by Bera, Ilia
“Move that light closer, will ya?” he says.
My heart is on the verge of exploding. “Sure.”
I move the light as close as I can—right into the back of his skull. With a single blow, Freddie is unconscious—out like the light I hit him with. I don’t think he’s dead—I can still feel the throbbing vein in his cock against my bare belly.
“Freddie?” I nudge his body, making sure he’s out.
His lack of response is just the response I’m looking for. I push his heavy body off mine and begin to dress. Any second, Freddie will be awake, pissed. I push his body off the messenger bag.
“Fuck you, prick,” I say to his unconscious body.
I leave the motel with no evidence of my existence, except for a gob of spit on his pretty-boy face.
Olivia’s Survival Guide, tip #22: getting knocked out isn’t like the movies. Unless they’re in a coma, people don’t stay unconscious for more than a few minutes at most.
The leather messenger bag is heavy and its wet strap keeps slipping off my shoulder. I hold it close to my body so the pouring rain doesn’t seep inside and ruin the money.
Heads turn as I step onto the city bus. The hungry glare from an awkward-shaped man makes me realize I left my bra behind, on the motel floor. Freddie’s unconscious body must have fallen on top of it.
Ugh. Not again.
So much for leaving no evidence behind. Luckily, I haven’t written my name on the tag of a bra since the eighth grade.
The awkward-bodied man continues to stare at me, at my chest. There’s an old saying in Ilium:
You’re only right
to wear white
when working the streets
on an Ilium night.
It’s easy to spot a prostitute in Ilium. They’re the ones wearing white over skimpy lingerie, or their bare tits. In Ilium, the rain never stops. In Ilium, white is another word for translucent.
I cover translucent top with my arm and turn away, but I still can’t escape the man’s horny glare. Even in his billboard photo, which the bus now passes, he's got the eyes of a sex-starved lunatic. According to his sign, his name is Crazy Dave and he owns the used car emporium next to the Holiday Inn.
At the next stop, Crazy Dave steps off the bus, leaving behind a pool of saliva in his otherwise empty seat. Unfortunately, in Crazy Dave’s absence, stares from the other passengers continue. Their heads tilt down as I look up, save for one old Chinaman, whose bitter smile breaks my body.
I’ve reached a new low. I may as well be a prostitute, sleeping with gangsters for money, trading my body and my pride for cash. Ilium bus drivers already assume I am a prostitute. This isn’t the first time this week my tits are Ilium Transit's main attraction.
The bus coming to an abrupt stop outside of a local nightclub. I catch the messenger bag as it slips from my lap. Under the shallow cover of the club’s awning, thirty under-dressed girls stand, waiting for the bus door to open. When it does, they pour in, in their little high heels and skimpy skirts. The volume on the bus jumps from zero to ten within seconds.
Six girls cram their skimpy bodies tightly around me. None seem to care that I can see straight down their low-cut tops, and straight up their short skirts.
“Oh my God, I can’t believe he said that to you!” one girl shouts.
“I know, right? It was so cute,” her friend shouts back.
“He’s so cute. You guys would, like, totally make a cute couple.”
“Really?”
“Oh my God, yeah.”
Had we stopped out front of a nightclub or a cloning facility? The girls’ voices are indistinguishable. Their outfits are all made from the same square foot of fabric and their hands are all glued to cell phones. None of them go a minute without sucking in their cheeks, pushing out their lips, and snapping a selfie. Dolphins only breathe once every five minutes. The monotony of their redundant voices blends with the hum of the bus’ engine.
The bus stops again. Only a single passenger boards. She takes the seat ahead of me. She is quiet and alone and she doesn’t seem to mind the noise on the bus, or smell of vodka and artificial strawberry flavouring. She has impeccable style: leather jacket, genuine chinchilla fur shawl, and, most eye-catching of all, her black crocodile-leather purse with golden embellishments.
I’ve seen that purse before. And that golden logo—that two–lettered monogram: BV. That purse is the whole reason I wound up in this mess. If it wasn’t for that purse, I would be at home with a cup of hot tea, comfortable in my warm bed and dry pyjamas.
“Excuse me,” I say.
The woman smiles. She doesn’t seem to notice my transparent shirt, soaked hair, or running makeup.
“Yes?” she says. Her voice is gentle and kind.
“That bag—where did you get it?”
The woman looks down at her bag, as if she can’t remember which bag she left the house with. “It was a gift,” she says.
“Where is it from?” I ask.
“I’m not sure,” she says with a smile.
“Who gave it to you?” I ask. The woman has tremendous patience. I’m starting to annoy myself with my relentless interrogation. I can’t help it. I need to know where she got the purse.
“I told you—a friend.” The woman looks away.
“Don’t you know where they got it from?”
The woman looks back at me. She takes a breath and then forces another smile. “Unfortunately, I don’t know.”
