William Vollmann - Whores for Gloria

Have you ever looked at an old street-whore's hand? Dirty worn creases deep as cuts, fingertips callused and peeling, thumb blackish-grey, but the whole hand so pale under the dirt, and so lean and tired like the wrist up which march buttons of sores. . That hand has worked hard at giving love to strangers, or giving what strangers call love, or what strangers want instead of love — no, it is love because work is love no matter what or how.

Phyllis's hands looked like that.

Phyllis went home to Luna where they lay together with eyes glowing so lovingly because Luna had become a habit like the fire hydrant in front of the Nitecap that a million dogs had peed on, like the bus stop pole that Dinah had leaned against so long that she had worn away a palm-sized place in the yellow paint. Then Phyllis injected the smack very slowly into her vein, holding her breath to better appreciate the goodness and blessedness of it like Virgin Mary candy full of sunlight and ocean fruit, and she was happy until it wore off at which point she picked a fight with inoffensive Luna and then sat on the bed staring down at the night of parked cars and heavy barred gates of hotel lobbies and barred storefronts like jails and sidewalks empty where there was no business, corners packed with black men selling drugs, corners occupied by blondes wearily waggling ass, and Phyllis said they might as well just lay me in the earth! Of course there isn't even any dirt in this place, except on people's hands. Maybe they could bury me in shit. Plenty of that around here, at least.

Oh, stop your whining said Luna, who was still sulking.

You suppose there's anything after death? said Phyllis.

How the hell should I know? Why don't you just quit it. Whatever it is that you need to keep you going, figure it out and get it. It ain't me, girl, and it sure ain't your fix.

It's death, laughed Phyllis.

Oh, dry up, yawned Luna. Here, have a beer. Who were you with this afternoon?

That nigger bitch and a pervert that wanted his dick sucked. Later on he made us tell him shit. You know. Whatever it takes.

Luna went to the window. — You know that girl Nicole? she said. Well, she got stabbed.

Dead?

You hard of hearing or you just got cunts for ears?

Good riddance, said Phyllis after a while. She had AIDS anyway. I hate people with AIDS.

Those Tenderloin hotel rooms were havens , not just worlds into which the Vice Squad looked and listened, bugging the elevators of the Hotel Canada for instance as everybody was convinced, so that Dinah was well aware that someday, some night, she might look through her window and see across the alley into a wall of many windows, and behind one of those windows the curtains would be drawn a little back and there she would see two glowing green circles like cat's eyes; but they were in fact Laredo's detective night-eyes, serenely horrible in their electronic night-vision goggles that magnified her in their circles as Laredo spread the curtains apart with her hands, not smiling, not frowning, but faindy green-glowing from cheek to chin like rotten algae. . yes, this hotel room was a real home — although, it is true, it was not a home of luxury where people could go to lie down when they were sick and listen to the soothing hiss of the teakettle, to watch their can of soup boiling on the stove when they were hungry and cold; but it was a home none the less; it was what Dinah and Jack had. If Laredo had in fact been surveying through her binoculars the ugliness of the room in the hotel where Dinah and Jack lived, with nothing in it, hardly, but a bed and a dresser and bloody scraps of toilet paper, she might have thought what animals, and how horrible, and what else is new, and when do I go back to Hawaii, until Jack got up and reached behind the window and brought over a record. No record player was anywhere near. The record was a version of Chopin's Nocturnes. It was Jack's favorite thing in the world. He read the performance notes on the jacket (which he knew almost by heart) and slid the record out a little so that its glistening blackness caught the light and then he pushed it back with his thumb and set the album behind the window again.

Dinah lay naked on the bed. Her body smelled like Jimmy's sweat. Her cunt was full of Jimmy's come.

I get hard just looking at you, Jack said.

Are you, dear? laughed Dinah.

We might as well play hide the salami, said Jack.

Dinah laughed. She clicked her stiletto in and out. Jimmy had given it to her. — Yeah, I like this, she said. Know what? I'd get a motherfucker and say come on motherfucker get with it gimme all your money gimme all your goddamned money right now. — She laughed and laughed.

Would you stop that? yelled Jack. Stop laughing like some goddamned sheep!

Dinah laughed and popped her stiletto in and out.

You sure are nothing to fuck around with, said Jack, half-amused. You're getting high fuckin' with that knife. Your little thing is starting to juice up and shit. Why, you vixen!

Jack

Jack looked great, although he had scars. He didn't have junky ways. He just had a 3 cc syringe. Every morning he woke up to something like morning sickness and had to get his speedball right away, but he wasn't addicted. If he didn't shoot up, on the first day his body would say all right you motherfucker I'm gonna GET you, but on the second day he would be OVER it, man; he would be healthy as pie.

Dinah

Leroy and Laredo caught Dinah the next night. — That's how it goes, said Leroy. Just remember the game. Tonight you got caught.

So what? Dinah said.

Tomorrow night you'll probably get away with it, Leroy said.

I'm not worried about it, Dinah said.

They drove her down to the station now, where streetlights shone down upon the sidewalk, and all the police cars were very black and white and logical.

You know what I want? Dinah said. I want to go to school at the community college with girls who think the worst thing in life is when their mothers won't buy them a new blouse. — Because she was drunk, she cried easily. — There are worse things in life, she said, but I don't want to think about 'em anymore.

Laredo and Leroy didn't say anything. They had heard that before.

Phyllis got busted, too — for smack. No one knew who'd snitched on her. Linda, Luna and Fawn moved out of the Hotel Canada. Linda and Fawn got busted or left town; no one saw them anymore. Luna moved to the Paradise Hotel.

Jimmy parked himself on a bar stool at the edge of a row of old men with round heads and glasses; their complexions were like tanned blankets. A few months back Jimmy had had a Korean whore who was real good and tight and he always used to tease her come on babe let's pop into the Kum Bak Club because that's Korean for come back isn't it and I'll always come back to you. — You crazy , laughed the whore, you just a big white crazy boy! — Ever since then Jimmy liked to drop by the Kum Bak Club once in a while. The whore always used to drink coffee there; she said their coffee was the best in the Tenderloin. During happy hour a Budweiser and a coffee were only two dollars. Jimmy ordered a Budweiser and a coffee and sat there drinking the Budweiser and the German barmaid asked him you vant a Glas? and Jimmy said thanks no and watched the steam rising slowly from the coffee that the Korean whore was never going to drink.

The Black Rose

Blinking lights rippled like domino stacks or windblown grass or a secret cipher of winking jewels, hard and round and yellow, with the wave of blinking sweeping across the top of the wide rectangular mirrors behind the bar and down their sides and under them and then the blinking lopped down between them like a descending ferris wheel at some night circus, curving below the glowing pinkish-purple square with the black rose on it, and the longer Jimmy stared at the black rose the more beautifully it glowed until it outshone the reddish warmth of the popcorn machine and the bloody-red light-globes on the ceiling that each hummed with its own little fan, and Jimmy had a Budweiser and tipped the pretty barman a dollar and sipped and sipped slowly and the sweet-malt taste of it with its chemicals and bad water was as natural in his mouth as the taste of his own breath and Jimmy watched the whores in the mirror; oh, there were so many interesting people there, hairstyles like cotton candy, and the video songs were loud and he felt the presence of people all around him being happy so that he was happy and he had another beer and a black girl who was really stacked set her money-tray down beside him and the lights flashed and everything flashed blue and red. But Jimmy wondered where Cecily was. He did not ask anybody. It did not matter that much. But he was used to her; he liked her.