Ha Jin - A Good Fall

That cracked them up again. I meant what I said, though. If I slept with one of them, I might have to do the same with the other two, spending a fortune. Then it would be hard to keep a balanced relationship with all of them. Besides, I wasn’t sure if they were all clean and healthy. Even if they were, I disliked Lili. It was better to remain unattached.

Then the phone rang, and Lili picked it up. “Hello, honey, how may I help you?” she intoned in a sugary voice.

I resumed eating as if uninterested, but listened carefully. Lili told the caller, “We have many Asian girls here. What kind of a girl are you interested in, sir? … Yes, we do…. Of course pretty, every one of them is pretty…. At least one-twenty … Well, that’ll be between you and the girl, sir…. Wait, let me write it down.” She grabbed a pen and began jotting down the address. Meanwhile, Huong and Nana finished their dinner, knowing that one of them would have business to take care of.

Lili said into the phone, “Got it. She’ll be there within half an hour…. Absolutely, sir. Thank you, bye-bye.”

Hanging up, Lili turned around and said, “Huong, you should go. The man’s name is Mr. Han. He wants a Thai girl.”

“I can’t speak Thai!”

“Speak some Vietnamese to show him that you’re not from China. He can’t tell the difference anyway, as long as you know how to charm him.”

Huong went back into her room to brush her teeth and put on some makeup, and Lili handed me the scrap of paper with our destination — a room in the Double Luck Hotel. I knew how to get there, having driven the women several times. I clapped on my brown duckbill cap, which kept my eyes hidden.

A few minutes later Huong came out, ready to go. “Wow, you’re beautiful!” I said, quite amazed.

“Am I?” She lifted her arms while turning a little to let me view her from the side. Her waist was concave at the small of her back.

“Like a little fox,” I said.

She slapped me on the arm. She wore a beige miniskirt and had applied lipstick, but she seemed more like a teenager who had messed up her makeup, so that her face appeared older than her petite body, which was curvaceous but tight. As she walked with her denim purse hanging from her thin shoulder, her legs and hips swayed a little as if she were about to leap. Together we went down to the garage.

The hotel was on a busy street, and two large buses stood at its front entrance, one still puffing exhaust out of its rear. Flocks of tourists were collecting their baggage, while a guide shouted to gather them for check-in. I found a quiet spot around the corner and let Huong out. “Call if you need me to come up,” I told her. “I’ll be waiting for you here.”

“Thanks.” She closed the door and strolled away, her gait as casual as if she were a guest at the hotel.

My heart sagged as I lay back in the seat to take a nap. She was young and beautiful and shouldn’t be selling herself like that. For sure she had to send her parents money regularly, but there were other ways of making a living. She wasn’t stupid, and she could have learned a respectable trade. She had finished high school in Vietnam and could speak some English by now. But from what I had gathered at the dining table, she was an illegal alien, whereas Nana had a Canadian green card and Lili held a student visa. They could make some money, definitely, but nothing like what the newspaper ads promised for the “massage” profession—“more than $20,000 a month.” Usually, the women charged a john one hundred at the house, but they had to give Mrs. Chen forty of that. Sometimes a client would give them a tip, between twenty and sixty dollars. Nana was rawboned and on the homely side, with a slightly cavernous mouth, so her price for incalls was eighty dollars, unless the men were older and had more cash to throw around. On a good day, they could each make more than two hundred after paying our landlady. Now and then an obnoxious client would not only refuse to tip them but also walk off with their belongings. Lili had once lost a pair of silver bracelets, stolen by a man who claimed to be from Shanghai, like her.

I had asked Huong about visiting hotels and private homes. She said she could make thirty or forty dollars more per client than at the house, though there were more risks. One night I had driven her to see a john at the International Inn, but on arrival she had found two men in the suite. They dragged her in before she could back out, and worked her so hard that she felt as if her legs no longer belonged to her. She had to take off her high heels to walk back to the car. She wept all the way home. She was sick the next day but wouldn’t go to a clinic, as she had no health insurance. I suggested she see Dr. Liang at Sun Garden Herbs. She paid ten dollars for a diagnosis fee. The old man put his fingers on her wrists to feel her pulse and said her kidneys were weak. Also, there was too much angry fire in her liver. He prescribed a bunch of herbs, which helped her recover. After that, I offered to accompany her into hotels and wait in the hallway, but she wouldn’t let me, saying it would be too conspicuous.

I couldn’t drift off to sleep in the car, thinking about Huong. What kind of man was she in there with? Was she all right? Did she like it if the john was young and handsome? Was she acting like a slut? Sometimes at night I couldn’t sleep and would fantasize about her, but when I was fully awake I’d keep my distance. I knew I was just a presser in a sweatshop, gangly and nondescript, and might never be able to date a nice girl, but it would be shameful to have an easy woman as a girlfriend. At most, I could be a good friend to Huong.

Tonight she returned in less than fifty minutes, which was unusual. I was pleased to see her back all right, though her eyes were watery and shed a hard light. She slid into the passenger seat, and I pulled away from the curb. “How was it? No trouble?” I asked, afraid that the client might have discovered she wasn’t Thai.

“Rotten luck again,” she said.

“What happened?”

“The man’s an official from Beijing. He wanted me to write him a receipt like I’d sold him medicines or something. Where could I get a receipt for him? Nuts!”

“Did he haggle with you?”

“No, but he bit my nipple so hard it must be bleeding. I’ll have to put iodine on it once we’re home. My clients will think I’m diseased now.”

I sighed, not knowing how to respond. As we were crossing Thirty-seventh Avenue, I said, “Can’t you do something less dangerous for a living?”

“You find a me a job and I’ll take it.”

That silenced me. She slipped a ten into my hand, which was the unspoken rule worked out by the women — every time I drove them, they tipped the same amount. Actually, only Huong and Nana did that, because Lili didn’t take outcalls.

I thanked Huong and put the money into my shirt pocket.

The three women often compared notes. The best clients, they all agreed, were old men. Older johns were usually less aggressive and easier to entertain. Many of them couldn’t get hard and spent more time cracking dirty jokes than doing real business. Those old goats could be more generous, having more spare cash in their “little coffers,” unbeknownst to their wives. The older ones seldom ate dinner at the house. Some of them were friends of Mrs. Chen’s, in which case the women would treat them like special guests, and even give them Viagra. I was surprised when I heard that.

“Viagra?” I asked Lili about Mr. Tong, a bent man in his mid-sixties. “Aren’t you afraid he might have a heart attack?”

“Only half a pill, no big deal. Mrs. Chen said he always needs extra help.”

“He pays you well besides,” Nana said. “Lili, did he give you two hundred today?”