Part 31 (2/2)

She didn't look like any wh.o.r.e I'd ever met. She did look like a poet, though, or what I thought a poet ought to look like.

She said, 'Chance said to give you my complete cooperation. He said you're trying to find out who killed the Dairy Queen.'

'The Dairy Queen?'

'She looked like a beauty queen, and then I learned she was from Wisconsin, and I thought of all that robust milk-fed innocence. She was a sort of regal milkmaid.' She smiled softly. 'That's my imagination talking. I didn't really know her.'

'Did you ever meet her boyfriend?'

'I didn't know she had one.'

Nor had she known that Kim had been planning to leave Chance, and she seemed to find the information interesting. 'I wonder,' she said. 'Was she an emigrant or an immigrant?'

'What do you mean?'

'Was she going from or to? It's a matter of emphasis. When I first came to New York I was comingto. I'd also just made a break with my family and the town I grew up in, but that was secondary. Later on, when I split with my husband, I was running from. The act of leaving was more important than the destination.'

'You were married?'

'For three years. Well, together for three years. Lived together for one year, married for two.'

'How long ago was that?'

'Four years?' She worked it out. 'Five years this coming spring. Although I'm still married, technically. I never bothered to get a divorce. Do you think I should?'

'I don't know.'

'I probably ought to. Just to tie off a loose end.'

'How long have you been with Chance?'

'Going on three years. Why?'

'You don't seem the type.'

'Is there a type? I don't suppose I'm much like Kim. Neither regal nor a milkmaid.' She laughed. 'I don't know which is which, but we're like the colonel's lady and Judy O'Grady.'

'Sisters under the skin?'

She looked surprised that I'd recognized the quotation. She said, 'After I left my husband I was living on the Lower East Side. Do you know Norfolk Street? Between Stanton and Rivington?'

'Not specifically.'

'I knew it very specifically. I lived there and I had these little jobs in the neighborhood. I worked in a Laundromat, I waited tables. I clerked in shops. I would quit the jobs or the jobs would quit me and there was never enough money and I hated where I was living and I was starting to hate my life. I was going to call my husband and ask him to take me back just so he would take care of me. I kept thinking about it. One time I dialed his number but the line was busy.'

And so she'd drifted almost accidentally into selling herself. There was a store owner down the block who kept coming on to her. One day without preplanning it she heard herself say, 'Look, if you really want to ball me, would you give me twenty dollars?' He'd been fl.u.s.tered, blurting that he hadn't known she was a hooker. 'I'm not,' she told him, 'but I need the money. And I'm supposed to be a pretty good f.u.c.k.'

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