Maelstrom

Chapter 2: Christmas in Hell

Christmas Day, three weeks earlier

How many movies had been made about Christmas in New York City? Twenty? Dozens, probably. Obviously there was Miracle on 34th Street, and Elf, and Scrooged, and I was pretty sure that that John Cusack movie Serendipity was supposed to take place around Christmas, too, but at the moment I couldn't come up with any others, not while I was standing on this godforsaken corner freezing my ass off when everyone else I knew was probably curled up in bed, recovering from some combination of too much food, too much drink, too much family, and too much Jimmy Stewart.

I stomped my feet to try to get some feeling back in my toes. Those chilled toes – painted a garish red, the color that my college roommate had always called "cocksucker red" when she saw it on the lips of women she didn't like – peeped out from the open ends of my cheap wedges, looking trapped and cramped and miserable in the black fishnets that were all that protected them from the trampled snow on the sidewalk. I willed my thoughts away from my popsicle toes and the equally frozen legs they were attached to and back to my mental movie game, but still couldn't come up with the titles of any other New York-based Christmas flicks. Home Alone 2! Now I was up to five.

If I'd majored in film when I was at NYU, as it seemed every third student there did, I could probably rattle off a quick list of top ten Yuletide-in-the-Big-Apple pics, complete with the year they were made, their directors, and why each one was either an under-appreciated gem or overrated garbage (it was always one of the two). But I had double-majored in Language & Mind and music, neither of which seemed particularly helpful right now. Humming classical music under my breath already had gotten me a few stares from the other working girls who frequented this corner, and waxing philosophical about the cold was just depressing.

My French minor was equally useless in this situation. Je suis de plus en plus de glace sur cette baise coin de rue (I am turning to ice on this fucking street corner). Thinking about movies was better, though I was quite sure that no one had ever filmed a heartwarming holiday pic in the part of town I was freezing in tonight.

I looked down at the cheap bit of time-keeping bling that I'd picked up from a street vendor exactly five months, two weeks, and three days ago, when I'd been unenthusiastically putting together my Candy the Happy Hooker cover. It was still only 10:31pm, a mere seven minutes since I'd last looked.

There was some commotion a little further down the street, as a silver Volkswagon Jetta station wagon with Jersey plates – which had passed us all a couple of minutes ago – returned and started a slow trawl. I moved a little further down the block, putting even more distance between myself and the gaggle of genuine prostitutes hawking their soiled wares.

I hated the husbands. It was bad enough working Vice, but if I could nab some real lowlife – maybe a drug dealer looking to pressure a working girl into a little pharmaceutical-distributing side-hustle, or an abusive scumbag that was looking to hurt women and saw streetwalkers as safe targets – then I could at least convince myself that I was making the world a better place. But the husbands and fathers, in from the suburbs to entertain a fantasy, put another nail in the coffin of a bad marriage, relieve some stress or monotony, or pretend they were young and attractive enough that sexed-up young women were competing for their attention – no, I didn't want anything to do with busting them for the heinous crime of paying for something that someone was selling.

Unfortunately, I was their type. At 5'9", the de rigeur high heels and rhinestone-studded Daisy Dukes I usually wore when working made my trim legs look a mile long. Add to those my slim waist, ample breasts, long blond hair, and the rest of my Sure-Thing wardrobe, and every one of these guys was mentally transported back to high school, fantasizing about slutty cheerleaders.

Sure enough, the Jetta passed the other women without slowing, only to glide to a hesitant halt in front of the graffitied brick wall where I leaned casually in all my down-on-my-luck Valkyrie glory.

When the window slid down, I quickly marked the driver as a Caucasian male, average height, average build, mid- to late-thirties, with short, light-brown hair, glasses, and what looked like brown eyes, from what I could see in the yellow sodium glow of the street lamp. He met my gaze only for a second, then turned his head to regard his gloved hands gripping and releasing the steering wheel. My guard went up immediately; he was in some kind of distress but working himself up to something. That might be bad. Maybe it was a good thing this one had nibbled at my bait; though they weren't exactly friends, I didn't want any of the other girls having to deal with violent crazies. I pushed myself away from the wall.

"Merry Christmas," I called in a voice made extra husky by what I feared was an oncoming cold.

"Merry Christmas," he replied automatically. He cleared his throat, but said nothing else.

"You lookin' for a date?" I prompted, sauntering slowly toward the car. I could see he was watching me from the corner of his eyes, and I made sure to swish my hips a little more than was strictly necessary to stay upright in my ridiculous shoes.

"Um, yes," he murmured, turning to watch me more openly while maintaining his death grip on the wheel.

As I leaned over to fold my arms on the open window and allow my prospective client a tantalizing glimpse down my shirt, I noted the booster seat belted into the back of the car and the small pile of children's books that had partially fallen to the floor behind the driver's seat. I brought my kohl-rimmed ice blue eyes back to someone's unfortunate dad, whom I was going to be busting for solicitation before the hour was up.

"I have a room at the motel around the corner; give me a ride?"

"Uh, sure," the driver responded. I heard the lock on the passenger door release, and I slid into the car next to him, using the door's controls to roll the window up. At least the car was warm, I thought, wiggling my cramped toes.

Warm, but not moving. I glanced over at my Nervous Ned, hoping against hope that he had changed his mind about the whole a-hooker-makes-the-perfect-Christmas-gift-to-myself thing, but he wasn't looking at me. He just seemed to be waiting. There was something familiar about the quality of that silence, and an almost-forgotten childhood instinct made me twist around to fasten my seatbelt. As soon as the buckle clicked, the car began to move forward.

I decided not to speak, curious if he would. Sure enough, the quiet was killing him. "I like your ... hair," he finished softly.

I was surprised. I'd received lots of lascivious comments on my body over the past few months, and a few on my clothes (usually calling out the most revealing item I had on at the time), but most clients didn't start with the hair.

I glanced down at myself to make sure I was showing enough skin, now that I was warming up. I had chosen my outfit this evening with a certain sense of perverse whimsy – red wedges and a ridiculously short red satin halter dress, black fishnets, and a white faux-fur bolero jacket. I'd pinned my hair up with a few artful tendrils dangling down and a real red poinsettia blossom holding the whole thing together. I'd thought that I looked like a strumpet-y Christmas angel; one of the working girls had called me "Mrs Claus's Sister." That had made all the others squeal, and one of them finally explained it was from a movie, but it wasn't one that I had seen, so the reference was lost on me. Maybe they were all film majors, too.

"Just here on the right," I directed him. I pulled my patent leather purse into my lap – black, of course; it went well with all my prostitute ensembles. Plus it had an easy-to-open clasp at the top and was just the right size to hold a bit of money, a tube of lipstick, my phone, a chocolate peanut butter protein bar, my badge, my cuffs, and my 9mm Glock 19. Everything a working girl needed for a night on the town.