On visiting a brothel

They seemed happy to have a man in the room they could ignore.

My good friend Sonia is the "Madam," the manager.  When she brought me in from outside the group of attractive women clad in lingerie inside responded together, slipping into subtle poses and charming smiles as gracefully as a well-rehearsed chorus line.  Sonia says "It's cool, guys.  He's a friend.  We're going out in a minute for dinner."

They all relaxed and turned their attention back to what they were doing before I walked in.  Sonia's words were like a cloaking device.  I was no longer there.

Mia was glued to her laptop, typing furiously between long pauses of reading through squinted eyes.  Harper went back to talking to Monique over a shared bag of potato chips.  Annette leaned behind the couch, grabbed a cosmetics bag, and returned to filing her nails.

I sat in the kitchenette, behind a counter, and thought about how strange it felt to have no one even attempt a brief exchange of small talk about the weather.  It was snowing at the time.  It was like sitting in a waiting room with strangers at the DMV.

Lydia bounded down the stairway, dressed only in a thong, saw me, froze, threw a hand across her breasts and glanced at Sonia who said "He's my friend Richard, it's okay, we're leaving in a sec."

Lydia waved at me with the fingertips of the hand across her breasts and whispered "Hi, sorry, need my bag." as she hurried over to a stack of backpacks by the door and reached for her bag.  She smiled at me again before she scampered back upstairs.

"Ok, I'm just about ready" said Sonia as she walked over in my direction.  "Did you meet everyone?  This is Mia, Harper, Monique and Annette" she listed with a left to right sweep of her hand.  "And the naked one was Lydia, she's busy upstairs."

Mia waved her hand without looking up from her laptop, the others nodded and smiled politely before turning back to what they were doing.  It was funny to have women in lingerie so casually disinterested in my attention.  "Hi everyone, nice to meet you all" I said with a smile and a wave before Sonia took my arm and led me to the door.

Their response was cold. I wondered if it was hostile, but I couldn't tell.  I wondered if I had violated some unwritten rule with my greeting.

"I have a rule against men who are not clients being here during work hours" Sonia whispered into my ear as we got to the door. "They're all pissed because it's going to be a slow night and then they have to go home in this" she said to the snow everywhere as we walked outside.  "I don't blame them."

Oh, I thought, as my mind got busy rearranging my recent history.

We stepped into six inches of soft new snow.