Working the Hard Side of the Street Read online

  “Shit, no. She was ugly. Christ.” Then he says, “White. He wants a white chick.”

  We stay on Sunset, going east, passing another black hooker.

  “Don’t slow down,” he says. I keep going.

  “Shit, where the hell are they?”

  “It’s Sunday night, you know?” I tell him. “This town shuts down early Sunday night. Besides, ever since the cops started to crack down they chased all the hookers out of the area. They work farther east now—down around Western.”

  “Western is too far,” he says.

  “Or else they’re up in the Valley, Studio City now, up and down Ventura Boulevard.”

  “Christ, that’s too far to go for a piece of ass.”

  We pass Fairfax, and see a figure standing in the dark by a bus bench, waving at us.

  “Could be a cop, you know … ,” I tell him. “Some of the hookers are policewomen, wired and all that.”

  “You think so?” he asks. “They’re doing that now? Christ. Who needs it?”

  “Some of these hookers look so damn good they just can’t be hookers. They slap on a lot of makeup, wear the skimpy outfits and all that—try to act like hookers, but they’re not. They’re policewomen.”

  “It’s all right,” he says. “Get closer. I’m a lawyer, I know about the entrapment law. Let’s get a better look.”

  I do like he says. It is so damn dark by the bus bench as there is a huge tree directly behind it that we almost have to pull up to the sidewalk. It is a white hooker this time, worn, nothing really left to sell, just as hopeless as the other two—and we can see a black pimp standing in the background, too.

  “Keep going,” the lawyer tells me. We roll east. “Where the hell are they? This town is changing.”

  I shrug. “They used to be lined up all up and down the street,” I tell him.

  “Yeah?” he says. “When was this?”

  “About two years ago. Cops are cracking down. People started to put the pressure on, about hookers and pimps ruining their neighborhood. It was getting really bad. Nothing but hookers, all up and down the street. I’m not kidding, man. Nothing but hookers.”

  “All we need to do is find one—just one white hooker. She doesn’t have to be great looking—I don’t want to come back with a dog either,” he says. “Know what I mean?”

  I nod.

  He’s looking for a hooker for himself, but he doesn’t want to admit it. But what do I care? I don’t anymore, about anything.

  My meter is ticking. That’s all I care about. It’ll help me pay my rent that is ten days overdue now. Being late with the rent is a bad habit to get into. I always liked to pay my rent on time. It eliminated problems. It kept the landlord and the apartment manager off your back.

  We near the Sunset-Palms Motel. A white chick in a black dress and a beer belly starts waving at us. I honk my horn, just for the fun of it.

  She walks up. “Hi, honey. What can I do for you?”

  “Sorry, not interested …,” the lawyer in the backseat tells her. “Sorry. I’m looking for something else.”

  The hooker is riled. “What chu stop for then?” I pull away; can’t help but chuckle, shaking my head. “You don’t think your friend would like that?” I say rhetorically.

  “What? That? No. That’s bad news.”

  In the distance, at the gas station on the corner of Highland and Sunset, we spot a couple of girls moving around. We get closer.

  “What’s that over there?” he says.

  “They look pretty young to me.”

  “Honk your horn,” he says.

  I honk my horn.

  “Let’s go over there.”

  We pull into the gas station. There’s two of them—blond and a brunette. The blond is wearing skintight black cords. She could be anywhere from 14 to 18. Tough to determine. The brunette is a little taller, and prettier—although both are good-looking—wearing just as tight Levis. Maybe 17. The lawyer waves them over. The first thing the blond says is: “Are you a pig?” The lawyer says: “Who? Me? I’m not a pig.”

  “What do you want?”

  “Let’s go for a ride.”

  “Where are we going? To the Pig House where all the little pigs are?”

  “Pig House?” the guy says. “You’re kidding? Do I look like a pig? We’re going to Trousdale.”

  “Where is that?”

  “You don’t know where Trousdale is? Sunset and Doheny. Right there.”

  “Why Trousdale?”

  “That’s where I live.”

