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due. We have to eat.
    How do you know you have a lunatic on your hands? It’s in their eyes. If he looks at you too long and there’s nothing going on inside his head, you have a potential problem. Now, most johns, they get excited looking at you. They breathe heavy. Their eyes glaze over. Maybe they’re panting. Any of this, it shows in their eyes.
    I’ve seen it a couple of times when the eyes lay as flat as the desert. One time I went along with it, even though I was thinking I shouldn’t. Even though warning bells were going off inside my head.
    I needed the cash. It was that simple. We had a week or two of rain and the rent was due. I went against my better judgment.
    It turns out this guy needed more than twenty minutes of my best work and still there was nothing to show for it. First he’s embarrassed, then mad. He starts yelling that I’m no good, that he wants his money back.
    In a circumstance like this, the last thing you do is complain. Instead, you back off easy. I said, I guess I’m just not your lucky number tonight. I guess I lost my golden touch.
    I told him, “I had the same problem just the other night. I guess it’s time I found myself another career.”
    And maybe laugh about it, like it’s nothing.
    Then you get out of there. Quick.
    That’s how I handled it. The other times I had a psycho asking me for it, I walked away. No thank you, polite as can be. And kept walking.
    Any job has one or two things about it you don’t like. You put up with it because it comes as a package deal.
    That’s how I look at the cops. As a minor inconvenience. They come, they get you to offer them a good thing, they arrest you. You’re in juvie a month or two, in foster care for less, then back to square one.
    The finances are messed up. All for him and none for you. It seems like I get my rent paid, buy groceries, stockings, a pair of working shoes, and there’s nothing left. Meanwhile, Manny’s got a cream car and silk shirts. These things don’t get by me.
    Most of the time I think, Well, look at him, he’s got fifteen girls he’s running interference for. That’s a big job. At least he doesn’t hit me. He isn’t some masochistic SOB, and I should be grateful for that. But one day I’m getting out. Moving on to something better.
    I’m going to get on a service. I’ve got the looks for it. I’ve got the business sense. I knew some girls who made it into the big time. Made top dollar, and kept half of everything they pulled in. I knew a girl who had a credit card machine in her apartment. Visa, Mastercard, American Express. She took it all. And the work, cream of the crop.
    So it wasn’t all bad. There was room for advancement, if you had what it took to get ahead.
    That’s what I was looking for. A way to the top. I kept my eyes open, too. I wasn’t out there thinking of the moment and nothing more. I thought about my future.
    I thought of myself as a commodity. American made. I thought, Somebody will come by who can’t resist the packaging.
    And then it was
¡Adiós! ¡Hasta la vista!
    That’s the way it works. Someone likes what he sees, and BAM! You’re outta there.
    It was like treading water, waiting for that to happen. It was like any job, with things you didn’t like about it, and fringe benefits that made it worth sticking around for a while.
    This is my song. I made it up myself. They let me in the library, the nurses who liked my attitude, me wanting to get ready for my moment in the sun, my first group and having something to say for myself.
    My song says it all, my little rap better than anything Latifah comes up with. This is how I was, when I was on the street:
    I’m the American Dream.
    I’m your inspiration.
    Your destination.
    I’m a woman of independent means.
    I have it all:
    Liberty;
libertad; liberación.
    I’m the American flag.
    I’m a franchise.
    A lawless indiscretion.
    Outspoken, downright shameless;
    I’m loose.
    I’m redemption.
    The key to your