Shella

by Andrew Vachss

  “How come you keep it so dark in here, honey?”

  “I was resting,” I told her. I always rest inside myself when I’m not working, but I couldn’t explain that to her.

  She crawled on the bed, nuzzling between my legs. “Can I buy some clothes tomorrow, Daddy? I left most of my stuff back in Baltimore.”

  “I’m not your daddy.”

  “Yes, you are. My sweet daddy. You’re gonna take care of Misty, aren’t you?”

  I shifted the muscles in my back, sat up. “I’m nobody’s daddy,” I told her. Quiet and nice. “You want to buy clothes, you got money. I’m not taking care of you.”

  “I know I have money, baby. I showed it to you, remember? I was just … like, asking permission.”

  “It’s yours, you use it the way you want, understand?”

  “Im sorry.”

  “You got nothing to be sorry about,” I told her, and let her do what she thought would make me happy.

  She stayed up with me all that night, doing things. I listened when she talked, working my body around to a new clock. Where I had to look, I could only do it at night.

  We finally fell asleep. When I opened my eyes, it was after one o’clock. Misty was sleeping on her belly next to me, my belt wrapped around her wrists, looped over the bedpost. I touched a spot in her neck and she came around.

  “What’s all this?” I asked her, pulling on the belt.

  “I didn’t want to wake you up, baby. So I tied myself up. I know it’s stupid … I mean, I could get out of it and all … but I thought you’d feel better if you got up and saw me like this.”

  “It’s okay,” I told her. “You don’t need to do that anymore.”

  She smiled. A big smile, like I just gave her something.

  She took another long shower. Put on black stockings with seams down the back, spike heels. Did a couple of turns in front of the mirror.

  “You think my legs look longer in these?”

  I told her they did. She shoved herself into a push-up bra, put on a little black jersey dress. I watched her from the bed.

  She took the hotel key, went out. Came back in a half-hour or so, had a little paper bag with cigarettes and some cosmetic stuff, couple of newspapers. I read one of the newspapers while she made some calls.

  I closed my eyes, listening to the purr of her voice on the phone. When she hung up, she put some stuff into a little purse, dabbed some heavy perfume between her breasts.

  “I got an audition at four—I’m not sure when I’ll be back, maybe I’ll be working tonight … okay?”

  “Okay. Leave the key with me. Tell the desk clerk you need another one for yourself, slip him ten bucks. It’ll be all right.”

  She kind of posed in front of me. “Do I look sexy?”

  I told her she did.

  I started looking that night. Not for Shella, for the man who could help me find her. He wouldn’t do something for nothing, this man. I never expect that—something for nothing, that’s a whore’s promise.

  There isn’t a lot of street sex in Times Square. Comeons, to get you inside. Movies, books, magazines, videotapes. The places where there’s real flesh, they always let you know. Live Girls, a lot of the signs say. Like there’s dead girls in the other places.

  In the live places, the girls are on stage, or behind glass. You put a token in a slot, the window opens up, the girl moves around, shows herself, says things. Your time runs out, the window closes, you have to put another token in to open it up again. When one of the watchers is done, they send a man into his booth, hose the place down, spray some green-smelling stuff around.

  Some of the places, the girls come into your booth. Massage parlors, modeling studios, lingerie shows … they have all these names for the same things. They show it to you, you want to touch it, it costs you more money. The more you want the girls to do, the more it costs.

  Come and Go, Shella used to call those places.

  I passed them all by, not looking for her there. Shella wouldn’t be in any of those places.

  Little knots of hunters on the street too, looking for someone weaker than them to take down. Smash and grab. Police cars cruised around the blocks, blue and white. Right past guys selling drugs, saying “Smoke?” when you went past.

  In the windows, big radios, the kind kids carry on their shoulders. Little TV sets you could carry in your pocket. Watches, electronic stuff. All kinds of knives, camera stuff. Sex stuff too: vibrators, fake cunts made out of fur, handcuffs, leather masks with zippers for mouths, dildos.

