Sin City

by Wendy Perriam

  “We’re lucky really, Carole. Carl insists on standards. He calls his place the Caesars Palace of brothels. And he’s right, you know – at least compared with some of the dumps round here.” Angelique screws up her face, makes a spitting gesture. “They’re the pits. The girls all have to haggle, and sell their own used panties, the smellier the better. They even sell used rubbers. No, you don’t have that word, do you? What do we say in England? My mind’s just gone a blank. It’s weird how I forget my own damn language sometimes.”

  “Sheaths,” I tell her. “Balloons. French letters. Durex.” Reuben taught me “rubbers”. Of course he’s not unhinged. He showed he cared, proved he …

  “Yeah, of course. French letters. I always wondered how they got that name. Anyway, some girls do a trade in them, wet and full and dripping. It makes you puke, doesn’t it? Carl wouldn’t hear of such a thing. He’s got class, finesse. And I know I’ve got a future with him. He’s got these big expansion plans, you see – wants to add a golf course and a health farm, even riding stables; have clients stay here, like they’re on vacation, but with girls.”

  I try and look impressed. What a future. The final hole for golfers, the softest saddle.

  “It’s not a bad life, Carole, if you can only clear your head of all the shit, all that stuff about nice girls not doing it. Our girls are nice. You’ll see that for yourself. Okay, there’re a lot of hard-nosed sleazy hookers on the game, but Carl won’t touch them. He’s even a bit wary about girls who’ve been working on the streets. He says they often learn bad habits and get careless about hygiene.”

  I mumble some response. I can’t sit dumb for ever. Why is she such a fan of Wonder-Carl? Does he screw her, pay her double?

  “Anyway, where else can you earn so much so quickly? The money’s damned important – course it is. Why not? Our whole society’s geared to making money, except it’s usually the guys who are stashing it away. No, I’m not a feminist, it’s just a fact that in most ordinary jobs we girls can’t seem to make it. There’s too much stacked against us – wombs and kids to start with. I mean, what other job can earn a girl a hundred thousand bucks a year with no training, no college education and no rich Daddy pulling strings?”

  “A hundred thousand?” Now she’s kidding, must be.

  “Sure. If she’s not too squeamish, does anything she’s asked, takes on all the weirdos and the masochists. They pay more, of course, and they’re often the top brass. It’s a funny thing, you know, Carole, it’s always top tycoons or judges, guys who spend their lives controlling other people, who want to be tied up, or beaten, or crawl around like slaves.”

  I swallow, shut my eyes, but I can’t shut out the pictures in my mind. Sordid frightening pictures. Worse than cripples.

  “Yeah, the money’s really good, though a lot of girls just waste it. There was this silly bitch last year – saved a good four thousand dollars in just a couple of months. She wanted to get out, start her own small business, buy herself a dress shop. And what does she do? Drives down to Vegas and plays four hands of blackjack at a thousand bucks a hand, loses the whole lot. She was back here the next morning.” Angelique waves a hand, dismisses her. “That’s not the way to do things. And she had three kids, kept moaning about the fact she never saw them.”

  “Kids?”

  “Oh yeah, a few of them have kids. And some are married with husbands who regard it as just another job. They’re the honest guys. There’s too much hypocrisy in this game. Men who pay you, then despise you.” Angelique leans forward, adjusts the air conditioning. “By the way, you mustn’t call them ‘tricks’ or ‘Johns’. Carl objects. He’s very hot on language. It’s part of his whole standards thing. We’re ‘ladies’, not just girls. He even calls us courtesans. Okay, it’s fancy, but who gives a shit if it attracts the richer blokes? Have I told you how the system works? Carl splits our takings fifty-fifty with us, then charges us for room and board. Over-charges, Suzie says, but she’s a born complainer. It’s fair enough, I reckon. I mean, the cooking’s pretty good and all the housework’s done for us, and for some of the girls, it’s the first decent home they’ve ever really had. There’s this kid, Desirée, arrived six months ago. Her father was a brute, roughed her up. And Beth was bawled out by her parents for getting pregnant, told never to show her face at home again. We get the Pill – and steak three times a week, and we’ve got Uncle Carl to run to with our worries and …”

  She swerves to avoid a pothole in the road. She’s smoking, a ring of scarlet lipstick on her slim white cigarette. No, it’s not a cigarette, it’s a stiff white prick, branded with that same brilliant lipstick. She has a whole silver case of pricks, each one stamped with her initials on its tip. She glances at me, sideways, then eyes back to the road. “So you’re still not saying anything? I might as well have saved my breath.”

