Release

by A. M. Sexton

  He made a slow, deliberate circle around me. That tattoo on his face seemed to twitch in the uncertain light. I tried to hold still. The il had taken affect and I was painfully aware of my erection, held within the confines of my pants.

  Donato made a low, growling sound. “Very good,” he said, his voice already thick with arousal. “I told Talia I wanted a whore who could play many roles, and she’s outdone herself.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “I wasn’t complimenting you. I was talking about your mistress.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  He stopped in front of me. He gripped my jaw in his strong hand, pinching hard as he forced me to look at him. “Yesterday, you were a courtesan, but today, you’re not even a whore. You’re nothing but a bit of trash who will do anything I say for a scrap of iron. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Good.”

  He wrapped both hands around my neck. Panic flared in my chest, but before I could react, he kissed me.

  This was nothing like the passionate kisses we’d shared in the carriage. This time, it was me being ravished. Being attacked. He crushed my lips with his own, tightening his grip on my neck when I instinctively tried to pull away. I forced myself to be still. I hadn’t taken one of the sedatives, and I wished more than anything that I had. My heart pounded. I imagined he could feel my pulse against his hands. He could squeeze it to silence if he desired. He tightened his grip, and I gasped. I could barely move the oxygen through my constricted windpipe. I longed to scream. My vision began to go black.

  He bit me, so hard I tasted blood. I made a terrible, strangled sound—the utterly primal squeal of a trapped animal as the hunter’s knife came down.

  “Get down on your knees.”

  He let go of my neck. My legs gave out and I landed on the floor sooner than I’d planned, the blood rushing back into my head. My bleeding lip throbbed. I held my throat, gasping for air, practically sobbing with relief.

  He grabbed a handful of my hair and pointed my face at his groin. He’d already undone his pants, and his erection stuck out from his open fly.

  “I’m going to force you,” he said, “and you’re going to fight just enough to make it fun, but not so much that you make me mad.”

  Obeying turned out to be both easier and harder than I might have expected. It was easy because I was already scared. Because panic flared in the dark corners of my mind, telling me that this was it. I was about to die, not by a knife in some alley, but choking on a cock in a rich man’s playroom. The hard part was not fighting too much. He shoved his erection into my mouth. He was still holding my head, and he thrust in fast and hard. I instinctively tried to pull away, but he held me there and shoved in harder.

  “Fucking stupid, cheap little whore,” he sneered, and thrust in again. “Trash, filth, you fucking whore. You’ll take that and more. You’ll swallow every inch of it if I want you to.”

  It went on, him pumping into me, showering me with hatred and disdain. He finished in a matter of minutes. He let me go and slapped me hard across the face. I fell backward on the floor, holding my aching cheek, gasping for air, fighting desperately not to cry.

  “Get out of my house, you stinking, vile little whore.”

  I fled. Down the stairs, out of the house, into the waiting carriage where I collapsed against the back of the seat. My hands shook. Tears filled my eyes. I bit my lip and fought to keep from bursting into tears like a child. I debated never going back. I wondered if I could stand seeing the disappointment in Anzhéla’s eyes.

  But as we passed through the Plaza Gate, and the carriage turned left into the fourth quadrant, I looked out the window at the sagging, decrepit houses. I made myself see the clanless children huddled in the alleys, the thieves in the shadows, the street whores, not good enough for any whorehouse, standing on corners in the disdainful yellow light of the gas lamps. All of them hunter, or hunted. All of them looking for prey, or waiting to be preyed upon.

  Tonight, I had pretended to be one of them, but I wasn’t. Not really.

  I wiped the tears from my face, cleaning away the last of Tawny’s make up, too.

  Whore or not, I was still me. Still Misha.

  Misha.

  I repeated the name, caressing it with my tongue, tasting it in my mouth. It was soothing. I found comfort in the consonants, release in the familiar vowels. This was me: this name, given to me by mother at my birth, used by my friends, by Anzhéla, by the few true lovers I’d ever had as we’d held each other close. It was my identity, untouched and unsullied. Donato never used it, and I was suddenly glad for the fact. I vowed that he would never know it. Even if he asked, I would lie.

