whatever it was that night that moment.) She liked seeing some guys over and over, a stable of “steadies” like her mom had, young dudes who cruised with booming hip-hop cars. They had flashy gold rings, gold chains, big gold watches with diamonds glittery, big belt buckles, and she so sparkling pantyhose girl, so high-heels clingy skirts, she looked so young, she looked so edible, and the business did not show on her. They’d take her to parties in the early days before gangs became posses. She would give them group rates so they wouldn’t have to fight over her. She liked them. In their arms she imagined being with a lover, and sometimes she might cum.
A few months later, and things started to change. Posses became strict; she couldn’t go from this boy to that without some other boy getting mad. You can’t go from posse to posse and do business; a girl that fucked someone in TTG would not be touched by someone in FNB. Iris found she couldn’t stay with a posse either, as all of a sudden posse boys weren’t so interested in hookers. There was plenty of fresh girl meat out there eager to get “tagged” by a posse, to be owned and belong, and they refused to have Iris anywhere near them. Iris couldn’t be tagged; not only was it bad for business to confine herself to a select group, but no one would tag a
After six months she was tired. Sleepless eyes. The young guys who would fuck her were abusive, pounding into her like hammer-thrust speed is of the essence, the great twitching shudder coming so fast. She’d sit on the stoop and not even look at their cars anymore. There were fat old greasy types waving bills, men who stank of cologne and cigarettes. She’d give them hand jobs while they talked about their wives, slipping their palms up her thighs in the
“I have this weird dream,” she told Pacheco one night on the stoop. “I’m with this older trick, and we fuck an’ all. I’m sleepin’ with him in Ma’s bed, when she comes in an’ starts screamin’. ‘My Gaw, whachu doin’ in bed wit’cha father?’”
Pacheco started sending her out on cushy assignments, dates where she’d end up at some hotel like The Penta, all spruced up like an office lady, to meet some flaky spick borough president or some shit like that. Those kind of people pay a lot for a fifteen-year-old. It meant not working so many tricks but the bastids did wear her out, all those pretzel shapes and that stripping shit they love. After one of those, she’d take the day off, sit around and watch TV. Row after row of soap operas, her mother lying on the bed behind her. Pizza delivery, and Pacheco’s visit to bring the crack. The hurried breath of Angie’s torch, the suck of cold white flame. A curl of freeze and then the glassy fishtank haze.
The soap operas put a lot of stupid ideas into Iris. She thought about the rest of her life, and how much she didn’t want to end up like her mother. It was starting to hit her, those nights when Angie sat there blind-eyed in float-daze, drool hanging drip—she was the only support her mother had. She was trapped. It was going to be tricks and tricks and tricks. The wear-and-tear was starting to show, those circles under her eyes, for starters, that rough feel to her skin that face creams and makeup would not hide.
“And in my old age,” she whispered to Pacheco while her mother slept, “I’ll have to have a daughter just to take care of me.” Tears tracked mascara down her cheeks. Pacheco could only add that he had no more cushy jobs for her. Those “
The week she went back to street duty, the first hooker body appeared strewn over empty fish crates behind the Hunts Point market.
“I want a boyfriend,” she told a Jose, a young trick she shared a joint with, after she heard about the second body, found seven blocks from her stoop. “Someone to take care of me.” She looked at Jose, but he wasn’t buying, just renting. There seemed nothing to hold her in her world, no handles no grips and no brakes to slow the speed.
“I’m saying I want all of you to keep your eyes peeled,” Pacheco told all the girls one Friday night, after the third hooker turned up barely three blocks away. “The guy is close. You stick together, an’ if you see anybody actin’ weird, you get me. Okay?”
The first time Iris saw the Jaguar, she told Pacheco, but he didn’t seem too interested. She noticed the Jaguar coming by at least two or three times a week. It would usually crawl over quietly, not far from her stoop. The windshield was tinted slightly. Iris could make out a young face behind the wheel, maybe a mustache. Not too sure if it was real or just soap opera. He would puff on a cigarette sitting like a sphinx behind the smoke. She could imagine those eyes, deep-set and pinned to her. The Jag was red slick and so heavy with mystical that she never dared go over to it.
“Maybe he’s that nut runnin’ around,” Pacheco told her when she spotted it again one night.
The Jaguar hummed just down the block, headlights off. Iris was glad he saw it too now, so maybe he wouldn’t think she was imagining it.
Pacheco grinned. “He’s lookin at’chu an’ thinkin how good you’ll look as pork chops!”
“Thass not funny,” Iris said, miffed at thinking of her mystery man as a murderer. Pacheco wasn’t the least bit entranced.
“He’s a cop or a nut,” he said on his way upstairs to dose her mother. “Stay away from him.”
Iris did. She was content to leave the dream alone. She loved the sensation of being watched. Many times she was the only thing on the stoop, only her, nobody else. One night she was hanging there with Yolanda, who had just dyed her hair red. Yolanda had no imagination, no sense of mystery. When Iris told her about the car as it sat up the block breathing soft, Yolanda walked right over to it, swinging her hips like a dare. Iris froze to the spot. She watched Yolanda lean down to the window, her yellowed birdlike face steaming as she turned and walked back to the stoop. The Jaguar growled and roared past.
“What did you do?” Iris asked, pissed off and worried that maybe the car would never return.
“I axed him if he wanted some company,” Yolanda said, shaking crunchy red from her face. “An’ you know what he say? He say, ‘Get away from my car.’ The bastid.”
For the next couple of days all Iris could do was worry about the Jaguar not coming back. If she heard a certain car roar she would run to check, sometimes doing rush jobs for fear of missing the car while she was with some trick. It was a relief when she spotted the Jaguar again, resting behind a group of parked cars. There was that mysterious dark shadow, the swirl of cigarette, or maybe she was imagining him behind dark glass. She would become aware of her every pore, every movement of her body like she was an actress on a stage working to always present her best side. There might be a radio playing—she would dance voluptuous teasing like a stripper in a cage. Whenever she heard that Jaguar growl its goodbye, something inside her would sink, as if her ride was leaving without her.
She could see his sharply featured face, the deep-set eyes, sweet long lips pursed around the cigarette. A trace of mustache, but baby face, never shaved. He was young, an ex—drug dealer tired of the daily kill. He had his