  “Yes. I mean no. It all sounds great, but …” I can taste come in my own mouth – come and vomit. When Angelique first told me what she did, I could feel myself shrinking from her, literally, as if she had leprosy. How can she call them “nice girls” when I’ve seen the list of things they have to do? It’s called the “menu” – appetisers, entrées, à la carte, desserts. Specialities of the House. They’re the worst. I don’t even understand them, half of them. Angelique said not to worry, she’d explain. She can’t seem to wait to break me in. It’s as if I either join her, or stay an enemy, a critic. She reminds me of those fatsos who keep pressing cream doughnuts on their friends in Weightwatchers, because slim girls show them up. Or divorcées who have suffered, and console themselves by hitting out at marriage, trying to separate any happy couple left.

  No – that isn’t fair. She went to quite some trouble finding me a job. It wasn’t easy when I haven’t got a work permit, and no hope of getting one. At the Silver Palm, I’ll be simply “helping out”, officially not there. They’re always specially busy at New Year, so she managed to arrange a deal. They’re short of girls, I’m short of cash. If I say nothing, he’ll say nothing. One favour for another. Good old Uncle Carl. Not a madam, but a male. He’s called the overseer. He does see everything – like God – on closed circuit TV. It’s for our security, like the four Alsatians, the two armed guards on duty round the clock, the emergency switches in each and every room, wired directly to the Sheriff’s office. It sounds like Reuben’s jail.

  I stare out of the window. Still no green, no other cars, no houses. Just bare brown scrubland stretching to the mountains. We’re in Nye County where brothels are permitted. They’re illegal in Las Vegas, some eighty miles away. A million miles away. It’s stupid, but I miss the lights and glitter, even miss the crowds. There’s nothing here at all. It’s as if every living thing has crept away to escape the contagion of the brothel.

  It was like that in Death Valley. No trees, no crops, no homes. Not a mingy sparrow or a cat. To tell the truth, it scared me; made me feel like nothing, just a speck in all that empty space. It was okay at the party (though I felt so shocked and weepy, it might just as well have been a funeral), but once the guests had gone, everything went quiet and sort of deathly, especially yesterday. Bernie drove us miles through all this bleak and lonely scenery, which looked barren like a moonscape, or some science-fiction movie where everything had died. It was even worse at night. The stars were too damn close, seemed to stare at us like spies. There was no other light to dim them – no street-lamps and no neon – and they went right down to the horizon as if the night had shut us in. I couldn’t bear to live there: nothing to distract you, nothing sort of human-scale or snug.

  I turn back from the window, start jigging on my seat. As Norah says, I need to go. These last few days I’ve been on the run one end or the other. I’ve had stomach upsets, headaches, crying fits, cystitis. Normally, I’m hardly ever ill. It’s as if I’m breaking up.

  Angelique pulls in again. If she swears, it’s only silently. She is my friend, a true one. Which means that Reuben is a … No. Not necessarily. She could have go
t her facts wrong, be merely passing on some ugly gossip. A lot of people hate the Jews. I feel hate myself, mixed up with the love. Hate because he made me doubt; gnawing hate which keeps crumbling into guilt. I can’t stop fretting about that mental hospital. It’s like we had the thing in common, yet both of us concealed it from the other. Was he really a bad case; psychotic, schizophrenic? He couldn’t be – not with his intelligence, his passion. I should realise, more than anyone, how easy it is to get labelled and locked up, how passion can be diagnosed as mania, or fervour as hysteria.

  I should have got in touch with him, written him a letter, done some small thing to show him I still cared. I tried. I really did. I kept telling Angelique I couldn’t just desert him. I didn’t even believe the things he’d done; had crazy plans at first to try and rescue him, or even share his cell. I kept begging her to drive me back, leave that stupid party; or use her influential friends to try and get him off. She refused point-blank, said if I ever made a single move to contact him, she’d drop me, just like that. She didn’t use threats normally, she said, but I was putting her in danger – not to mention Norah. I shut up after that. I felt bad enough already dragging Norah with me into all this mess. I was scared myself; still am. Yet ashamed of being scared.

