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she had earned and Stacey never even thought of calling her mother to ask for help. She decided to accept Annie Mae’s advice and go downtown with her friend; working the street in Toronto couldn’t be any worse than working the escort service back home. As she began to apply her make-up, Stacey suddenly felt excited, as fear and adrenaline heightened her senses. Then, just after nine o’clock, the three girls piled into the back of T-bar’s Trans Am, while Kenny and Terrance sat together up front.
    Kenny laid down the law as they drove towards the stroll. “This is not like the escort service, Stacey. No one books your dates—you have to hustle the man from the curb. A car slows down, you make sure he sees you first. You walk over and see what he’s shopping for. Do not talk to a black man on the stroll, ever. There are some players up here trying to move on our women, and you don’t want to get mixed up with them, so just stay away from any black guy who approaches you.”
    That last rule sounded stupid: Why couldn’t black men buy the services of the Nova Scotia girls? Stacey didn’t get the point—that the players were unwilling to take the chance of having their girls scooped up by pimps who weren’t part of “the family,” as they called themselves. As long as she did what she was told, she’d be keeping up her end of the family compact, and that was all the pimps cared about. A “dumb ’ho” couldn’t be expected to understand loyalty. Kenny continued to talk, but Stacey tuned him out as the car turned onto Yonge Street. The teenager stared out the window, taking in all the people and all the stores—clothing boutiques, stereo shops, jewellers, gourmet food emporiums.
    As the car got closer to the heart of downtown Toronto, Stacey craned her neck excitedly, searching for the fabled CN Tower. Was that it, that thing that looked like a lit-up spacecraft in the sky? She wanted to ask—maybe they could all go visit it sometime—but she thought that would sound stupid.
    The two men dropped the three girls on Gerrard Street, just east of Yonge and only a block or so from the stroll. The Metro Toronto Police Juvenile Task Force was paying closer attention to Nova Scotia pimps, so they avoided driving near the stroll when they had their own vehicles in Toronto, knowing their plates could give them away. This meant a bit more freedom for the girls than in Halifax. There the pimps patrolled Hollis Street frequently and picked up “their” money at regular intervals; but Kenny and Terrance, like most of the Scotians, insisted on staying in touch by cellular phone, as they sometimes did back home as well. Kenny had told Stacey to phone him right after she “broke” (serviced her first client) and to keep calling regularly until he had decided that she had earned enough for the night. Such anxiety was a perfect example of what distinguished young pimps like Kenny and Terrance from experienced players operating in Toronto and other big cities—the leeway they gave their girls on the street. Major players often sent prostitutes to another city on their own for days or weeks, and rarely supervised them on the stroll, they were confident that the girls knew better then to try to pull one over on them.
    Stacey was a walking contradiction as she headed toward the stroll. She was dressed like a woman of the night but she was every bit the awestruck kid in the big city for the first time. She walked awkwardly in her heels and tight miniskirt. The stumbling gait was not improved by her tendency to look everywhere except where she was walking. Stacey could not get enough of the city sights and she asked Annie Mae about everything she saw, the big buildings down toward the harbour and the manicured courtyard at Ryerson Polytechnical Institute.
    The three girls reached Annie Mae’s favourite corner shortly before ten