Eight Pieces on Prostitution Read Online Free PDF Page A

ankles.
    â€˜Give me a hand to get out of this.’ Harry rested one of his own hands on the massage table, while the other felt its way over button holes and fastenings.
    â€˜Would you like oil or powder at the finish?’ Maria asked him, ignoring the request.
    Harry said that perhaps powder would be more in keeping. ‘If you would wear white,’ he added, ‘or a blonde wig, or the mask of a young virgin, I could submerge myself in my part with greater vigour.’
    Maria reassured Harry that she would think about it, and told him to shut his eyes.
    Night was falling outside the parlour. When Harry opened his eyes again, they gleamed yellow in the dusk. Maria was reluctant to switch on electric lights, know they would accentuate the worn patches on the cod-piece, and on every piece of furniture as well. She thought about the principle of disorder in the universe, and it was as though this principle floated above the massage table like the curse of an angry god. She felt that someone, somewhere out there, was preparing for them – for herself and Harry - a disjointed, disorderly end.
    Sometimes Harry came to the parlour disguised as any other client, in a grey suit and white shirt, but more often he got himself up as a combination of historical characters, bearing on his skinny body the knick-knacks of the centuries. It amused Maria to think how long the dressing-up had taken him, and how impatient he was to divest himself of his costume once inside.
    Striding the boards like any period actor, taking his cue from some internal clock, Harry’s short legs tripped over the uneven floorboards, down the corridor that led nowhere but to the bathroom and the ancient shower. He paid Maria first because that was the rule. When he asked her why she kept the day’s takings in the oven, and she told him, ‘For the fairies,’ Harry nodded with a serious expression.
    Maria, whose daily experience was that of being inhabited by the body of another, saw landlords and tenants everywhere. She worried that her landlord was about to put the rent up. She’d been warned by, and had tried to ignore, the glitter of teaching her a lesson that shone in her landlord’s eyes. Maria watched coffee laced with brandy and hot orange tea disappear into the bodies of her clients and marvelled at the disappearance, the internal workings of it all.
    Outside, Maria was like a person who wore stage make-up on the street. She did not ask why mad Harry had chosen her; some days it seemed to her a miracle that there weren’t more like him; others that Harry was the miracle. He made her laugh. She did not ask why he put such a variety of obstacles between them, or why he returned faithfully every second week. For a man whose preparations for love were unusually elaborate, Harry had little to say; most of his sayings Maria knew by heart.
    Harry liked to sing. ‘Oh, little sail boat floating in the bay,’ he sang in a strong discordant baritone, ‘carry me away to my own countree.’
    Harry side-stepped on nimble feet, daring Maria to chase him round the table; he was slippery, though she had not yet oiled his skin that was as porous as a child’s.
    Curious, against her better judgment, Maria asked him who he was, and he replied, ‘I’m Harry Cod the Cod-maker.’ He smiled, delighted both with her question and his answer.
    Maria heard, with her inner ear, a military band tuning up, so in time were her fingers, then the movements of her body, on the rug laid ceremoniously underneath the massage table, with the little flat cushions shining white in the shadows of its legs.
    Harry called the parlour home, as he arched over her, as he sang in praise.
    They listened to the rain, standing by the window, Harry frowning at the thought of spots on his velvet jacket, Maria’s mind stretching out towards some backyard of a future house where rent was not a problem, and where clients were