Fighting the sickness rising in my throat, I move toward the bed. There’s hardly enough space on the mattress for two people to lie side by side. But I guess that’s not the point. The Point Girl, Marie, said if I came here a virgin, I’d leave here one. Well, I suppose I am a virgin. But I’m not so innocent, and I know there are plenty of other things a man and woman can do that skirt the line.
I’m still surveying the area when someone raps twice on the doorway. I spin around and find Jack blocking the light from the kitchen.
He moves toward me like a beast of prey, eyes locked on my body.
Chapter Fifty-Four
Cost of Supplies
Before I can speak, his hands are on me. He buries his face in my neck and mumbles that he hated the way we parted the night before. His body pushes against mine until I’m walking backward. Until the backs of my knees hit the mattress and I sit down.
My heart pounds inside my chest, and I struggle to catch my breath.
I was sure I could do this, but now my body won’t cooperate. If I don’t do something to lessen my anxiety, I’ll die of a heart attack. Jack sits next to me and slides his arm around my waist. His other hand squeezes between my knees.
“There’s still so little I know about you,” I manage to say.
Jack nuzzles my neck. “We have all the time in the world to get to know each other.”
“Is that what you want, Jack? Truly?”
He pauses and looks into my eyes. “Yes, it is. I may have come here to forget my troubles, but the moment I saw you was the moment everything changed for me.” He strokes my face, and it feels like blisters form beneath his touch. “Such an innocent face. So vulnerable.”
What did he just say? Wilson snaps. Innocent? Vulnerable? This guy is living in his own head. You’re just a prop for his twisted fantasies.
I don’t push Wilson down like I usually do. I’m relieved he’s back, because I may need him if this gets out of hand. I’m sure I must do this. But I’m also certain I don’t want to.
“What’s wrong, baby?” Jack grips my hand and looks at me as if we are a couple on our fiftieth anniversary, and he knows me all too well.
“My mother is sick.” I don’t know where this lie comes from. Maybe it forms so quickly because it’s not a lie at all. “She needs money to pay for her prescriptions, and she doesn’t have it.”
“Can’t you send her some of your earnings?” he asks. “Surely you have money after how many nights you’ve worked here.”
“It takes too long to apply for a withdrawal, and it makes the madam wary when we do.”
Both truths.
Jack rubs his jawline. “I’d give you money, Domino, but that house manager said if we ever did that we’d be fined and wouldn’t be able to return. I’m not sure he could actually fine me, but he might be able to keep us apart.” Jack grabs my hands like a thought has occurred to him. “Do you want to stay here? I mean, long-term?”
The hopeful glint in his eyes softens my resentment, and I decide that just this once, I’ll tell him the truth. “No, Jack. I don’t want to stay.”
“Then maybe I could pay off your debts.”
My entire body goes cold. “My what?”
“That manager guy—Mr. Hodge?—he said if I had enough cash he might be persuaded to let me take one of his girls. Would you ever want to…? What I mean to say is, how would you like to come and live with me? It would take me a few months to get that kind of cash but—”
“I’m for sale?” I ask, stupidly.
“No. Of course not. Well, not exactly.” Jack’s face pulls together. “You didn’t know? They said you were working off a loan and that most of your earnings went to that debt. But that we could pay it off for you, and that’d release you from your contract.”
I rub my hands over my arms, fighting nausea. Of all the messed-up things I expected to happen tonight, this was not one of them. How dare Madam Karina? How dare Mr. Hodge? To pitch us as products? To tell the customers we are but bodies to be traded for cash? This house is a mass burial site. The further I dig the shovel in, the more skeletons I discover.
I shoot to my feet, knowing if I don’t get fresh air, I’ll lose it. But first, there’s one thing I want to clarify. “You would want that? To pay off my debt and take me as your own?”
Jack stands up, thinking I’m shocked at his thoughtfulness. “More than anything.”
“You don’t even know me,” I whisper.
“Like I said,” Jack coos. “We’ll have time.”
I spin around and face him, every ounce of pity gone from my mind. He doesn’t want me. He just wants a body. Maybe my face pleases him in some way, or maybe I remind him of his ex-wife. Who knows? I only know I’m a placeholder. “I need cash for my mother’s medications, and I need it now. If you can get that for me soon, then I’ll tell the madam myself that I want to leave with you.”
“As soon as I have the money to pay for you,” he clarifies.
I cringe at his choice of words, but refrain from showing my disgust. Instead, I pull him against me and touch my mouth against his chest and say thank you, thank you, more times than I can count.
“How much does she need? Your mom?” he asks, his hands moving down my back.
I swallow, grip him tighter and say, “Two thousand dollars.”
“Two thousand? That’s not much less than what you owe the madam.”
Once again, my stomach revolts. Is that how little I’m worth? I choke on emotion, and Jack misunderstands the sound as fear for my mother.
“Shh. Come here, let me hold you.” He pulls me next to him on the bed though I desperately need that air. “I’m going to help you, but… Well, how old are you, Domino?”
He must want to ensure I’m not underage, which I am. I open my mouth to lie, knowing I need him comfortable in this transaction. In the end though, I say, “I’m seventeen. I turn eighteen in four months.”