  Both are chewing gum, trying to appear streetwise, street-tough. The brunette lights a cigarette. Both are looking around, like the older pros do. Somebody honks a horn and they wave or smile, or flip the guy off if he’s driving anything less than a luxury car—all this while talking to the guy in my cab. For some reason they’re not interested in him.

  “For how long?” the blond says.

  “Couple of hours.”

  “And you’re not a pig?”

  “Of course not.”

  “If you are, man—that’s entrapment.”

  “I know that. I’m not a cop. Here—you want to see my card?”

  He pulls out a card. She looks at it. The brunette at this point doesn’t give a shit about the guy at all. “What do you think?” the blond asks her friend. The brunette shrugs. “I don’t think so.”

  “Why not?” the guy says. “What do you got to lose? Just a couple of hours…”

  At this point no one has mentioned money—which is kind of unusual, no mention of money or sex. A hardcore hooker, a pro will get right down to the nitty-gritty—first they want to know if you’re a cop, then how long? and how much? And none of them are going back to your apartment with you. Most won’t anyway.

  The guy turns to me: “You don’t mind, do you?”

  “No, I don’t mind,” I tell him.

  “Sure, you don’t mind,” he says. “You’re getting paid for it. I’ll take care of you.”

  The girls walk away from the cab and start talking to a couple of young guys in a maroon pickup that has just pulled up, bantering back and forth, exchanging one-liners. The brunette still smoking like a young, street-tough chick, but there is nothing tough about any of it. I don’t like to see it. What do you do? They were too young and good-looking to be doing this. What can you do? You do nothing.

  My passenger starts calling after them. To me, he says: “Give me five more minutes. I just want to talk to them.”

  “Take your time,” I tell him. And mean it. I’m thinking about my rent. Take all night, I feel like saying. A cab pulls up from one of the other cab companies—a Checker cab. I know the driver. He’s got his top light on, sitting there, his mike in his hand, waiting for a call. He walks over, grinning, taking in the scene. He knows what is going on. We shake hands.

  The driver is in his 30s. Iranian. A nice sort. I get out, and we saunter to his cab so he can be within reach of his mike should a call come through for him. “What’s going on with that guy?” he says. “Looking for pussy, huh?”

  I nod. “I don’t like to see it, man; not when they’re this young. They should be at home or going to school, you know?—with a boyfriend; something decent, man; instead they’re selling themselves like this. It’s too fucking sad.”

  “I know what you mean,” he says. “The shit gets to you after a while. What’s he doing? Bargaining with them?”

  “Yeah. They don’t seem to want to go with him. I think they’re scared or something. Hell, I don’t blame them.”

  “They’re good-looking, too,” he says.

  “Yeah…”

  “You making money? How’s the business?”

  “I used to make money. I make half of what I used to make. Just making the rent, rent and groceries. That’s it.”

  “I know what chu mean.”

  The young hookers are back at the cab talking to my passenger. After five minutes of that, they walk away. I walk back, get in.

&nbs
p; “What happened?” I ask.

  “I can’t figure them,” the lawyer says. “The blond looks good. I like the blond. My friend would really like that. I think she’s interested, only her friend doesn’t want to go with her.”

  “That’s too bad,” I tell him.

  “I can’t figure them out. They don’t act like pros.”

  “They’re too young. Maybe you should forget about them.”

  “The blond is just right. I think she’s interested. It’s her friend, the brunette, that doesn’t want to go.”

  “Was there any mention of money?”

  “No. Not at all. What I can’t figure out.”

  A short white guy in worn Levi jeans and leather vest appears; dirty hair in a ponytail down to his ass, tattoos on both arms. The guy’s got a bushy Fu Manchu, and he’s lugging a gigantic ghetto blaster. He seems to know the young hookers and is talking to them, and looking at us from time to time; meanwhile, the lawyer keeps calling the hookers to return to the cab.

  “Hey, jack, hit the fucking road!” the guy with the ghetto blaster yells.

  “I just want to say something to them,” the lawyer says.

  “HIT THE FUCKING ROAD, MAN! RIGHT NOW!”

  The whole thing is kind of funny, but I don’t want any trouble.