“It’s beautiful.”
“Thank you. It’s certainly different.”
I can’t help myself. I need to know. “It looks different. Who makes it?”
The woman no longer bothers to smile. “Like I said, I don’t know.” She looks back out the window.
“There’s a logo on it—I don’t recognize that logo.”
She doesn’t respond. Instead, she shrugs.
The name of the company is written in small letters, too hard to read from across the lane. “Beau—” I start reading aloud. She pulls her purse away before I can finish reading the first word.
“I’m sorry. This is my stop,” the woman says. What a bitch. I just wanted to know the designer.
“Wait.” I try to stop her, but she’s too agile, already off the bus before I stand up. The bus jolts forward, throwing me onto a bed of heels and painted toes.
“Hey!” a young girl yells.
“Watch it!” yells another.
“Sorry,” I say, springing back up to my feet. I grab the messenger bag.
“Oh my God, look at my shoes! They’re scuffed! They’re ruined!” a girl whines as I walk towards the exit.
I’m still four stops from home, but I’ll live. At least the silent streets don’t have judging stares.
CHAPTER THREE
THE PURSE
That purse came into the Ilium Inn, my workplace, three nights ago.
The Ilium Inn is the older and swankier of three hotels in town. Like the other hotels in Ilium, it gets next to no business; at least the local motel gets the johns and whores, even if they are just paying the hourly rate. Total, in the two years I’ve worked at the Ilium Inn, no more than twenty-five guests have checked in—usually wealthy businessmen, and the occasional lost traveller who doesn’t know there’s a cheaper option five minutes down the road.
I, like most Iliumites, make minimum wage—but I don’t do it for the money. I don’t do it for the love of nightshifts either. I work at the Ilium Inn to cover up my independent bootlegging business. It’s the perfect cover; the government doesn’t wonder where I get my money, and the empty hotel makes a great place to meet with clients and suppliers.
When I was working the other night, that same purse from the bus—that same leather, made from porosus crocodile—came into the hotel. It was almost midnight, still early into my graveyard shift. There was only one room booked out and the couple that reserved it still hadn’t showed up. Aside from me, the only person who had showed up was the new m
aid, who came in to ask if her paycheque was ready. Since the day she was hired, she’s come in every night, and every night I tell her when payday is: every second Thursday. She barely speaks a word of English, and never understands what I’m telling her. I think she’s from Korea.
I was surfing the Internet when I got a text message from a supplier who wanted to meet up. He said that a deal had fallen into his lap and he thought I would be very interested. I told him to swing by the hotel.
Just as I put down my phone, a couple walked into the hotel—a petite woman and a tall, stocky man. Their black umbrella left a long trail of rainwater between the front door and the front desk. Sunglasses covered the woman’s crow’s feet. A fur shawl covered her black satin dress, which hardly covered the nipples of her very fake breasts—or as I prefer to call them, her bolted-on tits. Her facelift did nothing to cover her wrinkled smoker lips.
The man must have weighed three hundred pounds, but I couldn’t tell if that was three hundred pounds of fat, or three hundred pounds of muscle. His skin looked like leather—and not like soft porosus leather, but like cheap leather collected from a box of old shoes. It was like the Hulk finally ripened.
Before greeting the couple, I noticed the black leather purse hanging from the woman’s shoulder—a black purse made from porosus crocodile leather. There is only one company that uses porosus leather—Hermes Paris, and even they use it sparingly because it’s rare and expensive. That purse was no Hermes Paris, but I couldn’t make out what it was. The woman stayed back, far enough that I couldn’t read the golden, monogram logo.
“Pesconi,” the man grunted.
“What?” I said, my eyes still glued to the purse.
“Pesconi,” he repeated with half the speed and twice the volume. He had a strong New York accent. “Pes-co-ni,” he said even more slowly, a third time
“Oh,” I said, snapping out of my daze. “Your name is Pesconi! You’re checking in, right?”
“Yeah.”
I opened his reservation on the computer. “Carmine Pesconi—we have you booked in the Presidential Suite.” When dealing with hotel customers, I put on a bubbly, high-pitched voice, complete with a big fake smile and wide, owl-like eyes.
The woman reached into her mysterious purse and pulled out a box of cigarettes. She didn’t notice—or she didn’t care—that, two feet from her face, was a no-smoking sign. She revealed a golden lighter.
“Um—I’m sorry, ma’am. There’s no smoking in here,” I said in my bubble voice. I bobbed my head to the side and shrugged—my way of saying, ‘what a silly rule, right?’
The woman paused—completely frozen as if the bubbly night auditor at the Ilium Inn had just diagnosed her with cancer.
“What?” Pesconi asked for her. His voice was low, growling.
“Um—there’s no smoking in here,” I said—a surprisingly difficult sentence to get out with those unblinking eyes staring into my soul.
