Sally grabbed the book, flipped through it, and said, Listen, I have nothing against masturbation, but don’t you think the act is a bit overdone in this novel?
What else is there to do when you have a free spirit and you are confined to a small world of jailers and walls? I said. What else is there to do but to summon the world and lament and masturbate beneath your jailer’s nose, and break his keys and his chains?
Sure, I guess, whatever keeps you sane, said Sally. It’s a masterpiece in its lyricism, but it gets suffocating, claustrophobic. I can’t imagine being kept in a cell, I’d die.
And then she asked me about my working hours. I said, I have no particular shift. My hours are flexible. I work here and there for as long as necessary to cover the car rent and the gas, and so that I will be left with a little change.
Are you hungry? she asked.
A little, but I would love to see your bookshelf first, I said. Unless you prefer to see mine.
I have a feeling that your collection would be a bit intense for me tonight. The last thing I need is another image of a metal bar. I danced around one all night. Is pasta okay?
Yes, I said, and we talked about our lives some more. She wanted to be a professor of literature. She’d never believed in loans and debt, so to support herself and pay her tuition, she worked Thursdays as a dancer and a couple of nights a week as an escort. She was strong and had rules: she never kissed her clients on the mouth, she made it clear that they should not touch her neck or her face, and she always made sure they took a shower before her eyes, even if they assured her they’d already had one.
In time we became good friends. And every Thursday I would wait for her in my car. We occasionally slept together. There was friendship between us and no love in the romantic sense; well, at least that was what we agreed upon. She would tell me what had happened that night, her meetings with her clients, like the story about the man dressed as a clown who ejaculated as soon as she came through the door. Once, a friend of her father’s turned out to be the client. She promised not to tell his wife, he promised not to tell her father, and that settled it. But as she was leaving, he stood at the door and tried to touch her face. Listen, she said, I haven’t talked to my father in years. I can afford that, but can you afford your wife’s alimony?
At the end of every month, Sally would take a car with two work colleagues and drive to the south shore, to a meat-packing town where men worked in slaughterhouses for low wages. She and two prostitute friends would rent a couple of rooms in a cheap motel and host these workers, charging less than half the usual price. Charity work, Sally called it, and she explained it as a religious gesture, pointing out that Mary Magdalene had been a prostitute before and after meeting Jesus. Certainly after, she said, and giggled. The girl who’d initiated the project was named Maggie, short for Magdalena, and that is why they called themselves the Magdalena girls and were known by the slaughterhouse workers as the Magdalenas.
Most of these workers, Sally told me, are away from home. They have no one, and they can’t even afford to leave the meat-packing town with the little money they earn. Some of them are highly educated, some are just poor villagers. All kinds. I even met a doctor once, she said. He was an eastern European. He spoke English with a very strong accent but with eloquence nonetheless. He came to my room; he was very nice, I’d say graceful, in his manners. He came cleaned up, shaved; they all mostly do, they treat it like a date. They take us very seriously, they groom themselves and some even wear cologne; you would never know that they take apart animals and bathe in blood all day. The first time, this doctor brought a bottle of wine and some flowers, and he tuned the radio to a classical music station. He brought out his own condoms, then he washed his palms, his thumbs, and his wrists and he let the water rinse over him while he sang opera, and he walked out of the bathroom with his hands up in the air like a surgeon. He opened the wine and served me. He even brought two glasses. He was gallant.
When he went to the bathroom, I checked his bag. I often check their clothes after they strip and, if they carry a bag, I open it and quickly peek inside it. We take no chances. He had a book in there, and I took it out and saw that he was reading Hašek, The Good Soldier Švejk. I laughed, thinking, What is this doctor in the middle of nowhere doing reading Hašek? I keep on meeting these well-read men in all these odd places. Anyway, I didn’t want him to know that I had opened his bag. But I did ask him if he was Czech. At first, he said no. But I was sure that he was. He asked me why I asked. I told him that he reminded me of my uncle. Is your uncle Czech? he asked. Yes, I said, his name was Jaroslav. The doctor was all confused. What was his last name? he asked. Hašek, I said. He laughed and poured me wine, saying, You are one careful woman, and he lifted his glass and we drank. He sang some more opera in German and drank so much that he fell asleep, but I had to take him out of my bed because there were other workers waiting. So I called these two Albanian brothers who come at the end of every month and try to get us girls to have them both at the same time. But we girls have rules and everyone knows them very well. No anal penetration, no more than one man at a time, and of course a compulsory shower. . I called these two Turks, well, Albanians or whatever. Every time they come, they bring us blocks of olive-oil soap and figs and other sorts of food that their mother sends them; they are funny and harmless, villagers with big, rough hands, loyal and grateful. Anyway, they carried the doctor down the stairs and shoved him into their car and took him away.
I tell you, though, we had to train these workers. Like I said, some of them are nice, but some are angry and disappointed with life. They come to this land thinking that they have made it, escaped the misery of their homes, but then they get stuck in awful jobs. I mean, my job is hard too, but I try to keep it clean and interesting, as much as I can. But these men, they are immersed in blood all day and it is cold in those factories, with hard conditions and long hours. After they finish their shifts, they go back to their complexes and shower and sleep; that is all they do, that is all there is. Some have been doing it for years. Once they threw a party at the dormitory and they invited us. The food was amazing. Some of them were very good cooks. They all dressed up and, when we entered, they came one by one and kneeled and kissed our hands and offered us flowers and wine in plastic cups and they treated us like queens. When we first started the project, some of them were aggressive. Their lives had gone from one humiliation to the next. But later, they learned to respect us and love us. The smart ones among them try to save a bit of money or send it back home, and they do better because they have some sense of accomplishment, the small reward of knowing that their relatives or family are better off. But others, at the end of the month they get drunk and blow it all on poker machines, booze, or drugs. At first we refused many of them. Drunk, rowdy, we would just say no. Maggie, my partner in this, whom I adore, knows the working class. She grew up in a destitute small town. She watched her father and uncles lose their jobs. She taught me a great deal about how to handle these guys. She is so impressive. She shouts at them and they become like little boys.
Once, a Moroccan guy entered Maggie’s room. All macho, sure of himself, well-built, and dismissive. He acted boastful and condescending. He barely said a word to her, and then he took off his clothes and pointed to the bed.
Maggie said, We are going to talk first.