Chapter 10 ~ Trade
March 17, 2010
Ivvy and I wandered through Soho, one of our many days spent browsing shops in which we never intended to spend a dime. Wondering what people saw in all these belongings, what my parents saw in them.
Ivvy; her blonde, ratty hair, cropped to the nape of her neck. Every so often, choreographed for some imagined movie scene, all subtle lighting and angles, she tossed her head to flipping her hair from left to right or vice versa. On virtual celluloid, the sun filtered through her hair, glowing through strands, adding a halo as she flicked her fringe. Reality told a different story; straw on her head frizzing a little as static, humidity and city grime conspired to add weight where it was unwanted.
“What is it you do exactly?” I asked her, looking in the Prada shop and wondering whether it was even worth entering; we’d been thrown out within four minutes the last time we’d stepped in, politely followed by some male model between engagements but a good enough coat hanger on which to drape the product.
“You know,” she chided, not slowing a jot.
“No,” I replied truly ignorant, “I mean, I know you’re something in the good old NYPD blue, but you’ve never told me what.”
“I haven’t?” Now she knew she was stringing me along, the note of her voice changing as she began to play with me.
“No, you haven’t.”
She didn’t say anything for a few minutes and I wondered whether the conversation was closed.
“You’re not gonna freak out, right?” she said eventually.
“Right.”
She stopped, turned to face me.
“You mean it, right?”
“Yeah. Said so, didn’t I?”
Ivvy nodded, looked up and down the street, checked no-one was in listening distance; even looked above us, checking the fire escapes, windows and roof gardens.
Like the first time we’d met, in Washington Square.
“I’m a hooker,” she said.
It stopped me dead.
“You’re what?”
“A hooker.”
“But… But you… I thought you were with the pol…”
“I am.”
I did a double take and it was clear she understood my confusion; playing with me still.
“Undercover,” she said quietly, again checking up and down the street.
“Really?” I was impressed; this was unexpected to say the least.
She nodded.
“But I…”
This time she laughed. “Jesus Christ, Ken! It’s not as if I just told you I’m a pro for real!”
“It’s not that,” I fired back, “it’s just… How do they let you get away w…”
“When I’m on the street, I’m watching, making notes, sometimes wear a wire.”
“Who are you after, the pros or the punters?”
“Punters?”
“The guys… Look, it’s something my Father says, all right!”
“Take it easy, man! Easy. I just hadn’t heard it before, that’s all. Jeez! Usually it’s the guys who cruise the girls we’re after, the… punters. The pimps if we can get them.”
“My respect knows no bounds,” I said, still smarting from her reaction Although I wanted my voice to drip sarcasm, it actually came out sounding pretty much like a compliment.
She laughed at me again.
“It’s not that amazing,” she said, “it’s just what I do. Most of the time I’m just freezing my ass off in the snow or sweating in the heat.”
“I was being sarcastic,” I said, choosing transparency’s best tactic.
“I know,” she smiled, punching my arm.
“Show me how you do it?” I asked.
“What?”
“How you do it,” I repeated, “I want to see.”
“Do what?”
“Act like a hooker… I want to see it.”
She looked around herself, at the streets of Soho, busy as usual on this Spring day.
“Here?” Her voice was filled with disbelief and ridicule.
“It’s a street isn’t it?”
I walked over to a low window ledge; sat down, leaning forward, arms on knees.
Expectant.
“Go on.”
“No.”
“Go on.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
I shook my head. Ivvy looked up and down the street, at the faces of people passing by, bumping her shoulder as they passed, banging her shins with shopping bags, briefcases and folded coats.
Her eyes contained something like panic.
“Not exactly the right neighbourhood,” she said, nodding at the seething street.
Music erupted from a shop up the road as someone pushed the door open; reggae, pulsing sub-bass and stabbing horns. Sex on vinyl.
“They’re playing your song,” I said and smiled at her.
“You really want me to?” Her voice was full of disappointment.
I just smiled.
Without another word, Ivvy walked off up the street.
“Ivvy!” I shouted after her.
She just raised the back of her right hand above her shoulder, dismissing me with a single gesture. A single finger.
Once again, I was alone in the foaming sea of the city. Suddenly all those briefcase boys and Chanel girls were too close to me, not just passing by on the street. Aftershave and perfume cut the stench of the city; acid-washed and scrubbed, these exfoliated, effervescent, excessive urban executives. Their path peppered by the underclass; raggedy pants and t-shirts, sweat and cheap wine halitosis.
All of them. Too close to me.
I would have held my breath if I thought it would stop the oppressive weight of the city. But it wasn’t just a smell thing; New York assailed all senses in every way imaginable twenty-four-seven.
I had only been joking.
Surely she’d known that?
I was joking!
She’d done this sort of thing before; queen of the unpredictable mood swing. It was the come-down, or her period, or some medical condition I could have learnt about if I’d been bothered. The previous week, it had been storming out of Macy’s because I hadn’t said she looked good in a little red skirt she’d been trying on. The week before that, when she hadn’t want to eat at Burger King. Just like now, she hadn’t said a word, she’d just walked. It was something of a normal occurrence when I spent time with Ivvy.
