Broken Girl

by Gretchen de La O

  I was grateful she had the courtesy to tell me where she was, when you live with someone in the same business of selling sex, communication could mean the difference between life and death. Sybil and I promised one another that we’d keep each other safe. But I’d be damned if I was gonna call Crystal and suddenly have her become my problem. I knew everyone needed someone in this fucked up business. I got that; but pullin’ that girl under my wing right now was more of a hassle than anything else. What the hell did Sybil want me to do? Go over there and make sure she didn’t cry herself to sleep?

  This is a gnarly business with gnarly, disgusting, sick fucks who wouldn’t give a rat’s ass about you and whether you were gang raped in a back alley or lying in the gutter bleeding to death. There will always be some other girl ready to take your place.

  I buried the twist in my stomach and moved the fuck on, call it self-preservation.

  The hot water pummeled my flesh annihilating any desire I had to go back to bed. I’d be damned when flashes of Crystal’s savior flooded my mind. The way Laundry Man looked at me in the alley replayed in my head over and over again. His eyes, pierced mine, the tone of his voice as he told me to get into the pub. How he had become frozen when he had seen that the prick was gone. An urge swirled through my stomach, exactly what I didn’t have time to get all caught up in when I thought about him. My life was too busy. Soap up, rinse off and get the hell out, but stay just long enough to wake up.

  I hated to do business in the late afternoon. The only dates who showed up on the stroll were cheap ass motherfuckers looking for an early bird special. I end up wasting half of my afternoon getting these stingy bastards to cough up three-quarters of my going rate . . . no discounts, no exceptions. I should actually charge them double because the risk of being pinched was so much higher.

  I had my time and price per service mathematically down and memorized. So when the cheap bastards came out for an afternoon delight I could work the numbers to my advantage. Dip and lips ran the gamut, from the young stud construction guy needing to get his rocks off on his lunch break, to the senior citizen that wanted to pop before he hit the early bird dinner special and went to bed. Both were always hot for pussy and for the most part I could talk them in circles before they unzipped and end up more than happy to pay my evening rate.

  It was the uptight-businessman who wanted something for almost nothing. Broken by the wits of these middle-aged pricks, it was rare that I could get them to unzip for my evening rate. Big fucking briefcases with small cocks and if I had a dollar for every time they told me they’d never done this before, I’d be rolling up in a Benz dipped in gold. They were the stingiest fucks around and yet pulled up to the curb in eighty thousand dollar Porsches, walked around saturated in Armani and Christian Dior, with Rolex watches strapped to their wrists and twenty-four karat gold rings wedged on their short pudgy fingers. The only positive, they would be so wound up, they’d blow their wads after a couple of dips. Sixty bucks for a three-minute fuck wasn’t so bad.

  I hopped out of the shower and collected what I was gonna wear for the entire time. I slipped into my black stretchy tennis miniskirt. The same skirt that if I bent over everyone would get a peek at my merchandise. I pulled on a tight shimmery pink halter top that made my tits look unbelievable and rummaged through the pile of heels next to my bed and found the most comfortable pair of stilettos I could wear without having to take them off every half hour.

  I blew out my hair, helping the natural wave curve around my face before I dragged the sparkling peach lip gloss across the swell of my mouth and the earthy green shadow across my eyelids. I used to think there’d be a time, where the life that sparked behind my eyes would return. Come to find it was wishful thinking, dreams of a little girl who thought the world cared. It was a mistake I’d never let happen again.

  I grabbed a variety of rubbers from the lead crystal bowl on my dresser. Two strips of ribbed, three or four Magnums and a handful of assorted flavors; I hated the cherry ones, but if it was the difference between choking down a Robitussin flavored cock for a quick three minutes or losing forty bucks, I’d live with the taste of cherry cough syrup. I tossed a half-smoked joint and a handful of airplane mini bottles of tequila in my purse before I snatched my keys from the bookcase, straightened the seams of my miniskirt, as I double-checked my bulging cleavage in the full length mirror behind the front door. There, now it was time to make some money. I strolled past the threshold and didn’t look back. No use in turning around when I wouldn’t be meandering back this way before four AM, I never looked back anyway.

  I pulled into the parking lot of an office building a half block down from Preacher’s Square, an oxymoron at its best. I had always parked my ‘92 Le Baron far enough away so nobody would see me drive up. It was a car older than dirt and smelled just as bad when I had ran the heater. Two years older than me, it’d been around the block as much as a middle-aged hooker.

