by Amber Lin
“Any minute now.” She grimaced. “That’s what they said nine hours ago.”
“There’s nothing they can do? I’ll talk to the nurse.”
She caught my hand. “No. I just want you to sit with me. Can you?”
So I did, crawling into the bed beside her. The cold steel of the railing bit into my side, but I needed the contact as much as she did, maybe more. I needed the hard, contracting bump on her belly, the mysterious, elusive hope born of a nightmare, to make me forget.
The woman on the next bed began to cough, ragged and thick. I held Allie’s hand, pretending this was normal and okay and a perfectly safe environment for her child to be born into. A child, when we could barely take care of ourselves. What would she do? Her dad had sent her two hundred dollars when she’d called him. That was all the money she had. And now my five thousand.
If I told her. She would take that money, spread it thin, and make it last. Then what would she need me for?
She clenched and keened as a contraction hit, and I rocked with her through it, wincing as she squeezed my hand. It wasn’t enough to distract me from the ache lower down my body.
“Have you thought about where you’re going to live?” I asked.
She frowned. “You know I can’t afford to move out.”
“Yeah, I guess… I mean, you’ll probably get a job or something, right?”
“I already talked to Rick. He’s going to up my hours at the bakery.”
“Oh. Who’s going to watch the baby? I mean, a decent day care will be expensive.”
Her lower lip trembled. “I know. But I’ll make it work. I have to, right?”
Forgive me, Allie. “And what about when she gets sick? They don’t let sick kids go to day care. You’ll have to stay home and take her to the doctor. Rick isn’t exactly the lenient type. Plus paying for the doctor… Is your paycheck there really going to cover all that?”
A tear fell down her cheek. “I don’t know. What can I do?”
“I’m just worried about you. I want to help.” Five thousand dollars wouldn’t last forever, but it would be a good start. Something to comfort her. But what about me? I couldn’t go back. Something had snapped. What does that make you? A pretty bird in a gilded cage, its wings clipped for its own health and safety. “I’ll stay with you. I can help with the baby and with money. You’ll see. We’ll do it together.”
She blinked wetly. “What about your dad?”
“He’ll understand. I’m an adult now. It’s time I left the nest.”
She knew better. “Will he let you go?”
“He doesn’t have a choice. There, now. Don’t worry.” I pressed my lips to her forehead. “You don’t have to be alone anymore.”
I placed an ad online and met up with a few average johns before Henri called me up. He was exceedingly polite over the phone and brutal in person. A few weeks later, I was earning four times as much on his payroll.
For two years, I played babysitter by day and prostitute by night. A few times I had tried to leave the life, but something always dragged me back. Usually money. Occasionally the rough hands of Henri’s men. Every time, a small part of me sighed in relief. At least I knew how to do this. This way, I was wanted.
My complacency had been a fool’s gold. I had worked the upper echelon of Chicago’s sex trade and never run into my father. He ran in the same circles as these men, the rich and the cruel, but it was a big city. There were plenty to go around. Or had he been avoiding me? He said I’d always be his little slut.
It spun a silvered web in the shadows of my mind. Henri had targeted Jenny as revenge over her boyfriend’s shady business. He ripped each dime right out of her skin and gained face in the process.
What does this have to do with me?
Maybe nothing.
But it was everything. How had Henri known to contact me? I had always assumed that call had been random. It wasn’t. I knew that now, certain to my bones. For some reason, Henri had contacted me, worked me over, and offered me a job. Payback for some business deal gone wrong with my father? Maybe. Either way, I had never despised him more.
I had been fooling myself that this was about protecting Ella. That was a fringe benefit to what I really wanted: to nail Henri. If I could take down my father in the process, all the better. Both seemed impossible, like trying to touch the twinkling lights above me. But I had never had so many people fighting for the same purpose before. I had never had so little to lose.
Allie and her daughter were away from me now, under Colin’s protection. My obsession with Luke was threadbare, exposed as physical chemistry and a perverse desire to see myself fail. And then there was Ella, whose lower lip trembled in response to my rambled life’s tale.
