“Did you love him?” I asked her. That was the million dollar question. The water works really started then. It was a riot.
“So, Velvet, tell me. How many men have you been with since you started this lucrative career in the world’s oldest profession.
“Dozens.” She whimpered. “Look. Is this all we are going to do because I’m tired of playing twenty questions. If you need your rocks off then let’s get started but I’m not…”
I peeled off another twenty and another and another. She stopped and just watched. How long had it been since she saw more than one twenty dollar bill in front of her? I really could wipe my own ass with these and never miss them. Velvet, on the other hand would happy to take those shit covered bills.
“How many guys have you been with since you hit the streets?”
“Dozens?”
“Over a hundred?”
“Maybe.”
“And what did you do?”
Now this was interesting to watch. At first, Velvet shrugged her shoulders and looked at me as if she had never seen someone so dumb in their life.
“It really isn’t that hard to figure out, pal. You must be a trust fund baby because if you don’t know…”
I smiled. I had to admire her spunk. Normally, I would have slapped her silly for getting smart with me but I take the blame for the way I phrased the question. This one needed a little more instruction in order to give me what I wanted.
“No. Tell me what they did to you. The ones you remember the most. What did they do to you?”
There was no far off dreamy look in her eyes about a simple john who found her every Thursday on his way home from driving a big rig. And crazy as it may sound no millionaires paying her for a week of doing nothing but putting out. Shocking, I know.
Instead, Velvet gave me more than I ever could have asked for. She told a truly horrific tale of coming face to face with two guys who, had they not gotten so piss drunk would have killed this girl for sure.
She met them under a viaduct. It was raining. Business was slow, of course. And for some of their booze she offered a knobber to both. Fair enough trade for transients living under a viaduct, if you ask me.
But, well, after she held up her end of the bargain these two gentlemen tied her up. They talked about gutting her. They talked about raping her. They seemed to like to do a lot of talking. And as they talked they got thirsty and drank and drank until finally, they both passed out.
Velvet got out of her bondage. They tied her with a couple of old t-shirts or something, she said. And instead of taking the bottles they had been swigging from and bashing their skulls in she just ran away.
“I finally made it home.” She sobbed. “But I knew I’d have to get back out on the street in order to live. So…”
“Well, if you learned anything you learned to stay away from viaducts.” I said, chuckling a little. “Tell me, where is home?”
She described the Walona Motel. It was a run-down place that screamed for the 1970’s with its dated mint green and orange sign and long, long curved awning to protect the royalty that would sometimes show up and the huge rectangular windows for each room where the curtains were always pulled shut.
One or two men with gold chains and guns in their pockets were almost always loitering around the entrance. Women in jeans and t-shirts with bodies that had long ago given up on being firm walked back and forth along the busy street waiting for a car, any car, to pull up to them. Junkies would scurry like cockroaches into and out of the rooms they polluted for weeks at a time. Velvet had a room there that she shared with another whore splitting the twenty-two dollar a night fee and whatever smack they could score.
“Do you think this is what your mom wanted for you?” I asked, feeling the burn in my legs as I continued squatting in front of Velvet who was trying hard not to cry in the chair she was sitting in.
I had the endurance of a thoroughbred racehorse. Feeling the ache in my legs just meant I was getting stronger. But Velvet, well, I knew that chair wasn’t comfortable. I knew her back had to be hurting and her behind was uncomfortable and her neck was stiffening up. But she only slightly shifted.
Finally, at the mention of her mother she began to ball and snot all over the place. She had no father. That was no big shock.
Finally, after letting her cry over her own pitiful existence I stood up.
“Okay. This has been fun.” I said. “Let’s go.”
I turned and strolled confidently to the door we had come in from. Flipping off the lights as we went I walked out the door first and made sure it was locked tightly behind us.
We got back in my car and I drove her to the lonely, pitiful corner I had picked her up on.
“Look.” I said in my most understanding