she just came in short, black eyed, and bleeding

She is a hooker, I count her money. She comes in here, once or twice, you know, a week, with her stack of ones and fives, and I give her a receipt. She gets it into the bank that way -- so she can have an account. She can't take that money, with all the blood that is usually on it, she can't take that to a teller, she can't walk in all beat up, with her eyes black, smoking, like she does, and hand the teller a stack of bills that are grimy, crunched up, and bleeding. She is a hooker. She gives me her money. I deposit it for her and I tell her, usually, that she isn't living that swell a life, I say that and she sometimes smiles, like she had heard it on tv too, and it was a good memory. But she is living a shit life, you know, and she lets these marks beat the shit out of her and they really beat the shit out of her. But what can I do, I count her money, so at least she isn't squating in some crack house, or running into the basements of the city buildings to get from the weather. You know, this way, she keeps a place, she keeps some food and she makes, it from today until tonight and maybe even til tomorrow. I don't know, you know, she is just walking through this day to that day, thinking, well, hell, not thinking, but getting her money this way and that way and then bringing it here, and I take only a small fee, a modest fee, because I have to clean the money, you know, and make sure its not bleeding anymore, not like it is when she gives it to me, and then I have to be putting in these deposits into an account for her so that she can have the money for the place she has but in an account that they can't find her, because you know, those tax men, they don't really think that hooking is all that proper or legal so even if she could pay her taxes, she can't really pay her taxes, not down and out like she is. So I take a modest fee, a small fee, really, and adjust the account accordingly and we see the results. And she doesn't complain, not after all that, not now that she can walk up to a money machine and take out her money like she is just another woman in the city, just another woman making errands, you know, and paying bills -- but really, she isn't, you know, she's a hooker. And she gets the shit kicked out of her. I'd help her, but you know, its not like she isn't surviving, its not like it really is gonna come down to something that different for me or for her or for anybody even driving down here from the hills, I mean, on that last day, you know, that last day when you think that that sky is gonna be differnt, its just the last day, and she is going on the same boat as everybody else, even though she lived like this, like a rat, in the sewer. So what's the point, what's the point but make it, survive, and let her survive, I'm not trying to not let her survive. But what's the point. So she gets beat up real bad and one day she is gonna be dead and there she'll be, sitting right next to the whole bunch of assholes that thought there wasn't gonna be any room for a whore like her.