Twelve Nights

by Remy, Carole

  “Fodor’s says that Vancouver has one of the most beautiful downtowns in North America,” she commented.

  “Hard to tell in the rain.”

  “Don’t be a grump. This is a vacation.”

  “You’re right.” Angela knew her anxiety had little to do with the weather. She smiled and hugged her sister’s arm. “It’s great to be here with you. Who cares if it’s raining?”

  “Not me,” Aggie answered the rhetorical question. “Besides, it’s more British. We’re getting the full experience.”

  Angela laughed and then sobered as the cab pulled into the high tunnel at the taxi and limousine entrance to the Vancouver Hotel.

  “Wait here,” she told Aggie and the cab driver. “I’ll be right back.”

  She ran into the lobby, hardly noticing the British East India rugs and heavy mahogany furniture. She stepped to the imposing front desk.

  “May I help you, ma’am?” a stately middle-aged gentleman asked from behind the counter.

  “Do you have any messages for Agnes Trout?”

  “Let’s see,” the man flipped through a stack of papers. “I have one here for an Aggie Trout.”

  “That’s me,” Angela smiled. “Thank you.”

  She took the folded paper and turned away from the desk.

  “Miss.” The man’s voice halted her. “We have a room reserved in your name, Miss Trout. Would you like to check in now?”

  “I’ll be back later,” Angela temporized. She didn’t want to cancel the reservation and alert the man who placed the ad. Besides she needed to be able to pick up messages. But she had no intention of waiting at the arranged hotel like a sitting duck. She debated whether to take a key and risk paying an exorbitant figure for a room she wasn’t going to use. A man who could pay $120,000 for a twelve night stand wouldn’t stiff her for the hotel room, surely. “No. I’ll sign in now.”

  “Do you have a vehicle, Miss Trout?” the man asked, undisturbed by her waffling. He lifted his pen over a room slip.

  “No.”

  “You’re in the Queen Anne suite on the top floor. That’s a non-smoking suite. I hope that is all right.”

  “That’s fine.” Angela dug in her wallet for her credit card. Praying the man would stop her before he noticed the wrong name.

  “No need, ma’am,” the man lowered his voice discretely. Angela’s face flushed with relief. “The charge is taken care of. We often put customers of TransGlobe in the Queen Anne. If you could just sign here.”

  Angela tucked the company name into a corner of her memory. She looked at the slip and wondered why she needed to sign if not to pay for the room. Maybe the rules were different in Canada. She took the offered pen and signed ‘Anges Trout’ without hesitation. She had practiced for such an eventuality. The man handed her an envelope with the words ‘Queen Anne Suite’ engraved on the front. She could feel a flat credit card key inside.

  “Thank you,” she smiled.

  “If there’s anything I can do to make your stay more pleasant, Miss Trout, please don’t hesitate to ask. My name is Jeremy Smythe.”

  Angela was used to friendliness from strange men. Though the Canadian was most discrete, she saw the more than polite interest in his eyes. She knew how to handle the situation.

  “Thank you, Mr. Smythe,” she said in a no nonsense business voice. “Your hotel is lovely. I’m sure I’ll enjoy my stay in Vancouver.”

  As she walked away from the desk, she rubbed the message slip between her fingers. She could feel Smythe’s eyes on her back and didn’t want to stop and read the note with him watching. The lobby was large and she quickly turned a corner that hid her from view of the front desk. She stopped next to a tall white pillar. Her fingers trembled as she opened the folded paper.

  “Hi Aggie,” the note began informally. “Meet me in the lobby near the front desk at 10am on Monday. Danny.”

  Angela shook her head at the brevity of the note, then she drew a deep breath. It was really going to happen. She leaned back against the pillar and drew in another deep breath. Keep breathing. She thought of her sister and winced. How would she ever convince Aggie to go for the interview? Maybe she should forget the whole thing. She forced herself to relive the moments as the ‘Captain’ forced the rolled bills up her ass. More than the bruises and cuts, more than the pain of forced sodomy, the memory of the money in her anus turned her bowels to liquid. She firmed her resolve. Aggie would understand when she told her. Her twin wouldn’t let her down.

