By Steve Bishop
“What are sex workers doing in the pandemic?” asked one of my feminist friends on Facebook. I laughed and posted: “Business as usual: They’re shagging in my back yard.” Got a few likes in response and the predictable innuendoes: No, “back yard” isn’t a euphemism. Yes, they’re still at it. A smack habit doesn’t take a holiday for Covid19.
I always make a joke of it to visitors if the sound of amore from behind the shrubbery gets socially awkward, but to be honest I don’t really care. Prostitutes seem to have been following me around my whole adult life. I lived in Oakfield Road when I was a student, this was 1991-1992, before the community said “Enough’s enough!” They’d hang around on the corner right by my front door. A couple of car lengths down the street there’d always be some scummy looking pimp in an Escort Turbo.
I found her last night, left for dead by the compost, naked and bleeding from her mouth. Ordinarily, I would have called an ambulance immediately, but you know, things have changed on us so quickly. Only if she’s actually dead, or dying, I decided. The NHS have got enough to worry about. I felt her pulse, then went back into the house to get her a coat.
When I got back, she was sitting up and coughing. I pulled my t-shirt quickly over my nose and mouth and she started laughing.
-What?
-The look…on …
She coughed some more.
-I’m not ill…
She finally managed. Then,
-Oh! it hurts to laugh…
She said, laughing then coughing, then laughing because she was coughing so much and coughing some more because she was laughing.
Her real name was Niki. More brass knuckles than brass flute. Edgy as fuck, she looked Spanish or Italian. Lovely green eyes but filled with rage and want. I didn’t dare ask how she’d got into this scrape, just heated a can of soup for her and ran a bath, as directed. While she soaked in the tub, I hunted out some of Sarah’s old clothes. Pathetic that I kept them really, but at first, I thought she might come back.
I lent Niki my phone so she could call “Denny,” who would be some moody prick in a blacked out Merc. Seeing Sarah’s clothes animated like that, even though it was on a different body, brought her straight home to me. I remembered evenings by the fire, afternoons in the kitchen, the warmth of a shared life. And then, after bursting so dramatically in on my life, she walked out of the front door, never to be seen again.
The next day I patched up the back fence with the remains of a pallet I’d been planning to re-purpose as decking. It wouldn’t stop them using the waste ground along the edge of the railway track that ran along the back of the property, but it would keep them off the lawn. As I worked, my thoughts turned to Niki in Sarah’s clothes. In my head I was making love to her.
Like most people, I’ve got too much time on my hands. The physical work on the fence was welcome, but it left me tired. I had something to eat, then crashed out on the sofa. In a fug of completion, I tried out the idea of saving Niki from her life. I dispatched “Denny” with a garden fork to the throat and led her through the gate to my sanctuary. I held her in my arms under the moon shadows of the fir tree. Caressing her gently, I gazed into her eyes. Softened by genuine emotion, the smashed prisms of drug need and cynicism dissolved into glittering jewels. Our limbs intertwined in the eternal dance. We made love in the garden, like it was the garden.
Steve Bishop is an artist who creates stories from dreams, the subconscious, and mythic ideas. His publications have included flash fiction, and short stories in anthologies and online. He has also had one produced screenplay for a feature film, Deadtime (2012). The trailer can be seen here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DVCPhZuxBxE