Edward Lee - Trolley No. 1852

“Yeah, two so far…”

I felt my brow furrow at the arcane discourse. They’re clearly talking about… spent prophylactics. How eccentric…

The elfin pair separated, Ammi moving up the stairs to the fourth story—or I’d be more accurate to say limping.

At that same moment a door farther down clicked open and out stepped another brazenly unattired prostitute—this one with nipples sticking out like persimmons—only to turn down the stairs and proceed behind Ammi. But this woman, too, had a spent prophylactic dangling from her fingers!

And a moment later?

A third woman did the same…

My astonishment was plain. What cryptic onus could POSSIBLY charge these petite strumpets with the task of carrying away used prophylactics UPSTAIRS? Surely, the nearest waste basket would do…

The hall remained clear, but when I emerged from my hiding, my eyes inadvertently fixed on the previously unnoticed object sitting atop the display pedestal: a crude beige cylindrical clay-shape roughly the size of a common pail; when recognition alighted, I muttered beneath my breath a shopworn, “Oh my God!” for I knew all too well what the unlikely object was:

A cuneiform cylinder.

As any archaeologist and, indeed, professor of ancient histories would know, these objects provided humankind with its very first “books,” the most famous example being the Cyrus Cylinder which, in intricate cuneiform, detailed the conquest of Babylon by the Persian warrior Cyrus the Great and verified the prophet Isaiah’s prediction in Old Testament papyri scrolls of the same two centuries previous. This cylinder, however (as, I add, without meaning to brag, that I am well-versed in many variations of cuneiform) did not bear the typical assortments of logograms, pictoglyphs, and polyphonous sequences of wedges and slants that the early writing system is known for. Instead, the clay cylinder before me was covered entirely with the exclusive stylus marks used to denote numbers.

The entire cylinder, I reiterate, had been so inscribed.

Oh, if I only had a month’s time to decipher this cylinder, I lamented.

I let my considerations stew, along with my adjacent perplexity regarding the mysterious redeposition of expended condoms to some paradoxical upward recess of the building. I knew I must not make myself obvious; therefore, I strolled about the stair-hall half-pretending to examine various statues, paintings, and other pedestalled objets-d’art. Periodically, however, I took hasty opportunities to put my ear to each invaluable nine-paneled door I passed…

“Ooo-ooo-ahh-ahh… oh, YES!”

“Churn me like butter, honey!”

“Good, good! That’s a good boy!”

All of the shrill exclamations were in feminine tones and clearly indicative of some manner of fornication.

The hall quieted, then, in seeming increments; alternately, the doors I’d just quitted opened to release, first, a brawny man with a sated smile on his face, and then his corresponding fornicatress.

Each naked woman, as I might’ve suspected by now, dispatched at once from the room to the stairs, and up. And from the fingertips of each suspended a spent prophylactic.

The bizarreness of my observations were by now getting the best of me. Clearly, more rooms existed upstairs on the fourth floor, yet not one prostitute had taken a man thither; which left me to deliberate: The only person I know for fact to be up there is the club’s madam … Miss Aheb…

Could it be to Miss Aheb that these shapely, bouncing-breasted “slatternettes” were delivering the epigrammatic soiled condoms?

And if so…

Why?

I hadn’t a notion. Eventually I repaired back to the exorbitant atrium where I found my friend Erwin (looking a bit dogged) helping himself to some refreshment. His grin greeted my arrival. “This place is something, huh, Mr. Phillips?”

“Something… yes,” I uttered.

“The girl I got was pure dynamite, and she was none-too-disappointed with my performance, if ya don’t mind me sayin’ so.”

“Not at all,” I told him distractedly.

“Which girl did you get?”

I nearly moaned. If you mean which FIVE GIRLS did I GET, I couldn’t begin to tell you. I simplified the response by merely saying, “A more-than-satisfactory little hussy by the name of Ammi, quite uniquely possessed of various hair colours.”

“Don’t know what mine’s name was but I can tell you, she’s quite good at putting more than food in her mouth.”

“A laudable endorsement, indeed,” I chuckled. I leaned over to keep my whisper more discrete. “But allow me to ask, and I apologize for the crudity, but… did your partner, um, make off with the soiled condom once the business was done?”

“Matter’a fact she did, Mr. Phillips, and now that’cha mention it? They always do.”

“Doesn’t that strike you as singularly peculiar?”

He stroked his stubble-blued chin. “Yeah, it does. Ya’d think they’d just drop it in the room’s waste can but maybe they dispose of ‘em all in the same place, as a safety precaution.”

I squinted at his conclusion. “I’m afraid I’m not comprehending you, Mr. Erwin.”

“Well, any red house is always leery of a raid. If the coppers broke in and found used skins in every room, it’d be a snap to get a prosecution, wouldn’t ya think?”

“Why, I hadn’t thought of that,” I confessed, and I admitted, too, that in the remotest sense it did make some juris-prudential sense. But…

Somehow, however abstractedly, I couldn’t quite fathom the notion to any sufficient degree of acceptability.

“I’ll be going back for seconds, Mr. Phillips. You?”

“Oh, indeed,” I transfigured the truth. More sexual frolic was most definitely not my preference, but I thought it best to obfuscate the truth to maintain more the air of a “team player.” I did very much need to screen more of the working girls, to show them Selina’s photograph.

Erwin seemed suddenly frustrated. “That is if there’re any girls left I could grab seconds with. You heard the rumor, Mr. Phillips?”

“Rumor? Why, no.”

“Heard two girls yacking about it a minute ago. Apparently one of the men was with us on the trolley is quite the stud. They say he took care’a five girls in one go-round and wore ‘em completely out. They won’t be hob-knobbin’ with no one the rest’a the night. They also said the fella had something ‘tween his legs that should’a been hangin’ in the smokehouse.” He elbowed me with a wink and a smile. “That fella wouldn’t be you, now would it, Mr. Phillips?”

I let out a strapping laugh. “Only in my most delusory dreams!”

“Well—” He theatrically dusted off his hands. “I’m ready as I’ll ever be… and may God forgive me.”

I rolled my eyes and laughed.

“You coming up too?”

“I’ll be along presently,” was my erroneous response.

Erwin embarked for the stairs, in his search for “seconds.”

The other refractors, as I’d come to think of them, had also returned upwards in the same search, leaving me the atrium to myself. At once, I contemplated my next tactic; any women who might recognise Selina’s photo would be upstairs as well, on the second or third story. However…

An echoic click came to my ears, that elevated my gaze.

The conductor, I thought.

For there he was, the regulation cap perched atop the macabrely immobile white face. In the fashion of an automaton, he took slow steps up the winding stairs—to the fourth story…

Though my tactic remained undelineated, it was my sheer curiosity that overrode any action of greater utility.