Cat In A Sapphire Slipper

Mind the gap! Matt couldn’t believe he was ably parading prostitutes in and out of his lunchroom office like an Inspector of the Yard. Temple had a lot to answer for.

Inez was a Latina beauty with a tender manner. He could see her reared as a good girl, wearing a white mantilla and clutching a white First Communion prayer book and rosary at Mass . . . until some junior high gang-banger deflowered her in a back car seat and it was all over, the days of white and roses. Her culture was black and white, bad and good, and she was suddenly done wrong and irremediably bad.

So she went the way she’d been pushed.

She was a lovely girl, and his heart ached for her, but she wasn’t used to observing and making judgments, just living in her narrow aisle of deserved (she thought) purgatory.

He sent some Hail Marys after her, but doubted they’d catch up to her scurrying spike-heeled steps.

It was starting to weigh on him, like too many confessions heard in a row, the lives lived and not lived here. The ghosts of gaiety and ghastliness that make up the all-too-human condition.

What was he learning?

That the courtesans were gypsies, birds of passage who often bunked together but made no lasting ties. Not with the johns and not with one another. They shared the intimacy of sisters and lovers everywhere they went, but went everywhere alone.

That didn’t seem likely to lead to murder. Yet, maybe where sex was so casual, death would be too. Matt couldn’t fathom these women. He’d picked up that they liked their tawdry notoriety. They burbled about Web pages and blogs and steady customers always welcoming them back wherever they went. About MySpace.com and You Tube.

He found the lifestyle all too depressing. Sure, some of the women showed obvious signs of the childhood abuse that leads to sexual acting out. But some really seemed more like entrepreneurs, peddling their flesh with gusto and even glee of a sort.

Still, they were hooked on the midnight sob stories he heard on WCOO-AM radio.

Still, there was always one more rich john who would drape them in goodies, or a lonely one who’d leave consoled, or a reluctant one, like Matt, who needed to be cajoled. It was unnerving to think that he could have sex with every one of these women, or even several at once, all for what was a reasonable price for his income level.

But he’d been reared a Roman Catholic, not a Roman emperor, and orgies were not for him. Nor celibacy, anymore. Thank God.

And still Jazz and Kiki and Lili and Niki and that ole devil Zazu to go. It already felt like a long night, and no one was having any fun yet.

“What is it with the names?” he asked Jazz.

“Haven’t you ever wanted to reinvent yourself?” She was a fresh-faced pixie of a girl, with acne spots peeking through the pancake and the Clearasil. Maybe . . . twenty-two.

“I think we all do, sometimes.”

“Well, we can be whoever we want. Someplace else, we’re somebody else. Someplace else I use an English accent and go by Dana. “ ‘Wot’ll ya ‘ave, Ducks?’ ”

Jazz giggled at his expression. “You don’t have to take that personally. You’re better-looking than I’d thought, though. Most radio guys sound like Dr. Kool on the airwaves and look like Moby Dick the whale off the air. We get a lot of DJ guys. With us, on the other hand, whatcha see is whatcha get. We’re more honest.”

“Looking good isn’t that important.”

“Say you! I know. I mean, I’ve seen hookers with faces to die for. Bodies too. Models, only they’re too well endowed for the human hanger trade. Some of those don’t do too well at this. Snobby, I guess. They scare the guys.”

“What about Madonnah?”

“Madonnah? She wasn’t bad-looking. Never the kind of girl to play Queen La-ti-dah in the back of the house. Not that enthusiastic about her work. You got to work it, you know. Flash it, flaunt it, make a guy want to spend hard cash on some fun with you. She didn’t seem like a girl who was in it for fun.”

“She didn’t make much money then?”

“Enough, I guess. It kept her on the circuit. Some of the girls you know from the skin out. Some you never know. She was one of the never-knows, that’s why it was so weird she was killed. You wouldn’t have thought anyone was that . . . what’s the word?”

“Passionate about her?”

“Yeah. She was laid-back. Despite our profession, that is not a salable quality.”

Jazz bounced out in her gymnast-pixie way to make room for Kiki, Lili, and Niki.

Matt was asking for the others in groups now, figuring K, L, and N wouldn’t have much new to tell him. And he was wearing out from the parade of bouncing, flagrant party girls. Sultans and polygamists bewildered him. But the impulse to combine proved unwontedly provocative.

“Say, Mr. Midnight. I guess you’re up for a group scene!”

One was a blonde, one was a brunette, and one was auburn-haired. He knew he’d never remember who was Kiki or Lili or Niki, so he thought of them as gold, bronze, and copper.

They wanted to swarm him, but he made them take chairs at the table like civilized girls.