Sin City (51 page)

“Silver Palm Brothel,” I spell out silently. I turn away, feel sick. Up till now, I haven't quite believed it – that Angelique, my friend, my rescuer, is a … a … All the words are so repellent: whore, hooker, scrubber, tart. She calls it working girl, says she's simply going back to work. Work! Getting paid for letting any freak or pervert hire her body, use it like a punchbag or a rubber doll.

She kidded me she was a dancer (stripper). She was – for eighteen months. But prostitutes earn more, much more. Which is why I'm going with her. Yes, Carole Joseph, apprentice prostitute. It should have been quite different. Carole Ben Schmuel, Zionist, new wife. My Jewish bridegroom spent the wedding night in jail. He's still in jail. His idealistic work for the Land of Milk and Honey turned out to be robbery, extortion, even accessory to murder. Oh yes, he loved the Jews. He kept nothing for himself. All the loot was sent to Tel Aviv. The murdered man was Arab. It's God's work to murder Arabs, God's work to steal for Israel. A petty thug with high ideals.

I don't believe it – not a word of it. I keep thinking of his hands, blood on them, handcuffs round the wrists, touching me, exploring me, going everywhere. I've had nightmares. His black prick cocked and loaded like a gun. Blood instead of come. My orange-blossom wedding dress embroidered with black bullet holes.

“Angelique … ?”

“Yeah?”

“I'm sorry. I feel sick. Can you stop?”

“Sure.”

She pulls up by the roadside. We're in a no-man's-land. No fields, no houses, just a yellow-brown parched landscape with jagged mountains closing in around us like some prison fence.

I scramble out, looking for a tree or bush, something to be sick behind. There's not a tree for miles. Just a few bare rocks sticking up from stony barren soil. I crouch down on the ground, knees pricking on the grit. Throwing up is the most lonely thing on earth. You're nothing but a heaving stomach, retching throat; a shameful smelly outcast. I want to sick up everything – my misery, my shock, the whole jumbled battleground of fury, guilt, horror, disbelief; leave it here in this shrivelled landscape, drive on somewhere new and green.

I spit out a slimy trail of mucous, nothing else. I keep coughing and heaving to try and bring the rest up, but all I do is hurt my throat. I can't even be sick. “Daddy,” I mouth silently. He always held the sick bowl. My mother couldn't cope.

I mop my face on a corner of my skirt, walk slowly back to Angelique. She's flicking through a fashion magazine, looks up from the new Italian spring-knits.

“You okay?”

“Yes, thanks.”

“Coffee?”

“Please.”

Angelique unscrews a Thermos. I drink too fast, scald my mouth. Simple sorts of pain block out the deeper ones, at least for a few minutes.

“Look, I'd better drive you back, Carole.”

“No.”

“You haven't said a word since we set out. You
must
be ill.”

I force a smile. “I'll survive.”

“You can still change your mind, you know. I could probably wangle you some other sort of job. Jack Stein needs a waitress.”

“No.” Waitressing won't earn two air fares back to England, two sets of clothes, a suitcase. All our stuff is stranded at the Gold Rush, out of bounds.

I daren't return there. The police may be waiting for me, ready to arrest me as soon as I walk in. Oh, I know I haven't done anything, but I don't want to be questioned, labelled an accessory myself. They may find out I've already got a record. Okay, stealing a swiss roll is not exactly a big deal, but once you're in their hands, they can blow things up, make them sound much worse, especially in Las Vegas where crime appears to be the local industry.

They may even have our passports. I gave them both to Reuben. He said he had to have them when he changed our tickets over from London to Tel Aviv. Perhaps he didn't change them, just sent them on to Israel as another sort of loot, invented the whole story of our new life on a kibbutz. But then why did he turn up for the wedding? Even Angelique can't understand that. If he's the crook she says he is, he should have grabbed the goods, then done a bunk, disappeared completely, not put himself at risk by appearing at the chapel. Would he have gone through with the marriage, caught that flight to Israel? God knows. I keep asking myself questions which don't have any answers, going round and round in circles. Did he have the passports on him, or had he left them in his room? Or had he already doctored them, passed them on to someone? I'd feel a lot less frightened if I just knew where they were: on their way to Tel Aviv, in the Las Vegas Police Department, or totally destroyed.

Angelique was horrified I'd lost them; even changed her tune about the cops – said I should report the theft, tell them all I knew, ask their help in getting back to England. No. I can't betray my husband. Almost husband. It wasn't theft, in any case. I gave them to him freely. I'm sure he meant it at the time – that we'd marry, fly to Israel. He was probably forced to change his plans. Some threat, or plot, or blackmail, by a member of some gang, someone much more ruthless who had him in their power. Reuben wasn't ruthless. Okay, so he stole from other people, but not to make himself rich. And whatever else they say he's done, they're not crimes at all in his mind. If you believe in something passionately, you have to override the law. Even Christ was called a criminal.

