Chapter 4

We sat in McDonald's – Ross and I on one side of the table, and Al on the other. "How are you doing?" I asked her as we began digging into our food.

"Fine, Alan."

I raised my eyebrow at her. "You know, when we were kids, you'd never have called this fine."

"This what?"

"This – the clothes, the locale, the work ... You'd never have called it fine, back then, if you'd been doing dishonest work like this, or if you'd been doing 'work' that wasn't really work."

"Yeah, well, that was when life was so good and sweet, wasn't it?"

"Okay, it wasn't all roses, I know that. But still..."

"But still, Alan, what I was then is dead and gone, and buried deep. It's over with."

I looked at her in silence for a few seconds. She took a bite of her cheeseburger, and then said, "What?"

"Oh, just that if it's so over with you have a funny way of showing it." I would never have been so blunt with another woman, but with Al I knew I could be. Whatever else might have happened over the past 10 years, I couldn't believe that she'd decided she wanted me to pussyfoot around.

"What's that mean?"

I could feel Ross sitting beside me, taking it all in. I had the feeling that he wasn't so much listening, as being moral support. "It means," I told her, "that if it's all past and done with, you should be out of this and into something a little cleaner."

"Well, I'm not, am I?"

"My point exactly, Al."

She ignored that, and in fact ignored everything else I said for the rest of the hour except for pointless banalities. And I really wasn't in the mood to discuss the weather.

The next time I was on Central it was a cold November day – evening, actually – with a breeze blowing and making it worse. And yet the prostitutes were exposing as much of themselves as they could. I saw short skirts, and I saw shorts, and I saw open coats – many of them fur, or fake fur more likely. I got a new sense of just how little sex is involved in a prostitute's life, for any woman who could have sex on her mind in such clothes at that temperature wasn't normal. I had on long sleeves and long pants, and my coat was heavy and zipped up, and I still felt the chill.

I was on Al's stretch of the street again, though I didn't really expect to see her – but I did. She was leaning against a light pole, her arms wrapped around herself. I walked up to her, and this time she saw me coming. She moved, and it looked like she was thinking of running, but in the end she shrugged and leaned on her pole and let me come.

When I got to her I started to greet her with a smile, but the words froze on my mouth. She had a black eye, and there seemed to be a larger bruise peeking out of the neck of her top – though if she'd been modestly dressed, I'd never have seen that one. "Are you okay, Al?" I asked, reached for her arm. When I took it and pulled her toward me – to hug her, I suppose, though it wasn't a conscious impulse – she gasped and wrapped her arms more tightly around her.

She shook her head, her lower lip caught in her teeth. She had to get her breath back before she could speak. When she did, it was in a dead voice. "I'm okay, I suppose."

"I don't think so, Al. You act like someone beat you up – you look like someone beat you up."

"That's because someone did beat me up."

"Who was it?"

She tried to shrug, but aborted the movement with another gasp. I must have awakened a bruise with my friendly gesture. "A john. Does it matter?"

"Yes – to me it matters."

"Why? Does it excite you, thinking about it?"

"Al, I thought you knew me better than that." I suppose my anger got into my voice, though I was trying not to be angry. I felt my partner for the night – a man named Joel Ybarra – put his hand on my arm.