Corner Girls

[First Person]

Damn, I mutter, stubbing my foot on the curb. I stare at the glistening asphalt, which seems to glow in the moonless night. Let’s go, my friend says and grabs my arm. It’s been a nice night but time to get your drunken ass to bed.

We walk down Tenth Avenue, me wobbly, my friend unsuccessfully trying to guide. We make an interesting pair. Me, six-foot-two, 300 pounds, bald, sunglasses at night. My friend, a lithe five-foot-eight 180-pound flashy-looking bohemian.

As we make our way past Forty First Street we notice two women at the next corner. They seemed underdressed in the brisk mid-October night. They move out of sight as we make our way down the block.

We turn the corner, and they turn to look at us. One of them, heavyset, waves. The skinny one looks nervous, hesitant. Let’s go, she says to the other one. Leave them.

As we near, they seem to take a step back, tentative, as if struck by something unexpected. I look at my reflection as we pass a dark storefront window: black blazer, black turtleneck, black pants.

The women wear matching red and black miniskirts that don’t fully cover their asses. Both wear the same red frilly tops, sleeveless, cut off above the midriff.

Hey baby, the heavyset one steps towards us. Looking for a good time? She has flame-red-dyed hair tips and gives off a sour odor.

No, my friend says. We’re gay.

I look up surprised, indignant, and he promptly sticks a cigarette in my mouth. Resigned, I fumble for my lighter as the smell of stale beer and cheap perfume mix with the stink of exhaust from the basement of a nearby mom and pop. I light up and in a drunken stupor watch the embers catch. I take a long drag as I listen for the hiss of burning tobacco.

I can taste the smoke mixing with the remnants of a chicken doner in my mouth. I slowly look up and notice the skinny girl in front of me as if seeing her for the first time. Tiny mini dress with an itty bitty hot-rod red tank top. She must be freezing, I thought , my gaze slowly traveling up and down.

Beautiful long legs, clear olive skin, perfectly proportionate figure. Then I see her face, a huge bruise right across her right cheek and nose. It still looks fresh. I imagine some dissatisfied john or pimp beating her in a fit of rage. Our eyes meet. Hers are two almond shaped dark pools in which I see hopelessness and despair – pain, yet so much prayer. I think I see all her shattered hopes, the almost-forgotten memories of a past life, the evaporated dreams of a better future. I float off into what I imagine her childhood was like. Filthy staircases of Bronx tenements float like a cloud in my befuddled mind, little fat fingers of the happy five-year-old, a chocolate smear on a smiling little faced with a little button nose framed in tight curly pigtails.

A shout. My friend yells in my ear. Would move your ass already? I look around as the other woman shouts obscenities at a passing car. A junkie pisses in a corner as a drunk wobbles by. God, I think, where have those beautiful eyes been and what have they come to?

I snap out of my reverie and my friend pulls me along. Jeez, he mumbles, she’s just a hooker.

Later, unable to sleep, I wonder if the encounter was real. I get into my car, still in a drug induced haze, and drive to the area, circling for two hours. Those eyes, I had to see them again.