Read The Long Good Boy for Free Online Page A

run me over soon as look at me. Get it?”
    â€œI do,” I told her. And I did.
    â€œFar as they’re concerned, we’re all—” She moved the air with her hand.
    â€œInterchangeable?”
    â€œTrash.”
    Walking back toward Washington Street, I remembered seeing an article in the Horatio Street newsletter the winter before saying some of the tranny hookers were living at the Gansevoort pier, burrowing into the piles of salt used to melt the ice after a storm or getting into the trucks, sleeping there, nowhere else to do it, just trying like hell to survive however they could.
    The first of the delivery trucks was parked around the corner, hacked up perpendicular to the sidewalk. There was a patrol car just turning off Fourteenth Street, heading our way, doing a slow crawl. Chi Chi saw it, too. She grabbed my arm and pulled me across the street, pushing me back under the sidewalk bridge. Then she turned to face west, pulling up her collar, like that was going to fool New York’s finest.
    â€œOkay, boys. Sun’s almost up,” came blasting over the loudspeaker. “Back under your rocks. NOW.”
    Chi Chi’s arm in mine, we walked west, into the wind off the river, my face feeling numb in no time.
    â€œHe engaged, Vinnie,” she whispered as we passed Keller’s. “And she’s like very religious, his fiancée.”
    I nodded.
    â€œShe’s a virgin.”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œMeans she never done it.”
    I whistled. “No shit?”
    She shrugged, her shoulder rubbing against mine. Aside from the hair, we were the same height, at least with those heels she was wearing.
    â€œAnyways, that’s what he says she says. Him and me, it’s jus’ until they get married and he gets to do her.”
    Under cover of darkness I rolled my eyes. “Touching.”
    â€œNo, really.” She laughed. “I give him a month. No, two weeks. Then he’s on my cell, bobbing and weaving, telling me a tall one, why he’s gotta see me.”
    â€œFirst Rosalinda, now you? A long engagement.”
    â€œShe wants a June wedding, a long white gown, six bridesmaids, he said, the whole package.”
    â€œSo how did this happen, Rosalinda was killed and you started doing Vinnie?”
    She opened her mouth, but I stopped her.
    â€œThe truth this time, since obviously you do kiss and tell. At least, you tell. Otherwise, how would you have known how and where to contact Vinnie the pig man after Rosalinda—”
    â€œShe was my roommate, Rosalinda. She did, you know, tell me some stuff. Mos’ of it you don’t want to talk about. You don’t want to think about it. It’s jus’ a living, what you have to do to pay the rent and eat, pay for what else you need.”
    â€œBut this was different?”
    â€œRight. Because you could clean up, go to the bathroom, like a person. ’Cause you knew, no matter how slow the night was, younger hookers on the stroll, taking your work away from you like candy from a baby, whatever, at least you’d get your fifty.”
    â€œSo how did the transition occur?”
    â€œWhat do you mean?”
    We turned onto West Street, holding each other tighter against the wind.
    â€œCome on,” I said, heading for the corner. “Let’s get something to eat. Let’s get out of the wind.”
    â€œWhat did you mean?”
    â€œThe transition? How did you start”—I stopped, fishing for a euphemism, changing my mind—“after Rosalinda was killed?”
    â€œI’d done him before, once when she was sick. She had a bad reaction to some hormones. The doctors, they never ask what else you taking. They didn’t say, don’t take this, you on that. She was feeling bad, up all day throwin’ up. She tol’ me to go. She didn’t want to lose it to crazy Ebony or Alice. Alice, she’d steal your eyeballs out of your head, you