* * * *
I frowned at her. “Don’t cry over me. There are sadder stories every day.”
“But I’m not holding their hands,” she said thickly, tears pooling in damp spots on the silk pillow.
I pulled my hand free and wiped the dampness from my palms. She needed to get herself under control. She needed to calm down. No, I did.
“Tell me about yourself, Ella. I told you about me, things I’ve never told anyone. Now it’s your turn.”
“Is that all this was about? Make me feel guilty so I’ll trust you?”
“Yes.”
She soured. “Sometimes I think you’re the most selfless person I’ve ever met. Other times, I think you’re a manipulative bitch.”
“Why can’t I be both?” I asked mildly.
“Fuck you. I’m not telling you anything.”
“Such language. Come on. Telling you about my dad fucking me has got be worth something. What’s your name? Your real name.”
“Fine. You care so much? Claire. It’s Claire.”
I suppressed a smile. It was too sweet for her and just right. “Claire?”
“I know. It’s like an old lady’s name.”
“Kind of old-fashioned.”
“Whatever, it’s stupid. But you know what? It doesn’t matter. Claire was a problem child. Ella is the prostitute that couldn’t. I fail at everything. It doesn’t matter what my name is. I’m nobody.”
I swallowed. I should have seen her hurt. No, I had seen it and ignored it. “You’re somebody, Claire.”
“Don’t call me that. I don’t want to be her anymore. I’m nothing but a pain in your backside. You don’t like me.”
“Sure I do.”
“You didn’t know my name until two seconds ago. You don’t even know me.”
“You like Philip because he makes you feel safe. You figure even if he beats you, he’s strong enough and possessive enough to make sure no one else does. You like nice things, which is why you steal them. It’s simple really, but the psychologist your parents pay for tries to turn it into something about your self-esteem, like maybe if you win a cheerleading trophy, you won’t care anymore. But the truth is, you like power and money and having these things when other girls don’t. You want to be a good girl and have everyone love you for it, except you know you’ll never succeed, so you push them away before they can reject you. You’re scared and you’re sad, but most of all you’re lonely, and you’d rather risk death than be alone.”
Her eyes were wide and luminous, as deep as the sky above us.
“That’s you,” she whispered.
Shit.
“Just tell me why you’re helping me,” she said in a rush. “If this is some sort of new-age training program for escorts or hazing the new girl or something like that.”
I stared at her wide, owlish eyes, incredulous at her thought process. Although maybe it was a relief—for a second there, I’d thought she was uncannily intuitive. “That’s ridiculous. This isn’t a game. I’m trying to help you.”
“I know. I mean, I think so. You have this way of talking and looking at me like you really see me, and I want to believe what you say. But then I think you must do that for everyone, right? Everyone thinks you really like them
. They want to believe it’s true. That’s why you’re so good at…”
“Whoring?”
“Sex.”
“Same thing. If you want to believe something that comes out of my mouth, believe this: you’re safe here.”
“Then what was that before? You and Philip. I know you were doing it. Fucking.” She forced the word out. “If you have to have sex with him to keep us safe…to keep me safe, I don’t want that.”
“It was consensual.”
She looked doubtful. “You’re telling me you have paid sex and recreational sex?”
Hmm, when she put it that way, it sounded excessive. In fact, I didn’t understand it myself, how I ended up having sex for money, how I just couldn’t stop. I was trapped in the fun house, the mirrors showing ever more incarnations of me fucking for money, distorted depictions of my depravity. I couldn’t escape. Philip was a sleek tiger, lethal within his cage, and Henri the ringmaster. The only player I didn’t understand was Luke. He wanted to protect me, and he wanted to punish us all, and I wasn’t sure which one would win out. He looked at me with grave sympathy, an experience I both hated and craved, and yet at other times, though he tried to hide it, I felt his bone-deep revulsion.
