Ruth once more walked past the prostitutes on the Korsjespoortsteeg. She was aware of more men on the street, none of whom would look at her or at one another. She recognized two of them; they had made the same circle she had. How many times would they return for a longer look? This, too, Ruth wanted to know; it was a necessary part of her research.
While it would be easier for her, alone, to interview a prostitute on a pleasant, unthreatening street such as this one, or on the Bergstraat, Ruth believed that the character in her novel—that other woman writer with her bad boyfriend—had best suffer her encounter in one of the worst of the rooms in the red-light district. After all, if the awful experience was to degrade and humiliate her, wouldn’t it be more appropriate—not to mention more atmospheric—if it happened in the sleaziest environment imaginable?
This time the prostitutes on the Korsjespoortsteeg regarded Ruth with wary stares and a barely detectable nod or two. The woman who’d laughed at Ruth when she’d stumbled gave her a cool, unfriendly appraisal. Only one of the women made a gesture that could have been construed as either beckoning or scolding. She was a woman of Ruth’s age, but much heavier; her blond hair was dyed. The woman pointed an index finger at Ruth and lowered her eyes in exaggerated disapproval. It was a schoolmarmish gesture, although there was no small amount of wickedness in the heavy woman’s smirking smile—she might have thought Ruth a lesbian.
When she again turned onto the Bergstraat, Ruth walked slowly in the hope that the older prostitute would have had time to dress herself—or to un dress herself, as the case might be—and to position herself in her window. One of the younger, more beautiful prostitutes winked openly at Ruth, who felt strangely exhilarated by such a mockingly salacious proposition. The pretty girl’s wink was so distracting that Ruth nearly walked by the older prostitute without recognizing her; in truth, the prostitute’s transformation was so complete that she was an altogether different woman from the plain person with a shopping bag whom Ruth had seen on the street only minutes ago.
In the open doorway stood a vivacious, red-haired whore. Her winered lipstick matched her claret-colored bra and panties, which were all she wore except for a gold wristwatch and a pair of jet-black sling-backs with three-inch heels. The prostitute was now taller than Ruth.
The window curtains were open, revealing an old-fashioned barstool with a polished brass base, but the prostitute was in the midst of a domestic pose: she stood in her doorway with a broom, with which she had just swept from her threshold a single yellow leaf. She held the broom at the ready, offering a challenge to more leaves, and she carefully looked Ruth over, from her hair to her shoes—as if Ruth were standing in the Bergstraat in her underwear and high heels and the prostitute were a conservatively dressed housewife dutifully attending to her chores. That was when Ruth realized that she’d stopped walking, and that the red-haired prostitute had nodded to her with an inviting smile, which—as Ruth had not yet found the courage to speak—was growing quizzical.
“Do you speak English?” Ruth blurted.
The prostitute seemed more amused than taken aback. “I don’t have a problem with English,” she said. “I don’t have a problem with lesbians, either.”
“I’m not a lesbian,” Ruth told her.
“That’s all right, too,” the prostitute replied. “Is it your first time with a woman? I know what to do about that.”
“I don’t want to do anything,” Ruth quickly stated. “I just want to talk with you.”
The prostitute became uncomfortable—as if “talk” were in a category of aberrant behavior, short of which she drew the line. “You have to pay more for that,” the redhead said. “Talk can go on for a long time.”
Ruth was nonplussed by the attitude that seemingly any sexual activity would be preferable to conversation. “Oh, of course I’ll pay you for your time,” Ruth told the redhead, who was scrutinizing Ruth meticulously. But it was not Ruth’s body that the prostitute was assessing; what interested her was how much money Ruth had paid for her clothes.
“It costs seventy-five guilders for five minutes,” the redhead said; she had correctly estimated that Ruth wore unimaginative but expensive clothes.
Ruth unzipped her purse and peered into her wallet at the unfamiliar bills. Was seventy-five guilders about fifty dollars? It struck Ruth as a lot of money for a five-minute conversation. (For what the prostitute usually provided—in the same amount of time, or less—it seemed insufficient compensation.)