  Misha.

  By the time I climbed out of the carriage at Talia’s, I felt better.

  I thought about my evening with Donato.

  At least it had been quick.

  At least I hadn’t enjoyed it.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Over the next few days, it became clear to me that the most radical change in my life wasn’t how I spent my nights, but how I spent my days. For the first time in my life, I had hours and hours of free time, one idle afternoon trailing behind the next. No pockets to pick or new clan kids to train. No errands to run for Anzhéla and Frey. That would have been fine, but on top of that, I’d lost all access to my clanmates and my home. I was told in no uncertain terms that unless I had something worth reporting, I was to avoid my old stomping grounds and all of my old associates, in case Donato was having me watched.

  The den that had housed me for thirteen years was suddenly off-limits.

  It took a couple of days for me to put a name to the emptiness that plagued me, like some kind of quiet hunger that couldn’t be sated. But then I realized: I was lonely. It was harder to take than being a whore. I missed my clanmates and my den. I especially missed Jabin and Jimbo. I’d never quite counted either as a confidante—Jabin was a braggart, and Jimbo was a bully—but nonetheless, we’d been friends. We’d been in the den longer than any of the others and, over the years, we’d come to understand each other. We’d often spent our evenings together, playing dice. We had our own version of the game, developed over the years, with made-up, barely remembered rules that changed from week to week. Occasionally, we switched to count and capture with a set of smooth, polished stones, or cards, despite the fact our deck was incomplete. They’d talk about sex and girls and rib me good-naturedly about my preference for men. We’d sneak out of the den to smoke stolen fags, huddled together in the shadow of Anzhéla’s theatre, chatting idly while the gargoyles leered at us from overhead.

  Such simple, mundane things, and yet, in the blink of an eye, it’d all been taken away. Now, it was just me, and a whole houseful of whores, and the never-ending flow of customers. I thought at first the constant sound of creaking beds and headboards slamming rhythmically into the walls would drive me mad.

  Lalo laughed when I said so, one day over breakfast. “You learn to tune it out.”

  I hoped I wouldn’t be there long enough for that to happen, but I kept my mouth shut.

  Lalo and I were the only men Talia employed. While the girls has assigned times to work the front reception area and service anybody who showed up, I learned that Lalo never had specific shifts. He had one day off per week, but was otherwise expected to be available at any time, should a customer request him. It took me a couple of days to stop blushing every time I saw him—the memory of that drug-hazed night and the pleasure he’d given me was hard to shake—but he quickly became my friend. He introduced me to the day-to-day life of the whorehouse.

  There were two rooms Talia’s employees hung out in when they weren’t on duty: the kitchen, and a small parlor in the back. The kitchen was bright and warm and always smelled like fresh-baked bread. Late in the morning, sunlight streamed through lace curtains like gold, falling on the one long, rough, wooden table in the center. The parlor was more intimate, although also a bit claustrophobic due
to its lack of windows. Its walls were lined with books, although only a few of the employees ever bothered to read. There was a fireplace, and several deep, soft armchairs, and three small tables with chairs around them where the whores played cards.

  “Do you play chess?” Lalo asked me one day as we entered the parlor.

  It was early, and several of the women were sitting around the room, two playing cards with Lilja, another lounging with Tawny on the couch near the fire. One of the card players laughed at Lalo’s question. “Please say yes, Misha. He’s been trying to get one of us to play with him ever since Rona left. He’s driving us mad.”

  Lalo’s cheeks colored a bit. “She was the only one with a head for the game.”

  “Yeah,” Tawny teased. “The rest of us have inferior heads.”

  “That’s not what I—”

  But Tawny laughed. “I was ribbin’ ya.”

  Lalo eyed me hopefully. “Do you play?”

  “I’m willing to learn.”

  “Careful what you volunteer for,” Lilja warned, as she played one of her cards into the stack on the table.