  Walrus Mustache is about 5’5”, wearing cowboy boots with three-inch heels; the great protector/street preacher doesn’t want my passenger to be bothering the girls anymore. I turn the key.

  “… Macho man … ,” I hear the lawyer mutter to himself, in reference to pint-sized Midnight Cowboy.

  “You want to try to find something else? These two chicks are just too young, man. They don’t act like pros. They don’t seem to know what the hell they’re doing.”

  “I sure like that blond,” he says. “Make the corner, just pull around by that pay phone.” I don’t really like the idea as the pay phone is still on the premises, but I do it anyway. The guy may or may not want to make a phone call—and I’ve decided the punk with the ponytail and the ghetto blaster can go fuck himself. Maybe he was genuinely interested in the chicks’ welfare, and maybe, just maybe he was also getting laid for playing the role. Who gives a damn? The streets. The goddamn streets.

  My black-haired, curly-haired, chunky lawyer walks over to the phone. I wait ten minutes. He’s back.

  “Let’s go west,” he says; then adding: “Go around the block, just once. Come up on the gas station side. Let’s see if they’re still there.”

  I take him around the block, come up on Highland, drive through the gas station. The young hookers are gone, and so is Ponytail.

  “Let’s go west on Sunset,” he tells me. The meter is ticking. We go west on Sunset. He wants to know what my name is, what else I do, if I’m an actor and trying to break into show business. Everybody is an actor in Hollywood.

  “No, I’m not an actor,” I tell him.

  We pass Famous Amos, and there by Ralphs, sitting on the curb, is a long-haired bum in a tattered duster, puking in the gutter.

  “What do you think of that chick there?” I ask facetiously.

  “What chick? You mean that wino? That’s a wino, that’s not a chick.”

  “I guess you’re right. It looked like a chick from back there.”

  “That’s a drunk puking in the gutter. Where the fuck are the hookers? What’s happening to this town?” Then he looks back, cranking his neck, trying to spot the blond and her friend. We keep going and don’t see anything until we reach Crescent Heights—on the corner of Laurel and Sunset, a long-legged, bony white hooker with a pockmarked face is ready and waiting. I pull a U-turn. He starts talking to her. She’s just too damn ugly.

  Christ. But he’s talking to her. The same questions and answers: Are you a cop? No, I’m not a cop. How much? Where? How long?

  She looks at me and then says to my passenger: “How do I know he’s not a cop?”

  “I’m just a cab driver,” I say in response to her inquiry.

  “I’d feel a lot better if just me and you could talk,” she tells the guy in the back. I get out of the cab, standing outside, until they have finished discussing whatever it is they got to hash over. I look back and see her walk away. I get back in.

  “What happened?”

  “Too expensive. She didn’t want to go back with me.”

  We see another hooker standing on the southwest corner, smoking a cigarette, talking to the one we had just left.

  “Make a U-turn here,” he says. “Go down Laurel.” By the time we reach the corner the two hookers are busy talking to two fat guys in cowboy hats and don’t want anything to do with the guy in my backseat.

  We go west. See nothing.

  “Let’s go back.”

  We head east once again. By now I’ve got over 20 bucks on the meter. And that’s the way it went for about three hours, up and down in the drizzling rain—and the meter ticking, and the guy having no luck and me thinking about making rent, thinking about what the gutter is doing to me. I may not be the guy in the backseat—how do you make it through the gutter without getting some of that stench on you? How?

  I got fifty dollars on my meter by now. It is after one in the morning. A black-and-white is busting a black hooker in front of the burlesque club.

  Not a soul in sight. No cars. Nothing. Just my cab and the flashing red lights of the cop car on the south side of the street.

  We reach the corner of Sunset and Laurel—spot the blond in an ’83 Ford Mustang with three other hookers parked there at the gas station. They pull out, go north on a side street. The guy in the backseat wants me to follow them. I do—get close enough to honk my horn. They’re making a U-turn, heading back down to Sunset, but stop to check us over. The blond recognizes me and my fare, says to the other hookers: “That’s the asshole I told you about.”

  “YEAH, THAT’S THAT ASSHOLE,” the brunette who is sitting in the back says.