“My name is Ruth,” Ruth said nervously. She extended her hand, but the redhead laughed; instead of shaking hands, she pulled Ruth into her small room by the sleeve of her leather jacket. When they were both inside, the prostitute locked the door and closed the window curtains; her strong perfume in such a confined area was nearly as overpowering as the redhead’s near-nakedness.
The room itself was all in red. The heavy curtains were a shade of maroon; the rug, a blood-red broadloom, gave off the faded odor of carpet cleaner; the bedspread, which neatly covered a twin-size bed, was of an old-fashioned, rose-petal pattern; the pillowcase for the solitary pillow was pink. And the towel, which was the size of a bath towel and a different shade of pink from the pillowcase, was folded perfectly in half and covered the center of the bed—no doubt to protect the bedspread. On a chair beside the tidy, serviceable bed stood a stack of these pink towels; they looked clean, if slightly shabby—just like the room.
The small red room was ringed with mirrors; there were almost as many mirrors, at as many unwelcome angles, as there were at the hotel’s health club. And the light in the room was so dim that, each time Ruth took a step, she saw a shadow of herself either retreating or advancing—or both. (The mirrors, of course, also reflected a multitude of prostitutes.)
The prostitute sat down on her bed in the exact center of the towel, without needing to look where she was sitting. She crossed her ankles, supporting her feet by the spikes of her heels, and leaned forward with her hands on her thighs; it was a pose of long experience, which pushed her pert, well-formed breasts forward, exaggerated her cleavage, and allowed Ruth a view of her small, purplish nipples through the claret-colored mesh of her demi-bra. Her bikini panties elongated the narrow V of her crotch and exposed the stretch marks on the prostitute’s pouting stomach; she’d clearly had children, or at least one child.
The redhead indicated a lumpy easy chair, where Ruth was supposed to sit. The chair was so soft that Ruth’s knees touched her breasts when she leaned forward; she needed to cling to the armrests with both hands in order to avoid the appearance of lolling on her back.
“The chair works better for blow jobs,” the prostitute told her. “My name is Dolores,” the redhead added, “but my friends call me Rooie.”
“Rooie?” Ruth repeated, trying not to think of the number of blow jobs that had been performed in the cracked-leather chair.
“It means ‘Red,’ ” said Rooie.
“I see,” Ruth said, edging herself forward in the blow-job chair. “As it turns out, I’m writing a story,” Ruth began, but the prostitute quickly stood up from her bed.
“You didn’t say you were a journalist,” Rooie Dolores said. “I don’t talk to journalists.”
“I’m not a journalist!” Ruth cried. (My, how that accusation stung!) “I’m a novelist . I write books, the kind one makes up. I just need to be sure the details are right.”
“ What details?” Rooie asked. She wouldn’t sit down on the bed; she paced. Her movements allowed the novelist to see some additional aspects of the prostitute’s carefully appointed workplace. A small sink was mounted to an interior wall; beside it was a bidet. (There were several more bidets in the mirrors, of course.) On a ta
ble between the bidet and the bed was a box of tissues and a roll of paper towels. A white-enameled tray with a hospital aura held both the familiar and some un familiar lubricants and jellies, and a dildo of an uncomfortable size. Like the tray, of a similar hospital or doctor’s-office whiteness, was a wastebasket with a lid—the kind that was opened by stepping on a foot pedal. Through a partially open door, Ruth saw the darkened WC; the toilet, with a wooden seat, was flushed with a pull chain. And by the standing lamp with the scarlet stained-glass shade, a table next to the blow-job chair held a clean, empty ashtray and a wicker basket full of condoms.
These were among the details that Ruth needed, together with the shallowness of the room’s wardrobe closet. The few dresses and nightgowns, and a leather halter top, could not hang at right angles to the closet’s back wall; the clothes were twisted diagonally on their hangers, as if they were prostitutes attempting to show themselves at a more flattering angle.
The dresses and the nightgowns, not to mention the leather halter top, were entirely too youthful for a woman of Rooie’s age. But what did Ruth know about dresses or nightgowns? She rarely wore the former, and she preferred to sleep in a pair of panties and an oversize T-shirt. (As for a leather halter top, she’d never considered wearing one of those.)