Screeching tires announce the arrival of a car, the angle so bad that one of the wheels butts up against the curb, itching to mount it. Inside, a voice lifted in anger batters the insides of the windows, and then escapes when the passenger door is shoved open.
"...think you can try that shit on, you got another think coming, you lousy piece of crap. Christmas was yesterday, asshole." The words fall off the painted lips of the woman who climbs out of the car and into the rain. She stumbles between the gutter and the sidewalk, wrangling coat and bag and tugging her short, faux-leather skirt down. With a huff, she spins on one tall heel so she can use the other foot to slam the door closed, spitting at the driver, "And it's my real hair!"
The hair in question is ash blonde and streaked with candy pink, darkening with rain and tossed over her shoulder as she turns away from the car. Behind her, shouts are throttled inside the vehicle as gears crunch in a furious search for first. However, the man and his car have ceased to exist for her as she fumbles in her bag for her umbrella.
Instead, her gaze runs over the pale
streak of a girl standing in the lee of a building nearby.
"You
got a light?"
The girl doesn't answer, not even when the umbrella snaps open, a prong whipping out just inches from her cheek. Heels tick on the sidewalk as the new arrival steps closer and holds the handle out towards her. "Hold this for me, will'ya? C'mon, help a girl out."
With the umbrella out of her hands, she huddles under it and struggles into her coat, somehow without dropping her bag. What should be a fluffy fur collar is stuck down with water, but she flicks it up anyway, in case it might catch the drips trying to work their way down the back of her neck. She loops the bag's strap over her shoulder and immediately dips a hand into it to fetch a battered pack of cigarettes.
All the while, her gaze considers this quiet girl holding her umbrella. She'd be unremarkable if she wasn't so pale. She looks washed-out, as if she has been standing in this rain so long all her color has drained away.
"I'm Savannah," the painted lips announce around the butt of a cigarette. She fumbles for the lighter eluding her at the bottom of her bag. "What's your name?"
"Georgia."
"Well, nice t'meetcha, Georgia." She cups a hand around the lighter's tiny flame, and her barely-restrained cleavage rises and falls, catching the smoke within. "Haven't been in the city long, huh." It's not a question and the curl in the corner of Savannah's mouth has a knowing streak to it.
"Just visiting family. For the holidays."
An eyebrow quirks but Savannah doesn't question the answer. She knows a street rat when she sees one. She knows that hungry-edged look and the leanness hidden under thick winter clothes. But she smiles and lets the lie pass by. It is the holiday season, after all.
"Well, ain't that nice. So you got a gang of friends around here somewhere?" She glances around, but there's no-one else hanging around here - the few people on the street are all hurrying through the rain. A passing man eyes the two girls long enough for Savannah to flash him a wide smile and tilt her head. He ducks and hurries on, and she blows smoke up to the edge of the umbrella, where it fails against the falling water.
"No. Like I said, I'm visiting family."
"Right, right. Silly of me." Another deep inhale, as if the smoke might warm her.
Georgia seems like she wants to say something, the words queueing up across her tongue, so Savannah waits for them to fall off while her buzz builds. The question finally comes out, "Do you make a lot of money?"
The candy-striped woman is surprised into a laugh; if she's honest, she didn't think the girl knew a hooker when she saw one. She's not honest enough to say that, though.
"I make enough. My pimp, he makes a lot." She flicks ash off to die under the curtain of rain and considers skinny Georgia. "Why, you lookin' for a job?"
"No." The girl shifts her weight, soles squeaking against the wet concrete. "Maybe."
"It ain't Pretty Woman, kid." Savannah can't be more than three or four years older than Georgia, but there's more than just time between them. "What are you, thirteen, fourteen?"
"Fifteen." She straightens her spine and sticks her chin out.
Savannah smiles around her cigarette butt, drawing the last of its cancerous glow down towards her chipped nails. Look at the kid, all puffed up. "Fifteen, huh. And not a clue about what you're lookin' to get yourself into." There's a trace of bitterness around her eyes and the way they flick over the street around them. It's a miserable day and it wants to eat them. She exhales smoke in a long stream and flicks the butt into the gutter. It's an arc she has practiced.
Without anything to fiddle with, she grows restless and takes the umbrella back. "Come on, kid. Ain't enough cars around here." She turns and starts to walk up the street, waiting for young Georgia to join her.
"You serious about this? 'Cause it ain't easy to get out once you're in, y'know. If you wanna be safe, you gotta find yourself a pimp, and they don't like lettin' girls go. And even that ain't safe. You a virgin?"
Georgia snorts and twitches her shoulders. "No."
Savannah gives the kid a long look, but keeps right on walking without missing a beat. "If you were a virgin, I'd tell you to go talk to Rochester up the northern end of Poke Street. You know where that is? It's what we call Polk Street. He specialises in first-time deals. Get you a good price. Just don't try going back there a second time." She rolls her eyes and turns the corner, homing in on a coffee cart huddling under the shelter of a storefront.
"Don't go tryin' to go it alone on Poke Street, neither. If the fellas don't make a meal of ya, the girls will. But if someone turns you onto a fella called Richie, run like hell. He'll make all the promises in the world, but he's bad news. You gettin' this?" She glances at Georgia in case the girl might be taking notes, then turns and orders two coffees from the man rubbing his hands together over his cart.
