call service…you know, hookers.”
I paused before laughing; Mecca frowned.
“It’s not funny.”
“Sorry. You just caught me off guard. I don’t care,” I said, wondering why a man who ate snack cakes on the toilet paying for sex surprised me.
“Well, at least those girls appreciate my money, although I’m not sure how long it’s gonna last.”
He always commented about the help I never asked for, and I always let it slide. Maybe that was my comment.
“I’m not sleeping with men for money.”
“She needs someone to book clients and handle the cash. You’ve worked as a waitress and in nightclubs. You know how to deal with cash and talk to men.”
“Oh, yeah, well, I moved here to handle cash and talk to men, you know.”
“Everyone knows artists need day jobs. And let me tell you this: the sex business booms after national tragedies. People are scared to fly, but they gotta spend money somehow. Work out the tensions and shit. Tiffanese needs help with the bookings—”
“Tiffa who?”
“Tiffanese, like Tiffany’s.”
“Good God, her mama did not name her that.”
“Your Southern is showing. Look, I don’t know her real name. I don’t really give a shit. I do know all the girls tip the bookers. Some clients do, too. I do. You only need a few shifts a week to make the rent. The rest of the time, you can paint. You’ll have enough to buy art supplies and have fun, too. It’s in Hell’s Kitchen, in a big duplex-style apartment on the first floor of a gated brownstone. Very safe. Just meet her.”
So, I did.
We met at a Mexican place in Hell’s Kitchen. Fake palm trees and flowers overwhelmed the decor, none of it tongue-in-cheek. It was one of the out-of-town chain-type places that took hold like a virus after the attacks. A woman with “Sopranos” hair waved me over while downing a shot. I gave her the biggest fake smile I could muster.
Thirty minutes later, I decided that people who spew guacamole deserve the death sentence.
“The phone girl’s everything in this business. A good phone girl can make or break me. That last one I had double-booked all the time. What a ditz. Her lack of organization cost me a few clients. You know how it is: us career women can’t trust small-time bitches, plus we gotta watch our men. How many times did one of my true loves spend my money, only to turn around and tell me to fuck some guy for more? Glad I’m running things now,” she said, green cream spewing from her mouth like bullets.
I flicked the green from my neck and hoped a nod sufficed.
“Coming in as a phone girl shows initiative. If you want, you can take some clients. Make some extra cash. You got a not-so-hard look that men like for girlfriend requests. All my girls look like gladiators that have side jobs as whores, though you and I both know a man will fuck this here burrito if nothing else is around. Anyway, don’t fuck me over, or I’ll slit your throat,” she said, struggling to use the corner of a tortilla chip like a toothpick before swallowing it whole and shoving the rest of the burrito into her mouth.
That was the moment I decided I hated Tiffanese Diamond, a hooker without a heart of gold.
The clients buzzed us from outside a wrought iron gate, crossed a small courtyard, then entered the apartment at the end of an L-shaped hallway.
Buzzers make everyone feel so secure.
The place consisted of a galley kitchen full of pots and pans waiting for a purpose plus a living room with a spiral staircase wrapped in fake flowers that led to a lower level, defined as spacious by Manhattan standards. An in-call service, a whorehouse in any other town, cheaply styled but stashed with cash.
Tiffanese Diamond commanded the finesse of a woman who ran a hooker motel on an airport runway. She always screamed that the girls needed, “towels to clean their pussies” and she timed sessions to the minute. She fined me $500 whenever something went wrong. If a client decided to leave early, she fined me $500. One of her policeman clients loved sitting on eggplants then eating them while women had sex, and she asked if I wanted to eat with him. When I said no, she said, “That’s $500.”
So, my money was okay, but Tiffanese Diamond’s money was great. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss, even in the sex industry.
Then one day, she fired the security guy for eating her leftover guacamole, but she didn’t replace him. Weeks went by. No one showed up. It made me nervous, because a lot of people knew about us.
“Do you think you’re gonna hire a new security guard?” I asked one evening as she stumbled out of the bathroom and toward the door for a night out on Staten Island. Imagine your purse or pockets full of cash—you know, like in the Gen X days when everyone carried cash—and choosing to leave Manhattan to party in Staten Island.
Some of that cash belonged to me, in the form of fines. I struggled to hide my sneer.
“Didn’t Mecca say you were from down South somewhere, like Nebraska? You don’t sound like it. You sound like a New Yorker. They got a lot of crime down there?”
She snagged her zipper in that pretending-to-be-nonchalant way that makes you fuck-up.
“Down South in Nebraska somewhere… yeah, that’s right,” I said, wondering if she knew about MapQuest.
She kept popping her gum through cigarette smoke, pulling on her zipper till she got it loose. Finally she spoke.
