Taming Cross

by Ella James

  Hunter West.

  His name still leaves a sour taste in my mouth, and I know I have no right. I was a whore just like good Mr. West, so who am I to judge his past?

  Speaking of pasts: Missy King. Meredith Kinsey. I torture myself, imagining her fate. Wondering, for the thousandth time, if Meredith really is Missy King, or if this is some elaborate plot my father cooked up to throw me off the trail.

  And if she is, what happened to her? How did she go from crusading college reporter to sex slave?

  People like you happened to her.

  As I weave between a Mack truck and a van, I think about how true it is. The guy arrested on drug charges back in Georgia was probably her boyfriend. Maybe she fled to Vegas, where she didn’t have any money, and she met my father, who probably promised to take care of her.

  I used to think of myself as one of the good guys. Sure, I slept around, but every woman I was with wanted to be there, too. They wanted the sex as much as I did, and when it was over, we usually parted as friends. I try to stay away from anyone who might want something else.

  See? One of the good guys.

  But for almost a year, I knew what happened to Missy King and I pretended I didn’t. I believed she deserved what she got. Innocent women don't fuck married men, right?

  The thought makes me feel nauseated.

  I let fate stay its hand while I sat on her secret. While I protected my father. I let him get away with something abhorrent, and then, that night outside Hunter West's house, I paid for it. Jim Gunn, evil fucker that he is, was doling out justice in my case. I still want to kill him—preferably after feeding him his balls—but I know by the time this is over, I'll see just how much I deserve what I got.

  I take a sharp curve around a clump of cacti and my body tenses at the feeling of off-balencedness I get from steering. I’ve got a fucked up left hand, and I can't even ride a bike without losing my damn nerve. No way I'll be saving anybody.

  And for the first time yet, I wonder if I'm really going to Mexico to die.

  Almost six hours later, I cross the border at Mexicali, the capital of the state of Baja California, Mexico, with my passport and a story about motorcycling through the country. In the bottom of my bag is a second passport, for 'Meredith Carlson'.

  It's my hand, I tell myself. Because I'm disabled now, I need to feel like I can actually do something. But doing something is telling the cops. Not riding into a drug cartel’s turf.

  As I get into the bustle of Lazaro Cardenas Boulevard, with its half-dozen lanes of thick traffic baking under the hot sun, I take a very stupid risk, balancing with my left shoulder and hand and sticking my right into my pocket, where I grasp Meredith's picture and throw it out into the wind.

  The second after, I’m wrenched with regret. Just another sign that I'm pathetic. A lump of emotion rises in my throat, but I swallow hard and navigate the traffic. I focus on finding my way to Islas Agrarias Boulevard, which will take me to a little side street—Av de Los Serdan—where I should find La Casa del Amor.

  I'm in shoulder-knotting traffic for almost an hour, feeling the sweat drip through my hair and down my neck, wondering what will happen when I get to the strip club, when I finally spot the turnoff onto Islas Agrarias. My phone isn’t working like my provider told me it would, so I’m relying on visual memory of the map as I look for Calz Tierra something, the smaller street that will take me to the even smaller Av de Los Serdan.

  The roads here are paved but it’s been a while. Small, square business signs, nothing but colorful paper plastered over plywood squares, line Islas Agrarias, advertising party spots, a lawyer’s office, free colas. There’s no grass anywhere—just piles of sand that sprinkles across the road as a dry wind slaps me in the face.

  I squint through the sweat in my eyes, pass an old brown Jeep, and get into the right lane, where I think I see Calz Tierra. Yeah, that’s it. Calz Tierra…something. I can’t read the words. My eyes are too blurry. I make a slow turn onto it with my heart hammering in my chest, taking in the few food shops and businesses that, to me, look like little more than roadside stands. I pass a fruit vendor and someone selling something that looks like lottery tickets, and then I’m here: Av de Los Serdan. La Casa de Amor.

  If there's one thing I've learned from spending time at St. Catherine's Clinc, it's that I lived a mostly selfish life before. It didn’t start off easy, but that doesn’t mean I wasn’t a selfish girl with dreams and desires all centered around myself.