  “Fuck off, creep!” they yell at us, and pull out, heading east.

  We make it down to the corner. A car passes with two girls in it. The lawyer waves. They smile. He wants to follow them now. We stay on their tail down to Beverly Glen, and lose them.

  “Take me back to the house,” he says. And I’m glad. The meter is ticking, close to sixty now, but I’m getting tired of the whole thing. I’m getting tired of this guy, tired of the small talk, tired of looking for hookers, tired of the sleaze.

  I want to go home and take a hot shower, maybe soak in a tub full of hot water.

  I take him back to the house. He gives me $70 to cover my troubles.

  “I did try,” he says. “Got to admit that. We did our best.”

  “We sure did,” I say.

  “That’s all you can do; do your best.”

  “Thanks,” I tell him.

  “You bet,” he says, walking to his door. And I’m relieved it’s over. I pull away, drive down Loma Vista, reach Doheny, and notice the umbrella in the backseat. Shit! Now I have to drive back up Loma Vista, a good quarter of a mile (or more) uphill all the way; it’s a steep climb; leave the guy’s umbrella at his door, hurry back down to the AM/PM mini-market at the corner of San Vicente and Sunset, say a weary hello to the sleepy-eyed Arab behind the counter, give him money for gas.

  I jam the nozzle in my tank and a faded red Volks pulls up to the pumps across from me as I look up. The woman driving hasn’t noticed me yet, but I recognize her. Janet P.

  Janet was one of the decent ones. Goodhearted Janet of West Hollywood. Had dated her once or twice after a devastating breakup with the one I had given everything I had to (and I don’t mean money or anything material).

  To be fair to Janet, sweetheart that she was, I had stopped dating her, being on the rebound that I was. It’s a crying shame, but true—a bad female ruined you for many of the good ones you met afterwards. And I was running scared even now, close to three years later, a whipped dog too beaten-down to try again with anyone else. And I do recall the words that came out o
f that teenage, spoiled Beverly Hills female brat sitting in the backseat of my cab saying to me that time: “How could anyone love you?”

  Beverly Hills bred guttersnipes with fake nose-jobs, face-jobs, tit-jobs and ass-jobs—lacking in brains and heart. After all, what had I expected? But the spoiled B.H. teen’s words spoken to me two years prior reverberated inside my head as I stood at my pump filling my tank and glancing at Janet, patient, intelligent Janet; someone I could have easily fallen for, someone I could have easily considered getting down on one knee for and asked to marry me—but that other female, the shallow man-hater I had given my heart and soul to, had left this psyche scarred pretty good and I quickly turn my head away so that Janet won’t notice me.

  She enters the AM/PM. I continue to jam the nozzle in my tank, wanting to escape, desperate to flee, avoid a possible tete-a-tete with this lovely woman I had nothing against.

  Perhaps the Beverly Hills brat had been right after all: I wasn’t worthy of anyone’s love.

  I can hear Janet emerge, walk to her car and reach for one of the nozzle pumps. By now I am relieved—my gas tank topped off, only my nozzle is leaking and some of the gas drips on my sneakers and pants, my left hand. Man, it’s been a long night. At least I’m ready to flee, get away—steal a final glance at this woman I had once held in my arms, kissed various parts of her luscious and voluptuous anatomy, drunker than a skunk I was back then (my safety net that was neither safe, nor a net, as booze, we know by now, induces far more pain than it relieves) and detect a forlorn look to her eyes, a sadness. She has lost a bit of weight. Has some slick and heartless L.A. S.O.B. put her through the mill in the same tortuous manner as my former unfeeling bimbo had put me through? I wonder about it for a second. Just then, sensing my presence, she happens to turn in my direction, lifting her head. She looks at me.

  Our eyes lock, if for a split moment—but I avert my gaze without so much as a blink. I can’t even face someone as nice as her. Just a whipped dog not worthy of anyone, a whipped dog running scared, forever running scared.

  I turn the key in the ignition, and pull out in a hurry.

  A numb zombie is what I am, running away, running for shelter.

  Man, have you ever felt this way? Gone through it? Have you ever?