“I know what I’m doing. No one would dare rob me, I’ve got policemen on the client list; they put the word out to protect me, and people know I don’t take shit, so lay off the complaining. Look, lock up in thirty. One of the girls is in the bathroom, passed out in the bathtub. I think it’s Gina; who knows. Just make sure whoever it is gets out of here without passing out in the courtyard because we don’t need any more complaints, police on the client list or not. Next thing you know, Batman’s gonna swing by and promise to keep us all out of jail if we just ‘corporate’.”
“Cooperate?”
She sucked in her cheeks, maybe to keep from punching me.
“I can’t have every girl in here watching policemen sit on watermelons all day.”
“Eggplants.”
“Well, Farmer Brown, I told you to keep them out of the bathroom, so that’s $1000. And make the place spotless or else,” she said, disappearing into the hallway in a cloud of cigarettes and tropical body spray blends.
So, I let the fines go. But that’s when I decided. I waited. For a while.
I knew where she kept the guns and knives; I knew she never kept them ready because she felt untouchable. I knew Mecca would help me because his first-generation parents were tired of his antics and he needed money.
We waited in front of the door until one of the girls had to leave, forcing our way in. Tiffanese reached under the couch cushion for her gun, but the gun wasn’t there because I moved all the weapons the last time I worked. Mecca shoved everyone into a bedroom and told them to sit on the floor, heads down, while I emptied out the cash from the hiding spots. I had to keep an eye on Mecca, too, because he was so nervous that he forgot to pack two helmets. The gun shook in his hand. We had agreed not to talk beyond the essentials. But then he said my name.
“Hold this, Lori.”
As we ran out the door, Tiffanese screamed my name.
-
So, that’s how I wound up wondering if Mecca’s parents knew he was dead, but I stopped wondering when a sharp whistle pierced the air.
-
It sounded like a piano falling in a cartoon. I leaned out the window. Traffic lights blinked. People screamed. Without the hum of the grid, every voice was amplified. On the sidewalk, a man and woman cowered.
“What was that?” the woman said.
“We should call 911,” he replied.
“I’m calling. Are you calling? My call’s not going through. It’s 9/11 again!”
“My phone works. Besides, it’s August--- can’t be 9/11.”
“Then it’s 8/14. 8/14 is the new 9/11.”
I didn’t know what to do. I paced. Smoked. Paced. Swigged a beer. An old man across the street climbed onto the fire escape then reached back into the window to pull out a radio, a beer, and a pack of cigarettes. He lit a cigarette, popped open the can, chugged. For a while, he blew smoke circles into the panic on the street. When he finally pressed his face against the wrought iron and unleashed his ideas into the atmosphere, he should’ve thanked God no one had a gun.
“I gotta weather radio. It’s a power outage. Other cities got hit, too. We ain’t special. I’d rather go through 9/11 again, because I thought I was gonna die. I didn’t mind sitting out on the fire escape, thanking God it was over. Now, it’s nine hundred degrees, we’re thirty minutes in, I keep breathing, and I gotta sit out here and listen to you monkey-fuckers while praying for a breeze.”
“My mother died in the first tower,” a woman carrying endless bags of groceries screamed.
“Aw, I gotta dead mother, too. Typhoid Fever epidemic of 1712. Fuck off,” the old man said.
A few hours later, bodega owners passed out beers and ice cream; people drank, ate, and danced in the street. But in those first moments, everyone freaked, especially me. I needed to leave, but now the city functioned like the Dutch still ran it.
Then my landline rang, a modern miracle. It surprised me, so I answered without thinking.
“I keep saying these cell phones are just a fad. Look, here I am calling you during a blackout via Ma Bell, the ill communicator. And you’re still using a landline. People act like these things are something, but mark my word, they’ll be gone by 2008. There’s nothing else you can do with them but listen to them fail during an emergency.”
Cigarette smoke never sounded so serious. It struck me as odd, because that serious sound emanated from a woman talking on a payphone while eating an ice cream cone and smoking a cigarette.
“So you know all the 90s music that matters.”
“I know a lot of things. The policemen who enjoy my hospitality are always eager to help me out with a phone number or an address. Lucky, I got yours before the power went out. It went out when we were circling the block for parking. Hey, you know you live near McGurk’s Suicide Hall, and you’re doing suicidal things while working with a bunch of hookers?”
I looked out the window and Tiffanese looked back. The eggplant cop went inside the bodega.
“Wow, I’m surprised you know anything about history beyond yesterday.”
“I ain’t no history buff. I thought about buying a place down here, and some know-it-all broker thought it was a selling point. But Midtown’s got the men from out of town who like to play before commuting back to the burbs, and all I care about is money.”
“And food.”
She chomped the cone and exhaled some smoke toward my window.
“You calling me fat?”
“Let’s just say I wouldn’t be surprised if you had some guac in your bag.”
“I wasn’t sure which floor you lived on, but my policeman buddy that drove me down here told me to call you so we could hear the landline ring if you still had one. Open windows help during a heat wave, but they’re bad for hiding out. Now here I am talking to you on a payphone while looking at you so I know where you are. Me and my fat ass enjoying this tasty, free Drumstick the bodega owner gave me because the power went out. Now I’m set and all I gotta do is figure out if I shoot that old man who keeps screaming about his air conditioner before or after I shoot you.”
