Myron muttered, “Don’t they know they’re making love to what’s already dead?”

Esperanza paused, thinking. “Don’t know that one.”

“Fontine in Les Misérables. The musical.”

“I can’t afford Broadway musicals. My boss is cheap.”

“But cute.”

He watched a blond girl in sixties hot-pants negotiate with a sleazeball in a Ford station wagon. He knew her story. He had seen girls (boys sometimes) just like her get off the bus at the Port Authority, a Greyhound bus that had originated in West Virginia or western Pennsylvania or that great, barren mono-expanse New Yorkers simply referred to as the Midwest. She had run away from home—maybe to avoid abuse, but more likely because she was bored and “belonged” in a big city. She had high-stepped off the bus with a wide smile, mesmerized, without a penny. Pimps would eye her and wait with the patience of a vulture. When the time was right, they would sweep down and claim their carcass. They’d introduce her to the Big Apple, get her a place to stay, some food, a hot shower, maybe a room with a Jacuzzi and dazzling lights and a cool CD player and cable TV with a remote. They’d promise to set her up with a photographer, get her a few modeling gigs. Then they’d teach her how to party, really party, not that candy-ass shit she’d done in Hicks Falls with some beer and a zit-infested senior pawing at her in the backseat of a pickup. They’d show her how to have a good time with the prime stuff, the numero-uno white powder.

But things would change. Someone would have to pay for all these good times. The modeling job would fall through, and she couldn’t just be a freeloader. Besides, the partying was more a need now than a luxury. Like food or breathing. She could no longer exist without a snort or a pinch from her favorite needle.

It didn’t take long to plummet and hit bottom. And once there she didn’t have the strength—not even the desire, really—to get up.

She ended up here.

Myron parked. He and Esperanza got out of the car silently. Myron felt his stomach churn. It was night, of course. Places like this existed only at night. They fled with the onslaught of sunlight.

Myron had never been with a whore, but he knew Win had engaged their services on plenty of occasions. Win liked the convenience. His favorite spot was an Asian whorehouse on Eighth Street called Noble House. Back in the mid-eighties, Win and a few friends would have what they called “Chinese night” in Win’s apartment—Hunan Garden would deliver food, Noble House women. The truth was, Win had no feelings for women. He didn’t trust them. Whores were what he wanted. It wasn’t just the lack of attachment. Win never let women attach. But prostitutes were throwaways. Disposable.

Myron didn’t think Win still partook in such events—not in this disease-ridden era—but he didn’t know for sure. They never talked about it.

“Pretty spot,” Myron said. “Scenic.”

Esperanza nodded.

They passed a nightclub of some sort. The music was loud enough to crack the sidewalk. A teen—Myron couldn’t say if it was male or female—with green spiked hair bumped into him. Looked like the Statue of Liberty. There were lots of motorcycles, ear and nipple rings, tattoos, chain jewelry. A constant whore chorus of “Hey, baby” pelted him from every conceivable angle, their faces blurring into one mass of human debris. The place was like a carnival freak show.

The sign above the door read CLUB F. U. The logo was a raised middle finger. Subtle. A chalkboard read the following:

HEAVY “MEDICAL” NIGHT!

LIVE BANDS!

Featuring the only local appearances by:

PAP SMEAR

and RECTAL THERMOMETER

Myron could see through the open door. People weren’t dancing. They were jumping up and down, heads lolling lifelessly as if their necks were rubber bands, their arms tucked against their sides. Myron focused in on one kid, maybe fifteen years old, lost in the violet bliss, sweat matting his long hair to his face. He wondered if the group onstage was Pap Smear or Rectal Thermometer. Didn’t matter. Sounded like someone had jammed a rutting pig into a Cuisinart.

The whole scene was like Dickens meets Blade Runner.

“The studio is next door,” Esperanza said.

The building was either a disastrous brownstone or a small warehouse. Whores hung out the windows like shreds of leftover Christmas decorations.

“This is it?” Myron asked.

“Third floor,” Esperanza answered. She did not seem intimidated by the surroundings in the least, but she had come from streets not much better than this. Her face remained a placid pool. Esperanza never showed weakness. Her temper flared often, but for all their times together, Myron had never seen her cry. She could not say the same of him.

Myron approached the stoop. An overweight whore stuffed into a bodysuit that doubled as sausage casing licked her lips and stepped in front of him.

“Hey, yo, want a blow job? Fifty bucks.”

Myron tried not to close his eyes. “No,” he said softly, lowering his head. He wanted to offer words of wisdom, words that could transform her, change her circumstances. But he just said, “I’m sorry,” and hurried past. The fat girl shrugged and moved on.

It was a walk-up. No surprise there. The stairwells were littered with people, most unconscious or maybe dead. Myron and Esperanza carefully climbed over them. A cacophony of music—everything from Neil Diamond to what might have been Pap Smear bellowed through the corridor. There were other sounds too Broken bottles, shouts, curses, crashing, a baby crying. An orchestra from hell.

When they reached the third floor, they saw a glassed-in office. No one was inside, but the pictures on the wall—not to mention the bullwhip and handcuffs—left little doubt that they had arrived at the right place Myron tried the knob. It turned.

“You stay out here,” he said.

“Okay.”

He moved in “Hello?”

No one answered him, but music was coming from the other room. Sounded like calypso music. He called out again and stepped into the studio.

Myron was struck by how professional the setup was. It was clean, brightly lit, with one of those big white umbrella things you always see in photo studios. There were half a dozen cameras set up on tripods, and overhead was a variety of different-colored lights.

Of course, the setting was not the first thing that struck him. Other things caught his eye first. The naked woman sitting on a motorbike, for example. To be accurate, she wasn’t fully naked—she had on a pair of black boots. Nothing else. Not a look every woman could pull off, but it seemed to work for her. She had not seen him yet, intensely studying the magazine in her hand. The National Sun. Headline: Boy 16 Becomes Grandmother. Hmm. He stepped closer. She was big-breasted, very Russ Meyer, but Myron could see scars under the large swellings. Implants, the fashion accessory of the eighties.