Hue and Cry by James Alan McPherson

Author:James Alan McPherson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2019-05-05T16:00:00+00:00

An Act of Prostitution

WHEN HE SAW THE WOMAN, the lawyer put down his pencil and legal pad and took out his pipe.

“Well,” he said. “How do you want to play it?”

“I wanna get outta here,” the whore said. “Just get me outta here.”

“Now get some sense,” said the lawyer, puffing on the pipe to draw in the flame from the long wooden match he had taken from his vest pocket. “You ain’t got a snowball’s chance in hell.”

“I just want out,” she said.

“You’ll catch hell in there,” he said, pointing with the stem of his pipe to the door which separated them from the main courtroom. “Why don’t you just get some sense and take a few days on the city.”

“I can’t go up there again,” she said. “Those dike matrons in Parkville hate my guts because I’m wise to them. They told me last time they’d really give it to me if I came back. I can’t do no time up there again.”

“Listen,” said the lawyer, pointing the stem of his pipe at her this time, “you ain’t got a choice. Either you cop a plea or I don’t take the case.”

“You listen, you two-bit Jew shyster.” The whore raised her voice, pointing her very chubby finger at the lawyer. “You ain’t got no choice. The judge told you to be my lawyer and you got to do it. I ain’t no dummy, you know that?”

“Yeah,” said the lawyer. “You’re a real smarty. That’s why you’re out on the streets in all that snow and ice. You’re a real smarty, all right.”

“You chickenshit,” she said. “I don’t want you on my case anyway, but I ain’t got no choice. If you was any good, you wouldn’t be working the sweatboxes in this court. I ain’t no dummy.”

“You’re a real smarty,” said the lawyer. He looked her up and down: a huge woman, pathetically blonde, big-boned and absurd in a skirt sloppily crafted to be mini. Her knees were ruddy and the flesh below them was thick and white and flabby. There was no indication of age about her. Like most whores, she looked at the same time young but then old, possibly as old as her profession. Sometimes they were very old but seemed to have stopped aging at a certain point so that ranking them chronologically, as the lawyer was trying to do, came hard. He put his pipe on the table, on top of the police affidavit, and stared at her. She sat across the room, near the door in a straight chair, her flesh oozing over its sides. He watched her pull her miniskirt down over the upper part of her thigh, modestly, but with the same hard, cold look she had when she came in the room. “You’re a real smarty,” he commented, drawing on his pipe and exhaling the smoke into the room.

The fat woman in her miniskirt still glared at him. “Screw you, Yid!” she said through her teeth. “Screw your fat mama and your chubby sister with hair under her arms.

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