Then someone knocked on the door of my room.

"El guapo! Correo!"

I opened the door to one of the transvest.i.tes with half her makeup off. I was pretty sure her name was Daisy. She handed me a letter. I opened it.

Just a date and a time and a place. A little quote beneath as a flirtatious f.u.c.k-you: "I'm a romantic; a sentimental person thinks things will last, a romantic person hopes against hope they won't."

-F. Scott Fitzgerald She had cigarette-stain eyes. I prefer dark eyes even though most girls who possess them dismiss them as common. They aren't. You look into brown eyes, while you look at all the other colors. With no buildup or wind-down, apart from us nearly f.u.c.king, we'd said good-bye. She'd just finished doing some handstands for no particular reason.

I went to see her at the cafe but she'd stopped working there. I was leaning over a table writing in a notebook when I heard some roller skates smack the pavement. I looked up and saw her.

"Can I sit down?"

I stood up and we looked at each other for a while. I pulled out her chair and she sat down.

"The first time we met you were writing a story about a guy who falls in love with a prost.i.tute."

I nodded.

"It's strange, it happened to me."

"Hold on a second." I tried to process this. "You fell in love with a gigolo?"

"No." She smiled. "I was the hooker."

"When?"

"For the last five years."

"You were a hooker when we met?"

"Yeah."

"But you were working here."

"Part time."

"But you were in school."

"How do you think I paid my tuition?"

"Your stepdad was a dentist!"

"It's creepy you remember so much. Are you in love with me or something? I came so close to telling you but, you know, it just sort of took care of itself."

"Well," I said, "I still don't even know your name."

In Madrid my phone rang.

"You know who this is?"

"You're the only person who has my phone number."

"I'm at Plaza Mayor."

"Okay. You're close by."

"I'm high on ecstasy."

"That's great."

"I'm drunk, too."

"Come over."

"You're sure you know who this is?"

"I already answered that question."

"Where do you live?"

I gave her my address.

"I'll call you when I leave."

4 a.m. Phone rings.

"Still up?"

"No, I'm fast asleep."

"I've been dancing all night. I just got out of a swimming pool five minutes ago. I stink. Still want me to come over?"

"Get over here."

"Positive?"

4:15 a.m. Phone rings.

"I'm getting the heebie-jeebies. I haven't talked with you in a really long time. This is really weird."

"Don't worry. I have strawberries. It's fine."

"You have ... strawberries?"

"Exactly."

"You have strawberries?"

"Exactly. Nothing weird. Bowl of strawberries. Very wholesome arrangement. Everybody's happy."

"Okay."

"Just come over."

There was a pause and I felt something in my brain creak.

"I don't think I-" Raped, pregnant, aborted pause. "Okay. I'll be there in a second."

A few minutes later I saw her get out of a cab on the Gran Va. I dug into my pocket and pulled out my keys and flicked them out the window. I heard them connect with the pavement.

She entered the room and sat on the floor and grabbed a handful of strawberries and smoked from a pouch of Drum tobacco.

She didn't say much at first. Every ten minutes or so she'd go to the bathroom and leave the door open while she p.i.s.sed. After the first time I leaned over to watch her.

"Why don't you close the door?" I asked.

"Why should I?"

This seemed to me a very sensible answer.

"I don't know."

"I'm peeing."

"I know that."

"Welllll?"

"Well, do you ever close the door?"

"Do you want me to?"

"No. It's just weird you're so..."

She wiped herself and flushed the toilet.

"What?"

"I don't know," I said. "It's intimate."

She came back over to the carpet and sat cross-legged, facing me.

She wouldn't say anything.

"Tell me how you got into it," I asked, feeling like a jacka.s.s.

"Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman."

I gave her a look.

"My sister."

"Is she still working?"

"No," she said, pressing a strawberry against her lips. "She was a meth addict. So was my mom. But my sister kicked it and got out of turning tricks."

"So you worked on the street?"

"No. I worked at places they have set up for it."

"Which ones?"

"A bunch."

"What kind of type goes for it?"

She smiled. "There's no type. It's everybody. n.o.body."

"Did you f.u.c.k celebrities?"

"Sometimes. Sure."

"Only Vancouver?"

"No," she said. "Other places. They give you an apartment. They set you up with a room. I'd write my essays or study and the johns would come over and I'd buzz them in. They'd leave and I'd go back to the books until the next one arrived. I worked at a place in j.a.pan for a while. Hostess thing. I didn't go over there for it. But it finds you."

"How'd you get out?" I asked. Are we on Larry f.u.c.king King? KISS HER.

"Roll me another cigarette." She waited until I'd finished and handed it over and lit it for her. "You do that nicely. I always was a little crazy for how you roll and prepare those things. Well, a john approached me and I could see it in his eyes."

"See what?"

"It happens to these guys. They fall for you."

"But you never fall for them?"

"Anyway-this guy was gray, gray but not ugly. He was wearing an expensive but all wrinkled-up suit. And he came over to the bed and sat down beside me. He told me I didn't belong there. And I was pretty cold about it and told him if he was feeling something for me it was probably a useful thing to know that for me love was money."

"You still believe that?" I asked.

"No," she responded. "But he said that was all right. It was fine. He took a second looking at the ground, then turned back to me while he reached into his briefcase. He told me he had money. Then he asked what my price was to get out. I asked him to repeat himself-just to be a b.i.t.c.h about it-and he found the checkbook in that at-ta-che briefcase of his. I couldn't breathe when I saw it. Sorry. I have to pee."

She tried to get up but stumbled. Behind her I saw a wallet drop from her pocket. She struggled to get to her feet and made it, albeit a little woozily. When her back was to me, I swiped the wallet. She had the bathroom door open so I couldn't case it.