“Duffy? Sure. So is Chance. Duffy put me on the street. The Lexington Avenue stroll, and sometimes when it was hot there we’d go across the river to Long Island City.” She closed her eyes for a moment. When she opened them she said, “I just got this rush of memory, what it was like on the street. My street name was Bambi. In Long Island City we did the johns in their cars. They would drive in from all over Long Island. On Lexington we had a hotel we could use. I can’t believe I used to do that, I used to live like that. God, I was green! I wasn’t innocent. I knew what I came to New York for, but I was green all right.”

“How long were you on the street?”

“It must have been five, six months. I wasn’t very good. I had the looks and I could, you know, perform, but I didn’t have street smarts. And a couple of times I had anxiety attacks and I couldn’t function. Duffy gave me stuff but all it ever did was make me sick.”

“Stuff?”

“You know. Drugs.”

“Right.”

“Then he put me in this house, and that was better, but he didn’t like it because he had less control that way. There was this big apartment near Columbus Circle and I went to work there like you would go to an office. I was in the house, I don’t know, maybe another six months. Just about that. And then I went with Chance.”

“How did that happen?”

“I was with Duffy. We were at this bar. Not a pimp bar, a jazz club, and Chance came and sat at our table. We all three sat and talked, and then they left me at the table and went off and talked some more, and Duffy came back alone and said I was to go with Chance. I thought he meant I should do him, you know, like a trick, and I was pissed because this was supposed to be our evening together and why should I be working. See, I didn’t take Chance for a pimp. Then he explained that I was going to be Chance’s girl from now on. I felt like a car he just sold.”

“Is that what he did? Did he sell you to Chance?”

“I don’t know what he did. But I went with Chance and it was all right. It was better than with Duffy. He took me out of that house and put me on a phone and it’s been, oh, three years now.”

“And you want me to get you off the hook.”

“Can you do it?”

“I don’t know. Maybe you can do it yourself. Haven’t you said anything to him? Hinted at it, talked about it, something like that?”

“I’m afraid.”

“Of what?”