June, 1975
In the dead hours of the night, in a classy brothel at Wilson avenue swarming with alcohol and sex, Helen Ipswitch, sleepy-eyed, reluctantly wore her make-up. It was going to be for her first client for the night, and hopefully her last—she had obliged her manager to do this on a last-time basis after tendering her resignation two days ago. Motherhood could change a lot, a whole lot more when it came unplanned. Nursing a baby at twenty was like a truck hitting her at 180m/hr. Although she earned a decent living as a middle-class prostitute, she never got herself to abort the beautiful wonder growing inside her. Her blunt unwillingness had shocked her colleagues—getting pregnant on the job was bad PR (and bad PR meant no money)—and caused the idiot she called her boyfriend, who was responsible for the pregnancy, abandon her. He had severed all contact with her on discovering she was unwilling to go through the abortion session he had booked with a doctor friend of his. How irresponsible! Now she's left with a cute ten month old girl she had kissed goodnight as she lay peacefully asleep in her cot before leaving for work. She smacked her lips as the red lipstick settled perfectly, giving her face a more stunning look. She loved what she saw in the dress mirror standing before her. She closed her make-up kit—a lipstick and brown powder—and threw it into her purse. Still looking at the mirror, she was reminded again how effortlessly beautiful she was, her big dove eyes that held so much charm, her aquiline nose, her tender lips, her deep gold of long hair that tumbled down her shoulders. She was not part of those that used make-up to fill up for something absent, a temporary façade to deceive; she only amplified a little what already was. As she adjusted the single strap of the little green dress that shrunk far away from her shimmering laps, the door opened and a woman in her mid fifties walked in. She left the door open yet made it invisible to Helen as her broad body, wrapped inside an Arabian dress, made the dimly-lit room look like a squeezed matchbox.
"Lloyd will be here in five minutes," the manager, popularly known as Madame Hunt by her workers and clients alike, announced, giving Helen a satisfied look-over. " He's in the force—police. Top of the bunch. Give him the treat of his life."
"A police for retirement huh?" Helen said with a sardonic chuckle.
"Thank you for doing this. I don't know if I can't get any other girl like you." Madame Hunt said, a sullen wistfulness in her voice.
"Sure Madame, you certainly would." Helen croaked.
She knew Madame Hunt would, it might take some time but Madame's connections in the web of recruiting young immigrant girls ran deep and wide. Right now, she thought of raising her daughter, and raising her into a decent woman. Not the woman she had become. And that was the reason she accepted the receptionist job at Wintess, a hotel that just opened in town. Though the pay was nothing to be compared to the huge sums Madame Hunt gave her as one of her elite workers, it gave her a sense of fulfillment towards her goal in raising her daughter right. Immorality cannot produce morality. A sudden feeling to go close to the other woman and rub her massive shoulders in comfort overpowered her. But before she could move her red stilettos, Madame Hunt had whirled around with a quick nod of her square head covered with a shawl and squeezed past the door, shutting it behind her. Helen exhaled loudly, as though opening her own reserve of air she had stored as Madame Hunt sucked in all the air in the room.
She had barely sat on the neatly arranged bed when the door creaked open and her Client entered. Lloyd.
When she heard Madame Hunt use top of the bunch to describe him, her mind had whipped up a fiftyish old man with saggy beer belly and bald patches of graying hair—she knows promotion in the force—especially the police force—came with a lot of years of hard work, and of course dirty work. She had not expected a drop dead handsome blond that looked like a model that was cut out of a Calvin Klein advert. Not bad for retirement, she thought as she got up and struck her most seductive pose ever, placing her unbelievably straight right leg on the bed and running her fingers on her lap. Lloyd could only drool and feel his knees wobbling. He dashed towards her before he would collapse. Then came the kiss. She seldom kissed her clients except they paid extra for it—and Madam Hunt's give-him-the-treat-of-his-life speech meant Lloyd had. But It was that kiss, so smelly, so revolting, so unbearable, that made Helen pull away. Did he drink a mixture of alcohol and garlic with spoilt raw egg?
"Gosh you stink." She said, wiping her lips and standing up from the bed.
"What is that to you bitch. I am here to satisfy myself so better come in here and give me what I paid for!" Lloyd ordered, naked as the surprise in his face.
"Hey mister, mind your language," Helen said, folding her arms across her chest. "The token you paid doesn't give you the license to insult me. Do you hear?"
" Bitches are for Brothels and Brothels are for bitches. What's the fucking insult in that? I'm not gonna take this shit anymore, get on here now you fucking whore!"
"Go call your godforsaken mother that!" Helen exploded, her shoulders heaving with anger. How dare this stinking stranger talk to her like that. She was done. She was going to call Madame Hunt to get this skunk out of her bed. As she marched to the dresser where her phone lay, her eyes caught a sight that made her froze.
" How dare you insult my mother!" Lloyd barked as he stood up, his pistol pointing at her.
Helen threw her hands in the air and bent her head, trembling with fear.
"I, I…I am sorry…I didn't…"
"Fuck it! You shouldn't have mentioned my mother bitch! You shouldn't."
" Please, I…I have a…bab…"
Lloyd pulled the trigger.