“Don’t worry about it, honey,” Carmine Pesconi said to the lady.
And she didn’t. She finished lighting her cigarette.
He leaned over and scanned behind my desk. I wanted to ask him what he was doing, but I was afraid he would bite. “Pass me one of those water bottles,” he said, motioning towards the stash of water bottles under the desk, kept there for employees.
“There are plenty of water bottles up in your room—” His brow lowered into a scowl, so I handed him a water bottle. “There you are.”
He cracked the lid and downed half the bottle. “How long did we book for?” he asked, wiping his mouth at the same time.
“Four nights,” I said. “We have a smoking suite available, but it wouldn’t be on the same floor.”
“No, the Presidential Suite is fine.”
“Okay.” I tried to fake a smile, but it was becoming increasingly difficult.
“Make it seven nights. Plans changed.”
“Okay, sure,” I said, making the necessary changes in the computer.
“Hurry it up. We’ve been driving all day.”
I activated the key cards and walked around the desk. He stared at me with a taut expression as I handed him the room keys.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“I’m giving you your keys.” It sounded more like a question than a statement.
“Why did you come out?” His teeth clenched and his face reddened, as if I had dented his car and slapped his wife.
“To help you with your bag.” Again, it came out more like a question than a statement.
“I don’t need help. Do I look like I need help?” His teeth remained clenched.
I stepped back. “No, sir.”
“Don’t touch my bag,” he said.
“I’m sorry.”
“C’mon, honey,” Pesconi said to his lady.
The couple turned away and disappeared up the stairs, not noticing me flipping them off behind their backs.
A Google search of “BV brand purse” brought up nothing, nor did my search of “BV porosus leather.” Out of curiosity, I searched “Carmine Pesconi,” but that too brought up nothing. I would have continued my investigation had my supplier not interrupted me with a text message.
James Derrick is one of my suppliers—or I should say, he was one of my suppliers before he got himself arrested. He was a thin, ratty-looking guy, with scruffy hair and a scruffy beard. Unlike my other suppliers, James did all of his work by himself. He made his own deals and he sourced and delivered his product. He was cheap, but he was also… slow. He once brought me eight boxes of Alaskan furs—a retail value of around $80,000. James had no idea they were worth anything, so I only paid $8,000—though I wasn’t able to sell half of them when I discovered they were stained with what I’m almost sure was human blood.
Before getting himself arrested, James was the closest thing to a friend I had in Ilium. We’d been close for years, long before I started my own business. We were in the same gang before the big bust. We were two of four that didn’t get arrested. James—the stupid, crazy bastard—stole a cop car during the bust, and actually managed to escape. The cops eventually found the cruiser, abandoned at the edge of town. James hid in the woods for three weeks.
The two other members that avoided arrest never showed up for that meeting. They were already fifty miles away when it went down. Someone tipped them off but neither of them bothered to warn anyone. I don’t know where they ended up. Hopefully in a ditch, where they belong.
I’m lucky that I wasn’t arrested during the bust. I jimmied the warehouse air purifier open and crawled through the vents, out to the alleyway. I lost a beautiful pair of Chanel earrings in those vents.
And I gained a crippling fear of rats…
Olivia’s Survival Guide, tip #202: A building has two air purifiers: one in the basement, and one on the ceiling. The purifier on the ceiling cleans and carries new air into the building; the one in the basement recycles old air. Both connect to the building’s master ventilation system, which is wide enough to crawl through. It’s also where rats tend to live.
As much as I liked James, since the bust, he reminded me of those rats, crawling over my body in those vents: his slouched posture, patchy scruff, yellow teeth, and pushed-up rodent nose.
After the Pesconi’s checked in, James was waiting for me behind the Ilium Inn, sitting on the bumper of a cube van, almost certainly stolen, vandalized with uncountable layers of spray-paint.
“Hey Liv,” he said. “Long time, no see.” He stood up to give me a hug.
“Hi Jamie,” I said, planting a kiss on his cheek.
As usual, his face turned red. “How’s hotel life treatin’ ya?” he asked.
“Don’t get me started. I just had to deal with some huge prick—Carmine Something. Ever heard of him?”
James tilted his head, his clunky brain searching through all of the names that he knew. “Carmine? I don’t think I know any Carmine. What’s his last name?”
“Pes-Co-Ni,” I said
, imitating Carmine’s condescending New York accent.
James was silent again, with his head still tilted to one side as if his brain was struggling to get reception. “Carmine Pesconi? Nah—never heard of him. Why?”
“I dunno. He’s some rich dude, but he isn’t a businessman. He’s got these brooding gangster eyes—you know the ones?”
“Like these?” James asked, furling his brow in an attempt to look intimidating. For a gang member, James was surprisingly incapable of appearing intimidating.
