She found it sooner than that. The corner of 46th and Eighth was a poor man’s Hollywood and Vine. Girls were going by in all directions, singly and in pairs, and their faces and clothing told Honour Mercy immediately that she had found the right place.
That was nice, she thought. It was handy to the hotel.
She walked around a bit, looking at things. It was still pretty early, and the middle of the week besides, and there wasn’t much doing just yet. So she just looked at everything, wanting to familiarize herself with the local and local methods just as soon as possible.
Then a woman holding up a wall on 46th Street called to her, and motioned her to come over for a talk. Honour Mercy, wondering what this was all about, complied.
The woman, without preamble, said, “You just get into town?” She looked to be in her late twenties, with frizzy black hair that stuck out in wire-like waves from her head, and much too much makeup on her eyes.
Honour Mercy nodded.
“Who you working with?” asked the woman.
“Nobody,” admitted Honour Mercy. “I just got here.” Remembering that Newport hadn’t liked the girl who hustled on her own, without the blessing of one of the established houses, and assuming that New York would probably be much the same, she added, “I’ve been looking around for somebody to show me what to do. I just go here today, and I don’t know New York at all.”
“You found me,” said the woman. She left the wall, which didn’t topple over, and took Honour Mercy’s arm. “And it’s a good thing you did,” she said, leading Honour Mercy down 46th Street, away from Eighth Avenue. “The cops would’ve picked you up in no time. They got to make some arrests, you know, so they’re always on the lookout for strays.”
“I didn’t know,” said Honour Mercy humbly, showing her willingness to learn and to adapt.
The woman took her into the building Honour Mercy could see from her hotel window, and up the stairs to room on the second floor. The room was severely functional. It contained a bed and a kitchen chair, and that was all.
“My name’s Marie,” said the woman, sitting down on the bed.
“Honey,” said Honour Mercy.
“Glad to know you. I’ll introduce you to a couple people after a while. They’ll explain the set-up to you. Good-looking girl like you, they’ll probably put you on the phone.”
“Thanks,” said Honour Mercy.
“Of course,” said Marie, grinning a little, “I can’t just recommend you out of hand. You know what I mean: I got to be sure you’re okay. I tell you what, you take off your clothes. Let’s see what you got to offer.”
Honour Mercy’s reaction to that was complex, and it would be impossible to give the succession of her thoughts as rapidly as she thought them. Within a second, her thoughts passed from recognition through memory to decision, and with hardly a pause at all, she acted on the decision.
Here were the thoughts: Recognition. Marie was a Lesbian. Honour Mercy knew it as surely as she knew anything in the world. The unnecessarily tight grip on her arm as they came up the stairs together. The unnecessary demand that she take off her clothes. Marie was a Lesbian, and the price of her introducing Honour Mercy to the people who could give the unofficial blessing to her working in her occupation here in New York was that Honour Mercy be Lesbian with her for a few minutes.
Memory. The girls in Newport had talked about Lesbians more than once. It was a problem girls in their trade had to think about. In the first place, a surprisingly large percentage of prostitutes became Lesbian, at one point or another. Since they got from men only sex without love, they tried to get sex with love from other women. In the second place, Madge had been one hundred percent opposed to hiring Lesbians, on the grounds that dykes couldn’t give a man as good a time as a normal woman could.
Decision. Sex was Honour Mercy’s stock in trade. It was the way she made her living. With the help of Richie Parsons, she had successfully severed sex from love, without severing love from sex. She gave her body to men so she could have money to support herself and Richie. It wasn’t really such a large step farther to give her body to a woman so she could have the right to work.
She took off her clothes. The woman kept grinning at her, and said, “You know what I have in mind, Honey?”
“Sure,” said Honour Mercy. She said it as casually as possible, not wanting this Marie to get the idea that Honour Mercy thought the whole thing repugnant. That might spoil everything.
Marie’s grin now turned into an honest smile, and she joined Honour Mercy in the disrobing. They lay down together on the bed, and out of the corner of her eye Honour Mercy saw one of the brown bugs run out of a crack in the wall and diagonally down to the molding, where he disappeared again. She closed her eyes, struggling to keep her face expressionless, and Marie leaned over to kiss her on the mouth.
Having sex with a woman, Honour Mercy decided later, wasn’t having sex at all. It was just having a lot of preliminaries, all jumbled up together, and then stopping just when things were getting interesting.
Marie got a lot more excited than Honour Mercy did. She squirmed and writhed around, and somehow she managed to build herself up to a climax. Honour Mercy, thinking it was expected of her, made believe she had one, too; and then Marie, as satisfied as any of Honour Mercy’s satisfied customers, crawled off and started to dress.
Honour Mercy wanted to wash, very badly, but she thought it would give the wrong impression to mention it, so she didn’t say anything. She just dressed again, and waited for Marie to tell her what was next.
“That was fun, huh, Honey?” said Marie, and she patted Honour Mercy on the behind. Her hand lingered, and Honour Mercy unobtrusively moved out of reach.
“We’ll have to see each other some more,” said Marie. She came closer and took Honour Mercy’s arm, again with the unnecessary tightness, and said, “Now let’s go see a man about a whore.”
Five
When Joshua Crawford was a little boy his name was not Joshua Crawford. The Joshua part had been with him all his life, but the Crawford part had become his when he made out his diploma a few days before graduation from PS 105 on Hester Street.
The teacher, a sad-faced man with fallen arches and red-rimmed eyes, went through the traditional pre-diploma rites of New York’s lower East side. “You may now, for probably the last time, change your names without the formality of a court order,” he intoned. “This is the last chance for all Isaacs to become Irving, for all Moshes to become Morris, for all Samuels to become Sidney.” And all the Isaacs and Moshes and Samuels were quick to take advantage of the opportunity, the last chance, never quite realizing that all they were accomplishing was the strange metamorphosis of Irving and Morris and Sidney from English to Jewish names.
Joshua Cohen liked his first name. It was his — his father and mother had given it to him and he wanted to keep it. But he had no such feelings toward his surname, which was properly neither his nor his father’s. When his father had migrated from Russia the Immigration Officer had stood, pen poised, and asked him what his last name was.
“Schmutschkevitsch,” said Joshua’s father.
The Immigration Officer didn’t make the mistake of attempting to find out or guess how Schmutschkevitsch might be spelled. He asked, instead, where Joshua’s father had been born. It was convenient to use the place of birth as a last name, far more convenient than worrying over the possible spelling of Schmutschkevitsch.
“Byessovetrovsk,” said Joshua’s father. The Immigration Officer, who sincerely wished that all these Russian Jews had had the good sense to be born in Moscow or Kiev or Odessa or something simple like that, closed his eyes for a moment and wiped perspiration from his forehead.