Sodium Vapor

The city lay dark that night... the heavy rains fell, and puddles grew on the steaming, hot blacktop, while all around, the sodium vapor lights buzzed, and jaundiced all in their paths. In a small, nondescript car, a wizzened old cop met with a woman long past her prime. Her dirty scarlet hair hung in greasy clumps from black roots shiny with the grease of her rapidly-more-apparent scalp. Her dark eyes were small and hard, all hope and innocence, all joy and ability to love snuffed out, like a candle, long gone cold. In the jaundiced light, her wrinkles lay in relief, a road map of death and pain.
With a smile she thought was tempting and flirtatious, as it had been in her youth, not so long ago, although she looked at least 60, she bent, to apply lips waxy with drugstore lipstick, to his, and he gently shoved her back. What had happened? She hadn't allowed lips to touch hers in a long time. She shook off the rejection... she had become greedy, hoping she saw something different, in this sad man before her. But she knew... he hadn't slipped a soft, wrinkled twenty into her hand because he wanted more than what she usually gave. She'd offered him herself, rather than a fast, efficient release. She'd looked him dead in the eye. And she would pay, with her shame. She'd seen his dreams- still there, but almost gone... of being the next Elliot Ness. Of being a glamourous detective...another Dick Tracy. Of being a lover, to many, and being loved by all. She'd seen sadness and disappointment. She would have cried, but she had long ago expelled the last, salty drop. She didn't know she had a spark left. So, rather than cry, she bent her head, and folded her well- used body over his legs, and applied her red, waxy lips. She soothed him, even as he unleashed his beastial side, and forgot himself. She took his moans, grunts and growled profanities... his tug at her hair, and the fast jerk of his hips, and used them. She used them to prove she could still please a man. The cold rain fell steadily, adding "thunking" noises to the mix. Then it was over... and she was left in the cold, a dirty, crumpled bill in her dirty lace bra.