Red Light (17 page)

She was wrapped in a gold satin gown and was wearing high-heeled gold slippers, but underneath Zakiyyah could see that she was wearing only a black lacy corselet, with some of the lace ripped around the side of one cup.

Mister Dessie was standing in the corridor close behind them, smoking and talking to a girl in the room next door. ‘I’ll be off now, Mairead,’ he said, after a while. ‘Himself will be dropping by later, he said, after his round of golf. He said not to let anyone touch her until he’s taken a sconce at her and the doctor’s been.’

‘Oh, I will, yeah,’ said Mairead. ‘Listen, would you nip across the road for me and get me a packet of Johnny Blue before you go? I’ve been gasping.’

‘Go and get them yourself, you idle slag. What do you think I am?’

‘You’re all fecking heart, that’s what you are, Dessie. That’s the last time you get a gobble.’

‘After the last time, I’d rather stick it down a mincer.’

Mister Dessie went off, and Mairead put her arm around Zakiyyah’s shoulders and said, ‘Don’t take any notice of that gobdaw. He’s all mouth and no trousers.’

‘He frightens me,’ said Zakiyyah. ‘He will not let me have my suitcase and he hurt me.’

‘Don’t you worry, girl. I won’t let him hurt you again. Well, so long as you behave yourself, and do what you’re told, like.’

‘I was supposed to dance in a club. I do not understand any of this.’

Mairead looked towards the window, at the buildings opposite, and her eyes seemed even more unfocused, as if she had X-ray vision and could see right through them, to the hills beyond. ‘No, love, I don’t think any of us do. I keep asking myself how I got myself into this, and to be honest, I don’t really remember. I know that I was stone-broke. Dessie lent me some money, and then he lent me some more money, and before I knew it I owed him seven hundred euros and I didn’t have any way to pay him back except for this.’

‘I share a bed only once with a man,’ Zakiyyah told her. ‘That was my boss in Lagos, and I did not want to do it, but he said that I would lose my job.’

‘Oh, you’ll get used to it. It’s not half as bad as some of these Holy Joes try to paint it. Fair play, some of the punters we get are totally crustified, or else they’re langered and they stink of the drink, but in that case they usually can’t get it up any road. Either that or they’ll ask you to do something pervy. But you don’t have to do anything you really don’t want to, especially if it’s unhygienic. Mister Dessie will usually back you up if a punter’s giving you grief. But if a punter asks
me
to do something that’s pure disgusting, what I usually tell him is it’ll cost him double.

She laughed, although her laugh sounded completely flat, like a broken bell, with no humour in it at all. ‘Most of the time, though, they cough up, and then I wish I’d charged them three times as much.’

Zakiyyah said, ‘What if I do not like the man at all?’

‘Then you open your legs and close your eyes and think of what you feel like for your dinner tonight.’

‘I cannot say no, I do not want you?’

‘No, girl. You’re here to pay back what you owe. If you turn down a punter, or upset him at all, then you’re liable to get yourself a beating, believe me.’

‘I am so frightened,’ said Zakiyyah. She had to sit down on the bed because she was trembling so much and she felt as if she were going to be sick. She retched twice, while Mairead stood beside her, watching her patiently.

‘Let me tell you how it works,’ said Mairead. ‘What happens is, the punter sees your picture on Michael’s website. He phones up the number, like, and we send him to the courthouse there across the street. That’s so that we can see him standing on the steps, just to check out that it isn’t the shades or a fecking one-legged leper or something. If he looks okay we phone him back and we tell him how to get up here.’

‘Then what?’ asked Zakiyyah. She had never felt such dread in her life, and she found it even more terrifying because of the matter-of-fact way in which Mairead was describing what she was expected to do.

‘There’s four girls here most of the time. I’ll introduce you to the others in a minute. If your punter hasn’t already taken his pick from the pictures on the website, he’ll make his choice after we let him in. He’ll tell us what he wants, like, and we tell him how much it’s going to cost him. It’s a hundred euros for a hand-job, or a hundred and seventy for oral, or two hundred for full sex, with another fifty for anal. Then of course it’s extra for anything like bondage or lesbian or special requirements.’

Zakiyyah closed her eyes. She wished that somehow she could be magically transported back to her home village – that when she opened them again she would see her mother stirring Akamu custard and her father raking the yard and her sister laughing in the sunshine. If that was impossible, she would rather not open her eyes, ever again, and never see that purple bedspread, or those cushions, or those orange brick buildings opposite with their dazzling windows. She would rather be dead.