At first I’m afraid I’ve blown it. That he’ll hightail it out of here and choose a different girl to spend his bronze coin on. But a slow, shy smile parts his mouth. “So young,” he says. “Do you know how old I am?”
“It doesn’t matter to me.”
Twenty-three.
Twenty-four.
Old enough to know better.
“I’m thirty-one.”
He pauses as the floor falls out from beneath me. Thirty-one. Thirty-one? He’s almost twice my age. What is he doing here? And why is he grinning that way?
“Does that bother you?” he asks, slipping his hand inside the waistband of my jeans.
I shake my head to conceal my rising fear. I can’t name why his age makes me afraid of him. But it does.
Sensing my alarm, he says, “I can bring the money for your mother tomorrow. It won’t be easy to get together, and it’ll mean waiting longer before I can get you out of here. You still want that, right? To go with me?”
“More than anything,” I whisper.
Jack clears his throat. “We should commemorate this somehow. I mean, tomorrow when I bring the money. We should do something special.” He licks his lips. “Do you think you could reserve this room again tomorrow night?”
I know what he’s asking. Will I reward his generosity? I decided this before I walked into the Lilies’ house, so why am I hesitating? I pull in a deep breath. Two. Three.
“Yes,” I say.
He hears my hesitation. I hear my hesitation. The girls in the living room probably hear it. Yet he still replies with a cool, “Perfect. How about tonight we do something a little more low-key? It’ll help build suspense for our special night tomorrow.”
He can barely keep the giddiness from his voice. He sounds like a twelve-year-old boy, knowing he’ll commit a petty crime the next evening and wanting to relish the still moments before the excitement unfolds.
“Can I hold you?”
I smile and tell him I’d like nothing better. Jack lays himself out on the side of the bed, his back pressed
against the wall. Just like I suspected, there isn’t really enough room for us both. But we try anyway. Jack wraps his arms around me, and we share the single pillow. Light continues to shine from the kitchen.
We never even closed the door, I think to myself. Nothing to worry about.
But tomorrow night that door will be closed. And after it does, I’ll never be the same again. But I won’t be trapped by another woman promising me love when she has nothing but ugly hate to give. This time, I will escape.
As Jack rubs his anxious hands over my hip and thigh, something catches my eye. A movement in the kitchen. No, not in the kitchen. Outside the kitchen window.
The figure is there.
And then it’s gone.
Chapter Fifty-Five
Illusion
The next day flies by in a blur. I work alone on cleaning dishes and floors and emptying wastebaskets in the Lily house. Then I walk over to the Violets’ home, because Marie reminds me we have to clean their space as well. I’m not sure what I expect it to be like. I’ve built it up in my head so that nothing can compare.
But when we finally go inside, I’m surprised to find it’s a replica of the Lilies’ home: wood paneling, outdated décor, worn furniture. I suppose there’s no use in pretending these homes are used for anything other than what they are. Still, for some unknown reason, my heart falls. I guess I clung to the idea that if I had stayed, when I finally became a Violet, I would be rewarded.
It’s strange, seeing it for the first time this way—the Violets at breakfast, me walking over red bras and lacy robes and thigh-highs in the unforgiving daylight. I always imagined I’d see it at night, music thumping, Lola dancing on a table with a glass of champagne in her hand. I’d look at her and imagine I could be her, not a care in the world. I could take her place when she left this house of mirages and reign as Top Girl.
But this place is not the dream I created. It’s just a dusty house where girls trade their virtue for bronze coins they’ll never touch. When I complete my chores and leave their home, it feels anticlimactic. That’s it? I keep thinking. The holy grail of Madam Karina’s Home for Burgeoning Entertainers? I watch from the Lily house window as the Violet girls walk back from breakfast.
They stretch in the morning and smooth their tangled hair. Their faces are free of makeup and their clothes mismatched. The oldest can’t be more than twenty-four. One girl reaches down and scratches her crotch while yawning. And Lola walks in the back, mumbling to herself about who knows what.
They don’t look like the glamorous, untouchable girls I’ve seen in fleeting moments at market or outside the main house window. In this light, they aren’t Violets. They’re just girls who were nudged, little by little, to become what someone else wanted.
As I let the curtain fall back into place, and Marie yells for me to get my lazy rear moving, the last of Madam Karina’s illusions is broken.
Chapter Fifty-Six
Huckleberry
My hands sweat as I wait for Jack to arrive. I’ve already reserved the room, showered, and pulled on a pair of snug jeans. Even my hot pink wig is in place.
The Punk Girl with spiky black hair, Amy, is watching me with interest.
“Tonight the night, Cinderella?” she asks.
I rub my damp hands on my jeans and stare at the ceiling.
“Yeah, it is.” She laughs and elbows the girl next to her. The other girl makes a crude gesture with her mouth and hand, and the two crow harder.
Marie comes in and sees that two of her girls are heckling me. She smiles and says, as if I asked for her help, “They’re not going to treat you any differently than they were treated.”
“I don’t expect to be treated differently.”
Marie cocks her head. “How’d you move up so quickly anyway? You got a magic vagina?”