  My mother died in childbirth—her labor came on too fast, and I was born in the car—and after a month nursing bottles from my father, I wasn't gaining weight, so my Aunt Britta and Uncle Walter took me in. They had a one-year-old, my cousin Landon, but still, they made time and space for me. I saw my father on the weekends until I was four, when he was involved in a one-motorcycle wreck on a lonely Georgia highway outside Albany. Just before I started kindergarten, my aunt and uncle adopted me and made me Meredith Kinsey.

  Aunt Britta always made sure I looked nice and knew the things a girl should know. Cross your legs when you're wearing a skirt and don't talk to strange men. Don't go close to big vans with dark windows. That kind of thing. I did okay, I guess, until I hit puberty, and by then I'd started feeling...left out. Maybe it's because Aunt Britta was dark-haired, with brown eyes, and I'm so fair, or maybe it was because she used to introduce herself at teacher conferences as my aunt. I wanted a mother and a father. My childhood was consumed by wanting to be normal. A normal child with a mom and a dad. Not an orphan.

  When one of Landon's friends kissed me on a freshman/sophomore class trip to the aquarium, I felt so good...and it wasn't too long before kissing boys became my thing.

  It made me feel brand new; alive and wanted. Usually I'd go to bed and hug my pillow and I'd dream of marrying whoever I was kissing at the time. I would marry my crush and we would have a baby, and when I got six or seven months pregnant I would just go to the hospital and stay until I had the baby. No dying in the car. After that, we'd be a family. I wouldn't be the left-out little girl. I would be the mother. I would have a daughter with strawberry-colored hair just like mine, and when I took her to the grocery store, our outfits would color coordinate.

  I started writing stories in high school and it was around that time I met Sam, the band director. I learned how much I didn't know about what men and women did, and for a while, I relished the pleasant things he taught me. The world was worth being in, because someone wanted me.

  I was upset after Sam left town. Devastated. I had this crazy idea that I would get a job in Alpharetta, where he had transferred, and I would marry him, but Aunt Britta (who had no idea why I wanted to move to Alpharetta), insisted I go to college. I got a scholarship to UGA and went for something I thought would be easy: journalism.

  I was pretty much just like I was in high school, in college. I dated a few guys and we did more than kiss. I didn't sleep with all of them. My roomie, Carla, used to call me a kissy whore, and I guess I was. I was looking for the hugs and cuddling, and the kissing and other things—the hand-jobs and the blow-jobs and doggy style—were just a way to get there. To a place where I felt loved and cherished.

  And then I found another rush, another passion, and strangely enough, it was the student newspaper. For about a year and a half, part of junior year and all of senior year, I stopped dating completely and just worked. I loved it.

  I would go to the bar every once in a while, or smoke pot at a friend’s house. But the rest of the time I was working, chasing my buzz. It wasn't a bad life, and I never even thought about my lack of parents.

  So, when I met Sean the weekend before graduation—when I finally met the infamous Sean Tacoma, the weed dealer I’d never met (because I was always left in the car while Alec ran in)—I couldn't help but be smitten.

  Sean was cute, with bright green eyes and reddish blond hair, and all I could think about was what pretty babies we would have. They would be cuter than all the other kids in pr
eschool. Better-dressed. And they would have the perfect family with a mother and a father.

  Stupid, I know. Stupid, selfish Meredith.

  I squeeze my eyes shut thinking about how stupid I was. I didn't know where my choices would take me, and if I had... I could have joined the Peace Corps. Been a missionary. Nowadays I think that I would like that. Volunteer work. Work that helps people. Now that I don't have any choices that don't suck.

  Sometimes, since coming to the clinic, I think about the pretty kids that Sean and I would have had—if we hadn’t gotten into trouble in Atlanta. If I hadn’t fled to Vegas. Sometimes I think about the children I’ve met here who were born without arms and legs, children with cleft lips, children who can’t afford clothes, and I feel sick with my old self. I wish I could send a note back to my past.

  “Señorita Merri, you look sleepy!”

