It didn’t matter what I wore, if I painted my face with makeup. I’d found that men were eager to stick it in anything willing, and that made my desires even easier to feed. Some men were often suspicious about the fact that I was all too willing to have sex with them, demanding to know my age, whether I was a prostitute, how much I charged, and, most frequently, if I were a cop trying to catch predators.
I never had any qualms about accepting cash, but it was that nothing I was after. The gaping maw of whatever howled inside of me silenced for just a few precious seconds by that release.
I’d heard heroin could get me to that same place, but it was an expensive habit to pick up.
I felt the familiar gnaw of anxiety coupled with the surge of shame. Why had I done that? What was wrong with me? Couldn’t I make it through the shift without boning everyone with a tab open?
The truer thought was I wouldn’t have been able to stomach a shift without sex.
Patrons were thirsty, and I had to get back out there, trying to ignore my own thirst, building already, my body looking for its next climax.
I encouraged customers to keep drinking past the official cutoff time. I’d do anything to stay there at the bar for as long as possible, to keep pouring drink after drink, immersing myself in other people’s lives, just to stay away from my own. I wish I didn’t have to sleep or be alone, that those two things could be magically removed from my understanding of existence. I was just fine as long as I had something to do, people to learn about and be around.
The tips were better the longer I pushed for the customers to drink, but they eventually all drifted out, having to pass out for a couple of hours before they woke up to start their days anew, stumbling over the crumbling sidewalk just outside the door. I did whatever I could to make them stay, to distract myself, volunteering to help them get home, call them a cab, anything just stay with me.
When the door jingled shut for the last time, the last broad back vanishing into the inky night, I never even bothered locking it, hoping that someone—anyone—would walk in, for whatever purpose.
At that time of night, there were only a few more things I could do before I had to leave the bar. I took my time sweeping and mopping and wiping down every surface, whether it looked dingy or not. I counted the money and added it to the safe for the owner to collect at the end of the week. I turned off all the lights and locked the door.
I’d tried, during the beginning of my tenure behind the chipped wooden bar, to spend the night on the premises instead of leaving, certain that being here would be better than trying to go home, but I was surprised in the morning by the owner, pushing at me with a broom, trying to sweep me out the door, and thinking I was a squatter or a patron who’d somehow escaped attention during the night before.
“It’s me, Mr. Trenton,” I’d cried, shielding my light-sensitive eyes from the sharp ends of the straw on the broom.
“Meagan?” He was dumbfounded, still clutching the broom across his chest as if it were a weapon and I was someone he needed protection against. “What in the hell are you doing here?”
“I…I just fell asleep,” I said, pushing myself up from the little pallet I’d made myself of tablecloths we only brought out during the holidays and a package of napkins for a pillow.
“Were you drunk on the job?” he demanded.
“No.” I drank on the job often enough, sure, but I was never drunk. If I weren’t in control at all times, things could get pretty ugly pretty quickly.
“Are you homeless?”
It was a yes-or-no question that should’ve been easy to answer, but I found it difficult to define homeless. Was I homeless? Yes, in a way. I’d lost a sense of what home was supposed to mean ages ago. The home that was supposed to be mine just wasn’t anymore. The structure itself still stood, and everything inside of it continued to function as long as I paid all of the bills on time, but it wasn’t home.
“I’m not homeless,” I’d sighed eventually, for the benefit of the man who could fire me if things got too weird—and they were well on their way there. “I really did just fall asleep. It won’t happen again.”
That appeased Mr. Trenton, but it also cemented the fact that I had to leave the building once everyone had stumbled out and I’d completed the last tasks. There were a few lucky nights in which I made it to someone else’s home. The price I paid to do that was well worth it, in my opinion. If something I gave away to anyone so eagerly could win me a night away from the four walls of that old nightmarish house, I’d jump on it—literally.
Tonight wasn’t one of those lucky nights.
I spent an extra-long time polishing the surface of the wooden bar, even though no amount of cleaning solution could ever make it gleam again, and turned off each and every light, fingers lingering over the faceplates, dragging the heels of my sneakers, until I reached the front door.
I tried to convince myself it was going to be fine. I wouldn’t spend very much time at that house. Just a quick sleep and I could be gone again. If I couldn’t sleep, which was often the case, I could go for a walk. I’d be alone, of course, but at least I wouldn’t be at the house.
For not the first time in my life, I wished I lived in a big city. Big cities never slept. I could find someone who was awake and probably wouldn’t even have to give my body to ensure their company. I could lean against the counter of an all-night convenience store or bodega and chat with the person behind the register.
Not even the Walmart in my tiny, rural town stayed open all night.
Ever reluctant, I locked the door and yanked it shut behind me. After he’d found me asleep behind the bar, the owner hadn’t trusted me with my own set of keys, convinced I’d commit some nefarious act like spending the night again or something. It had been so innocent, but he had been so sure of my guilt.
