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Imperious, indolent, voluptuous, they filled the rows of mirroring windows flowing into one another along the half-timbered facades of the sagging, gabled little houses with the trumpery of their tawdry coiffures, feather boas, fringed bras, and froufrou; filled to overflowing the silk receptacles of their bodices stretched tightly over wire and whalebone forms with a gaudy bounty of female flesh, pushed-up breasts, rolls of fat, powdered shoulders and arms, burst out of them with powerful thighs that funneled into obscenely crossed legs in black net stockings. They filled the glassed-in, dollhouse interiors of the humble cottages with the trumpery of their female scent, the smell of powder and cheap perfume, filled the vitrines shining in the darkness of Whores’ Alley with the shrill trumpery of their make-up, false eyelashes, locks of hair pasted to their forehead like a flamenco dancer’s, and hennaed quiffs: duenna, matriarch, and mousie, child bride, tomboy, giant baby, she-werewolf, spider, wasp—each one the overly sharp copy of some woman once desired, loved, never possessed, the shamelessly revealed ur-image of a female type, the brazen mask of an anima—

thus they filled the short Whores’ Alley, screened off at either end by a wall of corrugated iron, with light and color, with the pattering rain of the keys they tapped against the window panes to entice customers, those magnificent augurs of happiness—

and all around, the concrete desert sprung from bomb craters, the faceless crowds, the lava of tinny vehicles rolling through the streets, the icy light of the arc lamps reflected in glass and steel and enamel, the trumpery consumer products filling the wasteland of department store windows

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