  I suspect even Angelique’s a bit on edge. When we crossed the border out of California, back into Nevada, she glanced around her sort of nervously, as if she was expecting the police to suddenly close in. And she was driving like the clappers when we first set out this morning, like she felt exposed and on the run; couldn’t wait to bolt back to her sanctuary, Fortress Silver Palm.

  I bunch my skirt up, pull my pants down. Not mine, Angelique’s. Real silk pants, real linen skirt with a designer label sewn into the back. Nice to own clothes like that myself, drive a red Mercedes. Is that why I agreed to work with her? Greed again? Envy of her lifestyle, her second home (her first one is the brothel), the maid who keeps it clean, looks after George, does all the grotty chores? After all, if I’ve got so many scruples, why don’t I change my mind, inquire about that waitress job instead, ask Angelique to take me back? She offered. I said no.

  Greed is bad enough; revenge is worse. Yes, revenge. I want to get my own back. If Reuben was a client at that brothel, poured out all his skills on prostitutes, then I’ll go one better, work there, turn every client into him, then cheat on them in some way, do them down.

  See? I’m horrible. My urine stings and burns as if to punish me. I glance down between my legs, remember Reuben’s mouth there. I can feel other tongues probing into me – furred and coated tongues; paraplegics dribbling down my thighs; kinky crawling judges; old men, men who smell, stumps of men with neither arms nor legs. God! I envy Norah. She’s never had it, never likely to. I ignored her in Death Valley. Now I miss her. A beetle crawls across my shoe. I pick it up. It’s red with silver wings. Exotic. She saved me one like that, put it in a matchbox as a present. I hardly even looked at it, just told her I felt lousy, begged her to shut up and go away. I can feel the beetle frantic on my palm, weaving round and round in circles, flustered and disorientated like Norah. Poor Norah. I miss her now, already. There’s a matchbox in the car. I’ll take this crawly back for her.

  Except we’re not going back, not for two whole weeks. Angelique’s used up all her leave. The beetle will be dead by then, and I’ll be … well – if not dead, then hardened. Numb. I’ll have to anaesthetise myself if I’m ever going to do those blatant things. They’re written in a dreadful jokey prose to make them sound cute and good clean fun. Flavoured Pussy Party, Two-Piece Snack Box, Hot and Cold French, Water Sports, Japanese Quickie, Passion Chair Profligate. I feel my stomach heave again as I run through the hors-d’ oeuvres; imagine those top brass being handcuffed, beaten up.

  I pull my pants up, slouch back to the car. “Angelique, I … I’ve changed my mind. I do want to go back.”

  “Well, I wish you’d said so earlier. We’re almost there. I’ll be late now, if I drive back all that way.”

  “Okay, okay. Go on, then. I don’t care.”

  “What do you want, for chrissakes? You’ve changed your mind twenty times already. Last night you said you were absolutely sure. That’s why I phoned Carl, confirmed the whole damn thing. He’s relying on you now.”

  “I was pissed last night.”

  “No, you weren’t. We stuck to orange juice. I hid the gin deliberately.”

  I don’t remember orange juice. To tell the truth, I don’t remember much at all. And if she hid the gin, why have I got this awful nagging hangover, the worst one yet? Perhaps it’s from the night before. I’ve been drinking for the last few days just to drown things out. Not to feel. Not to think. Not to blame or hate or doubt. It doesn’t work.

  “Look, Carole, we either turn back now and forget the whole idea, or we go on and you act professional, honour your commitment. Right?”

  I nod. She sounds like Sister Watkins. I’m scared, though, really scared. If she leaves us in the lurch now, then Norah and I are totally alone in a foreign country without money, friends or passports. Without even a roof above our heads. I’m lucky to get any job. You need a permit to wash dishes or sweep streets. A lot of people do land jobs without one, wangle them illegally, but I daren’t take any more risks. I’m in enough mess as it is. It’s so frightening the way that things just happen, through random chance or fate. I mean, winning this whole trip was only really luck, and then meeting Reuben who’s mixed up with all those horrors and nothing like he seemed – maybe even dangerous or mad. Then landing up a … a whore, when my father hoped to see me a nice respectable teacher or a safe conventional wife. It’s like gambling in a way – your whole life changed, decided, by the spin of a wheel or the throw of a dice.

