'Give me a better choice,' I said.
'There are agencies to deal with this sort of thing.'
'Uh-huh. Or maybe a nice foster home?'
'Perhaps,' Susan said. 'Often either of those choices is a good one for a child.' I always knew when she was speaking professionally. Her language became more formal.
'We did consider the possibility that being a whore offered her more than she was used to getting.'
'Yes,' Susan said, 'but only in comparison to her home life, to the sterility of her parents and their expectations and the conventional town that reiterated those expectations. Life in Smithfield is not easy unless you are nearly interchangeable with everyone else. Especially in the public schools.'
'Maybe being a whore in fact is better than being a whore to the expectations of your neighborhood,' I said.
Susan shook her head.
'Let me call some people in Youth Services,' she said.
'Sure,' I said. 'Want me to ask Poitras for some names?'
Susan shook her head again and frowned. '`Not fair,' she said. 'There are lots of good people out there. Poitras doesn't represent them all.'
'I know,' I said. 'I guess I am just dysfunctional about institutional solutions.'
We were quiet. I spat an olive pit into the fireplace. It made a barely audible sizzle. I drank some Beaujolais. Then I made a small triangular sandwich out of a piece of Syrian bread and some cheese, with a pepper ring, one cherry tomato, and an olive. I pitted the olive before I slipped it into the sandwich. The proportions are the secret in eating feta cheese and raw vegetables. I sampled the sandwich. Too much cheese obliterated the other flavors. I ate it anyway. Plenty of time to experiment, plenty of time to get it right. I ate some sausage. Susan was swirling the wine about in her glass and watching the small turbulence she'd created.
'Distaste,' I said, 'is our automatic response to prostitution. It's almost impossible for us to think about it beyond deploring it, you know?'
I poured a little more wine in my glass.
'Yes,' Susan said. 'I know. I suppose if you do think about it beyond the normal assumptions you have to recognize that prostitution is not a single experience.'
'No,' I said. 'It isn't. There's lots of kinds of prostitution. Metaphorically the kinds are almost limitless. Everyone who does things for money instead of pride, I suppose.'
Susan smiled at me. 'Didn't I see you building a cabin out by a pond in Concord the other day?'
'Uncle Henry,' I said. 'Not me. He was always a little dippy, Henry was.'
The wine was gone. I got another bottle. Beaujolais is new but once a year.
'But even not metaphorically, prostitution is more than. one experience. Some kid doing twenty, thirty tricks a night in hallways and cars isn't having the same experience that someone has who performs once an evening in a good hotel.'
'I suppose someone might argue that the acts were morally the same,' Susan said.
'Ah, Suze, you're toying with me. We both know what we both think about that.'
'I know,' Susan said, 'I just like to hear how you'll put it.'
'Her morality is her business. My business is to get her free so she can take care of her business.' 'And you think setting her up with a high-priced madam in New York is the way?'
'I think it's possible. I think she has a right to be a whore if she wants to .be. Just like she has the right to stop if she wants to.'
'But do you have the right to make the opportunity easy for her?'
'Yes.'
'To be a whore?'
'Yes. If she likes the work. I have no business telling her she's not supposed to like it.'
'Would you feel the same way about heroin?' Susan said.
'No. I know heroin is destructive to her. I know no such thing about the right kind of whoring.'
The fire hissed and a slow bubble of sap oozed from one end of a log. I tried less cheese and two rings of green pepper in my next sandwich.
'I think you're wrong,' Susan said. 'I think in the long run selling yourself, rather than your product, is destructive. I guess I'm willing to say that metaphorically as well as literally.'
'Maybe we're just choosing which kind of destructive experience to offer her,' I said.
'Maybe we are,' Susan said.
Chapter 29
Hawk wanted in.
'I want to see what this dude Poitras is like, babe,' he said. 'Always admired that streak of intellectual curiosity in you, Hawk.'
