Old and Rare

On that day and always, girls were scarce in Colleen's. They had been missing for weeks from the parking lot as well. There had been a crackdown, as it turned out. The ladies had been getting arrested, but Beale said the fun part was busting the men -- watching their faces change when the door to the motel room closed and they realized that instead of sexual pleasure, they were in for legal woe.

"Aw, that's not fair to the johns," said Colleen.
Beale smiled then, took the toothpick out of his mouth and said, "Fast cars, fast guns and fast women got more men in trouble than any three things together."

And Colleen couldn't argue with that, not in her neighborhood. After Beale was gone, she said she used to think about moving closer to her men. She imagined a safe place in Rice Village with mahogany shelves and leather chairs. But then she imagined that she would probably feel bad about taping jokes to mahogany. It would probably have to be kept real clean. And the people who came into her store might fear they weren't dressed for it and might think she didn't want to hear their dirty limericks. What's worse, they might not know any. They might be very boring people.

It sounded too much like becoming a housewife again. Colleen was 78 years old and didn't have the time. Her men would have to keep driving down Telephone Road.