  I'm holding four-year-old Maria in my lap, and we're working on her hand coordination. She has a rare condition where she's missing a part of her brain—the corpus collosum—so she has trouble with fine motor skills.

  I lean in and kiss her on the nose, then snap my teeth near her cheek. “Grrrr! I am a dragon! Dragons never sleep!”

  Maria giggles and snaps her teeth at me, and in seconds we are rolling on the floor. She flops onto her back, still giggling, and points to my hair. “You have a barrette. It looks like a diamond. I like diamonds.”

  It's not a real diamond. I found it on the ground one day and only kept it because I really needed something to keep my hair out of my face. Pretty soon, I won’t need it anymore.

  “Can you get it out of my hair? If you can, you can have it.”

  I feel her little fingers grip my neck as her other hand delves into my hair, and I can't resist tickling her underneath her arm.

  “No fair!” she cries, but she's laughing.

  I lean my head down and wait for her to free the barrette.

  If only I had known how nice life is when you're focused on something besides yourself.

  When Maria gets the barrette, I clap and kiss her cheek. I hold her close for just a second, telling her a silent goodbye. Tomorrow, I'm leaving. I hope she wears the barrette for a long time. I hope that she’s the prettiest girl at preschool.

  CHAPTER TEN

  The club is less than fifty yards ahead: a box-shaped, white and red building framed by a parking lot that’s surrounded by dirt. As I come up on it, I realize it’s not quite as small as I thought—maybe about the size of a roller skating rink back home. The parking lot isn’t empty but it isn’t full, either. I count maybe fifteen or so cars and one ragged out white Honda CB500F.

  I notice, as I park beside an old Maxima, that on the wooden porch there’s a girl with long, bleached blonde hair wearing nothing but a sombrero and a black string bikini. I wonder how seedy a place has to be for Priscilla to call it that.

  It takes me a minute to get off my bike, because my body is so stiff and sore, and after that I have to dig through my bag to find the one source of protection I was able to take across the border: a small, palm-held Taser. I bought it for Suri years ago, when we were all starting college, but she refused to carry it, and somehow it ended up at my house. I slide it into my pocket, check for my wallet, and lock my bag onto the bike.

  The whole time, this girl is dancing for me. As I cross the dusty parking lot, where the air smells of sour liquor and fried foods, she rubs her palms over her tits. I try not to ogle her, but her breasts are huge and she won’t let me break eye contact. When I get to the door, she holds out her hand for me, like she wants me to take it and pull her inside. I don’t take it, and she makes a pouting face. A second later, a short, broad-shouldered bouncer comes out the door, trailing a cloud of bar smoke. Mexican party music booms behind him.

  He gives me a murderous look, but the girl laughs and says, “This one is okay, Pedro.”

  The guy flicks his fingers at the door, and I step into the thickest cloud of smoke I’ve ever seen. I can hear the clink of pool balls before my eyes clear enough that I can see. In every direction, there’s a pool table, and on my left is a long bar where girls in short shorts and skirts are talking to guys in grungy, baggy clothes and sometimes baseball caps. Like inside most bars, the patrons are mainly in their 20s and 30s, but I think I see a few teens.

  I choose a booth near the back of the room and pull my phone out of my pocket, pretending to text someone while I get a better look at things. I rest my hands on the table top and cringe at the sticky filth that coats it. I lift my hands, and that’s when I notice the filmy curtain on the wall a few feet to my right. Beyond it, I can see women’s bodies in various states of undress, gleaming in stage light. If I strain my ears, I can hear the cat calls.

  After few minutes of pretend texting, a waitress comes over, wearing nothing but a lacy hot pink apron and a g-string. She turns her body to the side, giving me a good view of her ass. Then she bats her fake eyelashes and smiles at me. Her teeth are crooked. “Can I get you something to drink, sir?” she asks in Spanish.

  While I order a bottle of Corona, she looks me over—slowly. I must be really off my game, because it makes me feel uncomfortable. Like she can see all the scars under my clothes. Like she knows my hair is short because I had my skull sawed open less than six months ago.

