“I know a shit-ton, kid,” he said, almost succeeding in sounding offended. “But what I recently found out I’m not so sure I’m eager to share.”
I quirked a brow at him. “And if I order you to tell me?” I challenged.
“Then I’d say ‘fuck ya and yer orders,’ cheese-dick!” he shot back with a laugh. “Watch who ya try draggin’ ‘round with that ‘Leader’ badge of yers. Don’t ferget that, while ya might be captain of this here ship, ye don’t know shit ‘bout steering the ol’ girl and, without my cute ass to do it for ya, yer in the middle of the Shit Ocean with limited fuel and a dwindling crew.”
“Alright,” I withdrew, nodding with respect. “That’s fair. Then what if I politely asked you to overlook your likely valid instincts and tell me anyway? Maybe as a friend?”
He sighed and rubbed at the back of his neck. “Ah fuck!” he groaned, shaking his head. “Then I guess I’d have to tell you that the Carrions got a little get-together going down tomorrow night.”
I considered this, frowning. “A get-together?”
Danny shrugged. “Call it what ya want—a ‘party,’ a ‘meeting,’ a ‘shindig’… whatever! It’s being called all sorts of things on the street dependin’ on who ya ask, but I guess its formal title is a ‘fundraiser,’” he explained.
“‘A fundraiser,’” I parroted with a scoff.
“More like a buy-in for rich people wanting to get in on their operation,” Danny went on. “But there’s more to it. They’re using it as a means of getting everyone tied to their projects together in one place. As ya already know, they prefer to keep all their cogs separate—far apart as possible to keep from possibly implicating one with the other—but the problem with that approach is that eventually the cogs are too far apart to even operate together. So’s they gotta have events like these every now and again to get the machinery moving together once more.”
“All the parts…” I said, realizing where he was going with this.
Danny’s face sank and he nodded again. “Yeah, well, I know ya know what that means.”
“Means that T-Built’s gonna have to be there,” I said through gritted teeth.
Danny watched this, cleared his throat, and then sniffled. “Like I said: sounds like ye’re feeling particularly confrontational.”
I rolled my eyes at him. “When would I not be confrontational if that son of a bitch is the subject?” I asked.
“Fair enough,” Danny dismissed with a shrug. “So I take it there’s nothing I can say to convince ya not to go.”
“Not a goddam thing!” I assured him.
He folded his arms across his chest. “Even though what ye’re likely planning is certain death; basically suicide?”
I didn’t answer.
“Look, Chase, I get that this T-Built fucker is slippery as a twink’s pecker, but ya can’t possibly think it’s a good idea to go waltzing into a Carrion Crew event just to have a shot at him. There’ll be at least a hundred people there who will recognize ya the moment ya step foot inside, an’ they ain’t exactly gonna believe yer there to sign up fer a jacket.” He squared off in front of me, looking desperate. “Ya want me to double down my efforts in finding where T-Built’s hiding himself any other night, I will. Just say the word and I’ll—”
“Have you not been trying then?” I asked, interrupting him.
He frowned at that. “Well, I mean…” he sighed and looked away, “Honestly, I’ve been adding more and more manpower to the search since I first heard about what he did. I’ve got folks ain’t even members of the Crows on the lookout.”
“And still nothing?” I pressed.
“Still nothing,” he admitted.
“I don’t think ‘slippery’ even begins to describe just how elusive he is then,” I said. “And that means that I definitely can’t miss this opportunity.”
“But they’ll kill ya, Chase!” Danny said, nearly choking on the words.
“Then they’ll have to call it a revenge killing, Mercury, ‘cause it’ll be after I’ve killed T-Built!”