But she opened them again, and she was still alive, and Mairead was still talking to her. ‘Renting this room will cost you two hundred euros a week, and your advertisement on the interweb will cost two hundred and fifty. On top of that, Michael takes sixty per cent of everything you make, which goes towards paying him back. I’ll help you to work that out.

‘House rules: none, really, except that you must always use a condom. Michael’s very particular about that, even for oral. It doesn’t matter how much the punter offers you to do it without. It’s all part of Michael’s Green Light campaign, so that he can prove to the world that he keeps his girls healthy and safe, that’s what he says. You have to buy your own condoms, though, and your own baby-wipes.

‘You’ll be starting in the morning as soon as the first punter rings, and finish whenever the last one wants his end away. That usually means you’ll service ten or maybe twelve punters a day, sometimes more. You’ll be extra busy when Cork’s playing at home, I can tell you. Sometimes you won’t even have time to wash your mouth out.’

Zakiyyah managed unsteadily to stand up. ‘I would like a drink of water, please.’

‘Oh, of course, girl! I’ll bet you haven’t had a drink all day, have you? And did that Bula give you anything to eat? I’ll bet that he didn’t, the gowl. Jesus, he’s as thick as two short planks tied together. Come into the kitchen and I’ll knock you up a hang sangwich.’

Zakiyyah followed Mairead into the tiny kitchenette, where a moulting green budgerigar was perched in a cage on the window sill. Mairead poured her a glass of red lemonade and made her a sandwich with white bread and Spam. As she sat at the glass-topped table, two other girls came in, a small flat-faced Thai girl with very long black hair who was wearing nothing but a thong and a quarter-cup bra, so that her prune-like nipples were exposed, and a tall, thin blonde in a stained pink dressing gown. The blonde’s hair was braided in a tight coronet and she looked as if she might have been Czech or Ukrainian.

‘This is Lotus Blossom and this is Elvira,’ said Mairead. ‘Girls, this is Zakky.’

Lotus Blossom came up and kissed Zakiyyah on both cheeks and said, ‘Welcome. You call me Lawan, that is my real name, not work name.’

‘Zakiyyah,’ said Zakiyyah.

Elvira smiled and gave her a little finger-wave, but Lotus Blossom said, ‘Elvira does not speak good English yet. She has been here only one month now. For me it was very hard to understand Irish people when I first come here, even though I speak good English already. Sometimes I still don’t know what they say. Everything they say is “like” and good is “how bad” and even old man is “boy”.’

She pressed her sparkly-polished fingertips to her lips and tittered. Elvira smiled, too, in a dreamy, drugged-looking way, although it was obvious that she didn’t know why.

Zakiyyah drank her red lemonade and tried to eat her sandwich, although she found it difficult to swallow. The phone rang and Mairead picked it up and said, ‘Oh. Sure. You’ll be there in five minutes, will you? Well, give us a ring when you get there, darling, and I’ll tell you where to go next. That’s all right.’

‘Who was that?’ asked Lotus Blossom.

‘Not for you, girl. It’s some culchie who’s just come up on business from Kenmare and he fancies Elvira. Do you know what he said, the stupid cake? “I’ve only seen her picture online and I’m desperately in love with her already.” Jesus.’

‘So long as it’s not that old man who sells fish in the English Market,’ said Lotus Blossom. ‘Every time he always wants
me
. “Oh, Lotus Blossom you’re so sweet like your name!” But he stinks of kipper! He says he washes but he always stinks of kipper!’

She tittered again, although there was no real humour in her laugh at all, just like Mairead’s. Zakiyyah felt that they were laughing only because crying wasn’t going to change anything. She pushed her plate away and said, ‘I am sorry. I cannot eat any more. My stomach is not good.’

‘Oh, don’t you worry about that, girl,’ said Mairead. She picked up one of the sandwiches herself and took a bite. ‘You’ll soon get used to the delights of Irish cuisine. And most of the time we get takeouts from one of the local Chinkies.

‘Here …’ she said, with her mouth full. ‘I’ll show you the rest of the place.’

