Stranger Than The Sun

Dawn was an unenthusiastic grey behind the clouds. Night had dissolved at the approach of morning. The sky was the colour of old khaki.
Across the road a girl stepped in rapid but careful steps over the cracks in the pavement, ducking in and out of dew-covered cars as if she was trying to take cover among them. She couldn’t have been over sixteen, and she walked anxiously, her concern alternating between the urgent need to keep pulling the hemline of her skirt downwards, and the need to fold her arms over the sheer blouse she wore.
Skiv and I slowed down to puzzle over this spectacle- and muse over why it was so arresting. We knew hookers had to go somewhere in the morning, we knew not all of them were jaded, thirty-five and stoned, but it was the first time we had seen a teen prostitute in daylight, staggering in what could have been anything from tight shoes to shame. Hookers had never looked sad before.
“They carry an extra pair of trousers or a longer skirt in their handbags, then they change into it in the mornings,” Steve said.
“You think someone stole her bag?” I asked.
“No, I think she just hasn’t learnt how to organise herself.”
Shrug. It was an adequate way of dealing with the tragedy that confronted us: blame it for its own inexperience. The problem is that it she is not tragic enough. In a few years when she is settled in the ways of the business, she will never cross our eyes in the morning like this. And we will only see her when we are drunk, at night, red and blue and green neon lights dripping from her lips, and we will want her.