cool, Zo. I was playing a part and I was perfect at it.”
“Then what happened?”
“He said, ‘How’s about twenty-five?’ And I just looked at him, like, stop wasting my time, jerk. And he sort of laughed, this big old haw-haw-haw with his big teeth showing, and he said okay, thirty it is. Then I thought, shit, what happens now? Am I supposed to know a hotel for us to go to? But he said to come with him, and we went, like, a few blocks over to this hotel he was staying in, the Edison or something. Yeah, the Edison. And we went up to his room and I said, ‘Before we go any farther, how about my thirty bucks?’ He did that haw-haw-haw thing again, and he gave me the money. Man. His teeth were as big as dice. He didn’t ask me any questions. He didn’t even ask how old I was. He just took his clothes off and he wasn’t a pretty sight but he wasn’t the worst thing I’ve ever seen either and I took my clothes off and blew the motherfucker right there on the bed and then I put my clothes back on and got the hell out.”
“That’s it?” Zoe asked.
“That’s it. Thirty bucks.”
“You really did it?”
“Only way to get the money.”
“Weren’t you scared?”
“Zoe, I told you I was scared.”
“I mean, of him.”
“No. He was nothing to be scared of, you’d know that if you’d seen him.”
Zoe sipped her coffee, looked out the steamed window at Waverly Place. An obese man walked a gleeful-looking yellow dog he had dressed in a white blouse and a plaid skirt. There was a new world with no rules and there was the old world with too many. She didn’t know how to live in either place. Her mother was the guardian spirit of the old world. Her mother was proud and offended and she warned Zoe: Never let a boy talk you into losing control, boys want to ruin everything you prize.
Cassandra was the guardian spirit of the new world. He believed in sex but he believed in safety, too. He cautioned girls against going off with men who secretly worshipped harm.
Zoe said to Trancas, “I don’t know if you should be doing this.”
Trancas’s face held its rapt, furious light. She was already gone.
‘Thirty dollars, Zo,” she said. “For, like, twenty minutes’ work. Nine more guys, and I can get myself that Harley.”
“It’s prostitution, though.”
“Man. So is being a waitress or secretary. This just pays better.”
Zoe looked at Trancas and tried to know. Was she setting herself free, or was she beginning the long work of killing herself? How could you be sure of the difference between emancipation and suicide?
“If you’re going to keep doing it, be careful,” Zoe said.
“Right,” Trancas answered, and Zoe could see her dead. She could see her blue-white skin and the faint smile she’d wear, having beaten her mother, having gotten first to the wildest, most remote place of all. Having won.
Cassandra stood at the bar that night in an old prom dress, a chaos of emerald satin and lime-green chiffon. Zoe waited until Trancas had gone to the bathroom and went quickly up to Cassandra. Cassandra held a drink in his hand, talked to a tall black man in a velvet cloak and a canary-colored pillbox hat.
Zoe said, “Hello, Cassandra.”
Cassandra’s face was clever and squashed-looking under his pancake makeup, his lipstick and eyelashes. Cosmetics and the intricate cross-purposes of being a man and being a woman seemed to impel him forward, and he could look, at times, as if he were pressing his face against a pane of glass, speaking distinctly and a little too loud to someone on the other side.
“Why, hello, baby,” he said. “How are you?”
“I’m all right. Actually, I wondered if I could talk to you for a minute.”
“Honey, you can talk all you want. Start at the beginning and just work your way straight through to the end.”
“Maybe, alone? It will just take a minute.”
“There's nothing in this world that could possibly shock Miss Cinnamon here,” Cassandra said.
“You got that right,” Miss Cinnamon said. A scrap of yellow veil quivered like insect wings over his shining brow.
Zoe paused nervously. “Well,” she said. “You know Trancas, my friend?”
“Sure I do.”
Zoe paused. She wanted to bury her face in Cassandra's gaudy dress, the slick, livid sheen of it. She wanted to sit on Cassandra's skinny lap, to whisper secrets in his ear and be told that a wicked