“Prostitution isn’t black or white. If our goal was just to get off, we could curl up with our hands and be done with it. Sex is about wanting something from the other person, whether it’s affection or intimacy, security or money. I’ll admit I owed Philip something, but I wasn’t coerced. If I had said no and meant it, he would have listened.”
She frowned. “When do you say no and not mean it?”
“We’ll save that lesson for another day, grasshopper.”
* * * *
I suspected Philip hadn’t left at all. He could have been at a meeting or at another one of his houses, but given his fascination with Ella, I figured he would stay close. Which meant he was probably in the basement. True to paranoid form, it was a fully decked-out storm shelter, probably designed to withstand a nuclear explosion. Probably filled with the latest gadgetry and every comfort. Though in my mind, the basement was darker and definitely damper, like canal-woven caves in The Phantom of the Opera, and there he dwelled, hiding his face, listening to the sounds from above and feeding off the gaiety.
With a closed-circuit audio feed, most likely.
So we would give him that. It gave me the opportunity to patch things up between Allie and me. I went downstairs to call her from the kitchen.
“Hello?” Her tone was guarded. Clearly she had checked caller ID.
“Hey, sweets. How’s my best girl?”
“Don’t let Ella hear you say that,” she said, though I could tell she’d loosened already.
“I was talking about Bailey,” I said, referring to Allie’s daughter.
“She’s fine. She learned the Hulk smash. The cat is not happy.”
“You let her watch The Hulk?”
“Nah, I think she learned it from a boy in school.”
I tsked. “Goddamn boys in school. They’re a nuisance.”
“Tell me about it. I think Colin’s going to have an aneurysm when she hits middle school. And the situation with Ella isn’t helping any.”
“Her name’s Claire,” I said absently.
“Oh yeah? So she’s talking to you.”
“A little bit. But I need my best girl on hand for tonight. Emotional support.”
“You need emotional support?” Begrudging curiosity laced her words. “This I’ve got to see.”
“Don’t sound so eager to see me fall, you bloodthirsty bitch.”
“I don’t want to see you fall, but if you tripped every once in a while, I might believe you were human like the rest of us. As long as I’m around, I’ll catch you.”
Pretty sentiment, but she wouldn’t be around on Saturday.
“Come over tonight,” I demanded. “Girls’ night in. Poor thing has been cooped up here for days with only Adrian for a friend.”
“Poor thing,” Allie said and meant it. She had never been partial to his formal charms.
I waited in the kitchen for her to arrive, poking at the contents of the fridge. Plenty of fruit, seedless grapes and chocolate-covered strawberries. Various spritzers and organic colas. Some homemade chicken salad in a Tupperware container. A far cry from fuzzy tacos.
“Need anything?”
I jumped and turned to see Adrian standing behind me. “You surprised me.”
“Sorry,” he said, contrite. “I forget sometimes.”
“Forget what?”
His smile was wry. “That this isn’t my room.”
I looked around the kitchen. It was more his room than anyone else’s. “It’s yours,” I said. “I just feel comfortable enough with you to invade your space.”
“Invade away. Are you hungry? I can make you something. I was about to get dinner started.”
“Let me make something for you,” I said on impulse.
“You can cook?” He sounded doubtful.
“I have lived alone for many years now. Surely you didn’t think I subsist solely on the fruits of my illicit labor.”
His face screwed up in disapproval. “I figured you subsisted on prepared foods from the grocery store with a frequent helping of takeout.”
Bingo. And men had called me mysterious. Ha! I was an open book. “Look, just let me give it a shot. There’s plenty of food in here. And you’ve cooked for me so many times. I want to return the favor.”
“That was different,” he hedged. “I’m paid to do that.”
“I’m paid to do things too, but sometimes we like to have things done for free.” He got a speculative and slightly lustful look on his face. “Don’t think too hard about that. I just want to do something nice for you. Is that so strange?”
“Frankly, yes,” he muttered, although he left when I shooed him away.
