Hooker Street

Ten more minutes, I’ll wait ten more minutes, that's all’. She’d waited for half an hour, but why has he been delayed? So she waited a while longer just in case. She stood underneath the street lamp where Mark could see her as he came around the corner, not the best place to wait. It was a street used by prostitutes, walking up and down, and then to stand under the lamp where a likely punter could see what they were buying. Some were small girls, others were tall but mainly very young, some barely out of school, dressed to kill to look just that bit older to make the legal age of sixteen. This was a well-used and trodden road, their pimps passed by and watched their young prodigies from a safe distance, making sure that each and every punter paid their fifteen bob, bringing back whatever money they might have made that night, but tonight it had started to rain, and the business of buying and selling would be slow. The girls would cover their legs and short skirts that showed plenty of thigh and bottom. The old 'swank' supe’d up cars, the bobbing dice and the mock leopard covered seats that were to denote affluence and attract the gullible little tartlets that passed by, ready to be lured into the sordid game that made their pimps rich, and the girls grateful for the pittance that was just enough to get their fags and cider, which kept them sane and keen enough to go on to the next punter. The drug pushers were out touting and selling their wares, mingling with the rough and the smooth, the poor little rich kids that could pay for more than they could manage to use (purple hearts), but then the world looked much prettier through rose coloured glasses, and on they would go to a club or two showing off what Daddy had bought them for their birthday. The Porsche or the new Merc, only to get behind the wheel and fall asleep in a purple haze and wrap it round a tree, but then again, it was only money, and daddy would pay for another anyway. So, the lamplight was a good spot for all to meet and see, but it was not a place for a decent young lady to wait. The police that often patrolled turned a blind eye to their goings on, unless they were bored or had just finished their pie. Then they would jump out of their little Ford Anglia to move them on with a warning not to return, although they knew that the same warning would be issued to the same faces again tomorrow. The girls who waited regularly knew when to expect the bobby on their beat to appear, usually before they finished their shift and went back to the station with their note pads full of familiar girls` names, same ol’ same ol’. Their day was done. The drunks sat slumped in doorways singing muddled incoherent songs waiting for the night to sleep, ‘perchance to dream’, only to wake up to the rustle of someone close by trying to steal or rummage through their worn-out ruck sack that they guarded with their life. Their shoes and the bottle that were tucked into their bedding, cuddled close in a safe place from chance predators that passed by silently, to pick like vultures any unguarded half emptied cider bottle or other drinkable intoxicating juice. It would have been another sleepless night unless the liquor had taken its drowsy effect, then their precious belongings would be gone without trace. It was a jungle out there, they would wake up sodden in their urine, to live in the same stench again walk the same mile, same routine same putrid smell day after day after day, bumming a fag or a left-over burger, rummaging in the bins that were over spilled and smelly…