I knew she was a hooker, but if felt nice to be wanted.  It didn’t make any difference that what she was truly after was in my pockets rather than dangling in the front.  I hadn’t eaten.  Maybe that made the situation more complicated.  I’ve always had a hard time sorting things out when I’m famished.

I bought her a drink anyway.  She must have thought she had me.  I knew what was going on.  It’s okay, every now and again, to let these situations play out.  If you looked at this girl from the shoulders up, you’d guess she weight about a hundred and fifteen pounds.  Gaunt cheeks, pouty lips snapping into gum that I could tell she’d been chewing all day.  Big smears of makeup here and there.  If you only had her drivers license photo to go by, she’d be a solid seven.  Once you got past the shoulders it sort of deteriorated from there.  The backs of her arms were droopy and sad.  Her stomach could fool you, depending on where you were standing.  Nothing hung over the belt on the sides, all the meat and cheese was piled right in front.  I didn’t even notice it until she started dancing.  A little two step, nothing special, but that tummy, that slab of deep fried whatever, it kept nudging into me.  She could have been pregnant.  I don’t think so, though.

My stomach was messing me up.  Desirae, or Desire, Debbie…I don’t remember her name.  It was one of those names that probably changes depending on color dress she was wearing.  For me she was a brunette.  Shoulder length black hair, straight and dead.  There was a tuft in the back that made it look like she’d been in an altercation.  I wanted so badly to press it down, but I didn’t want to offend her.

The bar tender, a gentlemen, kept giving me these big expressive eyes.  He thought I was falling into the trap too.  Everyone thought it.  For a bit, I thought it too.  I’d be caught up in whatever little lies she was telling me.  Her whispering so close that I could hear that stale gum creaking between her teeth.  Then that malformed belly would jolt me and everything would come back into focus again.

I didn’t have anything better to do.  I would have been drinking at the bar with her or without, so I figured it didn’t make much of a difference to have someone to talk to.  Especially a young lady with a pretty face.  I did notice that she had one toe missing.  That wasn’t until after we’d been talking awhile.  It wasn’t the big toe, it was the one right next to it.  You’d think you wouldn’t notice one missing toe in a dark bar, but she was wearing a pair of sandals that lace right there in the gap between the first and second toe.  Only her foot looked like it had a death grip on that poor sandal.  It went like this; one big toe, the sandal strap, a considerable gap with nothing, then the three little toes bunched up all the way at the other end.

I was curious about that missing toe.  How does a woman lose the second toe, but keep all the rest in perfect working order?  They were even painted.  Pink.  It would have been better for her to paint a little pink square on the sandal, a fake toenail.  Maybe that would have fooled me.  She got tired of me glancing down, so eventually she ended up addressing it.  The toe had been maimed by a horse.  Stomped and pulled off in one clean shot.  That story doesn’t make much sense to me, but who am I to call her a liar?  She just didn’t seem like a woman who you’d find on the back of a horse.  It was her shape.  That belly would have been jumping up and down on the poor horse’s neck. And then she had these ankles that were like sausage if you took that outer sleeve off.  They were dimpled and gritty, with all sorts of hairs and red bumps.  Luckily I had that missing toe to distract me.  I don’t think I would have talked to her much longer if it was only those chewed up ankles I had to look at.

She tried all her moves on me.  As she talked, she liked to slide one of her fingers through my belt loop.  She leaned into me and put her head on my shoulder when I made her laugh.  Any chance she had to move a little closer, she took it.  If it wasn’t for that paunch, playing defense, she would have been on my lap, I’m sure of it.

I didn’t mind having her hang around.  It’s good to flirt a little.  After that, I got a bad case of the spins.  Alcohol on an empty stomach will do that.  She must have thought I wasn’t going to recover enough to drag her up to some hotel room, because as soon as I looked away, she was bumping her belly into someone else.  It didn’t bother me for too long.  I ordered some chicken wings and my head cleared up straight away.  Desire was gone.  Someone must have taken her up on her offer.