Savannah pulls a bill out of her bra to pay for the drinks. She hands one steaming cup to the kid and takes hers to the shelf on the end of the cart, where she pours in half a cup of sugar and starts stirring. Abruptly, she leans over to hook a finger into the neck of Georgia's sweater, pulling it forward so she can peek in.
"You're gonna have to get some girl's clothes," she says, letting the startled kid go again before the protests emerge. "Might look pretty good, cleaned up right." She goes back to stirring, but with less enthusiasm than before.
"You know this ain't a party, don't you, kid?" Her expression slips and shows concern, and she dips her gaze to her coffee. A drawn-in breath strains against the sparkles on her shirt; she's composed again by the time she lets it out. "Ain't no romance in the Tenderloin. All you'll get is fucked." She gives a bright smile again and nudges the kid with her elbow.
The fellow behind the cart is trying not to stare and failing. For a moment, it looks like he's going to say something to the sombre-faced kid, but then Georgia blinks and gives the hooker a smile as the joke registers. "Yeah."
The moment has escaped him, and the pair turn to continue on down the street, one with clipping heels and the other shuffling along quietly.
Savannah is blowing on her coffee, driving the steam away as casually as she was with the smoke earlier, when Georgia pipes up again.
"Is it worth it? It must be."
The hooker snaps a glance sideways, bitterness sliding into the tilt of her mouth. "Worth it? Depends what you mean. Could be worse. Could be a damn-sight better. It's a life. I ain't starvin' or sleepin' on the street." She shrugs, her faux-fur collar shivering droplets onto her shoulders. There's something about her words that adds an unspoken 'any more' to the end of her sentence, or possibly, 'like you'.
"You get beat up at all?"
Savannah relaxes at the question, shrugging again. Oddly, this is an easier one for her to answer. "Yeah, coupl'a times. Tony's okay, he don't treat us as bad as some of the others. Stick to the rules and you'll do all right. You always gotta watch out for the johns, though - some of 'em get rough. One of the other girls got her face bashed in last week. She was junkie, though; those girls're crazy. Go with anyone. Still, Becky, she wasn't, and she wound up behind a dumpster." She wrinkles her nose and sips at her coffee.
The hooker might speak casually enough about a colleague's death, but she's still surprised when Georgia doesn't seem to be worried by it.
"A, uh... a client did that? Why?"
Savannah licks coffee froth from her lips. "Could'a been one of them. Or a dealer, gangbanger, pimp. Random sicko off the street. Cop, even. No-one knows. She got messed up with the wrong person. It happens. As for why, well, take your pick. Lotta people see us as easy targets."
Georgia times her next question to coincide with Savannah's mouthful of coffee.
"How much for one go?"
The hooker struggles not to choke, and manages to swallow with some grace. "What?"
"You know. How much do you charge?"
Savannah blinks, then a wide, taunting smile slides over her face. "Why, do you want a go? There's an alley right there if you're eager." Her head tilts towards a gap between two buildings.
"No." Georgia pauses to acknowledge that she does, in fact, know that Savannah is messing with her. "Seriously, what's the pay scale for this thing. Is it like twenty dollars or two thousand dollars?"
Savannah tosses her hair over her shoulder, amused that the kid is asking in such earnest. "It don't come with a laid-out price list, honey. But if you want a ball-park, you're not looking at thousands. Do I look like I earn that kinda money? Like I said: this ain't Pretty Woman."
She draws in a breath and lets it out again. "Lessee... head's ten bucks, standing up in an alley is twenty. Fifty if they wanna go to a room and spend the whole hour. If they want somethin' kinky, add on some more. Extra twenty for handcuffs, thirty for anal. Forty for appliances - those things burn through batteries, y'know. Some girls charge double for bareback. With threesomes, it depends if the third person is a hooker or another john. You sure you don't wanna take notes here?" Savannah glances at Georgia, but the kid isn't taking the bait.
"Thing to remember is to keep it simple and don't ever give discounts. Or change." A smile flashes with private amusement. "And always, always get the money first. Otherwise, they'll screw you twice for the price of none."
Georgia's mouth twists as she listens to the hooker. The heels stop ticking when Savannah comes to an abrupt halt, looking up and down the street, and Georgia takes the opportunity to step into a sheltered dooorway. The hooker turns to consider the solemn-faced girl absorbing all of this information and her attitude alters.
"Listen, kid. Best piece of advice I can give ya? Don't do it. It ain't all that." She takes a gulp of coffee and holds the cup out. "Here, hold this, will'ya? I gotta get back." She stoops to rub at her knees briefly; they're bare and chilled. Then she straightens and huffs, turning to look at the traffic again.
A glance at Georgia makes her pause, as if her hair had just been ruffled. "Good luck, kid. Don't let anyone take advantage of ya, yeah?"
"Thanks. Not like I'm gonna do it or anything. I was just wondering."
A crooked smile tilts the older girl's expression as she steps over to the curb. "Yeah, okay." Of course not.
She beams at an approaching car, come over all coy and hip-cocked. Water showers towards her feet as the vehicle swings in to meet her, but she ignores it, stepping to the window anyway. She exchanges a few words with the driver, then glances over her shoulder at the girl standing in the doorway behind her. Fingers waggle briefly, then she closes her umbrella and gets into the car before the rain can spatter her hair too much.
Georgia is left alone again, standing in a doorway looking at the rain, with a half-drunk cup of coffee in each hand and a head full of information. Just like Savannah, no matter which way she steps, she's going to get wet.
