I knew a working girl who called herself Ashley. She wasn’t like the other burnouts who walked Ridgewood avenue in Daytona after dark: a thin, pretty blonde of twenty-seven with hazy blue eyes. She lacked the track marks and facial scabs the others had etched into their frail, dying bodies, and she had all of her teeth. She still looked like alive, human, bright and beautiful, but her smile and her eyes were tired. She too was beginning to slip and fade like everyone else who makes money in the back seats of cars when the sun has set.
I met with her several times. We would have sex, talk, and then she’d be on her way, back into the bleak darkness of Cracktown USA.
When I last saw her, she was walking the street in the rain at night. I pulled over and she got in my truck, soaked to her bones, but smiling. She said that she was always happy to see me because I wasn’t dangerous, and she knew I wouldn’t rob or rape or beat her. We conducted our business, and took our time doing so. Afterward, we went out for a cigarette.
“You know, there are a lot of psychos out there posing as normal guys” I said.
“Yeah, I know. I had a friend here who got picked up once and she never came back. Nobody ever heard from her again. She was just gone” she replied.
“Aren’t you worried about what could happen to you? Why do you do this to yourself? You’re sharp, and you’re gorgeous on top of that. You could get financial aid, go to college or something. Why not?”
She smiled and replied “because I like drugs.”
After that night I never saw her again.
Towers of Rust 