Lyon County, Nevada. Five trailers painted pink, linked by a corrugated metal roof, are surrounded by a six-foot fence topped with barbed wire. It is three o'clock in the afternoon and inside a dozen girls, young, mostly bikini-clad, lounge in the parlor or in their small rooms.
A buzzer sounds. The maid in a white uniform calls "Company! The sheriff plays pinochle at the kitchen table with some of the girls who aren't working. The taxi driver who brought the last customer waits in the parlor to drive him back to Carson City, ten miles away. Amsterdam, Holland.
Zeedijk Street, flanking a small canal in the port district. At dusk the porno film theater flashes its lights, a child plays outside his house, a sex-shop window offers its display of magazines and erotic gadgets.
It is an odd melange—an Indo-Chinese restaurant, a vending machine dispensing condoms, a bistro-like restaurant with an American Express card sign, an occasional police officer, and the windows Lit by a red bulb and framed with lace-edged curtains, each ground-floor window reveals a neat room—bed, sink, a chair, and a young woman.
No more than a few inches from passersby, the women are reading, knitting, brushing their hair, or just looking. When a customer comes in, the clean, starched curtains are pulled. Paris, France. Saturday, payday, around nine o'clock in the evening. Almost all are Algerians, neatly dressed. One holds a bouquet. They stand quietly, orderly, except when the door opens and they strain to see the half-dressed woman who lets a customer out. The police station is a few yards away, but the officers on patrol show no interest in the line of customers.