  Angelique is still waiting for an answer. “Okay, Carole, which is it going to be?”

  I hesitate a moment longer, see Norah and myself sleeping on cardboard like those beggars in Las Vegas, see policemen closing in. Their questions fire like bullets; questions about Reuben, grilling about passports. “Go on,” I whisper, doing up my seat belt.

  “Great,” she says. “Have another fag. Calm your nerves. It is just nerves, you realise. I was just the same myself – kept worrying about my Mum and what she’d say.”

  My hands are trembling on the lighter. “What did she say?”

  “Nothing. She doesn’t know. She thinks I’m still a dancer. The Swan Lake sort of dancer – tutus rather than titties. She’d die, if she found out. That’s the trouble, really. I’d like to bring her over, give her a break, a decent sort of life after all her years and years of making-do, but how can I? That’s one advantage with dear George. Even if he guesses what his sister does, he can’t let on.”

  George is deaf and dumb. It amazes me the way Angelique accepts. Accepts her job, her mutilated brother, her father dying when she was only three. And still stays cheerful, paints her nails puce-pink, wears citron-yellow playsuits with gold boots. She ought to be a bitch with looks like that, cash like that. Yet she spends half the money flying George out here and back, so her Ma can have a rest from looking after him. And she took in me and Norah. Norah’s sitting in her house this very moment, with the maid to wait on her, three television sets, a Burmese cat. I ought to stick with Angelique. At least she’s sorted out her life. “Yes – as a well-dressed wealthy leper,” a little voice whispers in my head. I try to shut it up as we rattle on again, through leper-land. Still no grass or trees. They’re scared to take up root here.

  I’m wrong. We’ve passed a tree, a bare and stunted one, but still a tree. We even pass a house, a normal cheerful house with washing on the line, two small children playing in the garden. To think that whores have kids. I mean, who the hell looks after them and what are they told when they ask what Mummy does? I crane my head back, keep looking at the toddlers – blue tee shirts, orange shorts – the first bright colours I’ve seen for miles and miles. I’ve never felt so utterly alone. No kids myself, no husband, no safe and hap
py home, not even any Norah; another move to somewhere strange; a new anonymous room with nothing of my own to put in it. I keep thinking of my gear, shut up in the Gold Rush. We were meant to leave tomorrow, so maybe they’ll just sling it in a box, shove it in Lost Property, if it’s not with the police. I hate to think of all my things ill-treated. They’re precious, part of me – the striped dress from my father, the checked shirt pinched from Jon, the black cat brooch I’ve had since I was ten. All gone. Even that smart coat which Victor bought me. It cost a bomb and I wore it just three days. Now I’ve got to start again from scratch. Borrow things, scrimp and save to buy them. Even my toothbrush is hard and unfamiliar, so new it makes my gums bleed. And real silk pants feel strange. I’ve lost the cheapo pair with hearts on which I bought with Jan in Brighton.

  “See the sheep,” says Angelique.

  They’re so still and grey they look like greyish stones, but at least they’re living things. Sheep mean farmers. Farmers are real people, not lepers, gaolers, pimps. I can even see some grass, yellowish and parched, but welcome nonetheless. The sun is really warm now. Blue sky, puffy clouds. It’s like May back home in England. But that’s only on the outside. It’s November in my head – bleak and cold, things dying, shrivelling up.

  We drive on for another half a mile. No more sheep or houses. Just blistered brown, ash grey. Then suddenly there’s red. Red! Red for danger. A huge red flashing arrow pointing to a high wire fence with barbed wire coiled on top.

  “That’s it,” says Angelique. She stops, gets out, comes round and helps me out the other side. She needs to. It’s like the moment when I first walked into Beechgrove, the same liquid stomach, paper legs. I stare in shock at the grey one-storey building spreading out untidily beyond the wire, the pile of lumber, the clapped-out fridge stranded on its back. The Caesars Palace of brothels? Christ Almighty! It looks more like a Portacabin, or a Salvation Army shelter for the homeless and deprived. I’m not sure what I expected, but if the Vegas tourists come here, then they’re used to glamour, opulence. This is simple grot.