  “What were you doing?” Aggie’s words greeted her as she opened the back door of the cab. Angela slid onto the seat. “Are we staying here?”

  “I didn’t like the room,” Angela lied.

  “Take us to the Sylvia Hotel,” Aggie told the driver. She explained to the startled Angela, “The guidebook says it’s one of the best buys in downtown Vancouver. And it’s right on English Bay.”

  A short drive took them to the entrance to the Sylvia. Angela was entranced by the ivy covered walls of mellow stone. The hotel was indeed on the waterfront. Across a narrow but busy road, a sandy beach fronted by weathered logs stretched out toward choppy white-capped waves. She could see the tops of pedestrians half-hidden by a low stone wall. The location was idyllic even in the persistent rain.

  Angela insisted on entering the lobby alone. At the front desk, she pulled out a wad of Canadian cash and paid up front for three nights of a suite facing the water. The receptionist didn’t ask her to sign a room slip, didn’t even ask for a name, and she wondered again about the man at the Vancouver Hotel. Why would he, or Danny, want a sample of her handwriting? It was only too easy to guess. She went back out to the cab.

  “Drive us around to the underground parking,” she ordered the driver.

  “Why…” Aggie began.

  “I don’t want you to get wet,” Angela explained.

  Luckily the elevator was empty. Angela knew she had to keep herself and her twin from being seen together, at least in downtown Vancouver. They were too memorable a sight. She hurried Aggie along the hotel passageway and breathed a sigh of relief when she closed and locked the door of the suite behind her.

  “This is nice!” Aggie exclaimed.

  Angela followed her sister’s voice into the living room. The furniture was shabby genteel. To the right was a small kitchenette with fridge, two-burner stove and teakettle. The British habit of tea must prevail in Vancouver too. The view from the living room windows was spectacular. Though only on the fourth floor, they could see over the traffic and trees, across a large body of water to the land on the other side.

  “That’s Kitsilano directly opposite us,” Aggie explained. “Then there’s Jericho Beach and the University Endowment Lands.”

  “And the water must be English Bay. Is it another arm of the Fraser River?” Angela asked.

  “No. It leads to Burrard Inlet, after you get around Stanley Park. We’ll have to walk around the park along the seawall. It’s one of the sights of Vancouver.”

  Angela murmured an assent, though she knew they couldn’t risk exposure that close to downtown, at least not until after Monday. If the man chose someone else for his extended romp in the sack, they could go wherever they wanted.

  “Let’s go to Chinatown for lunch,” Aggie’s enthusiastic voice interrupted Angela’s thoughts.

  “Sounds good to me,” she agreed. Surely they could lose themselves in Chinatown.

  Aggie donned rain boots she had providently packed and Angela pulled on a dark red coat with a hood. With her hair covered, they wouldn’t be so noticeable. She called a cab to meet them in the basement parking lot.

  The Chinese district was closer to downtown than Angela had hoped, but even on a rainy Saturday it teemed with a jostling mix of tourists and vociferous Chinese. She and Aggie ducked into the nearest restaurant and were greeted with comforting indifference, even when Angela took off her coat and their identicalness became obvious. The menu was written almost entirely in Chinese characters, w
ith only a few undescriptive English words scattered throughout. Aggie asked the waitress to bring them something hot but not too exotic.

  A huge bowl of hot noodles with spicy chicken and thin slices of green vegetables filled Angela and her sister to abundance. The total bill came to an unbelievable $4.25 Canadian. No wonder Chinatown was a tourist mecca. As they left the restaurant, Angela was careful to pull the hood back over her hair even though the rain had dropped to a thin mizzle. No need to take risks.

  The young women spent the afternoon browsing the shops of Chinatown. Aggie bought a Buddha figure in the first store they entered, then learned that it was actually a Bodhisattva in the second. She explained to Angela that a Bodhisattva was a Buddhist who decided to forgo entering nirvana, or heaven, until he had helped everyone else on earth to become a Buddha.

