One Lone Hooker

Hedda and I were sitting in our living room at seven o’clock this morning, drinking out morning coffee and chatting, like we do every morning. Since it was a nice morning out, we had the shades open on our front windows, and we were watching the street as we talked. In the middle of our discussion about something or the other, she interrupts herself to point out that this one girl has been walking up and down the street over and over. Is there really a prostitute out on our street so late in the day?

I hadn’t noticed her, but now I did, and yes she was. She wore skin-tight black jeans, four-inch spike heels, and a black puffy coat, smoking a cigarette. The look was unmistakable. Her makeup, perhaps mysterious and alluring to some John only a few hours before, now looked gaudy and tired in the morning light. She chugged her way down 13th Street, and back up again, the smoke rising from her drags, like a miniature steam locomotive running the Vice Express.

We weren’t sure who she was trying to pick up. Prostitution is down in our neighborhood these days - even during the prime hours! - and the surge in business brought on by the construction boom has also dwindled away, courtesy of a built-up block and a crappy housing market. But even in the fattest times, trying to turn a trick in the middle of a commuter corridor during rush hour couldn’t have landed much success.

Perhaps it was the lack of business; or maybe it was the dirty looks and odd stares she was getting from the smartly-dressed twenty-somethings emerging from the condominiums, passing her on their way to work; or it could be she was scared off by the MPD car that rolled by a few minutes later; or maybe she finally got picked up, but we realized we had seen the last run of her particular choo-choo when she failed to come back up the street after a few minutes.