'Does he have a feeling for the others?'

'He has a feeling for me,' she said.

'And anybody else?'

'He likes Sunny. Everybody likes Sunny, she's fun to be with. I don't know if he cares for her. Or Donna, I'm sure he doesn't care for Donna, but I don't think she cares for him either. I think that's strictly business on both sides. Donna, I don't think Donna cares for anybody. I don't think she knows there are people in the world.'

'How about Ruby?'

'Have you met her?' I hadn't. 'Well, she's like, you know, exotic. So he'd like that. And Mary Lou's very intelligent and they go to concerts and s.h.i.t, like Lincoln Center, cla.s.sical music, but that doesn't mean he has a feeling for her.'

She started to giggle. I asked her what was so funny. 'Oh, I just flashed that I'm the typical dumb hooker, thinks she's the only one the pimp loves. But you know what it is? I'm the only one he can relax with. He can come up here and take his shoes off and let his mind roll out. Do you know what a karmic tie is?'

'No.'

'Well, it has something to do with reincarnation. I don't know if you believe in that.'

'I never thought about it much.'

'Well, I don't know if I believe in it either, but sometimes I think Chance and I knew each other in another life. Not necessarily as lovers or man and wife or anything like that. Like we could have been brother and sister, or maybe he was my father or I was his mother. Or we could even have both been the same s.e.x because that can change from one lifetime to another. I mean we could have been sisters or something. Anything, really.'

The telephone cut into her speculations. She crossed the room to answer it, standing with her back to me, one hand propped against her hip. I couldn't hear her conversation. She talked for a moment or two, then covered the mouthpiece and turned to me.

'Matt,' she said, 'I don't want to ha.s.sle you, but do you have any idea how long we're gonna be?'

'Not long.'

'Like could I tell somebody it would be cool to come over in an hour?'

'No problem.'

She turned again, finished the conversation quietly, hung up. 'That was one of my regulars,' she said. 'He's a real nice guy. I told him an hour.'

She sat down again. I asked her if she'd had the apartment before she hooked up with Chance. She said she'd been with Chance for two years and eight months and no, before that she shared a bigger place in Chelsea with three other girls. Chance had had this apartment all ready for her. All she'd had to do was move into it.

'I just moved my furniture in,' she said. 'Except the waterbed. That was already here. I had a single bed that I got rid of. And I bought the Magritte poster, and the masks were here.' I hadn't noticed the masks and had to turn in my seat to see them, a grouping of three solemn ebony carvings on the wall behind me. 'He knows about them,' she said. 'What tribe made them and everything. He knows things like that.'

I said that the apartment was an unlikely one for the use being made of it. She frowned, puzzled.

'Most girls in the game live in doorman buildings,' I said. 'With elevators and all.'

'Oh, right. I didn't know what you meant. Yes, that's true.' She grinned brightly. 'This is something different,' she said. 'The johns who come here, they don't think they're johns.'

'How do you mean?'

'They think they're friends of mine,' she explained. 'They think I'm this s.p.a.cey Village chick, which I am, and that they're my friends, which they are. I mean, they come here to get laid, let's face it, but they could get laid quicker and easier in a ma.s.sage parlor, no muss no fuss no bother, dig? But they can come up here and take off their shoes and smoke a joint, and it's a sort of a raunchy Village pad, I mean you have to climb three flights of stairs and then you roll around in a waterbed. I mean, I'm not a hooker. I'm a girlfriend. I don't get paid. They give me money because I got rent to pay and, you know, I'm a poor little Village chick who wants to make it as an actress and she's never going to. Which I'm not, and I don't care much, but I still take dancing lessons a couple mornings a week and I have an acting cla.s.s with Ed Kovens every Thursday night, and I was in a showcase last May for three weekends in Tribeca. We did Ibsen, When We Dead Awake, and do you believe that three of my johns came?'

She chatted about the play, then began telling me how her clients brought her presents in addition to the money they gave her. 'I never have to buy any booze. In fact I have it to give away because I don't drink myself. And I haven't bought any gra.s.s in ages. You know who gets the best gra.s.s? Wall Street guys. They'll buy an ounce and we'll smoke a little and they'll leave me the ounce.' She batted her long lashes at me. 'I kind of like to smoke,' she said.

'I guessed that.'

'Why? Do I seem stoned?'

'The smell.'

'Oh, right. I don't smell it because I'm here, but when I go out and then I come back in, whew! It's like a friend of mine has four cats and she swears they don't smell, but the smell could knock you down. It's just that she's used to it.' She shifted in her seat. 'Do you ever smoke, Matt?'

'No.'

'You don't drink and you don't smoke, that's terrific. Can I get you another diet soda?'

'No thanks.'

'Are you sure? Look, would it bother you if I smoked a quick joint? Just to unwind a little.'

'Go ahead.'

'Because I've got this fellow coming over and it'll help me be in the mood.'

I told her it was fine with me. She fetched a plastic baggie of marijuana from a shelf over the stove and hand-rolled a cigarette with evident expertise. 'He'll probably want to smoke,' she said, and manufactured two more cigarettes. She lit one, put everything else away, and returned to the sling chair. She smoked the joint all the way down, chattering about her life between drags, finally stubbing the tiny roach and setting it aside for later. Her manner didn't change visibly for having smoked the thing. Perhaps she'd been smoking throughout the day and had been stoned when I arrived. Perhaps she just didn't show the effects of the drug, as some drinkers don't show their drinks.

I asked if Chance smoked when he came to see her and she laughed at the idea. 'He never drinks, never smokes. Same as you. Hey, is that where you know him from? Do you both hang out in a nonbar together? Or maybe you both have the same undealer.'

I managed to get the conversation back to Kim. If Chance didn't care for Kim, did Fran think she might have been seeing someone else?'

'He didn't care for her,' she said. 'You know something? I'm the only one he loves.'

I could taste the gra.s.s in her speech now. Her voice was the same, but her mind made different connections, switching along paths of smoke.

'Do you think Kim had a boyfriend?'

'I have boyfriends. Kim had tricks. All of the others have tricks.'

'If Kim had someone special - '

'Sure, I can dig it. Somebody who wasn't a john, and that's why she wanted to split with Chance. That what you mean?'

'It's possible.'

'And then he killed her.'

'Chance?'

'Are you crazy? Chance never cared enough about her to kill her. You know how long it'd take to replace her? s.h.i.t.'

'You mean the boyfriend killed her.'

'Sure.'