  They toured the Dr. Sun Yat Sen Classical Chinese Garden and learned that it was built near where Sun Yat Sen had stayed when he visited Vancouver. The garden was a replica of an ancient scholar’s home and had been painstakingly built by Chinese hands of authentic materials. Angela felt a welcome peace steal into her spirit as she listened to the patter of rain on bamboo leaves outside the master’s study. Water dripped off the red tile roofs and formed a lacy curtain hiding and then revealing the pebbled courtyards and glossy green foliage. She wanted to stay in the garden forever, but eventually she and Aggie moved on.

  Angela bought a concealing silk scarf with a red dragon motif. Aggie loaded them down with a teapot in the shape of a pig, a pair of large straw fans and books on Buddhism, the garden, the history of the Chinese in Vancouver and Chinese cuisine. By the time they arrived back at the hotel, again entering through the basement, Angela felt closer to her sister than she had since childhood. The emotion was a double edged sword.

  Unluckily, the hotel didn’t have room service. The receptionist explained over the phone that there was an excellent restaurant right next door. Angela pleaded a headache to avoid going with her sister to the restaurant for dinner. She asked Aggie to bring her back a doggy bag. They spent the evening watching old movies on television and laughing over childhood memories.

  By the end of the weekend, Angela’s headache was real. The constant skulking around the hotel preyed on her nerves. Though they spent the day Sunday on the skytrain and had lunch and dinner far from downtown, the coming explanation was never absent from Angela’s thoughts. She knew Aggie was suspicious. Her sister had grown quieter as Sunday progressed, and when Aggie slammed the hotel door behind them Sunday night, Angela knew the moment of revelation had arrived.

  Chapter 8

  “All right.” Aggie grabbed Angela’s arm and dragged her toward the living room. She pushed her down into a chair. “Spill.”

  “Okay. Promise me one thing. Don’t kill me until you hear the whole thing.”

  Aggie didn’t think her sister’s attempt at a joke was funny. She flopped onto the sofa and stared at her twin.

  “Is it that bad?”

  “I’m a prostitute.”

  Angela’s words hit Aggie like a baseball bat between the eyes. She felt the trust of twenty-eight years shatter like fragile crystal. How could Angela not have told her?

  “You really were hurt,” she stated. “When my wrist was sore, you were in trouble. You were hurt, weren’t you?”

  Angela nodded and slipped to the floor to sit at Aggie’s feet. Aggie watched detached as her hand moved to caress her sister’s hair. Her twin’s head lifted and Aggie hardly recognized the hard eyes that had once been her mirror image.

  “I have to get out,” Angela stated calmly.

  “Tell me what happened.”

  “I went to what I thought would be a normal trick,” Angela began.

  “Normal,” Aggie whispered.

  “You detach,” Angela explained. “But this john was a real bastard. He wanted to make me feel bad, to humiliate me.”

  “What did he do?”

  “He handcuffed me.”

  Aggie rubbed her wrist.

  “He sodomized me. He bit me. I got a tetanus shot in case he had rabies.” Angela’s laugh was bitter. “Then he wrapped the money in a condom and shoved it up my ass. That was it, the last straw.”

  Aggie felt the wetness on her cheeks before she realized she was crying.

  “You have to help me get out,” Angela pleaded.

  “Of course,” Aggie agreed. “You can come live with me in Cincinatti. You have a degree. I’m sure you can get a job.”

  “A degree in art history isn’t very practical.”

  “Just come live with me.” It was Aggie turn to beg.

  “I have a plan.”

  Aggie stifled a groan when she heard her sister’s words. She knew the plan would be something weird or her sister would have told her outright. She also had an intuition that it would involve her active participation. She pushed her doubts into a corner. Better to let her sister give an unprejudged explanation.

  “What’s the plan?” she asked in as neutral a voice as she could manage.

  Her sister must have heard or anticipated her reluctance, for her voice was defensive as she replied.

  “I know it’s going to sound crazy, but I want you to listen to the end.”

  “Agreed.”

  “Okay.” Angela’s chest swelled as she took a deep breath. She stood up and walked into the hallway. When she returned, she held a scrap of paper in her hand. “A few weeks ago a man put this ad in the New York Times.”

  Aggie took the ad from her sister’s outstretched hand. She read the simple words and immediately thought of herself. She was exactly what the man was looking for. Angela wanted her to prostitute herself for this man and then share the money.

