I was cruising the slums, looking for pussy-for-hire, when I had to slam on my brakes. I almost got rear-ended by a guy in a Suburban that was obviously looking for the same sort of thing I was. I waved him around, and he sped off with a mouthed insult about my driving.
I couldn't help it. I saw someone I knew. Carla Dawes. From high school.
She had been a cheerleader, just seven years ago, a hot brunette with lovely tits and an ass that approached divine. She had always been on the arm of some jock, strutting around with her nose and perky tits in the air, not willing to give a geek like me the time of day. I would have begged her for a date, had she not been so clearly out of my league. Many a night her face and perfect body had figured prominently in my onanism. She had been a year ahead of me, a perfect princess, a prom queen runner-up, destined for glory.
She didn't look that glorious now.
She was wearing a too-tight halter-top that displayed her primary assets admirably. She wore Daisy Duke cut-offs and high heels and carried a leopard skin handbag. Her once-gorgeous hair looked a little greasy and needed trimming. But it was her once-angelic face that drew my eye. It was worn and tired, carried too much makeup. I knew that look, the half-lidded eyes and the slack-jaw expression. I didn't need to see the marks in her arm to know that she was a drugged-out whore.
Carla Dawes. Crack whore. I almost laughed at the irony.
I couldn't help myself. I pulled up to the curb opposite the abandoned building she was working, and rolled down the window. She was at the window of the Jag before I came to a full and complete stop.
"Hey, gorgeous, wanna date?" she asked, a sly grin on her face. It was supposed to be sexy. It was a little pathetic.
"How much is a date going to cost me?"
"That depends on what you like, Sugar," she said, eyeing the car and figuring out how much she could soak me for. She still hadn't recognized me, which was golden.
"You ever take French in High School?"
"As a matter of fact, I was an A student! And I give lessons. Fifty bucks."
"Twenty."
"Now, Sugar, you know French is a hard language. My time is expensive."
"And you know that you aren't the only teacher in town. Twenty. Thirty if you're good."
"I don't have anything else going on, Sugar, so I guess I can give you a discount."
"Hop in," I said, unlocking the door. With a spring in her step that reminded me of her cheerleading career, she opened the door and slid into the passenger side. I didn't wait for her to buckle up. A wave of cheap knock-off perfume, the stuff they sell in the 'hood that is supposed to smell like expensive stuff, rolled over me and almost made me gag. "Where to?"
"Behind that old Food Lion," she said, pointing to an abandoned grocery store a block ahead. Then she sat back and drank in the leather-clad luxury of a $60,000.00 automobile. Probably remembering better days.