  When my beer arrives, the uncomfortable feeling magnifies. I look around the club and realize I have no idea what to do next. I take a few swigs, discreetly searching the room for someone I could ask about Carlos. I see a few bouncers—one with prominent acne scars, one with a permanent scowl, and one surrounded by flirting women—but none of them is nearby, and none looks in charge.

  I finish my drink and order a second. It’s been a long while since I drank regularly, so I feel a little lightheaded, but it works for me. Makes me looser. When the waitress brings my second Corona, I lean in and ask her if she knows Carlos.

  She hesitates for half a breath, then nods toward the sheer curtain on the other side of the room. “He’s there. In the club.”

  I guess the curtain separates the strip club from the bar. I slide the waitress a twenty. “Thanks.”

  I want to get to Carlos before she can tell him that I’m coming, so I get up almost right after she saunters off. Unfortunately, she senses me behind her and turns around grinning, probably thinking I’m coming after her.

  She waves at herself, as if displaying the merchandise. This is when I know I’ve definitely lost my game. I can’t even come up with something smooth. Instead I hold my hand up and lamely shake my head, and the girl huffs off, shaking her ass like she’s got a hula hoop around her waist.

  I pass a cluster of American frat bros, heehawing and guzzling beer from a funnel. The old Cross would have stuck out just like them, so I feel grateful for my dusty clothes and sweat-rumpled appearance. Nobody seems to notice me as I cross the room.

  When I go to duck through the curtain, the womanizing bouncer grabs my left arm from behind. I whirl around, snatching my arm away from him on instinct.

  He holds his hands out like he meant no harm. “Two hundred,” he says smoothly.

  I frown.

  “Two hundred dollars.”

  Is he serious? He doesn’t blink, so I pull the money out of my wallet and press it into his palm, and he waves me in.

  “Carlos,” I say before he slips back onto his bar stool.

  “Right there.”

  He nods at one of the dozen round tables set in the room, this one nestled in a shadowy corner, and I glance quickly around the room before I start that way. It’s smaller than the bar and not quite as disgusting. It doesn’t smell like stale urine inside a beer bottle, and the lights are more than just bare bulbs. The girls swaying around poles on stage are nothing to scream about, but maybe I’m just not feeling the whole working woman thing these days.

  I pick Carlos out before I get to the table. He’s sitting with three other men, and he’s the smallest one, but he’s wearing an expensive looking red silk d
ress shirt with a diamond-studded pin on the lapel, and the other men at the table are all listening intently as he speaks with broad hand gestures. His longish black hair is slicked back with gel, and even so, he has the shine of wealth that no one else in this place has. Like he has his own personal strippers scrubbing him down in his Jacuzzi every morning.

  I dread approaching the table, but I don’t let it affect my mannerisms. When I’m within spitball-tossing range, I catch his eye. I step closer, placing one fist on their table: casual but firm. “Can we talk for a minute?”

  I realize this might sound threatening, but I’m not sure how else to put it. To my surprise, he looks almost glad to see me. His eyes roll over my body and I shake off the self-conscious feeling that’s new to me since the wreck.

  He sends the men around him to another table near the stage, and as they leave he motions for me to in the chair one leaves out, across from him. I slide in, taking my time so he doesn’t notice my left hand.

  Carlos lights up a cigarette and exhales to his right, so it doesn’t go into my face. “What can I do for you?” he asks me in English.

  “I’m told you’re a man who can find people.”

  Carlos smirks. “It depends on the people.”

  “I’m looking for someone.” I heave a deep breath. “An American who’s been in Mexico for a year or two.” Based on the e-mails, I think Missy was sold around September 2011, making it almost a year and a half ago—but I don’t know that for sure.

  “You think I can help you find this girl.”

  I nod. “The girl I’m looking for is named Missy King. I’ve heard she’s at a church.”

  My neck feels tight, and my upper arm is aching. I grit my teeth and ignore it, focusing on Carlos’s face. He seems to be considering what I’ve told him, with his palms pressed flat on the table.

  “You know…I have heard that a little bird is staying with the Sisters at St. Catherine’s Clinic in Guadalupe Victoria.”