Hells Kitchen

He looked around nervously. “Hi,” he said. “How you doing today? Hot, isn’t it? Sure is hot.”
    She looked around and then walked to the car, her high heels tapping on the concrete with loud pops.
    “Yeah, hot.”
    “I go home this way from work,” he said. “I’ve seen you out here.”
    “Yeah? Where you work?”
    “A place. Up the street.”
    “Yeah, what kinda place?” she asked.
    “Office. It’s boring. I seen you a couple times. Here, I mean. On the street.” He nervously cleared his throat.
    This boy was too much.
    “Yeah, I hang here some,” she said.
    “You’re a pretty lady.”
    She smiled again, wondering, as she did a hundred times a day, if a plastic surgeon could smooth out her cheeks.
    “So,” he said.
    Dannette eyed him again. Echoed, “So.” After a moment she added, “Well, honey, you innerested in a date?”
    “Maybe. You sure got nice boobs. You don’t mind I tell you that, do you?”
    “Everbody like mah tits, sugar.”
    “So whatta you do?” The boy wiped his face. He was sweating. He started to take his cap off but changed his mind.
    “What I do?” she asked, frowning.
    “Like if we were to have a date, you and me, what’d we do to have fun?”
    “Oh, I tell you. I do everthing. I suck and I fuck and you can put it up my ass, you want. S’okay with me. You gonna be wearing a rubber anyways. And I got me some K-Y.”
    “Wow.” He seemed embarrassed but she definitely had his attention. “I like it, you talking that way. Dirty talk.”
    “Then I’ll talk t’you that way on our date.”
    “Man, you are one hot woman.”
    “Shit, honey, that ain’t news,” Dannette said, straight-faced.
    “What’s your name?”
    “Dannette. What’s yours?”
    “Joe.” There was a warehouse across the street. Joe Septimo’s Hauling and Storage, painting in letters twenty feet high. Half the guys who stopped here were named “Joe.”
    “Well, Joe, how’s that date sounding?” she leaned forward, letting him get a good look at the tits he seemed to like and letting him see they were real and that she wasn’t a transvestite.
    “Sounding pretty good.”
    He whispered something she couldn’t hear. She leaned forward on the car, her hands inside now. He looked at her nine rings.
    “What’s that you said, honey?”
    “I said, how much we talking? For our date, I mean?”
    “Fo’ a nice boy like you? What it is is I go down on you for fifty. You can fuck my pussy for a hundred. You can fuck my ass for two. And we can do it right in your backseat. There this alley I know ’bout. Now, whatchu—” She gasped in shock as the boy’s eyes hardened and he reached into his pocket, grabbing the handcuffs in one hand and her wrists in the other. He was skinny but surprisingly strong.
    “What’re you doing?” she screamed.
    With a click the cuffs ratcheted onto her narrow wrists.
    “Well, I’ll tell you what I’m doing, Dannette. I’m arresting you for soliticiting sexual services in violationof the New York State Penal code. I want you to stand over there, with that lady who’s coming up right behind you.” The boy pulled her purse off her shoulder.
    “What?” Dannette turned around, eyes wide.
    The policewoman appeared behind the car and walked up to Dannette, led her to the shaded part of the sidewalk.
    “Oh, shit,” she said, astonishment in her voice. “You don’t mean you a cop.”
    “Fooled you pretty good. I do that.”
    “Oh, shit, man. I don’t believe it. I just got outa detention! Shit. I coulda swore you was just another asshole from Jersey.”
    Pleased with this review of his performance, the vice officer nodded to the policewoman, said, “Get her in the wagon. Take ’em downtown.”
    The stocky woman cop gripped Dannette by the arm and led her around the corner where a Dodge Caravan waited—an unmarked paddy wagon—and helped her up inside the vehicle, where two other prostitutes sat, bored and sweating.
    “Man, they on a fucking fishin’ trip,” Dannette blurted. “Don’t they got nothin’ better to do w’their time. I mean, shit. Don’t you got nothing better to do?”
    “We’ll get you downtown in ten, fifteen minutes,” the woman said. “I’ll tell ’em to turn on the air conditioning when we start moving. You, what’s so funny?”
    But Dannette was laughing too hard to answer.
    *   *   *
    More sweat. And look how these poor hands shake.
    Ah, momma, can this really be the end?
    Sonny walked through the