Bike accident (II) and sex work

Wifey called me. She was at home.

I’m desperate for a shag she says so I obligingly nip off home on my bike. Home's uphill. I arrive all sweaty.

Shag, lunch, back to office.

I whizz along the cycle lane, past the computer shops on the Ronda Sant Antoni. Near the office now, across the Plaça del Pes de la Palla (Hay/Straw Weighing Square), just round the corner. After 11 in the morning the square fills up with teenage Rumanian and Russian sex workers (slaves). Their pimps sit lazily among the pensioners on the benches of the square and control their girls from a few yards away. Globalisation. The Eastern Europeans started appearing about three years ago. Prior to that this was the territory of local women. Those who are still around are now getting on for retirement age. One, a platinum blonde of around 60 or so, sits on a bench reading an Agatha Christie novel and waiting for regulars.

"Tssssssssssssst. ¿Quieres follar?" (Want a fuck?) hisses one of the Rumanians. She’s obviously blond but her hair is dyed black. Maybe that’s what your middle-aged wine and carajillo(black coffee with spirits)-stupefied punter prefers. What I’m supposed to do with my bike I don’t know.

Meanwhile, in the corner of the square Northern European tourists (lots of Brits) burdened with luggage arrive at the Hotel Ronda by taxi. Some argue with the taxi drivers, thinking they’ve been overcharged for the 20-minute journey from the airport. Easy targets for local pickpockets, who form orderly queues (honour among thieves?) to get their hands on the visitors’ cash. The taxi drivers do try to warn the tourists but ......... too late.

A Russian girl whisks a punter away from the square. She doesn’t hang around. She doesn’t want to be spotted. Plain clothes cops sometimes come to the square in the hope of bagging a big fish. But they seldom do. Big fish don't come here and the women are still around. She takes her client to the video shop/sexpoint, two doors down the street from my office. The door of the next building is covered in tape. "Precintat pel ajuntament" (Closed by the council) read the words on the tape. The video shop/sexpoint will soon be shut down too but then there’s always the nearby phoney radio station or the "beauty salon".

I want to get back to work. It’s Friday. If I finish the job I’m doing today, I can take Little One to see the Wallace & Gromit film tomorrow. But I’m not looking where I’m going. The Agatha Christie reader is about to cross the road and steps out from behind an inconveniently-on-purpose-placed bin next to the traffic lights. I swerve and miss her but run into a parked car. Face on the tarmack.

Agatha Christie is standing over me; platinum hair, bright red lipstick and make-up thickly plastered over the cracks of her face .

"¿Estas bien?" she asks. The Good Samaritan.

"I think so" I reply, getting to my feet and not really knowing whether I am. She helps me up.

"You should look where you're going?"

"Thanks" I say again and pick up the bike. Its front wheel is buckled. I limp off to the office.