  I walked criss-cross through the blocks until I found the place where I used to meet the man. The club had a different name, but I figured, they do that all the time, he might still be there.

  The beefy guy at the door took ten dollars from me. I sat down at the end of the bar. On the stage, a woman dressed like a little girl, short little dress with straps over a blouse … like a sailor suit. She had on little white socks, shoes with straps over the front. Dark hair in pigtails. Licking a lollipop, lifting up her skirt with one hand, pulling it down, teasing.

  When the bartender came over, I asked him for the man, gave him the name I had. Monroe. I didn’t offer him any money to tell me, that’s what a hunter would do. I asked him like I was an old friend, been out of town for a while. Shella always said I didn’t know how to be slick, but I could do pretty good if I had to.

  The bartender went away, like he hadn’t heard me. I stayed where I was. He came back, looked me over careful, like he’d have to describe me. I knew that wouldn’t do any good—I don’t look like anything.

  I sat there, watching the woman on the stage bend over, flip up her skirt, pull down her underpants, crawl around so everyone could see. She had a roll of fat on her hips, lumps on her thighs.

  The bartender came back again, leaned over.

  “If I knew a guy named Monroe—if I knew him, understand?—who would I tell him wants to see him?”

  I’m no good at that kind of stuff—I never know what to say. I told him to bring me a glass. He gave me a look, but he went and got one. I held it up to the bluish light in the bar. It was medium weight, had spots on it from the dishwasher. I took the glass in my hand, squeezed it until it popped, crushed the glass in my hand, put it back down on the bar—only the bottom of the glass was in one piece. I opened my hand so he could see there was nothing in it. No blood either.

  “Tell him it’s me,” I said.

  The bartender looked, said I could find Monroe in this poolroom on the East Side of town. Gave me the address, said Monroe would be there tomorrow night.

  I don’t dream much. I did when I was a kid. In the institution. I’d wake up, wires in my face like I was screaming, but no sound came out, the blanket all wet from my body. I was always scared then.

  Every place they put me, I was scared. All the time, scared. I ran away, a lot. Every place they put me. The foster home, the farm. I could always run away. The last time I ran, I wanted to get far away, so I stole some money from a store. Just grabbed it out of the open cash register and ran. They caught me so easy.

  Where they put me, there was no place to run.

  Every other place they put me, the grownups ran it. But in the institution, the kids ran the place. Not all of them, just a few.

  Duke, he was the one in charge. A real big kid. I think he was seventeen. He was in other places before too. The way you could tell, he had two little blue blobs tattooed on his face. They were supposed to be tears. One for each time he was locked up before.

  The first time I saw the tears, I thought, I guess I could get one myself now.

  Duke had flunkies with him always. They carried his stuff. He never carried anything himself, not even his cigarettes. They always handed him whatever he wanted, even a knife, sometimes.

  The first day I was there, I went in the bathroom. Duke was there, with his flunkies. He had one of the littler kids and he was slapping him. Hard. Over and over. The flunkies laughed. The little kid’s face
was all red and wet. Duke took the little kid back into the showers. I kept my face down, but I heard them. He made the little kid suck him.

  I didn’t say anything to anybody. I knew that much from the other places.

  When the little kid came out of the bathroom, he laid down on his bunk with his face in the pillow. He was crying when The Man came by. When The Man asked him why he was crying, the little kid said he was homesick.

  The Man laughed at him.

  Every day was like that. Duke and his flunkies would take everything for themselves. If you were playing basketball when they came up, you had to get off the court. They watched whatever they wanted on the TV. If you got packages from home, they took some of it.

  I never got any packages.

  The nights were the worst part. The Man never checked on us at night. He stayed outside the dorm, watching his own TV. As long as it was quiet, he never came back where we were.

  Fridays, we got our commissary draw. That’s when we could spend our money. They held our money for us until then. Every week. On Fridays, you could buy cigarettes, candy, soda pop. It was supposed to last you all week. Duke took some from everyone.

  Even the State kids, the ones with no families like me, they got something. For chores, like cleaning up the grounds outside.