Tiffanese slammed down the phone and her cop friend, a balding cross between Mike Tyson and Cicely Tyson—hey, I’d had a lot of beer—strolled out of the bodega and gave Tiffanese another ice cream cone, which she ripped open with her teeth. Tiffanese had the nerve to chew on that ice cream cone as they crossed the Bowery to kill me. I figured she’d get in without any problem, because this building was always hot during the summer and someone always decided to prop the main door open. I felt my energy lagging from the pain and the beer. I took a bump from the baggie, grabbed a knife, and cracked the door just enough to see into the hallway. I felt no pain, but I felt paranoia. It took a while, but heavy panting finally echoed up the stairs.
“Why do you always have to hire people that live in sixth floor walk-ups?” the cop said, leaning on the banister. “That last woman we beat the shit out of lived high up, too.”
“Well, we’re gonna do more than beat the shit out of this one. Thank God that lady let us in so we didn’t have to stand around all day waiting for someone with a key because I’m ready to just call it a day. You know, it’s a lot harder to kill someone in a modern building with all that electrical shit on the doors. At least this one lives in a dump.”
“Yeah, I do know, because you keep asking me to go on all these shit errands with you.”
“God, I can’t kill anyone until I catch my breath,” Tiffanese said, finishing the last of the cone before the slaughter commenced.
I flung open the door and saw the cop facing away from the door. I plunged the knife into his back and he turned to look at me with a wide mouth and eyes before clutching his heart and collapsing. I couldn’t tear my eyes away from him, then remembered I still had to deal with Tiffanese, I looked up, and came face-to-face with that ice cream cone. Only then did I realize I needed two knives, and that killing isn’t as easy as it looks in the movies or on the news. I wasn’t even sure if the cop was dead. Tiffanese didn’t have her gun out because she was still holding on to that ice cream. Maybe that was from shock, though. But she was dumb enough to warn me they were coming.
I came here like the others before me. I took, and I would move on. I was ready to take and move on again.
I pressed my hand into her chest and shoved her against the wall. White powder glistened on the edge of her nostril. She growled; I growled. She bared her teeth and tried to close in on my face. I responded by sinking my teeth into her nose. Her nails pierced my scalp and I felt the ice cream on my hair, which gave me a cool burst of energy. She landed a strong kick with her Chinatown Manolo Blahniks and I stumbled. We stood gasping and staring at each other, then I noticed she was rummaging around her fake Louis Vuitton for the gun. I wrestled it from her and threw it into my apartment. She shoved me into the apartment, but those cheap heels got the best of her because one of them broke right as I hit her with an ashtray. She landed with a thud, moaning, but still struggling to stand, I pushed her back and sat on top of her, wrapping my hands around her neck.
She tried to maneuver her hands in between my wrists, but my grip and body left her powerless. I heard a few people below us going into their apartment, laughing and talking about the free beer they got from some restaurant. I wondered what they’d do if they knew that someone was being killed above them. Would they finish the beer? I sure could use one, I thought. Taking and defending is hard work. Finally, she died, or I noticed she died. I opened her purse and found a baggie, glistening white. I shoved it in my bra and looked in her wallet. There was no money. Her driver’s license said, “Susie Marino.” Behind it, there was a photo of Susie with what looked to be a younger version of herself, sitting on a beach. What happened to her…what happened to me.
A terrible smell hit my nostrils and I held my breath. I didn’t have time for anything but essentials. I pulled the cop into the apartment, moving the handle of the knife around in his flesh. He seemed dead, too.
Thank God I had already packed, but I realized that I needed something to help transport my stuff including the money because the blackout meant no cabs. I grabbed my mini grocery cart and shoved Mecca’s baggie into my bra along with Tiffanese’s. I just needed to roll a mini grocery cart from the Bowery to Port Authority and hang out until the buses started running again. I’d done whole moves using that cart so this was nothing. I didn’t stop to look at them again as I made my way down the stairs balancing the folded cart and the bags. I just kept moving. Manhattan’s easy to walk, I thought. The blackout won’t last forever. I can disappear, I told myself, wiping sweat from my eyes. I just needed to endure one hell of a bus ride the fuck out of here with a few stops in-between.
Around 6th and 8th, a bodega owner stood in front of his bodega, passing out all sorts of goodies. He waved a can of beer and a sandwich at me.
“Where are you going?”
“I’m on the move,” I said.
“How wonderful for you. Here, take this for your journey. I can’t run the register.”
Other bodega owners did the same thing so when the buses started rolling again, I did ride drunk. I never stay in one place long, but wherever I go, I waft in with a look like a girlfriend and leave a stench like garbage.
(An earlier version of the story appears on Reedsy. The logistics and rhythm of that version bothered me, so I edited it.)