The bar was located in the old downtown part of town, but the idea of “downtown” was more like a pathetic joke. A few dilapidated brick storefronts populated the block, each end demarcated with a blinking red light that was really more of a formality than a necessity. The occasional car that approached the twin lights gave a cursory tap on the brakes before continuing on its journey. There wasn’t much of a reason for them except for maybe pride, some sad desire to slow a traveler from their own lives to make them gaze upon this dump.
Most of the buildings stood vacant, lacking a tenant for years. The bar only existed because some people in the town decided they needed a distraction from all of the depression. They’d made a special ordinance in the city commission to allow the establishment to open. Maybe that was the reason for the red blinking lights demarcating the borders of downtown. Stop here. Stay a while. Have a drink. Remember better times.
The home I headed toward—the house, rather—was a bit too far to walk to in the cold night, but walking gave me something to do. Counting my steps and concentrating on the vapor clouds that my breath formed in the clear air distracted me from my purpose. I had to go to that house, had to close my eyes for a bit and try to sleep. I hated going to that house. Hated what it represented, what had happened there.
Hated that I was still there.
I couldn’t blame my brother. He was trying to save the money to get me to New York City, but I knew it was hard for him. I hadn’t heard from him in a long time. He was probably busy at his job.
A nastiness inside of me insisted that perhaps he was tired of his needy kid sister, but I ignored it. That voice was easy to ignore. I wasn’t needy. He had no idea what I really needed, what I did in the out-of-the-way corners of my job, this town.
If he did, he’d probably try a lot harder to get me out of here.
I turned a corner and my discomfort became a lot more acute. It would’ve been better, I’d often thought, if the house had been at the end of a long, winding dirt road. People expected terrible things to happen to people who lived in those remote places, away from the protection offered by houses clustered together in neighborhoods. There was safety in
numbers, or so people claimed.
The house I was dragging myself toward, my steps growing slower and slower, was in one of those neighborhoods, one of those white-picket-fence places where it was hard to imagine that things could go wrong. The bright lights illuminating each porch of the homes I passed belied the fact that things could go wrong wherever someone existed who wanted to do bad things. It didn’t have to be at the end of a road, behind darkened glass, out of reach of any possible help. It could happen right beyond those chintz curtains, right past the moths doing lazy loops around the fixture lighting the wintry wreath that someone had put out, even if it wasn’t yet Thanksgiving.
I reached my destination and stood in the street, looking at it, steeling myself for going inside. I’d stay out all night, if I could, and I had before, but I’d likely freeze to death if I tried it tonight. It was too cold, and I needed to go inside, needed to charge my batteries in someplace safe.
This house had never been safe. In spite of its present state of vacancy, I still didn’t feel at ease.
It looked just the same as any of the houses on the same street, but it wasn’t the same. Things…bad things…had happened here. I’d seen them happen. I’d experienced them. Some of them had happened to me.
The only reason I was still here was because I didn’t have the money to move away. I’d needed my brother for help on that front, but he was struggling enough on his own. He didn’t need another mouth to feed when he could barely manage to feed himself. At least, that’s what I told myself. The fact that it had been a year since he told me he’d save up and move me to the city with him hadn’t escaped me. It had been nearly as cold as this when he’d sat next to me and told me his plan. That I wouldn’t have to stay here much longer.
He probably hadn’t saved enough money or moved into his own place. That was why he hadn’t come back or contacted me in months.
Thinking that was better than the alternative—possibilities that the nasty little voice inside of me liked to whisper.
My brother didn’t want me in the city. He didn’t want something as broken as me around him all the time, reminding him of what had been lost.
I couldn’t blame him. If I didn’t have to be around myself, I’d gladly go somewhere else—New York City, London, the moon. But here I was, and I couldn’t escape myself no matter how hard I tried.
The rattle of the keys in my pocket as I crunched down the gravel sidewalk to the front door of the house sounded like chains. I’d long given up on turning the lights on in the front entryway. A well-meaning neighbor had encouraged me to do so some time ago, saying that the lights would ward off those with nefarious intentions.
That was a lie, a false hope. What if that person lived inside, well within the protective reach of the light?
I would’ve welcomed someone into the house to ransack it, remove anything thought to be valuable, to torch it until it was embers scattered across the wild lawn. Then, perhaps, my brother would take pity on me, let me move to the city with him, savings and plans be damned.
But night after night, after I unlocked the door and pushed it inward, letting the creak of the hinges echo into the empty space within, everything was always in its place. No one had come in here to erase what I wanted them to erase. This tomb remained a testament to things I wished desperately to forget.
I closed the door behind me, not bothering to lock it, wondering why I even locked it in the first place every morning when I left. My new game to distract myself from losing my mind inside this silent monument to pain was trying to remember the names and faces of all the men I had been with. I scoured my brain, letting the keys and my coat fall to the tile of the entryway, remembering the old man I wanted to like me, and the poor lay in the alleyway, the smell of metal on my hands.
I drifted past the banister leading upstairs, taking special care not to look up those stairs. There had been someone the day before, someone who had been kind. I couldn’t remember his name—Christopher? Kyle? It was hard to tell. There were so many of them, but he’d been kind.