  “It’s hard,” another said.

  “It’s not,” Lalo said. “It’s just—”

  “Complicated?”

  “Impossible?”

  “Boring?” the girls offered in turn.

  He smiled at me. “Complex.”

  I was intrigued. “I don’t have anything else to do.”

  He retrieved a board and a box of playing pieces from a shelf, and I sat opposite him as he began setting up the board.

  “Anyway,” one of the girls at the card table said, clearly resuming the conversation they’d been having when Lalo and I entered, “he said he went to Chilpan once, and there are people there who claim men once came from the skies, and he said—”

  “I bet he said a lot of things,” Lilja interrupted. “It don’t make them true, Dulcie.”

  “They’ll say anything, trying to impress us. Like any of us give a damn.”

  “They do that to you, too, Lalo?” asked the girl playing cards with Lilja and Dulcie. She was tiny. I guessed she barely weighed a hundred pounds. “Do they do everything they can to impress you?”

  “No,” Lalo said, without embarrassment. He didn’t even look up from the board and its pieces, which he was placing in lines on the checkered top. “They mostly get what they came for, then leave.”

  “I wish mine did that.”

  “You’re too nice, Clea,” Tawny told her. “Tell them talking costs extra.”

  “Sometimes I don’t mind.” She gathered Lilja and Dulcie’s cards and began tapping them on the table, lining them up so she could shuffle. “If only we could pick and choose our customers.”

  “No kidding,” Dulcie said. “Must be nice to be a kept man like Misha, only having one chump pumping away at you each night.”

  “Even if that man’s Donato?” Lilja asked.

  Dulcie dropped her gaze to the table, and Clea paused mid-shuffle to glance my way. “Is he mean?”

  I thought of La Fontaine, and the upside down sky. I thought of the night after that, when he’d nearly strangled me. “Only on occasion.”

  “Hey,” a girl I hadn’t noticed before said from her seat in the corner of the room, lowering her book. “No shop talk.”

  The others rolled their eyes, but fell silent. She retreated again behind her book, and Clea began to deal the cards.

  “All right,” Lalo said, rubbing his hands together. “The point of chess is to capture the other player’s pieces. We each have sixteen of them at the outset...”

  The first game wasn’t much of a game at all, as Lalo discussed each move either of us made, pointing out the options and the pitfalls. I found the game fascinating, and Lalo was clearly impressed with my ability to remember how each piece moved after being told only once.

  An hour later, as we were setting up for a second game, the parlor door opened and a girl’s dark head poked through.

  “Clea. You’re up.”

  “No,” she said, without looking up from her cards. “It’s my day off.”

  “It’s Benedict.”

  Lilja and Dulcie both turned to Clea, who’d gone pale. Her hands shook visibly as she laid down her cards, but she put on a brave face and followed the girl out the door.

  “Come to collect, I guess,” Tawny said when Clea was gone. “The arrogant fuck.”

  Nobody else spoke, and I looked questioningly over the chessboard at Lalo. “Collect?”

  “Business owners who want to avoid Benedict’s raids pay him a weekly commission.”

  “And in our case, a weekly freebie between somebody’s legs,” Lilja interjected. The other girls all made sounds of disgust.

  “I admit,” Lalo said under his breath, “I’m glad I’m not his type.”

  I remembered Benedict at La Fontaine, asking Donato for use of me. But certainly he’d known I wasn’t a woman? “He doesn’t like men?”

  Lalo laughed. “Only the pretty ones.”

  “Only the ones he thinks he can intimidate, you mean,” Lilja said. “Man or woman, he likes them small and scared.”

  “He always picks Clea these days,” Dulcie said. “I feel bad for her, but...” She shuddered.

  “I’m glad I didn’t please him the time he chose me,” Tawny said. “He’s a mean son of a bitch.”

  I didn’t doubt it. I’d sensed it in him that night when Donato had introduced us. I turned back to Lalo. “So, he extorts payment from Talia?”

  “From a lot of business owners. He calls it protection money.”