“And how’s that gonna work out?” he demanded. “Walk me through the plan, okay? Ya walk into the joint—either ya on yer own or toting a bunch of our just-as-obvious boys with ya—an’ then ya stroll around all not ninja-like, catching the eyes of Carrions who’ve either—one—” he held up his index finger, “personally seen yer face while they was workin’ fer us—two—” a second finger raised, “seen yer mug flashed around in pictures and documents cycled about fer exactly this sort of reason, or—three—” a third finger jumped into the party, “yer punk-ass just reeks enough of Crow-born vengeance that somebody thinks to point ya out to somebody who fuckin’ knows better!” He looked at his hand and its three raised fingers, looking like he wanted to slap me with the back of that hand before finally letting it drop and, instead, shaking his head at me. “Meanwhile, yer dumb ass, with or without backup, has only just begun to wander about the place in search of one slipperier-than-slippery needle in a five-story haystack. The guest list is already in the hundreds, Chase, an’ ya think that—what?—the power of yer anger will be enough to lead ya right to him? Even if—if, if, IF!—ya manage to find the fucker, how ya think yer gonna go ‘bout doin’ a goddam thing about it? Ya gonna pull a piece out in the middle of a scene like that? Hm? Or ya gonna try to sneak ‘im off somewhere private, do it real secret-like? That ain’t happenin’! Or maybe ya think that the guy who’s representin’ the Carrion’s human trafficking and drug income is gonna be waltzin’ ‘round with no security? ‘Cause I got news fer ya, buddy: the Carrion’s might be crazy as primetime Fox programming, but they know better than to put their biggest cash crop in the crosshairs without at least a bunch of high-paid cock-knockers shadowing his butt all night prepared to take a bullet, blade, or bad word aimed in his general direction. So, by all means, Jason,” he was on the cusp of shouting at me now, “tell me how ya plan to get at this guy without getting yerself dead first. ‘Cause from where I’m standing, kiddo, ye’ll be dead ‘fore T-Built even knew ya was there.”
I glared at Danny for a long time after he was done, not bothering to finish. I didn’t have words for him. Not ones that I was prepared to say aloud, and especially not ones that I was prepared to think to myself. He had some good points; truthfully, he had nothing but good points. And I had none. No points, no plans, no hope.
Well, I had one hope—one that he’d clearly articulated, even—but not one that either of us wanted to admit was something I was hoping for.
“Just give me the address,” I finally said. “And know that I’m sure the Crows will be left in good hands if things don’t work out.”
SIX
~MIA~
Another night.
Another chance to stare into the mirror and argue without words with the ugly-pretty girl who stared back.
I capped the lipstick, thought about my sore asshole, set my foundation aside, remembered the analytical stare of the father as he watched his son working to piston inside of me, and then snatched up my hairbrush. I began to brush. The father’s eyes cut through the time that divided us, telling (me) his son to go faster. I brushed faster. The sound of the slapping impacts at my thighs punctuated the commands, the background chorus of the boy’s grunts. Faster, faster, faster! I brushed faster, remembering the moment I realized that the boy’s grunts sounded more like whimpers; more like the early precursors to crying. That wasn’t how he wanted it to be. It wasn’t how I wanted it to be. Faster, faster, faster!
“You want her to feel it, don’t you, son?”
“Oh don’t you worry, you son of a bitch!” I muttered back at my reflection. “I felt it. I felt it where it mattered.”
Because, while my heart had been broken enough to know just how the shards fit back together—“Cannot say it’s broken if I can glue it back together,” as my mother used to say—I knew what it was I was feeling the moment that poor boy’s heart broke. I imagined he had a girl he liked back at his sc
hool; maybe a pretty little thing just a few years into her development—perhaps a pair of mounds that weren’t quite breasts; two things that were more punctuated by her nipples than vice-versa—and just beginning to feel a variety of itches in her panties. The itches of the hair that society would sneer at for the rest of her life, and the itches—deeper still—that her pubescent mind would feel conflicted about wanting to scratch. I thought of this maybe-girl—this not-quite-real fantasy of the one who had caught that boy’s eye—and how it was her that he’d been hoping would occupy the moment I’d been paid to rob from him the prior night. How many nights had he comforted himself to the thought of her and the night they might someday share?
God knew it wasn’t you he was imagining when he fantasized about that moment, I thought angrily at the girl in the not-a-window, and she flinched back.
“Faster! Faster! Faster!” the phantom-father ordered the two of us.