“You seemed like you needed this,” he’d told me, buttoning his shirt in the restroom at the bar.
“You have no idea,” I’d answered, wishing he’d shut up, wishing I could preserve that nothingness of release, the relief of the abyss. Already, the world was seeping back. Reality.
The names and faces faded almost immediately after the act, itches scratched, succumbing to the ravages of time and memory. It wasn’t important to look back on. It was only important in the moment.
I reached the living room and observed the nest I’d made on the worn rug. I couldn’t force myself to sleep with any of the three beds in this house, or the couch. I’d ripped the pillows from it, and the pillows from the beds I couldn’t bear to look at, and made a pallet of sorts on the floor. All I had to do was lie down on it. Just lie down, close my eyes, and wait for sleep to take me.
I didn’t like giving up that kind of control.
I settled down all the same, drawing an afghan over me, staring at the dark ceiling above my head until I wasn’t sure that my eyes were opened or closed.
Chapter 3
I was up with the sun, pushing myself up off the pallet the moment my eyes partially opened.
The house was just as forbidding in the daytime as the night, and I wanted to move as fast as I could before the memories consumed me.
I threw myself into the shower, wetting my body before soaping up my hair, face, and skin all at once, rinsing in a practiced rush. If only I could stay somewhere else—anywhere else—but my brother had promised me that he’d send for me in a year’s time. I could handle it. The anniversary of that promise was going to roll around soon, and I needed to maintain the house, do what I could until then.
I wriggled into my customary uniform for the bar—black pants, dark shirt—and pulled my hair back, my eyes traversing the collection of pill bottles covering nearly every surface of the countertop. I could recite those long, ugly names by heart, I’d bet. I should’ve just thrown them all away, swept them in one movement into the garbage can, but something stopped me. It wasn’t as if she were coming back. She wouldn’t need them, but I just couldn’t. They’d been her lifeline. Her hope. They’d let her down, sure, but I couldn’t just get rid of them. They’d meant so much.
“Shut up,” I said, pushing the heel of my hand against my forehead. There it was. That was it. The memories would swallow a person whole if they spent too much time in this hellish house. I knew that, and yet I lingered over those pointless bottles. It was well past time to go.
If possible, it was even colder this morning than it had been last night. My breath hung in clouds before me, and I jammed my hands into the pockets of a coat thrown hastily on, wondering if it would be worth it to go back into the house to fetch a scarf and a hat and risk getting sucked into its badness again. No. I would’ve rather froze.
The bar opened for a lunch shift, but it was still far too early. I stopped at a gas station for some coffee and a breakfast sandwich, trying to ignore the pitying stares I still got from the people of this tiny town, hungry to glom on to tragedy and not let go. I didn’t stay long, and neither did they, hurrying to commute to jobs in other, better towns.
It was a wonder this place existed at all.
I read snatches of the newspapers on the stands until I drew the ire of the woman manning the cash register.
“If you want the news, you’re going to have to buy it,” she fussed.
“I’m going,” I said. The news was free at the library, but it was a long walk in the cold. I could’ve taken the car, but it was as dangerous as the house, memory-wise. The songs she used to sing, for example. How we sang along. The crayons jammed in every available pocket, ready to scribble thoughts and ideas and pictures on notebooks and coloring books and fast-food-restaurant napkins. All surfaces available.
Today was just going to be one of the bad days. I could already tell.
There were days when
I could distract myself completely. They were usually the times when I didn’t have to spend the night in the house. I woke up fresh and revived and ready to find the next thing to keep me from thinking about whatever had happened. It helped that I was focused on earning money and saving it, obsessed with getting enough to prove to my brother that I could be more of a help than a hindrance.
And then there were days when it consumed me, days I didn’t make it out of the house—or out of my own head—at all. Days when I crouched, my heart pounding, in the pallet of pillows I made on the living room floor, paralyzed with fear, certain that I was living my worst nightmares again.
That he was in that house with me, waiting just upstairs. Around the corner. Waiting for me to open my eyes so he could smile at me and make me…
No. This wasn’t going to be one of those days.
I walked to the library, which was several miles away, knowing that I could, at least, distract myself with how badly I’d have to hurry back downtown in order to make my shift at the bar. There were books, computers, newspapers, and magazines at the library. I could submerge myself in someone else’s reality for a while. See if I could shake my own reality off for at least a few hours.
I didn’t bother with the newspapers arranged haphazardly in the racks, picked over already by frugal souls like me. I’d gleaned what I wanted from the rack in the gas station, over breakfast. Something about property taxes, a shooting in New York City, a sick girl collecting toys for other children for the holidays.
I grabbed a fashion magazine—there was nothing so vapid and escapist than a fashion magazine and its self-important tips for self-improvement. Life going to shit? Here are ten ways to make your boyfriend come. Terrified to be inside your own mind? Nail polish colors you need to be trying right now.
When I wasn’t at the bar, the library was the next best distraction. I could spend a whole day in here if I had to, and I wouldn’t once think about the house or what had happened.
LUCIEN: A Standalone Romance Page 98
