Chances by Jackie Collins Page A

week.” She spoke quickly. “Sweet, black, hot an’ young, just the way those old ofays like ’em. I worked me a while at Florence Williams’s, I ain’t no amateur.”
    “You ain’t no hot stuff neither.”
    “How about a chance?” she wheedled, drawing her hands down her body. “Dressed up an’ fattened up you got a real winner. How ’bout givin’ me a try?”
    “Me and Madam Mae are into class, little girl.
Class.
Go shake it elsewhere.”
    She glared at him, the wheedling smile leaving her face in a flash. The hate she had learned on the island welled up inside her, and she wanted to strike out. But she didn’t. She shrugged, turned to go.
    He stopped her with a hand on her arm. “You want a job as a maid?”
    She shook his hand off and kept walking. A maid! That was a real laugh. There was no going back for Carrie.
    “You!” He was coming after her now.
    She stopped, and he moved alongside her. She sensed he was interested at last.
    “You really work at Florence Williams’s place?”
    “Check it out. Me, a girl called Billie, two white chicks….”
    “Hmmm.” He blew a thin trickle of smoke in her face. “You wanna take a chance on Madam Mae likin’ you?”
    She knew when to be bold. “You like me, then she’s gonna like me. Everyone knows that’s the way the story goes.”
    He smiled. “So smart.”
    She smiled back, although the smile never reached her eyes. “And so young.”
    “Get in the car.”
    “Sure, Whitejack.”
    “How’d you know my name?”
    “Everyone knows your name out on the island—you sure is some big man.”
    His smile broadened. “Knows how to say the right things.”
    “And knows when it’s time not to say anything at all.”
    He burst out laughing. “Shee-ii-t, I got me one can talk!”
    She laughed with him. “You sure have!”
    They bathed her, fumigated her, deloused her, fed her, had her examined inside and out by a doctor, dressed her in a pink satin robe, and put her to work immediately.
    Madam Mae was as tall as Whitejack, voluptuous, with a long curling blonde wig that contrasted Starkly with her jet black skin. She was a working madam, charging exorbitant prices for her occasional services. She was in her late thirties and had been an active prostitute since she was twelve years of age.
    She hated Carrie on sight, but she knew a good business proposition when she saw one. “You want to take her on, we’ll do it,” she told Whitejack. Carrie had not been wrong on
that
score. “But you stay out of her pants,” Madam Mae warned. “I don’t like sharing what I got with no child.”
    Whitejack laughed uneasily. “I wasn’t thinkin’ of it, mama!”
    “The hell you weren’t!”
    “Aw, shee-ii-it. You think I mess with that when I got you?”
    “I think you mess with anything that breathes I don’t watch you real close!”
    Carrie was determined to succeed. She wasn’t worried about making any deal with the house until she had established herself. A fifty-fifty split suited her fine to start. She collected her belongings from Florence Williams and was delighted to find her six hundred dollars intact. Florence even asked if she wanted to come back, but Carrie declined the offer. Madam Mae ran a much larger operation, and once she got herself established she wanted to work nonstop. Money was the name of the game. And she was set to make herself a stash.
    Madam Mae’s clientele was more varied than Florence Williams’s. She kept an open house, with ten very hard-working girls: two other blacks, a Puerto Rican, three white-skinned blondes, a fat Mexican girl, a Chinese, and a perfectly formed pretty midget called Lucille.
    Carrie had to work hard to stand out. But she had ambition. She wanted to be the best.
    From her very first client, they started coming back for more. Carrie knew how to make a man feel like a man. They came to her with their limp dicks, their problems, and their stories of woe. She sent them off refreshed, invigorated, and