Madam Read Online Free Page B

away what was going on behind them. Eyes of mystery, Mama would say. Use them, Mary. Use them.
    A husky voice from outside the crib startled Mary from her thoughts. “Gettin’ on in time, Mary!”
    Yes, yes, Mary thought, quickly reminded that Venus Alley may well be on dry ground, but it wasn’t like the Swamp, where the whores looked out for one another. Here, it was everyone for herself. It didn’t matter a darn if a john were mid-action on top of Mary, not if her cribmate’s shift were due to begin. Someday, Mary told herself, she’d never have to hear Beulah Ripley’s voice at her door again.
    But for now, she didn’t let Beulah’s whining rush her. She brushed off her dirty feet and reached for her boots. In the right toe bed she’d hidden her burlap purse, and from that, she pulled out a little amber bottle of rose oil she’d purchased for a nickel at the apothecary. Removing its tiny cork, she tilted it upside down, using her finger as a stopper. With a dab on one side of her neck, then the other, she inhaled the brightness of the rosy scent. How nice to smell something fresh in this dank, close crib. For good measure, she dabbed some oil on her armpits before corking the bottle. She pressed her feet into her boots and was careful not to tug too hard as she hooked the threadbare laces. Then she hoisted her kip over her back.
    As expected, Beulah was hovering on the stoop, fists dug into her hips. Her dark hair, which was usually in dozens of tight braids, had been sheared close to her head ever since the lice had spread around her family. All Mary knew of Beulah’s people was that they were Negroes from the cotton plantations. Truth be told she barely knew much more about her own people, just that Mama’s father had been a young stowaway on a boat from Germany—as Mama would say, a fitting beginning to a low life.
    “Well, la de do!” Beulah said, giving Mary a smirk. “Pretty girl keepin’ time today.”
    Mary gave her a weary glance.
    “Why you keepin’ time today? Ain’t there no johns ’round?” Beulah taunted. “No ship come in?”
    “You want I can go find another trick and be a while,” Mary barked back.
    “Just that you been late three times already this week,” Beulah said with a wag of her finger. “Always actin’ like you’re above your raising.”
    Mary let out a sigh. “We’re all just tryin’ to earn a living.”
    Beulah snorted. “So the bossman can pour your livin’ down his throat?”
    Mary couldn’t have agreed more, but she didn’t let on. It was Philip Lobrano who held the crib in his name, and he liked to think he pimped Mary and Beulah even though business tended to come in with no help from him.
    “Bossman come collect your pay today?” Beulah asked.
    Mary shook her head.
    “Oh, he’ll be finding you,” Beulah warned, her eyes growing wide. “Saw him stumblin’ around, and he’s crazy with drink. Crazy Devil Man today. Lookin’ like something the dog’s been hidin’ under the porch.”
    The last thing Mary wanted to do was stick around knowing Lobrano had spent hours sidled up to a bottle of absinthe. She gave a nod to Beulah, for as much as each resented the other, they both shared the millstone of Lobrano. Beulah lifted her own kip onto her back and Mary moved past, stepping from the warped stoop of the crib onto Venus Alley.
    Venus Alley was really a street, though it was so narrow and cramped with row-to-row cribs that it had come to be called an alley—also seemed easier for johns to hide their illegal indiscretions on an alley as opposed to a wide-open street .
    Mary had long ago dulled her senses to Venus Alley. There was no way someone could work a place like this day after day without overlooking most of it. She no longer saw how potholes became film-covered pools of muck that sat and stank until the next rain. Or how rats scuttered about like they ruled the place, not even flinching when you stomped at them, their droppings, along with