And so I brushed faster.
“It shouldn’t have been you,” I chastised myself, replaying those not-grunts that had resounded behind me. “It wasn’t yours to take!”
“Faster!”
My head was beginning to hurt where the teeth of the brush dragged across my scalp.
“It wasn’t—” I began again, but then another voice joined the awful song in my head, and I repeated its horrible truth: “You a whore or not?” The girl in the not-a-window stared back, defeated—too embarrassed to answer—and I remembered the nightmare that had woken me up earlier that day. I nodded, and the girl staring back at me mirrored the gesture. “You got me,” we whispered to each other in unison.
“BY ALL THE QUEEFING CUNTS OF AMERICA, MIA!” Candy bellowed, banging on the bathroom door. “WHAT”—Bang!—“IS”—Bang! Bang!—“TAKING YOU”—Bang!—“SO GODDAM LONG?”
A billion apologies, oh glorious whore-goddess, I thought back in that instant, I was just ripping my skull raw under the command of a skeevy father who I’m pretty sure whacked off to the sight of his crying son’s stolen virginity! Just let me powder my pussy like you showed me and we’ll be off down the yellow brick road, just you, Scarecrow, and Lion, and me, the Tin-Whore—just aching for a heart that’s NOT glued together with tears and semen!
What I said, however, was, “Just powdering my pussy like you showed me.”
Whoever said the CliffNotes version of fine literature was cheating never had to face the wrath of an angry hooker.
Or, I thought of T-Built with a shudder, an angry pimp.
“Well give the meat-wallet a good slap for me, okay?” she called back, her voice a great deal calmer than a moment earlier, “Remind her who’s boss!”
“If it’s the boss who’s supposed to be slapping my pussy,” I muttered, not caring if she heard or not, “then I’d do best to keep my hands off myself.”
Head still aching from the aggressive round of brushing, I stowed away my stuff and hurried out to let Candy have the bathroom. As we traded places, I couldn’t help but wonder what sort of routine she had with the girl she saw staring back in her not-a-window.
****
I made myself sad by getting excited when the bus managed to drop us off at our actual stop. The flood of euphoria that came as an immediate and unplanned response to the sight of our corner just a half-block away as the bus groaned to a stop carried a secondary thought that went something like this:
Your life has reached a point of such absolute and complete shit that when the smallest, simplest things go right—in this case: having public transportation successfully dump you off at the corner where you’ll be selling more blowjobs, robbed virginities, and rough anal poundings—your dumb ass actually celebrates it. What’s next, Mia? You gonna think it’s your birthday when a John’s condom doesn’t break and knock you up? You gonna play the lottery when a hundred-dollar fuck doesn’t rip up your insides? You really are just a stupid, stupid whore, aren’t you? And, what’s more, that’s all you’ll ever be! Now off with you, stupid whore, because there’s plenty more shitty ‘rights’ to celebrate, and there’s T-Built, himself, to no-doubt deliver another!
Like the thought wasn’t bad enough on its own, the observation at the end—that of the one-and-only monster who’d all-but ripped me from my blossoming life and plopped me on that very corner standing there, waiting for us—had all the immediate sadness and depression taking an instant backseat to panic and dread. In the few months I’d been working with Candy on that corner, T-Built had only shown up five times in person. It was a rare and justifiably cringe-worthy event, because he only did so for one of two reasons: he felt that one, if not both, of us were holding out on him or he had what he called a “special” job for one, if not both, of us. In cases of the first, there was guaranteed beatings and the very high likelihood of a rape—to “remind us,” as he put it, what it was we were made for—and, in cases of the second, we got to look forward to playing the role of party favors to some prospective clients.
The previous month had marked a potential contract for one of the city’s biggest dealers to carry T-Built’s (and only T-Built’s) product. The deal, which we were told represented the sort of money that “whores ain’t got sense enough to imagine,” meant enough to him to pull us off the streets and act as the dealer’s private playthings for an entire weekend. Deciding to test the offer to its fullest extent, the dealer had gone ahead and organized a gangbang, certain that T-Built would, eventually, tell him that he’d gone too far with his girls.
