As Lydia strolled down the street with her husband between her breasts, she remembered a passage from the second book of Gulliver’s Travels, in which the Brobdingnagian Maids of Honour passed the hero around like a doll among themselves, how ‘The handsomest among these Maids of Honour,’ Swift writes, ‘a pleasant frolicksome Girl of sixteen, would sometimes set me astride upon one of her Nipples; with many other Tricks, wherein the Reader will excuse me’ for not going into further detail. A smile crossed her face; she felt an urge, on the sudden, to share this little souvenir with Levi. But she didn’t dare to speak to him, even around the little trickle of people and talk she passed on her walk. Instead she straightened her dress, and drew him somewhat more snugly into her cleavage, which, despite the near-freezing temperatures, was beginning to sweat under her full-length woolen dress.
After passing the Ochs place, Lydia slipped both letters under the door, and then continued walking east toward the ferry. In fifteen minutes, she was approaching Corlears Hook, the red-light district of the day (the word ‘hooker’ probably originated here, among the seedy gambling houses, the smoky saloons, the greasy restaurants, the crumbling tenements, and the houses of ill repute, where girls stood out in their woolen worsted knee-highs, and their gaudy skirts, passing their inviting words and wandering eyes on the men in top-hats and thick black coats, who carried long polished canes with golden knobs and ebony ferrules). That November night they lined the street, and middle-aged men with scabby faces and pockmarked skin traded witticisms with them. Sometimes the men circulated around with escorts, and other times they stood at the doorways, knocking feebly or forcefully—wheeling around apprehensively, or waiting on the stoops for permission to enter.
Levi himself felt uncomfortable in his position, and hoped that his wife would stop or sit somewhere, every quarter of an hour. Her sweat began to drip down onto his face, into his mouth, and over his clothes. Her pores, moles, tiny hairs, everything, though for the moment invisible, was awkwardly wedged against his flesh. Again, the smell of his wife surrounded him, her sweat, her perfume, but this time it was oppressive, and in the stifling atmosphere he clung to the sweat-saturated wool above him.
As Lydia walked down the street at this late hour (it was now past midnight, and turning toward dawn), she pressed Levi closer against her heart, which, for good reason, was beating very rapidly. A woman approached her suddenly out of the dark, a tall maiden out of the shadows, who hid her face and pulled Lydia off to the side, before that good woman could fathom what had happened to her.
“Madam, how much are you going to make tonight?” The dark lady pivoted around, as though to make sure her flanks were guarded .
“You must have the wrong person,” Lydia said, unscrewing her hand, “I don’t know you. You must let me go at once.”
But she persisted, “Lady, lady” – while clamping her hand again on Lydia’s tiny wrist – "really, tell me how much."
“I insist,” she said, now reddening and growing more alarmed. “I insist that you let me go.”
But then a door opened squeakily behind her, and two more figures joined that first worthy woman. Together they dragged Lydia inside a building and led her upstairs, through some ratty, mildewing tenement halls where the water dripped down from the ceilings continually, where the building was unequipped with any piping or plumbing system, and where the people within the rooms she passed seemed and sounded older than New York, than America itself. Three women on the third floor from the ground (as far as she could judge) surrounded her and then sat her down on a foul-smelling cushion.
Levi perceived some of this and certainly heard most of it from where he had been positioned in his hideout, between Lydia’s breasts. He was aware that something in their plan had gone awry, and waited, well, ‘in the dark’ – swallowing his apprehension until someone had exposed him to the light, or carried him into the light.
The light was blinding, and at first he could see nothing. But one by one, the dimensions of the room, and the objects and people within the room, were defined. Three young women stood in a semi-circle in front of him, as he was still perched between his wife’s breasts. It seemed to be Lydia’s dress, gown, and linen chemise the girls tore off first. If they had harbored any designs to steal his wife’s clothes, or to, somehow, employ her alongside them (a demented, hopeless, and impossible object, he thought, considering his wife’s social position and connections), they immediately threw everything aside. He watched them as they watched his two-inch long form sprawled out against his wife’s right breast,; they watched with mouths agape, and with a kind of wonder and lust in their eyes, as he attempted, pitifully, without success, to scale and then hide behind her breast. They watched as he looked high in in the distance, and saw Lydia’s two arms tied at the wrist far above him. As, behind him, he made out the few words that she was casting in his direction, through her gagged lips: “I’m sorry,” “I don’t know what has happened,” and the like. And then, finally, he turned to face their three captresses, who stared down at him, astonished, and with hunger in their eyes. What sort of women were these? He was terrified to find out.
Then a voice boomed up from the floor below, calling for Charity and Cordelia. The last, whose nature as well as name we will soon learn, was Christina, the one whose hand clamped down on Lydia’s wrist in the inky gloom of the Lower East Side. Christina, 5’10” and formidable, was the girl who nigh singlehandedly dragged Lydia, up the stairs, the two others merely accompanying. Why she did this is unclear: she might have been insane, she might have wanted the night off, and money for her efforts, or she might have been motivated by certain sadistic impulses, as common among the lower classes as the upper, and in one sex as much as the other. Charity and Cordelia departed together with quick steps, meanwhile peeking backward at Levi, chattering girlishly, and casting sidelong frowns and grimaces at Christina, who paid them no heed—indeed her eyes never left the little man, but stayed on him unsealed, focused, a playful glimmer showing now and then behind the coal-dark and smoldering passion of her pupils. When the door had shut, she advanced toward him with deliberate steps, and took him up, despite Lydia’s muffled outcries.
Levi punched and fought against her hand as far as he could, but without effect.
“Tut tut,” she clicked her tongue against her teeth. “No, no, no. You must try to behave, my little friend.” She looked over at Lydia, who was staring wide-eyed and helpless at her. “Oh, girly, you’ll be fine. Alonzo doesn’t want you, no one else here will take you—seeing the risks involved—and now I can do without you. When the two others climb back up here, in good spirits, they’ll let you go, and you’ll be free to go. Have no fear. As for your little dainty here,” and she looked down on the little man, “Well, you’ll have trouble finding him again, I’m sure.” Christina peeled off her old, low-heeled leather boot, and slipped Levi within, angling him down to the rank, battered, encrusted toe-section. “Tonight, tomorrow, and forever, my dear,” she said, turning to Lydia-- and Christina, that dangerous & formidable woman, fitted her damp knee-length woolen stocking back into the boot, and stepped out the side-door with a light step into the night.