He doesn’t tell me his name and, for some reason, I don’t think to ask. I just follow him, let him lead me like a child in a foreign place. He waits until we are on Thirty-Fourth, closer to Foothill Boulevard than International, and then leans me against a building. It’s cold out and I thought he was leading me to a car, but sometimes the body has no shelter for its animal and here we are, here he is, outside. He pushes me against the brick. He doesn’t kiss me and part of me is relieved to not taste whatever metal makes up his mouth, but part of me wants a reason to believe this stranger might care about my scabbing.
I try to get out from under him, telling him I don’t do it like this, that I need money up front, that I need a house or a car. He pushes me back, continues, unbuckles his belt, running his hands under my skirt, pressing into me. He pins my arms to the side and with a shove, the back of my skull digs into a protruding brick. I can feel every crack in the brick as easily as I can feel every crack in my skull. I squirm, mumbling that my head hurts. He continues to push. He continues to grunt. My body says what my breath does not. He is so tall. The soles of my feet are blistering. My cheek stings, skull sharp pain. He pushes. He pushes. He is all metal.
Siren.
It isn’t that the car startles me, but it is loud. That echo-in-an-empty-room loud and if you could call a street empty, this would be it. St. Catherine’s Church stands to my left: the statue of her standing witness to the car, to the man, to the metal.
The passenger-side door of the cop car swings open, and a man steps out belt first. If this ain’t every horror movie come to life. Us, street, too many fractures to be afraid and still my breath is a shallow squeal. If this ain’t my daddy’s worst nightmare.
“Stand back.” Cop puts hand to gun and I’m lucky the metal man believes in a trigger because he steps back, lets me remove my skull from the brick’s dagger. Everything is still spinning.
Cop approaches metal man like he himself is weapon and, in one swift movement, metal man has his hands clasped behind his back by Cop’s fist and Cop’s mouth spits right into metal man’s ear.
“I don’t wanna see you around here again, you hear?”
Cop’s hair is thick and dark. He is nothing unusual, just a uniform and a mannequin.
Metal man spits right out his grill, nods once. Cop pushes him, makes him stumble into a run back to where the light is. I watch him, think about how he fixed my shoe, think about how small I am.
It is me and Cop and car now. Ain’t it funny to be so scared of being saved? Cop approaches me, still has his hand on the gun.
“What are you doing out here? You know it’s late.”
I think about responding but I can feel a pool of blood in the back of my head and my hair will probably be crusted red tomorrow and there is no answer to something that is not a question.
“You know prostitution is a misdemeanor.” He smirks, licks his lips. “We’re gonna have to take you in, for your own good.”
The mannequin is saying things and Saint Catherine must be responding because I am not, I am silent, I am two funeral days past forgetting.
Cop comes up and grabs my arm, fits his fingers into the bruises metal man’s imprints made on my body. Catherine’s statue waves to me with a missing nail as Cop drags me into the backseat and climbs in after. Another officer sits in the front seat and Cop says something to him about keeping the streets safe before laughing, and the driving man is tapping his fingers on something I can’t see and singing country music real soft to himself and Cop is on me, Cop is digging at my flesh and ain’t this everything they said it would be and ain’t I so sad to be familiar. Ain’t this just another night.
So many ways to walk a street and I am still just girl with skin.
Hotel rooms taste like chalk. The air filling up in decades of sweat and semen, smoke gathering from where one of the men is lighting up by the window, all of us assembled at the table, one of their hands on each of my thighs. When they brought out the deck of cards, the men placed their badges in front of them, like plaques with their names engraved, marking their territory. They just finished playing Texas Hold’em, and the winner of each round won the two spots beside me. Now they’re onto blackjack and Officer 220’s fingers are climbing up toward my shorts; 81 has his hand closer to my knee than my thigh, trying not to look at me.
I’ve never wanted to reverse a decision more than I want to right now. Say no when Cop from the alley asked for my number, when he asked to give my number to a few of his friends, when those friends invited me to their cars, when I got in them. Last week they told me they wanted me to be their entertainment at this party. They told me they needed me, that I would be compensated for this post-work relief session with ten OPD cops and no escape, and I wish I had said anything but okay.