T-Built, smiling the entire time, had said no such thing.
After the dealer and his crew—something in the realm of twenty-or-so men, I remembered—had cycled through at least five times, they began inviting in strangers. The dealer had remarked that the offer was to “secure a connection” with potential buyers, but I, even through the haze of tears and other hindering fluids, could see that he was still testing T-Built and his offer.
But T-Built and his offer remained solid the entire time.
There wasn’t a part of my body that didn’t ache from the memory of that weekend.
Begrudgingly, I realized that I was hoping he thought we were holding back on him. And that desire reawakened the other thought, which gloated in my head that, yes, life was pretty much the worst kind of shit when you were hoping for a circumstance wherein being beaten and possibly raped was the better of two options. Then, worse yet, I realized that a part of me was actually celebrating the opportunity to gloat about such things to the rest of me. Cursing inwardly, I reminded myself that we—God! Am I really starting to think of myself as “we” now?—were supposed to be in this together.
Only as we stepped up in front of T-Built did I realize that Candy had taken hold of my hand and was beginning to squeeze it.
We, being trained to do so, stayed quiet.
T-Built smiled at us as one would smile at a pair of obedient dogs who knowingly sat before their master to await another command.
Just a couple of lowly bitches, I thought to myself.
Our pimp held the silence like a treasured thing. He simply grinned, shaking his head—an oscillating fan with a leering, lecherous face in place of a cooling breeze—between the two of us, seeming to dare us to disobey our training and speak before him. We did not speak. Finally, drawing in a satisfied inhale, something between the sound one might make over a pleasant aroma and a post-orgasmic breath, he spoke:
“I have an important job for you two tomorrow.”
And, just like that, any satisfaction I might have felt at our bus dropping us off at our stop fizzled and was gone like spit on a hot sidewalk.
The phantom sting of ejaculate made my left eye twitch. In the brief moment between that winking spasm, the entire weekend of being one-half of the center of focus for what felt like a citywide gangbang flashed before me like the world’s fastest, most poorly scripted porno. Somewhere in my subconscious I heard myself think that, at least in the pornos, they found better looking guys who seemed to know what they were doing—being ugly and
of mediocre size, as it turned out, made for overly aggressive “scenes,” and I almost made myself laugh with the curious mental detour that maybe I should have let myself be abducted by a pornographer rather than a pimp.
T-Built, as though he could read my thoughts, narrowed his eyes at me. I more felt the chill of his focus than saw it, and I straightened the moment I did; a loyal soldier at about-face.
“Something to say?” he asked.
I shook my head.
He held his gaze on me for another ten seconds—I counted—and I felt myself shrink an entire inch for every one of them. It was a gaze that didn’t so much meet my eye as it stood aggressively before it, refusing to shake its hand or even offer it the courtesy of a nod; his gaze had no more desire to meet mine than a king has desire to meet the man who scrapes the shit off the streets at night. He looked at me like I was old food, something he might have to consider throwing away; like I wasn’t ever really wanted, anyway—just something grabbed on a whim that wouldn’t be remembered once it was in the trash. He looked at me like I was a whore.
And nothing more.
And, what’s more, that’s all you’ll ever be!
“You a whore or not?”
If ever I felt a glimmer of doubt at those thoughts and those words, the way T-Built looked at me made short work of it. It was only because of his unchallenged rule for absolute silence that I didn’t fold in on every instinct and say “Yes, Master.”
And that that instinct existed within me at all made me furious at everyone and everything—made me furious at the world, at all the Johns, at the Carrion Crew and T-Built, at my brother, and, most of all, at myself.
And then Candy squeezed my hand, and I somehow understood the meaning behind that simple gesture:
“Your survival is how you fight.”
Whether she’d said it to me sometime before or if it was just the sort of stunning profundity I’d come to expect from her I couldn’t be certain, but it worked all the same. I let him finish the long, cold look, decide that, yes, I still had worth for the time being, and finally—FINALLY!—look away.
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