Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. Vol. 133, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 811 & 812, March/April 2009

“I can’t believe Roach is making you work like that. Couple of times that happened to me, Jacky-boy said take a day off, take a rest.”

“Roach likes it. Says I’m too small and skinny to be worth much but if I have, like, a specialty, I’m worth a lot more.”

“You’re kidding. He wants jerks to do that to you? Jacky-boy would kill anyone he found doing something like that to one of his girls.”

“Yeah?” Lady Mary looked wistful. “I think if Roach caught him he’d just charge him double.”

Silverfish didn’t have a good night. The weather was rainy, not one of those cold nights where you’d give anything for indoor work, but rainy enough so most johns stayed home. Silverfish never got that. It was all about their cars or a mildewy room at the River Motel, not like they were doing it on the sidewalk, so why these jerks disappeared when it rained she never knew. But johns were a mystery to her anyway. She was glad they existed, sure. After her mom shacked up with that hundredth bastard boyfriend, the one she picked up in the 7-11, and Silverfish had to get out, how else was she going to make a living? But as long as the world was full of women like her mom, why did any man, anywhere, ever have to pay for it?

And then there were idiots like her last trick tonight. She thought about him while the sky faded to gray and she walked slowly home. This guy, how stupid was he? What was funny, he even knew how stupid he was, and he kept talking about it with himself. First thing, after they got past the price and all that, him still leaning out his car window: “So, sweetheart, you clean?”

“Just took a shower, hon. You’re my first tonight.” She said it even though it was a lie and even though she knew that wasn’t what he meant. But she was feeling cross and cranky and wanted to jerk this guy around a little, make him say it.

“Yeah, that’s nice, but what I mean, you got a certificate?”

“What kind?”

“Jesus, girlie! You have AIDS, or what?”

“Oh, that.” Like she was bored, she dug in her purse, pulled out an HIV test card dated four months ago, showing she was negative. Silverfish got tested every six months, and she made the johns use condoms if she could. So her card was real. But the john said, “How do I know that’s real?”

“Beats me. It is, though.”

“I’m supposed to believe that because a whore tells me?”

“You’re not supposed to do anything you don’t want to.” She started to walk away.

“Hey! C’mon back. I didn’t mean anything by it. I’ll take your word for it. You look honest. C’mon, you and me, let’s go park someplace.”

So she got in, and they parked, and he had no imagination so it was a pretty easy trick, and now she was walking home, thinking about how even though her card was real she had no way to prove it to him, and he knew that, and he didn’t want to take a whore’s word for it but in the end he did because he said she looked honest. Herself, she’d have thought the silver hair might be a tip-off that some things about her might not be on the up-and-up. But it wasn’t about how she looked, silver or honest or anything else. It was about him wanting to get laid. So he believed what worked for him.

She narrowed her eyes when that thought came to her. He believed what worked for him.

A couple of days later she asked Jacky-boy if he’d have taken Lady Mary on if he’d seen her before Roach.

“Well, sure.” Jacky-boy leaned forward on the sofa and helped himself to a slice from the pizza she and Rainbow had ordered. Silverfish was annoyed because the slice was off her half, the anchovy half, but she didn’t say anything. Rainbow winked at Silverfish and reached for a pepper slice. She was resourceful, Rainbow. When she found out Jacky-boy hated peppers she started always getting peppers on her half, in case he showed up while they were eating. Silverfish had considered adopting that strategy, but she didn’t particularly like peppers herself.

“And if she was on her own now?” Silverfish persisted.

“I guess,” Jacky-boy said. “She’s little and she’s cute, except if she keeps getting beat up on like she is, she’s not gonna be cute long. But Fish, honey, I know you’re not asking me to mess with Roach? He’s a shit and I’d love to see him go down, but I’m not in that business.”

“But if Roach threw her out?”

“Can’t see that.”

“But if he did?”

Jacky-boy wiped sauce off his mouth. “You have enough school to know about ‘hypothetical’? That a word you ever heard?”

Silverfish shook her head.

“Hypothetical’s when you’re talking about something but it’s never gonna happen. Like, you know, snow in July, that’s hypothetical. So, in the hypothetical situation where Roach throws her out and doesn’t change his freakin’ mind the next day, I’d take her on. Rainbow, pass me a Coke.”

“Hey, Rainbow,” Silverfish said, casual, one morning a few days later, both of them just coming in, no one else home yet, “how come you don’t get tested? You and Danielle and Flash?” That wasn’t her real question, but sometimes you don’t start with your real question.

“What kind of tested?”

“HIV, girl.”