His hotel was three blocks away, one of the newer American-designed ones, the same anonymous but lavish cell repeated one hundred sixteen times. By day, the rear door from the parking lot was left unlocked, so the John took her around that way, to avoid the problems of bringing this alley cat through the lobby.
His room was on the second floor, with no view except another wing of the hotel. There were two beds, a single and a double, both neatly and smoothly covered with Mondrian-influenced spreads. The maid had been through, to put a strip of paper around the toilet seat and distribute fresh plastic glasses in sealed plastic bags, all of these tiny ways to deny the great teeming filthiness of the world just out there, just beyond that double-paned permanently shut window. What did sealed plastic bags and droning vacuum cleaners mean, when these big blond residents brought their skinny dirty Pamis inside?
“I am Danish,” he said, locking the door. “Am I your first Danish man?”
How would she know? “Yes,” she said.
“Good.” He smiled, and crossed the room to close the drapes over that broad rectangle of plate glass. She stripped off the small plastic shoulder bag and loose pale green cotton shift and low black plastic boots that were all she ever wore at work, and the big man turned from the window to beam at her dark nakedness, the small loose breasts with their large areolas, the narrow muscular hips, the lush foliage of her bush. The room was dimmer now that the drapes were drawn, everything in it touched by a pale grayness, in which his eyes gleamed like tiny signal lights from a ship far out at sea. “You will be rough?” he asked, with a hopeful rising inflection.
Her jaw produced another nasty smile. “As rough as you want,” she said.
He walked toward her, undoing his belt, then reached around to clasp her buttock hard with one hand. “No ass at all,” he said.
“I got enough ass,” she told him. “And it cost twenty shillin.”
“Oh, yes, yes,” He released her, took off his suit coat, reached into its inside pocket, pulled out a large thick billfold, and tossed the coat carelessly onto the single bed. He stood weaving slightly, as though he were drunk, breathing audibly through his open mouth, as he leafed through crackling currencies in the billfold, muttering to himself: “Francs. Krone. Marks. Oh, I spent it all.”
People had tried to pay her in other currencies before, but she wouldn’t do it. She had great trouble finding a bank to change the money, usually had to give some hotel desk clerk a blowjob in return for switching dollars or marks into Kenyan shillings; and then she would be cheated on the exchange rate, as well. She was about to tell this man her policy — she’d put her dress and boots and bag back on and walk out if he had no shillings — when he tossed the billfold onto the coat on the bed and said, “I get. Okay.” And plodded heavily over to the closet.
Pami looked at all the paper money stuffed into the billfold, lying open on the coat. All different kinds of money, and lots of it. Probably more than she earned in a month, if you added it all together. And didn’t cheat on the exchange rate.
The big man slid open the mirrored closet door, stooped with a grunt, and brought out a black attaché case with gleaming chrome locks. This he put on the low dresser, took a key ring from his pocket, unlocked the case, and lifted the top. He made no effort to hide the stacks of money that almost filled the interior. Again, there were four or five different currencies, but this time including shillings; she saw stacks of one hundreds, five hundreds. And on top of it all, in a brown leather case, was a hunting knife.
Pami moved toward the door, keeping an eye on the blond man’s hands as he pushed the knife aside and rooted through the wads of money. She’d known women who were killed by Johns, sometimes tortured first, sometimes cut up afterward. It wasn’t going to happen to her. If she had to run, she wouldn’t worry about the dress or the boots or the bag. All of that could be replaced.
But what he finally brought out of the case, holding it up by the edges in both his hands, studying it as though he’d never seen one of these before, was a twenty-shilling note. Mostly blue, the twenty shilling has a picture of Mzee Jomo Kenyatta on the front, looking responsible and noble and caring, and a serene family of lions on the back, with playing cubs. Turning to Pami, holding up this note, he said, “Do you know what this is worth?”
What kind of question was that? “Twenty shillin,” she said.
“Ah, yes,” he said. “But in pounds, English pounds, oh let us say seventy P. And in U.S. dollars, one. One dollar.” Showing that wet smile again, he said, “This is a very significant amount of money, twenty shillings. I hope you will give first-rate service for it.”
“Come and see,” she said, holding out her hand for the money. He gave it to her and she half turned her back, stooping to put the bill into her left boot, knowing he wouldn’t be able to resist grabbing her. I’ll do him in no time, she thought, as his hands groped her, I’ll be on the street in a minute and a half.
But it didn’t work out that way. Naked, he was a pink wet whale, wheezing and sweating with every exertion, but what endurance he had! He turned her this way, he turned her that way, he studied and pried, he even drew a real response from her two or three times, and still he went on, still he wouldn’t stop, and she was becoming furious. To a whore, time is money.
I’m gonna infect him, she thought, moving from her usual indifference as to whether or not a John caught her disease to an aggressive desire to make him catch it. She managed to get her saliva into his mouth, and later into his anus, and then she stopped fretting over the lost time. What the hell. She gave herself up to the acceptance of the moment.
At the finish, he was on his back, puffing and heaving, she riding him like the boy on the dolphin, fast and hard, grinding down, clenching tight. His head and neck got redder and redder, his pale eyes bulged, and when he came he cried out like a woman, the high wail ending in a bubbling cough. He sagged onto the mattress, muscles slack, jaw hanging open, dull eyes gazing toward the ceiling.
She frowned down at him, sweat-slick herself, rubbing her palms over her wet belly and drying them on her thighs. “Mister?” she said.
There was no reaction. Moving gingerly, she climbed backward off him, crawling on hands and knees back down over his legs and over the foot of the bed, to stand there and stare at him, lying like a big rag doll with the stuffing coming out. I killed him, she thought, and grinned in glee at the idea. She’d never killed anybody before. I killed him wid my box.
She looked around, and her eye lit on the open attaché case on the dresser. Steal it! She took one step.
“Nnnnnuunnn-nanghhann!”
She spun back, terror-struck, and he wasn’t dead at all, his head and left arm were raised, eyes staring in pain and fear as his left hand wobbled, trying to point. “Med-cine,” he gasped. “Drawer. Med-cine!”
Not dead, but dying. She watched him, and didn’t move.
He cried out again, and once more, and then his head and arm fell back, and he lay with his head twisted at an angle, staring at her. “I’ll,” he panted, and wheezed. “Get,” he whispered, harsh and sibilant. “P’lice,” he gasped, and his flailing arm lunged out and caught the phone beside the bed.
No! Terrible trouble! And the money was hers! She stared from him to the money in the case, and her eye lit on the hunting knife.
He knew what she was going to do before she even reached the case: “I won’t call! I won’t call!” But the wooden handle was in her hand, the sheath was flung away into a corner, and she leaped on him like a cheetah, punching down, punching down, unable to stop, hitting him over and over, cutting him open in a hundred places, gritting her bloodstained teeth, snarling in her throat, using every ounce of her strength to drive the blade into him, again and again and again, until at last the knife caught on something inside him and her hand was so slippery with blood it slid right off the handle when she pulled back.