Six-dollar stockings and she went through them like kindling, but the right
had been hard earned and so the small luxury brought her no shame. Pretty
little whore pulled up a stocking nice and slow; not for worry of runs, just for
savoring the slide of silk against skin. It had been a long road to the sweet
life of whoring at Arlington Hall.

Opportunities of employment for young girls in the Parish came down to
whoring or factory and field work. Whoring paid better than the others --
and wasn't much dirtier all told -- so the choice was bitter but obvious for
pretty tan gals of color like Diphtheria Morningstar. So at the tender age of
fifteen, Diphtheria had rented herself a crib on Marais Street and got busy.

When a gal is working the cribs, it means she rents a tiny room in a shotgun
row house at the dirty inner crust of the district, puts out a red lantern and
pays rent to a landlord who doubles as pimp. The room is so small that her
bed must be narrow, so narrow that it can't hold two unless one is on top of
the other, which is the idea anyway. A bed, a stove for heat, a washstand
and two lanterns; one regular and one red. The red one to draw in flies.

Most of her memories of that place were reduced to blur by now, but the
wallpaper in that crib had remained etched in her brain with perfect clarity
all these years. Still had dreams about that wallpaper. Curved burgundy lines
joined by small x's at the ends, making shapes that could pass for either edges
of stormclouds or seagulls in flight or razor-wire fencing -- depending on her
mood and disposition. The paper itself was dingy yellow, curling brown
towards the ceiling and warped from leaks. All the cribs had their leaks. "If
it got no leak then it wouldn't exactly be a crib," Oscar the Pimp once told
her by way of excuse for not fixing hers.

Money is short but steady in the cribs. This is the low budget world of whoring
where sailors can have a go for a dollar or less, usually counted out in the form
of nickels and dimes. "Crib-nickels" they called them -- sailors rarely holding
paper money in their pockets. The higher class bordellos of Basin Street are
for the mid-to-high society men who want more than just to fuck; they want
music and atmosphere and a woman's tender touch (along with tender lies)
before their britches come down. It's the tenderness and music that costs extra
-- you can't expect such fancy things for no combination of crib-nickels.  

In the cribs, the pay is low and tenderness is dispensed at the whore's
discretion, but traffic is high and the nickels can really add up if a girl works
long hours.

Five solid years in that crib on Marais.

Five years turning sheets over between customers because she didn't have
time to wash. Five years of watching other girls get sick, then die of flesh
plague, wondering when her own turn might come up -- hoping, on some
days, that it might be sooner rather than later. Five years of being handled
rough by sailors, listening to their nasty mouths and feeling their fists when
they couldn't get it hard after six months eating sea rations spiked with
saltpetre. Five years wiping tears from the faces of women who had to
decide between a "trick baby" and a visit to Doctor Jack for a "cure." Five
years of phony smiling, leaning half naked through a window saying, "C'mon
pretty papa, come take a li'l nap with mama." Drawing in flies. Needing their
nickels. Hating their grins. Wishing them harm.

Sometimes doing harm.

During her time in the cribs, Diphtheria Morningstar had kept a knife under her
mattress. Seven-inch blade with a four-inch wooden handle, a knife meant for
gutting fish. Just in case, for self defense.

Diphtheria knew better than to use a blade simply because a john might give
her a smack on the jaw or skip without paying. Oscar would turn her over
to the cops quick as a whip for cutting a john over something so small. But if
her life was in actual and immediate peril, well, that was a different matter. A
pimp can't make a red penny off a dead whore, and so Oscar tended towards
sympathy regarding humanitarian plights that might result in lost profits.

The bruises around her throat had been proof enough for Oscar on the night
she'd used the fish knife. The bruises were less from pressing than from the
rub of rough, callused hands, but those hands had meant to kill Diphtheria
Morningstar all the same. Oscar had been a real sport; dumping that sailor's
body in the Bayou St. John and bringing around a clean mattress with a new
set of sheets that same night. Oscar had snuffed out Diphtheria's red lantern
while the night was still young, told her to rest up, feel better, don't worry
about the cops -- and even gave her a dixie (a ten dollar bill) to keep her
mouth shut. Oscar had taken care of everything the night she had killed the
sailor -- and by the next morning it was like it never happened. All gone
except for the remembering.

Remembering his limp dick flop against her thigh, only getting harder as his
fingers tightened around her neck, his eyes feeding on her terror, filling his
terrible, handsome face with a look of cold confidence and dumb power, his
complete control over her life and death being the key to his sexual success,
to his defeat of the saltpetre in his veins. She remembered looking into those
wide black pupils, eyes like a shark, and seeing death. A part of her beaten
soul welcomed the sight.She remembered the ease of giving up, slipping into
sleep, watching those depthless eyes fade and melt into the flickering gray of
his face, a concrete statue come to deliver her from the crib. Was this man
her knight in shining armor? Come to take her from this awful place, to show
her something better?

No, he wasn't that. Wasn't that at all. But it was true he had delivered her
from the crib. At least for a moment.

For a moment she was gone.

Diphtheria remembered touching death with her fingertips, caressing its cheek,
kissing its nose, swimming in its thick waters, its music tickling her ears. The
music was familiar and telling, its voice gentle and firm. It was the sound of
Buddy's horn, the same strange sound it made the night her father died, the
sound it made while Buddy's fingers splayed and stretched above the instrument,
impossibly; not touching the keys at all. The music spoke to her dying mind the
night she touched death; said that love was life, not death. Not now, not yet.

And so, before her heart had beat its last, she had reached beneath the
mattress.The sailor's grip on her throat didn't loosen right off, had even
tightened some as the knife dug in, as Diphtheria cranked the handle back
and forth, tearing at the sailor from between and beneath thick ribs. His cold
look of confidence had slowly yielded to fear as his insides ripped and mingled,
and she felt him go limp inside her before any meaningful biological transaction
could be completed. As crimson and black spread from between his shoulders
to touch warm air, the color crept from his face. Still, his grip failed to loosen
-- and Diphtheria's mind went black once more.

In time she awoke, the sailor cold and motionless, his weight a vast, dead
stone across her body. With much effort she rolled him off of and out of her
-- wedging his naked bulk between wall and mattress edge. Sat at the foot of
the bed, thinking. Not crying, not afraid, not proud, not feeling lucky to be
alive -- not feeling much of anything. Just thinking.

The sailor was still bleeding and therefore not yet dead, but she decided it
would be best not to interrupt the dying process. She waited for the blood
to quit its shimmering trickle, waited for its metamorphosis from shiny motion
to shiny stillness. Watched him die there on the bed, watched the bright red
life vacate his body and ruin her only mattress. When she was sure his life was
done, she walked out slow and knocked hard on the door of her neighbor
and crib colleague, Hattie Covington.

Diphtheria's pounding had caught Hattie in mid-trick. Upon opening the door
Hattie looked mighty perturbed -- until she saw the blood on Diphtheria's
skimpy fuck-me-silly-in-my-crib-for-pocket-change dressing gown. Hattie's
john had jumped up from the bed; riled as hell, buck naked, swinging his fists
in the air and ready to let loose -- when he too noted the bright red. Got quiet
all the sudden -- then got his pants on in a big hurry. Left a whole dollar on
Hattie's washstand before leaving.

Hattie fetched Oscar. Oscar erased the night. Erased all but the remembering.

She had killed the sailor during her fifth year working that Marais Street crib.
And so five years in the cribs had added up to that. A series of close calls, a
long train ride called misery, and a pitiful, endless stream of dirty crib-nickels.