  “I won’t do it.” Aggie thrust the paper back at her sister.

  Angela sat in an armchair. “You don’t know what I’m going to ask you. Aggie,…”

  “No!” Aggie interrupted.

  “No, Aggie!” Angela interrupted back. “I said you had to listen to the whole explanation before you decided. Now you’re jumping to conclusions and I haven’t even started explaining.”

  Aggie recognized the justice of her sister’s words, though she couldn’t image another more acceptable explanation. She nodded for Angela to continue.

  “I answered the ad. I used your name and circumstances.” Aggie nodded tightlipped and Angela carried on. “About a week later I got a letter asking me a bunch of questions. Everything was getting too complicated already and I sent back the letter with kind of a nasty note.”

  Aggie could imagine her sister’s words. Though Aggie had the hotter temper, once Angela was angry, she was deadly. She smiled and her sister continued, her voice more optimistic.

  “A few days later a man called me.”

  “You have an unlisted phone. I couldn’t even find you.”

  “This man must be really wealthy to offer $120,000. I used a box number. I guess he bribed somebody. I don’t know.”

  “Keep going,” Aggie prodded.

  “Okay.” Angela took a deep breath. “The man on the phone was Danny, the brother of the man who advertised. He said the lawyer was suspicious of me and had rejected my letter when I wouldn’t answer his questions. Do you follow me?”

  “So far.”

  “Danny said he knew I was the right one for his brother. He didn’t say ‘thought’. He said ‘knew’.”

  “And…”

  “So here we are in Vancouver. The man lives here.”

  “And you want me prostitute myself for twelve nights and then share the money with you so you can get out of prostitution.” Aggie couldn’t suppress her anger. She stood and paced the short length of the room.

  “NO!”

  The horror in Angela’s voice couldn’t have been faked. Aggie stopped and turned to her sister, her eyebrows raised.

  “All I want you to do is go to the initial interview with the lawyer, convince him you’re on the level. Then I’ll do the nights. I can fake innocen
t in bed. I just don’t think I can fool a lawyer.”

  The proposition was so much simpler, so much less painful than Aggie had imagined, she almost laughed in relief. Her sister didn’t want her to sell her body. She just wanted her to pull another twin stunt. No wonder she had cut her hair to match Aggie’s. No wonder she had tried to fool their father and Mary. All the pieces dropped into place and Aggie laughed.

  “You’re too much, Boo.” Aggie held out her arms to her sister. Angela rushed into her embrace and knocked them both back onto the sofa. Angela was crying in loud gusts.

  “I knew,” she sobbed. “I knew when you understood… that you would understand.”

  Aggie squeezed her tight.

  “Stop crying, Boo,” she advised her older sibling. “You’re not making any sense.”

  Angela sat up.

  “You’ll help me, won’t you?”

  “Are you sure you want to do this, Angela? This man may be as bad as the last one. He could be worse.”

  “I can handle anything for twelve nights. Hell, pregnancy lasts nine months. This has to be easier than throwing up every morning.”

  “You don’t throw up for nine months,” Aggie reminded her.

  “You know what I mean. I have a goal, Aggie. I really, really need to get out of prostitution. I need the money.”

  An awful possibility occurred to Aggie. “You’re not hooked on drugs, are you?”

  “No.” Angela stated flatly. “I’ve never touched anything. Not that they aren’t around. That’s not why I want the money. I just want to make a new start.”

  “You can do that without $120,000.”

  “Can you see me in some poky apartment drudging every day at some stupid job?”

  “Is that how you see my life?” Aggie asked, surprised and hurt.

  “No, stupid. You have a house and a good job. You were smart and got a degree in library science. I was the stupid creative one. Now I’m not fit to do anything real. I thought maybe I’d go back to school, become a lawyer or something.”

  Aggie couldn’t argue. Angela had always been smart in a careless way. Aggie had gotten the better marks, but Angela’s B’s had come easily. If she had the determination to go back to school, Aggie was sure she would be successful. She made one last try to dissuade her from what she saw as unnecessary self-degradation.