physical violence but he can’t be. I watch every muscle move,
trying to figure it out. He can’t be. N comes back and orders
food for us. Poor R manages a stunning ignorance: she has
gone on a date with her lover, just like other girls on a Friday
night. N had left her some hours before, I could see by the
volume of food and the new packs of cigarettes and the new
rounds of coffee. Actual loose dollars are taken out in a
rumpled pile. N gives me some money and some grass and
some cigarettes before she goes off with A. I walk home alone
in the dawn, the streets nearly empty now, the heat beginning
to build for the new day: thinking about pimps: a bit disturbed.
*
6z
N and A are now officially friends and lovers. This means it
isn’t for money. This means he visits us both and talks. This
means we listen to music together. This means he and N go off
alone for whole nights.
He is concerned about us, down in this violent neighborhood. He is concerned about us, so poor, and for what? We should be making real money after all, not small change for
drinks and pukey drugs. We should have enough to finish our
film. He is quiet, gentle, concerned. He is worried for us. He
doesn’t think we are quite safe down here.
He seems to adore N. He is nice to me. He is a good friend.
He brings presents now and then, something nice, a bottle of
wine, like a person.
At night we roam together sometimes: meet his friends at
some late-night joint: the jukebox plays Billie, and we sit while
he talks to his friends, sometimes about us, we can’t understand, especially to one of his friends, a Latino, dark-haired, big moustache, long hair, machismo. They buy us food. We
meet here late at night. A is who we are with. No one asks us
anything. Sometimes he tells us to play something on the
jukebox. He gets us something to eat. It is friendly and not
friendly. It is tense. What are we there for? The men look at
us: make remarks we don’t understand. They play music and
smoke and stare at us. It is ominous. I don’t want to be turned
over to them. It seems possible. There is an edge somewhere.
A sits there polite as ever, our friend. N seems to trust him. He
sits and watches too. The blues vibrate from the machine. The
room is tiny. There are two or three tables against a wall
where we sit. A sits on the outside of the tables, we are blocked
in against the wall, the men stand around. There are a lot of
them, all crowded in, and then spilling over to the sidewalk.
Billie keeps us company while the men stare and do business.
We are quiet.
*
A’s best friend doesn’t say much. He never talks directly to
either of us. N sleeps with both of them by now. She says they
have quite a routine. She says the puncture marks on A’s body
are holes that go right through his skin. Sometimes she does