I decided to watch the crowd instead, the river of blood, bone and breath flowing before my eyes.
Hot women, square-jawed management wannabes, fatties pulling hard on Big Gulps, chomping down on burgers, chins drizzled with grease, execs stepping sideways to avoid black guys, confirming every stereotype in a single movement.
I only became aware of the change over the course of five minutes.
There was nothing spectacular, nothing different, no sound or signal but I sensed the shift in the focus of the street as soon as it moved. It was in the way they paused a little as they walked in front of me, slowing their pace; a few more collisions, heavier breathing. When I looked up, more of them were looking away from where I sat. They were looking…
Across the street.
She was on the corner, bag dangling from her left forearm, hips kicked out to the right, hand planted securely there. The top she’d been wearing a few minutes earlier was now ripped.
Ivvy: every inch a caricature.
A group of young guys out for lunch came between me and the corner where she was standing as clear as a billboard.
I leant to my right to try and see around them. But they were too dense, too many, and I lost her. They joked with each other, a couple of them pointing across the street; blatant in their admiration.
Though I stood up, they remained a wall in front of me.
She had ripped the sleeves off her t-shirt, slashed it a couple times across the chest, so that her cleavage was revealed through two diagonal gashes; near parallel. The mini-skirt she was wearing was pulled up one thigh slightly.
The guys moved on and she was no longer on the corner. I scanned the other side of the street frantically, trying to spot her.
And there she was, tucked in by the entrance to a shabby car park, leaning against the wall, left foot up on the wall behind her, causing the hem of her skirt to ride up her thigh.
She swung her bag, all provocation and tease, blew bubbles with her gum. Her hair was all messed up, falling partly over her eyes while she looked up through the lids at passers-by.
Her head turned for a moment and she spotted me looking at her.
Blowing a kiss to me, she stepped out into the sunlight in front of a passing suit, talking to him, looking him in the eye, walking backwards at the same pace as he did forward, nodding every now and then, succeeding in getting him to stop before they reached the end of the block.
They talked for a minute or so. Then he nodded and headed around the corner. She looked at me, gave me the thumbs up, raised her eyebrows; I told you so. She began to follow him.
This was rapidly getting beyond the original joke I’d played. It had stopped being funny the moment she suckered that guy, made the deal, agreed to…
Just as she reached the corner, she turned to look at me, making sure I was looking and pulled at the rips in her t-shirt, revealing her nipple while her right hand lifted her skirt slightly, letting me see that she wasn’t wearing any underwear.
And of course, this being New York, no-one but me saw this happen. Or if they did, they marked it down as just another ordinary freak in the city.
She turned the corner and was gone from my sight.
This had gone too far. My heart beating too hard. My breathing forced. I began to sprint after her.
I’d only been joking! She didn’t need to score this point!
As I pushed through the group of guys who’d blocked my view earlier, I scattered them in all directions, a couple of them falling. I didn’t have chance to see whether they were following me to seek retribution; in that moment, didn’t care.
A taxi screeched to a halt as I ran into the street. If this had been uptown I’d have been dead but in Soho they sometimes went at a reasonable speed; streets too narrow for haste. I looked at the driver for a second but he was too busy cursing me and calming his passenger to take any notice.
I ran along the street, half expecting another car to hit me or one of the guys from the group to hit me; just waiting to be hit, period.
As I sprinted around the corner, tumbling around the edge of the building, Ivvy was standing there with the guy, both of them leaning against a wall, watching me. Waiting for me.
Smiling at the state of me, she turned to the man.
“There,” she said, “I told you he would. Thanks so much for helping out.”
He smiled back at her, offered his hand.
“It was nothing,” he said with a heavy British accent, “glad to be of help.”
He picked up his briefcase and walked up to me, stopping to speak.
“You’re pathetic,” he said, his words speckling my face with saliva, “sick!”
He regained his original direction, waved to Ivvy over his shoulder and was gone.
“What did you tell him?” I asked, still having trouble breathing.
She smiled at me but didn’t say anything.
Eventually, my breath found its way back into my lungs.
“What did you say to him?”
Her grin turned lupine.
“That you’re my boyfriend and you can’t get it up unless I act like a hooker.”
“Huh?”
“But if it looked like I’d actually made a deal, you’d be around that corner in a matter of seconds.”
“What? Why did you do that?”
She stepped close to me. Flicked her fringe to get it out of the way. Looked me directly in the eye. Her voice hissed sibilance.
“Don’t you ever pull that shit on me again, you hear me?”
We stared at each other for a long time as the city returned to its normal frenetic pace around us, destroying any hope of silence.
“You ripped your t-shirt,” It was all I could think of to say.
She hooked her thumb in one of the slashes.
“Want another look?” she asked and her voice was barely concealed venom. The ice was thin beneath me.
“Margarita?” I asked.
She thought for a moment.
“Yup,” she said, “right after you buy me another shirt.”
We walked on without saying another word.