Damn. I wished Allie would get here already. I really couldn’t cook at all. I couldn’t even figure out why I wanted to do this, except for a burning desire to please—the same desire that always simmered beneath the surface, now burning white-hot, fanned by my lingering unease from the gun I’d gotten yesterday and my trepidation about tomorrow night. I would get to see Luke again. Then after it was all done, I would return here. I would come back, but something compelled me to fix things with Allie, with Claire, with everyone before I left, tying a knot in the loose, winding threads before they ran out.
Claire found me in the kitchen, and together we prepared a big grilled steak to share and asparagus, something fitting for a last meal. Claire, Adrian, and I ate together, a mishmash family, human trinkets collected by a reclusive owner. Allie arrived with dessert, as she most often did, and we all four feasted.
Although Adrian was just as comfortable with a girl’s night as me, maybe more, he excused himself, perhaps sensing the particular gravity of the night’s festivities. I wished the mood were lighter, my apprehension further from the surface.
At least Claire and Allie seemed mostly unaffected. They chatted as if they didn’t notice my quietness, as if they had known each other forever. I loved that about them. They were both so vibrant, fighting and laughing their way through life. I paled in comparison, a single note in contrast to their harmonies, a single trick to perform again and again.
As they bent their heads together, their laughing faces lit by the glow of a laptop, I noticed how much they looked like each other. Both petite, both brunettes. Claire’s face was thinner, her nose a little longer, but the resemblance was remarkable. It wasn’t an altogether uncommon look, but uneasily, I wondered if I would still have saved Claire if she hadn’t looked so much like Allie.
When Claire looked up at me slyly, I had to ask. “What are you two up to?”
Allie grinned. “Claire wanted to see him in uniform.”
Claire smacked Allie’s arm. “Hey, that was you.”
I came around the laptop. On the screen, the CPD’s Web site was pulled open to Luke’s prof
ile. He stared unseeing at the camera, his green eyes more of a misty hazel in the camera’s lighting. He seemed younger than I remembered, but possibly the picture was old. His youth didn’t detract from his severity. And in his full uniform regalia, he looked very upstanding. The very opposite of what a prostitute could aspire to have for herself.
Both Allie and Claire waited expectantly. Claire seemed a little nervous, as though I might get mad at them. Allie looked mischievous, probably expecting the same thing but knowing she could handle me.
“Well?” I raised my eyebrow. “What are we rating him?”
“Eight out of ten,” Allie said. “Would let him bang my best friend.”
“Next,” I said.
Luke blinked off the screen, taking his solemn sexiness with him. The next guy had olive skin and a Hispanic heritage. More than that, he had a gleam in his eye that was sadly not wicked at all.
“Four out of ten,” Claire said. “Would steal his wallet but not his rosary.”
“You can tell religious fervor from his face?” Allie asked doubtfully.
I concurred. “Virgin Mary tattoo on his back.”
The next listing was a butch female cop and then another man, older but with a decidedly roguish smile.
“This one’s a good tipper,” I remarked.
“Follow the formula,” Claire said.
I examined the picture, mentally comparing him to hundreds of other men. “My guess is…good hygiene. Corny dirty talk.”
“I’d hit that,” Allie said. “He has a silver-fox thing going on.”
“Oh no,” I teased. “Are you panting after a cop? I should tell Colin what you’ve been up to.”
“No, don’t.” Her voice filled with playful fear. “I wouldn’t be able to walk for a week.”
Claire looked up sharply.
“It’s a figure of speech,” I said to soothe her.
Allie’s face softened. “I didn’t mean it that way.”
“So you’ve never really been sore?” Claire demanded. “It never really hurts?”
“Not the way you’re thinking. Not with someone who cares about you.”
Allie’s eyes clouded over, and I wondered whether she really believed that. If so, she had healed more than I realized. More than I had. Years ago, our friend had hurt her—raped her. We had both been shell-shocked. He had cared about her. Not enough, though. Not in the right way. No, I still didn’t understand. Who could comprehend evil? Who understood what made friends and fathers do what they did? Claire’s quiet questions disrupted my thoughts.
