I went straight to Frenchy’s. When I got there, Yasmin was working on a young, thin guy wearing white baggy pants with drawstrings around the ankles and a gray salt-and-pepper sport coat about fifty years old. He probably bought his whole wardrobe in the back of some antique shop for one and a half kiam; it smelted musty, like your great-grandmother’s quilt that has been left in the attic too long. The girl on stage was a sex-change named Blanca; Frenchy had a policy about not hiring debs. Girls were all right with him, and debs who’d had their full changes, but the ones stuck indecisively in the middle made him feel that they might get stuck sometime in the middle of some other important transaction, and he just didn’t want to be held responsible. You knew when you went into Frenchy’s that there wasn’t going to be anybody in there with a cock bigger than yours unless it was Frenchy himself or one of the other customers, and if you found out that awful truth you had nobody to blame but yourself.
Blanca danced in a peculiar, half-conscious way that was common among dancers all up and down the Street. They moved vaguely in time to the music, bored and tired and waiting to get out from under the hot lights. They stared at themselves incessantly in the smeared mirrors behind them, or they turned and stared at their reflections across the room behind the customers. Their eyes were fixed forever in some empty space about a foot and a half above the customers’ heads. Blanca’s expression was a faint attempt to look pleasant — “attractive” and “alluring” weren’t in her professional vocabulary — but she looked as if she’d just had a lot of nerve-deadening drug pumped into her lower jaw and she hadn’t decided if she liked it yet. While Blanca was on stage she was selling herself — she was promoting herself as a product entirely separate from her own self-image, herself as she would be when she came down from the stage. Her movements — mostly weary, halfhearted imitations of sexual motions — were supposed to titillate her watchers, but unless the customers had had a lot to drink or were otherwise fixated on this particular girl, the dancing itself would have little effect. I’d watched Blanca dance dozens, maybe hundreds, of times; it was always the same music, she always made the same gyrations, the same steps, the same bumps, the same grinds at the same instants of each song.
Blanca finished her last number and there was a scattering of applause, mostly from the mark who had been buying her drinks and thought he was in love with her. It takes a little longer for you to establish an acquaintance in a place like Frenchy’s — or any of the other bars along the Street. That seems like a paradox, because the girls rushed up to grab any single man who strayed into the place. The conversation was so limited, though: “Hi, what’s your name?”
“Juan-Javier.”
“Oh, that’s nice. Where you from?”
“Nuevo Tejas.”
“Oh, that’s interesting. How long have you been in the dty?”
“A couple of days.”
“Want to buy me a drink?”
That’s all there is, there ain’t no more. Even a top-notch international secret agent couldn’t relay more information in that small amount of time. Beneath it all was a constant undercurrent of depression, as if the girls were locked into this job, although the illusion of absolute freedom hovered almost visibly in the air. “Any time you want to quit, honey, you just walk out that door.” The way out the door, though, led to one of only two places: another bar just like Frenchy’s, or the next step down the ladder toward the deadly bottom of the Life: “Hi, handsome, looking for some company?” You know what I mean. And the income gets lower and lower as the girl gets older, and pretty soon you get people like Maribel turning tricks for the price of a shot glass of white wine.
After Blanca, a real girl called Indihar came on stage; it might even have been her real name. She moved the same as Blanca, hips and shoulders swaying, feet almost motionless. As she danced, Indihar mouthed the words to the songs silently, completely unaware that she was doing it. I asked a few girls about that; they all mouthed the lyrics, but none of them realized they did it. They all got self-conscious when I mentioned the fact, but the next time they got up to dance, they sang to themselves just as they always had. Made the time go quicker, I guess, gave them something to do besides look at the customers. Back and forth the girls swayed, their lips moving, their hands making empty gestures, their hips swirling where habit told them to swirl their hips. It might have been sexy to some of the men who’d never seen such things before, it might have been worth what Frenchy charged for his drinks. I could drink for free because Yasmin worked there and because I kept Frenchy amused; if I’d had to pay, I would have found something more interesting to do with my time. Anything would have been more interesting; sitting alone in the dark in a soundless room would have been more interesting.
I waited through Indihar’s set, and then Yasmin came out of the dressing room. She gave me a wide smile that made me feel special. There was some applause from two or three men scattered along the bar: she was mixing well tonight, making money. Indihar threw on a gauzy top and started hitting up the customers for tips. I kicked in a kiam and she gave me a little kiss. Indihar’s a good kid. She plays by the rules and doesn’t hassle anybody. Blanca could go to hell, as far as I was concerned, but Indihar and I could be good friends.
Frenchy caught my eye and motioned me down to the end of the bar. He was a big man, about the size of two average Marseilles enforcers, with a big, black, bushy beard that made mine look like the fuzz in a cat’s ear. He glowered at me with his black eyes. “Where ya at, cap?” he asked.
“Nothing happening tonight, Frenchy,” I said.
“Your girl’s doing all right for herself.”
“That’s good,” I said, “because I lost my last fiq through a hole in my pocket.”
Frenchy squinted and looked at my gallebeya. “You don’t have any pockets in that outfit, mon noraf.”
“That was days ago, Frenchy,” I said solemnly. “We’ve been living on love since.” Yasmin had some orbital-velocity moddy chipped in, and her dancing was something to watch. People all up and down the bar forgot their drinks and the other girls’ hands in their laps, and stared at Yasmin.
Frenchy laughed; he knew that I was never as flat-out broke as I always claimed to be. “Business is bad,” he said, spitting into a small plastic cup. With Frenchy, business is always bad. Nobody ever talks prosperity on the Street; it’s bad luck.
“Listen,” I said, “there’s some important thing I have to talk over with Yasmin when she’s finished this set.”
Frenchy shook his head. “She’s working on that mark down there wearing the fez. Wait until she milks him dry, then you can talk to her all you want. If you wait until the mark leaves, I’ll get someone else to take her next turn on stage.”
“Allah be praised,” I said. “Can I buy you a drink?”
He smiled at me. “Buy two,” he said. “Pretend one’s for me, one’s for you. Drink them both. I can’t stomach the stuff anymore.” He patted his belly and made a sour face, then got up and walked down the bar, greeting his customers and whispering in the ears of his girls. I bought two drinks from Dalia, Frenchy’s short, round-faced, informative barmaid; I’d known Dalia for years. Dalia, Frenchy, and Chiriga were very likely fixtures on the Street when the Street was just a goatpath from one end of the Budayeen to the other. Before the rest of the city decided to wall us in, probably, and put in the cemetery.
When Yasmin finished dancing, the applause was loud and long. Her tip jar filled quickly, and then she was hurrying back to her enamored mark before some other bitch stole him away. Yasmin gave me a quick, affectionate pinch on the ass as she passed behind me.
I watched her laughing and talking and hugging that cross-eyed bastard son of a yellow dog for half an hour; then his money ran out, and both he and Yasmin looked sad. Their affair had come to a premature end. They waved fond, almost passionate farewells and promised they’d never forget this golden evening. Every time I see one of those goddamn wogs climbing all over Yasmin — or any of the other girls, for that matter — I remember watching nameless men grabbing at my mother. That was a hell of a long time ago, but for certain things my memory works just too well. I watched Yasmin and I told myself it was just her job; but I couldn’t help the sick, acid feeling that climbed out of my gut and made me want to start breaking things.