  One Thursday night, Duke and his flunkies came over to another kid. They woke him up. I kept my eyes closed, breathed deep like I was asleep. But I listened.

  “Tomorrow, when you draw commissary, you buy me a chocolate bar,” Duke told the kid.

  “Please, please, Duke … I don’t wanna …”

  I heard a slap. “Shut up, punk,” one of the flunkies said.

  “Tomorrow,” Duke told the kid. “Or I’ll cut your fucking heart out.”

  Friday, the kid drew his commissary. Handed Duke a chocolate bar. Duke unwrapped it, put it on the radiator. I watched the bar get soft until it flowed down the side of the radiator.

  That night, one of the flunkies picked up the gooey bar in the paper in two hands. He carried it, walking next to Duke. Duke went to the kid’s bed.

  “Give it up,” is all he said.

  The kid turned over. Duke dropped his pants. Smeared the soft chocolate all over his stiff prick and got on top of the boy.

  The boy screamed, once. I heard a squishy sound and then he was quiet.

  I was so scared I couldn’t cry, like no air was in me.

  The Man never came in.

  The boy went to the Infirmary the next morning.

  It was two weeks later, summer just starting, when Duke told another boy to bring him a chocolate bar the next day. We were chopping weeds on that Friday when the boy who had to bring the chocolate bar, he brought the scythe down over his foot. It went right through. I could see a piece of his toe in the tip of the sneaker.

  The Man took him to the Infirmary. They know all about stab wounds there, but they don’t keep you long. They took the boy to the hospital, outside the institution.

  I thought the boy won then. But they brought him back a few days later, walking on crutches.

  The next Friday, Duke walked by the boy’s bed. One of his flunkies held up a chocolate bar. Duke smiled at the boy.

  “This time, I got my own,” he said.

  They gang-banged the boy that night. All of them.

  The next morning, The Man took him out of the dorm. He never came back.

  I thought about it. Every day. Some days, it was all I thought about.

  It was just after the 4th of July when Duke and his flunkies came over to me.

  “This Friday,” he said, “when you draw, buy me a chocolate bar, okay?”

  My heart slowed down when he said that. There was a smooth, cold chill inside me. An icy feeling, but it made me warm inside.

  I nodded like it was okay. My voice wouldn’t work.

  Thursday night. I could feel the moon, even if I couldn’t see it from my bed. I walked over to it, shining through the window. Duke’s bed is just below the window, the best bed in the dorm.

  Everybody was asleep. The cottage was full of night sounds, night smells. The Man only looked in when there was noise.

  Duke had a big portable radio, the kind with speakers on the side and a tape player and everything. One of his flunkies carried it around for him. I lifted the radio down from the shelf. Big fat batteries inside. I took them out, quiet, quiet.

  Duke’s sneakers were at the foot of his bed. Brand-new white leather sneakers. His socks were inside, dirty socks from yesterday. One of the boys did his laundry every week for him.

  I took out one of the socks. Put the batteries inside the toe. One by one. Soft, so they wouldn’t click together.

  I held the ankle-part of the sock in my right hand and walked around to the head of the bed in my bare feet. Where Duke was sleeping on his back. I spread my legs apart. I could feel wetness on my face but I didn’t make a sound. I swung the sock between his eyes as hard as I could. His nose splattered, red and white. He made some moaning sound and rolled over, moving his hands, but I smashed the sock into the back of his head again and again. White stuff came out of his head onto the pillow.

  When I stopped, it was all pulp. The sock was sticky with hair.

  I put the sock on the floor, went back to my bed.

  They found Duke in the morning. Some men in white coats came later, with a stretcher. They covered his face with a sheet.

  That night, Friday night, Duke’s flunkies walked over to my bed. One of them was carrying his big radio. They put it on my bed and walked away.

  Later, I turned it on. They’d put new batteries in it for me.

  It was almost five in the morning when I heard a tinkle of metal against glass. The quarter I’d put on the doorknob fell off into the ashtray I put on the carpet right under it—somebody trying the door. I slid off the bed, stood over to one side. Misty came in, closed the door behind her real quiet, walked over to the bed.

