which was packed with wives worse off than her and crawling with children. Wandering the streets, weighing the relative merits of going back to wait for Wade or sleep on the street, she found the Tender Trap.
When Violet walked in a month ago, drawn by the Help Wanted sign, one of her eyes was still too swollen to see out of. She looked like what she was, but while waiting to speak to the manager, she caught a shoplifter stuffing EZ-Whip cartridges in his pants, and was hired on the spot. The rest had come with it—a room above the store to sleep in and a few people to talk to, and money to save for something better—and she began to feel safe.
Then she began to notice #9.
The booths were a relic from the pre-home video era, when porno theaters and hookers thrived on the local sailor traffic. While all kinds of perverts came into the store, only a few virtually invisible types still used the booths. The homeless who begged on the Boulevard all day and night came in to jack off as a kind of conjugal coffee break. Illegal aliens, filthy and shaking from exhaustion, often had to be chased out because they tried to catch a nap in them. Then there were the businessmen, the upright solid citizen types whose wives would never tolerate such filth in their homes.
They were as broad a cross-section of masculine humanity as could be found in the city, but once they came in the door, they adopted uniform customs, darting past her roost at the elevated cash register to duck into the back of the store, stopping only to get quarters from the change machine. They stayed inside for a few minutes or an hour, then darted out just as quickly, while Lupe, a hunchbacked Latina crone who sat on a stool at the end of the row of booths, cleaned up the dregs of their ardor with paper towels and 409.
Violet had zero interest in the private lives of the customers, but just keeping her eyes open, she soon noticed how, every so often, one would fly into the booth alley, and never come out. The Tender Trap had no back door, but Violet didn’t ask questions. She watched a little closer when she saw a customer go in. She came out onto the floor to straighten the bargain VHS carousel closest to the batwing saloon doors that blocked her view, glancing over them at the retreating masturbator. It took several of these spying expeditions to discover that only #9 held onto its suitors.
After an hour or so of whatever went on inside, Lupe went to the booth and opened it with a skeleton key, sprayed down the interior, and shuffled back out, always carrying a bundle wrapped in towels in the crook of her arm, which she brought back to the closet that was her workspace and where, for all Violet knew, she slept. Lupe, the manager told her, was a Mayan Indian and didn’t speak a word of English or Spanish. Whatever language she did speak, Violet never once heard her use it, no matter how many times she tried to draw the cleaning woman out.
She asked the other clerks about it, but got nowhere. Merle, the defrocked carnival-ride operator who ran the counter through the dinner hours, eyed her warily and snapped, “What’re you, a cop?” Crayonne, the ugliest, gayest, blackest man Violet had ever seen, told her there were peepholes, if she wanted to watch them jerk off, then laughed at her the rest of the night. Judith, the early morning cashier, sighed in obvious relief. “Do you see them right now, too?” she asked, sweeping her shaking bird-claw hands and jangling silver jewelry around to accuse the whole empty store. “I do, too…”
Violet did not ask the manager, Zoe, about #9. Zoe hired her and set her up with the studio apartment upstairs, asked no questions but seemed to understand everything. When she thought of bringing it up, Violet began to doubt that there was anything amiss but her own fucked-up nerves misfiring. Besides, every time she got deeper than surface chatter with Zoe, she was pressed against the ceiling of her own ignorance. After a
When Violet walked in a month ago, drawn by the Help Wanted sign, one of her eyes was still too swollen to see out of. She looked like what she was, but while waiting to speak to the manager, she caught a shoplifter stuffing EZ-Whip cartridges in his pants, and was hired on the spot. The rest had come with it—a room above the store to sleep in and a few people to talk to, and money to save for something better—and she began to feel safe.
Then she began to notice #9.
The booths were a relic from the pre-home video era, when porno theaters and hookers thrived on the local sailor traffic. While all kinds of perverts came into the store, only a few virtually invisible types still used the booths. The homeless who begged on the Boulevard all day and night came in to jack off as a kind of conjugal coffee break. Illegal aliens, filthy and shaking from exhaustion, often had to be chased out because they tried to catch a nap in them. Then there were the businessmen, the upright solid citizen types whose wives would never tolerate such filth in their homes.
They were as broad a cross-section of masculine humanity as could be found in the city, but once they came in the door, they adopted uniform customs, darting past her roost at the elevated cash register to duck into the back of the store, stopping only to get quarters from the change machine. They stayed inside for a few minutes or an hour, then darted out just as quickly, while Lupe, a hunchbacked Latina crone who sat on a stool at the end of the row of booths, cleaned up the dregs of their ardor with paper towels and 409.
Violet had zero interest in the private lives of the customers, but just keeping her eyes open, she soon noticed how, every so often, one would fly into the booth alley, and never come out. The Tender Trap had no back door, but Violet didn’t ask questions. She watched a little closer when she saw a customer go in. She came out onto the floor to straighten the bargain VHS carousel closest to the batwing saloon doors that blocked her view, glancing over them at the retreating masturbator. It took several of these spying expeditions to discover that only #9 held onto its suitors.
After an hour or so of whatever went on inside, Lupe went to the booth and opened it with a skeleton key, sprayed down the interior, and shuffled back out, always carrying a bundle wrapped in towels in the crook of her arm, which she brought back to the closet that was her workspace and where, for all Violet knew, she slept. Lupe, the manager told her, was a Mayan Indian and didn’t speak a word of English or Spanish. Whatever language she did speak, Violet never once heard her use it, no matter how many times she tried to draw the cleaning woman out.
She asked the other clerks about it, but got nowhere. Merle, the defrocked carnival-ride operator who ran the counter through the dinner hours, eyed her warily and snapped, “What’re you, a cop?” Crayonne, the ugliest, gayest, blackest man Violet had ever seen, told her there were peepholes, if she wanted to watch them jerk off, then laughed at her the rest of the night. Judith, the early morning cashier, sighed in obvious relief. “Do you see them right now, too?” she asked, sweeping her shaking bird-claw hands and jangling silver jewelry around to accuse the whole empty store. “I do, too…”
Violet did not ask the manager, Zoe, about #9. Zoe hired her and set her up with the studio apartment upstairs, asked no questions but seemed to understand everything. When she thought of bringing it up, Violet began to doubt that there was anything amiss but her own fucked-up nerves misfiring. Besides, every time she got deeper than surface chatter with Zoe, she was pressed against the ceiling of her own ignorance. After a
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