Amy slaps her knee and bends at the waist, howling. Then she shoots upright. “Nah, that’s not it. Look at that face she’s hiding. Men want to wreck her. She’s got that scared, skinny, victimized thing going on. Makes them want to rescue and ravage her at once.”
I curl into myself, imagining what they’re saying is true. Is that all it comes down to? Men like Jack want to steal that fragile innocence away? If so, I wish I could spoil the surprise. Whisper that I’ve helped end a half dozen men’s lives as I bring him to completion. Maybe I will.
Wilson taps his fingers inside my brain, waiting. I won’t let him come out and play. Not tonight. Every time he raises his voice, I push him back down. Last night I wanted him close, but I’ve decided that this is my battle, and I need to do it alone.
I rub at the six written on the back of my hand. It would be harder to move up here than in the main house. Glad that’s not a concern anymore. I’m still rubbing circles over my hand when Jack arrives. He’s wearing a charcoal gray suit that has him sweating like a pig on the spit. He’s carrying limp red roses in his hand and a bottle of champagne in the other. I almost feel a twinge of sympathy over the look of excitement on his face.
Until I remember that he basically wants to buy me off someone. And that he doesn’t find that problematic. And that he is a thirty-one-year-old man bringing flowers and sinful expectations to a seventeen-year-old girl in a desperate situation.
The sweat on my palms breaks out across my entire body as he moves toward me. He takes my hand and, without asking if I’m ready, directs us toward our tiny room across the kitchen. A laundry room. A place where things are cleaned and reused.
Jack puts the roses and champagne in the hall, already forgotten. “I brought your money,” he says, withdrawing an envelope from his pocket. “Had to sell my father’s guitar to get it.” I peek inside and see tight green bills. My heart picks up when I realize this is really happening. Jack doesn’t seem to have the same hesitation, because he tucks the money away and leads me toward the bed.
“Tell me you can’t wait until I take you away from here,” he says against my neck.
“I can’t wait,” I whisper.
He runs his hand under the back of my shirt. “Tell me you’ve wanted me from the first day you saw me.”
“You know I have.”
“Say it.”
“I’ve wanted you.”
I am a puppet playing Simon Says.
Kiss me like you mean it.
Ha, ha! You didn’t say “Simon says.”
His lips move up my neck and toward my mouth. Two thousand dollars. That’s my price. No, my price is freedom. My price is enough money to get my friends to safety. To find help for girls being kept in cells. To give two stiff middle fingers to Madam Karina.
Jack’s mouth is warm against mine, but I can’t bring myself to close my eyes. He forgot to close the door. I can see his face in the kitchen light, clenched like he’s constipated, as he gropes my chest.
Maybe I could steal the money from him and run without going through with this, I think in desperation. Hit him over the head with that bottle he brought and use the few seconds I have to grab Poppet and Cain and run, baby, run.
Even as I think this, I know it’s stupid. I’d never have enough time. I have to do this.
I concentrate on the end game as my pulse races and dizziness overwhelms my senses. He smells like aftershave and tastes of Angie’s peppermints. I focus on this and not the fact that his hand is sliding between my knees.
“Tell me you like this,” he says.
“I like this.”
He pauses. “Tell me you love me.”
A chill races down my back. I won’t say it. I won’t. I’m not sure why this is the line I won’t cross, but it’s like a fault line that can’t be disturbed. Should I attempt it, earthquakes would rumble the house. Aftershocks would bring down the roof.
“Don’t ever leave me,” I try, hoping that’ll suffice.
He bites the tender flesh above my collarbone. “Tell me you love me.”
I shake my head, and tears spring to my eyes. He’s crazy. We’ve spent mere hours together, and he
thinks I could love him that quickly? He thinks I could love him at all? Jack’s hands slide down my arms until he finds my wrists. He pulls them up and over my head.
“You want to tease me?” he says playfully. “Well, I know just what to do with that.”
Dread rumbles in my blood as he releases my wrist and strides toward the door, peeling off his suit jacket and shirt as he moves.
“Jack,” I say in a whimper.
I hate the sound of my voice. The pleading tone that silently begs him to give me the money, no strings attached. There’s no such thing as a free lunch, isn’t that what they say? My body begins to shake, and I cry openly.
“Shhh,” he says, closing the door. “Don’t be sad. I’m not leaving.”
When I see him move toward me—completely ignorant of my distress—is the moment I snap. I can’t do this. Not for any amount of money. Not for any amount of freedom. Because this isn’t freedom. Cain is right, if I do this, I’ll become one of Madam Karina’s girls. No matter how far away I get.
I’ve already let Jack kiss me. But I won’t let this go any further.
I stand up. “I can’t do this.”
“You’re scared I won’t come back,” he says soothingly. “But I will. You don’t have to worry.”
“No, Jack. I don’t want to be with you. I thought I could, but…”
“You thought you could?” The confusion that crosses Jack’s face swiftly morphs into sadness. He shakes his head once. Twice. Three times. A thousand times, trying to figure out my sudden change of heart. “You thought you could because I was going to pay you?”
I don’t respond.
“Do you want to leave with me?”
“Jack…”
Violet Grenade Page 24