And yet … Oh God, it's awful, but my own doubts keep creeping in. The thing's so complicated. I've run it and re-run it in my mind – his ideals and his vision, and then what Angelique said, or read out from the newspaper: how he'd been in jail before, jumped bail, was a disturbed and violent drop-out who seized on the whole Jewish thing as an outlet for his own aggression. She said she wouldn't even glamorise him with the name of terrorist. He didn't have the guts or dedication. He's also been in a mental institution – yes, that as well as jail. She hinted he was really quite unhinged. That's upset me more than anything, except I still can't quite believe it. You can land up in a loony-bin through sheer bad luck, or just with minor problems like worry or depression. Don't I know that from my own case, or Norah's, or Di Townsend's? If Angelique's still jealous, she could be blackening him on purpose. She told me she first met him in the brothel, as a client. Whose money paid for that, I'd like to know? Or is it just a lie? Another lie. As a child, you accept most lies as gospel. Being older means you never know, can't tell friends from jealous bitches; unhinged crooks from husbands.

Angelique refills my cup, extracts a cigarette from her initialled silver case, lights it for me. She's acting like a friend, has done since she first showed up, providing everything – clothes, food, smokes, a place to stay.

“Angelique … ?”

“Mm?”

“You … know I'm grateful, don't you?”

“What for? Turning you over to a life of vice, corrupting your young innocence, acting the procuress?”

“Shut up.”

Angelique laughs, swings her hair back. “Look, love, you're intelligent. You don't have to take the standard view of brothels. They're a service.” She shrugs. “A social service. Providing sex for those who can't get it elsewhere because they're too busy or too old or shy, or their wives are sick – or selfish – or their girlfriends too uptight to give them what they want. Okay, some of them want the way-out kind of stuff, but so what? It's not doing any harm. Better to do it safely with a girl who's trained to handle it, than break a marriage or go out and rape some kid. A brothel cuts the risks all round. No pimps, no threats of blackmail, much less chance of catching a dose. We're checked, you realise, every week. The doctor's quite a sweetie, laughs and jokes with us, stays on to have a drink. It's all quite civilised. Okay, so we charge. But everything costs money. Why not sex? You could say it makes it better. People only value what they pay for.”

Angelique stows away the Thermos, reapplies her lipstick. I say nothing, simply watch her lips change from palely prim to scarlet. I keep wondering what that glossy mouth has done, where it's been, how much it earns.

She blots it, twice, smiles at her reflection in the mirror. “Our clients aren't just nerds, you know. In fact, I've met a better class of person here than I'd ever meet back home in boring Watford – attorneys, film producers, top businessmen, high-ranking physicians – you name it. Some of them work sixteen hours a day. They haven't time for dating, so they come to us instead – get exactly what they want and what they pay for – then straight back to their desks. No need for smoochy phone calls, lavish presents, wining, dining, dressing up.” She crumples up her Kleenex, smooths her skirt.

“Others are just lonely. They may spend six or seven hours with us, but only half an hour or so on sex. They want tea and sympathy as well, someone to confide in, someone they can trust. Some are handicapped, or have lost an arm or leg, or even both. One poor sod I saw last month had been smashed up in a car crash and still had all the scars. Others are too ugly to attract a girl, maybe very short, or hugely overweight. One guy who comes quite often – drives all the way from Utah – weighs three hundred and thirteen pounds. We need a winch to get him on the bed.”

Angelique is laughing. I'm appalled. Bad enough to think of normal clients, but dwarfs and amputees, Billy Bunters, cripples …

“We're doing them a favour, Carole. They crawl in here feeling like they're failures, and if we're any damn good at our job, they ought to swagger out. We're twenty girls in all, okay? Three of those are ex-nurses and two ex-social workers. One was a psychotherapist with her own private practice. Carl picks girls like that deliberately. Okay, we've got to be reasonably attractive, and ready to open our legs as well as just our arms, but if we're not kind and sympathetic and good listeners, then better stick to stripping.” She sheathes her lipstick, starts the car.

I say nothing. Who's she kidding? Does she need to see herself as a Florence Nightingale, can't face the sordid facts? Or is there some real truth in all that spiel? Is it any worse for Reuben to call robbery and murder Holy War than for Angelique to turn whoring into social work? Don't ask me – I don't know. I know less and less with each new day, in fact. All the uncomplicated values which my father taught me, or my school spelt out, seem too naive and simple for the real world.

“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 …”