Fifty Dollars A Night

Those guys own all the girls on Hayworth, and they’re not gonna take kindly to you stealing their customers."


"I’m not a prostitute, or hooker like you said."


"Sure sounded like it to me. You offered to spend the night at my place for fifty dollars. The law calls that soliciting."


"I just wanted someplace warm to spend the night, and I figured the only way anybody would let me was if they got to sleep with me. The money was just to make you think I’d done this before."


When I thought about it, there were a lot of things that didn’t add up to her being a hooker. She hadn’t just come right out and said she do this and that for such and such an amount, like she was reading off a menu. The cardinal rule of hooking is to get the money before anything else happens. She hadn’t done that either. She was in the wrong block to attract men only interested in a quick blowjob or fuck in their front seat.


There was also the only offer she had made. Street girls stayed on the street as much as possible to attract as many men as possible. Volume meant money, and the money was why they were there. Hookers who spent the night were high priced, pretty sophisticated, and very discriminating. You’d never catch one of them flagging down cars on the street. They made their appointments by phone.


"OK, suppose I believe you. Why’d you flag me down?


She looked at me with puffy eyes.


"I don’t have anywhere else to go and I don’t have any money and I don’t know anybody who’d help me."


"Honey, this is a big city. There’s shelters all over the place. You could sleep for free and get a meal too."


"I can’t go to a shelter. I want to be a singer. If it ever got out that I’d stayed in a homeless shelter, no producer would give me a second thought."


"What d’ya think they’d say if they knew you’d been convicted of hooking?"


"I guess I didn’t think I’d get caught", she sniffed.


I still wasn’t really convinced.


"Give me some ID."


"Here, take my whole purse."


She was Sandy Jeanne Williams. The Tennessee license said she was twenty, lived at 625 Richmond - a couple of blocks over from Hayworth - and was an organ donor.


The rest of her purse seemed to confirm her story. Her wallet contained her Social Security card, a library card, and twelve cents in change. She had a lipstick, half-gone, a compact with no powder, two pens, and a hairbrush. I couldn’t find any trace of drugs either.


"How in the hell did you ever get to this point? You could have called your folks to come and get you."


"I don’t have any. Mom died ten years ago, and Daddy three, right after I got out of school. A drunk driver was what the police said. I always wanted to be a singer, so after the funeral, I sold everything but the car and drove to Nashville.


"I’ve spent the last two years singing in bars, but it’s harder than I thought it would be to get noticed. I sold my car last month to pay the rent and buy some food. I ran out of money again last week and couldn’t pay the rent. When I got back to my apartment this afternoon, the super’d locked me out.

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