  I wondered about Anzhéla. Did she know about Benedict’s corruption? She must. After all, our den had never been raided. And yet, I couldn’t imagine her paying it. She hated the man.

  Clea came back some time later. Her eyes were swollen and red from crying, and there were obvious bite marks on her neck. She rubbed them nervously with her fingertips as she resumed her seat at the table. “Deal me in,” she said, without meeting anybody’s gaze. Dulcie and Lilja exchanged a glance, but before they could say anything, Clea spoke again. “I don’t want to talk about it. Just deal the cards.”

  I glanced at Lalo. He didn’t say anything at first, but later, when the girls were absorbed in their game again, he spoke quietly, so that I only I could hear. “Talia normally blacklists customers who do that kind of thing.”

  He didn’t need to explain the rest: Talia had no power over Benedict. Trying to stop him from mistreating her girls would only be asking for trouble.

  Several hours later, when Talia came to tell me it was time to get ready for my night with Donato, I didn’t allow myself even a moment of self-pity.

  Better Donato than Benedict.

  ***

  I’d thought to have a few hours the next day to play chess with Lalo—it was the one day of the week he wasn’t required to hang around the whorehouse in case one of his clients showed up—but Talia had different plans. She pulled me aside after breakfast.

  “Misha,” she said, “it’s time you went shopping.”

  “Shopping? Like, for groceries.”

  She laughed. “No. Donato sent word that he’ll not have his pet parading around in rags. So today, I’m ordering you to buy some new clothes.”

  I looked down at what I was wearing, some of which had been pulled from trash, some of which had been stolen off clotheslines. It was all clean, but I still looked like exactly what I was—or rather, what I had once been—a common pickpocket. And yet, I felt a ridiculous attachment to them. They were the last remnants of my old life.

  “So I have to dress like a whore on a daily basis now?”

  “I’m not saying you have to parade around in the getups he sends for you, with your face painted like a woman. But I run a high-class establishment here. All of my workers are expected to dress appropriately.”

  I swallowed hard, trying to squelch my unease. “All right.” I thought of the money I had squirreled away in my room. It
was already more money than I’d ever had access to in my life, and yet the idea of spending it on clothing when what I had was mostly intact seemed criminal.

  Talia smiled, as if sensing my thoughts. “Here.” She pressed a small, heavy purse into my hand. “Some of this is a gift from him. Some of it’s an advance from me on what you’ll earn over the next few days. I don’t care how much or how little of it you spend, but I expect you to come back well dressed.”

  I nodded, wondering how it would feel to go into shops as an honest customer. To be measured for boots and jackets. In the past, I’d worn nothing but castoffs and rags. I’d counted myself lucky to be able to wash them once in a while. I’d never owned anything new, and I’d certainly never purchased it. Now, I was being ordered to do it. The problem was, I had no idea where to go. I didn’t even know where to begin.

  I found Lalo in the kitchen, eating with a few of Talia’s girls. I’d thought only to ask him where I should go, but he smiled broadly at my question and said, “Can I come with you?”

  The stores Lalo wanted to take me to were in the third quadrant. We left Talia’s and headed west, toward the plaza. Only a few yellow leaflets lay on the ground, soiled and torn. They’d obviously been there a while.

  “There haven’t been any new ones in a while,” Lalo said. “Not since right after the festival.”

  “Maybe that’s a good sign. Nothing new to report.”

  We did, however, spot one of the yellow-robed men, preaching rebellion from an overturned crate on a street corner.

  “Do you think it will happen?” Lalo asked, his voice quiet.

  I looked over at him, trying to decide how he expected me to answer. Lalo was older than I was, although it was hard to say exactly how old. In the bright light of day, I could see the beginnings of wrinkles around his eyes, but working at Talia’s had taught me that whores aged fast. Regardless, his days making money on his back were probably numbered. What would he do then?

  I didn’t know him well enough to ask.

  “Eventually,” I said, finally answering the question he’d asked. “I don’t see any other possibility.”