Zakiyyah finished her drink and got up to follow her. As she did so, Lotus Blossom laid her hand on her arm and said, ‘Don’t you worry, Zakky. It’s not so bad. Better than working in a shop, or a restaurant. Most of the men are very nice to you. You only get a few bad ones, and that’s because they’re drunk.’

‘How long have you been here?’ asked Zakiyyah.

Lotus Blossom shook her head. ‘I don’t remember! Maybe two years. I will still be here when I am old and all of my teeth fall out! Men like that! Blow-job with no teeth! Not so worried you will bite it off!’

‘You have not paid them back yet, in two years, the money you owe them?’

‘I don’t remember. They always say I still owe them more. Besides, what else am I going to do? They have my passport, all my papers.’

Mairead took Zakiyyah into the living room. The sunshine showed up the dust on the purple velvet curtains and the worn-out black carpet. Three black leather couches were arranged around the walls facing a 42-inch flat-screen TV, and in between the couches there stood a black-painted coffee table with dog-eared copies of pornographic magazines like
Private
and
Color Climax
arranged in a fan shape – like
Irish Country
and
Woman’s Way
in a dentist’s waiting room.

‘This is where a punter can come in and have a drink and make his mind up which one of us he wants,’ said Mairead. ‘We charge twenty-five euros for a beer, thirty for a glass of wine, and fifty for spirits. Well, those are the basic prices. Usually, we charge as much as we can get away with.

Mairead’s own bedroom was almost as large as the living room. It was furnished with a four-poster bed and a red plush chaise-longue and a white Regency-style dressing table with a marble-patterned top, although its edges were chipped. There was a built-in wardrobe opposite the bed, with mirrored doors.

‘That’s so the punters can watch themselves getting their money’s worth,’ said Mairead. ‘Mind you, they all want to take selfies these days, right in the middle of it, so they can show their mates afterwards. Michael’s thinking of charging them extra for that.’

She showed Zakiyyah the bathroom on the opposite side of the corridor. This was gloomy and smelled of damp, and the grouting between the tiles had turned black. Underneath the frosted-glass window stood a narrow, old-fashioned bathtub with rust stains in it, and next to it a washbasin crowded with bottles of shampoo and conditioner. The ceiling was patchy with mould and looked as if it was about to collapse at any moment.

Mairead said, ‘We’ll go out shopping for you tomorrow and get you everything you need, like toiletries and make-up and that, and something for you to wear, like – although, believe me, you won’t be wearing much for most of the time. Saves on the laundry, I can tell you!

At that moment there was a chime from the doorbell downstairs. ‘That’ll be Elvira’s punter. And I expect Michael will be here before we know it. Why don’t you throw yourself down for a while, girl, and have a rest? You won’t be getting much of that from now on, I can tell you!’

She lay on the purple bedcover, but she didn’t close her eyes. The velveteen smelled sour and musty, as if it hadn’t been cleaned in years, or ever, and from the angle at which she was lying she could see that there were shiny silvery splotches all over it. She heard the front door of the flat being opened, and a man’s gruff voice, and then Mairead saying something, and laughing, although she could only make out the word ‘darling’.

After that, she heard the door to Elvira’s room close and the television in the living room being switched on. She couldn’t hear that distinctly, either, only Irish women arguing with each other, and then music. Sad, lilting pipe music – the kind of music the Irish play to make themselves cry. It seemed to go on and on, until her eyes began to close.

She didn’t want to fall asleep, but she did. She might have dreamed, but if she did, she didn’t remember what her dreams were. All she knew was that she was abruptly woken up by a knock on her door, and a man saying, ‘Well, well, what do we have here? The sleeping beauty! The sleeping
black
beauty!’

Immediately she opened her eyes and sat up, tugging down the hem of her slip to make sure that she was decent. She tried to primp up her hair as well, because she knew that all her glass beads had become tangled.

A tall, broad-shouldered man was standing in the doorway, wearing a camel-coloured summer jacket, with a green silk handkerchief in the breast pocket. He had thick chestnut hair, combed back in a wave, and he was suntanned in that freckly way that fair-skinned people tan. He was green-eyed, with a wide, generous face, and a deep Celtic cleft in his chin. He was smiling, although one of his front teeth had caught on his lip, so Zakiyyah couldn’t be sure if he was smiling or snarling.

Mairead was standing very close behind him, and she said, ‘Zakky, this is Mister Michael Gerrety. He’s come to take a look at you.’