  I said “Ssssh” from behind her—she gave a little jump.

  “You scared me, honey!”

  “It’s okay. I didn’t know it was you.”

  “I didn’t want to wake you.”

  “It’s okay.” I sat down on the chair, watched her as she took off her clothes.

  “I got a job,” she said. “Dancing. First place I went to, that’s good luck, right? I worked a whole shift too.” She took some bills out of her purse. “Look, baby. Tips. For only one night. A new girl always does real good.”

  She handed me the money, the same way the flunky handed me Duke’s radio.

  In the morning, Misty moved real soft in the bed, pulling off the little blue silk wrapper she was wearing, put her head down between my legs, licking, like she was going to wake me up that way. I shifted my body to let her know I was awake.

  She looked up at me from between my legs. “I’ll do whatever you want,” she said, voice rough and soft.

  I closed my eyes. She was a dancer now, Misty. Like the woman I saw in the bar last night, dressed in little-girl clothes. She liked me, Misty. Because I didn’t get any nasty fun out of hurting her, the way the hammer did. That was enough for her.

  It made me sad.

  Shella came into my mind. One night, I came home later than her. She was dressed in a little-girl outfit, like that woman last night. Sat on my lap, made baby noises. I slapped her so hard she fell on the floor, started crying.

  It was the first time I hit her, the only time. The only time she ever cried too.

  “I only wanted to please you, Daddy,” she said. “Men like little girls. I know.”

  I held her for a long time while she cried then. Promised I’d kill her father for her one day. So she could watch him die.

  Thinking about Shella, I grew hard in Misty’s mouth.

  New York City is a cross-hatch. The streets run east to west, the avenues north to south. The poolroom wasn’t more than a couple of miles away. It was a little before ten o’clock when I started out, walking. Misty had go
ne to her job.

  Walking downtown along Eighth Avenue, I saw everything. Cop cars drove past like they didn’t.

  The poolroom didn’t have a sign or anything, but the number was on the door. I opened it, climbed up some metal stairs. It smelled like a housing project.

  Upstairs, it was a big room, maybe forty tables. Old-style, all green felt, leather pockets. Sign on one wall. It just said NO in big letters, then little words next to it: Gambling, Foul Language, Alcoholic Beverages, like that.

  The place was mostly empty, a dozen tables in use. Just like the prison yard: blacks in one piece of space, whites in another. Spanish, oriental. All separate.

  The guy at the desk gave me a plastic tray of balls, pointed to an empty table over in a corner, by the windows.

  I carried the tray over to the table, took the balls out one by one. I rolled them around the table with my hand, testing for drag and drift on the felt. The cloth was worn, but it ran true.

  I checked the cue sticks racked along the far wall. Numbers are burned into the sticks to tell you the weight. The highest number was 22. I looked through them until I found one with nice balance, good tip. Put some talc from a dispenser in my left palm, worked the stick through until it slid smooth. Racked the balls, rubbed the cue tip with a little cube of blue chalk I found on the table.

  I broke the balls, started sending them home, one by one. It was peaceful there, the table clean and flat, the ivory balls clicking together, going where I sent them.

  “You’re pretty good,” a guy said, coming up behind me like a surprise. I’d seen him when he first started to move. Red-haired guy, light eyes, little scar at the corner of his mouth.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “You … wanna play somebody for somethin’?”

  “No thanks. I’m just practicing.”

  He took a seat on one of the stools, lit a cigarette like he was going to be there for a while. I like the feel of things in my hands. I like making them move, do what I want. When I look close, get locked in, I can see the weave in the felt, the grain of the ivory. The balls look big—I can see the edges where they start to curve. The cue feels like it’s coming out of my arm, like a long fingertip. I ran a couple of racks, never looking up. Kiss shots, banks, getting the feel of the rails. I pocketed the last ball, racked them up again, locking the balls against the front of the wooden triangle with my thumbs to make them tight, squaring the angles, getting it perfect. I chalked my cue again, sighting down.