  Preacher’s Square was designed to give hardworking people a patch of grass to eat lunch and bring the kids to play, instead it had become nothing more than a cesspool for runaway teens who wanted to get high and hos who needed a place to do their business.

  I downed two of the mini tequila bottles and took a couple hits off the joint I had before I readied myself for the hunt. It didn’t take but two minutes before I got a hit, a businessman looking for an afternoon blow job. He leaned in close enough to be heard but still far enough away so he didn’t get caught. Day jobs were more difficult and easier to get arrested. All it took was one cop who wouldn’t trade for a tuck-and-pull from any of the girls in the park and we’d all go down. Fortunately, one of the new girls showed up or the cops were having a shift change because there wasn’t one in sight.

  “Hey, sweetheart, what’s it cost for you to . . . you know?” he said as he pointed to the stiffy in his pants.

  “That depends on what you want. Lips are forty, a dip is sixty and if you need both, seventy-five.” I sounded like a broken record.

  “Well, that little piece of ass over there told me she’d give me both for forty-five.” He tossed me a thoughtless smile as he pointed over to a girl who was rockin’ her shit back and forth, his eyes were as big as drink coasters.

  “You know what, if that ho is willing to bargain basement her coochie for forty-five bucks, I suggest you run your cheap-ass over there and tap it, because I guarantee her prices are all ready going up as we speak.” I stood there waiting for him to respond. He couldn’t, we both knew he was lying, because I knew Patsy and she wasn’t willing to give up her snatch for anything under fifty bucks. Maybe if she was feeling generous she’d blow you for thirty-five bones but nothing less. “Pay or get the fuck out of my face,” I spat at him.

  “I only have thirty-five dollars. Come on help me out,” he whined as he dug pudgy fingers into his suit pants.

  “Are you kidding me? You’re walking up on me wearing a Giorgio Armani suit worth more than the car I drive and you’re gonna stand here and tell me you can’t come up with another five bucks so I’ll suck your cock? Get the fuck out of my face, you cheap-ass bastard.”

  When you sold yourself for money that was how you had to treat all these cheap-ass motherfuckers. Pull out your toughest trait, own it and wear it like a glove; let them know you aren’t desperate for their money and always be willing to walk away. If you don’t, they’re gonna whittle away at your profit and the next thing you know you’re sucking them off for free.

  “Shit,” he spat as he dug into his wallet fat with cash.

  He collected up forty bucks before he twisted it into his fingers, he held it up between us. “You better be worth it.”

  “Put away the money and don’t pull it out until I say. What the fuck, you trying to get me pinched?” I growled staring him down.

  He slipped his cash into his front pocket.

  “Now, are we doing business in your car or all Adam and Eve style?”

  His eyes narrowed, he looked around bef
ore he cleared his throat, I knew by his body language he was about to say something that made him look like a total douche.

  “Just follow me,” I mumbled as I began to walk up the grassy knoll.

  I should have known he didn’t want to use his car. Another perfect example of why I’d rather fuck a dusty old fart, hopped up on Viagra in the back seat of his rusty Cadillac, than deal with assholes like this, where his briefcase was bigger than his cock, and the value of his pinstriped charcoal gray suit was worth four times anything I owned.

  In the far corner of Preacher’s Square there was a grove of Eucalyptus trees surrounded by tall juniper bushes. Behind it, a twelve-foot-tall stucco wall that separates the upper-middle class neighborhood from the park, secluded enough to be private but it still gave you a clear view of who was coming over, a perfect place to do our business.

  “You don’t have to keep looking around. It makes you look guilty of something. Just walk casual. You ever done this before?” I asked.

  “Yeah, in a car, or a hotel room, but not like this.”

  “Let me tell you, first, nobody gives a rat’s ass about what you and I are about to do. And two, the busy people will still be busy walking down the sidewalks, dogs will still be taking a shit on the edge of the square and their owners will still be the assholes who leave it there to fuck with my profession and lastly, as I drop down and give you one of the most ball-tightening blow jobs you’ll ever have . . . we’ll have an audience. So when your eyes are rolling into the back of your head and you’re about to blow your wad, remember there’s always a couple street rats that sneak back here and jack off to the show, just make sure you give them one. You ready?” I asked as we slipped behind the sparse juniper bushes.

  “I guess so, sure.”

  His eyes darted from where we came, a couple of straggling joggers passed by but never noticed us. He worked to get his cock out. A smirk crept across his face and his eyes gleamed sadistically, as if he had just bought my soul from Satan himself.

  “Whoa, slow down there, cowboy, I need the dough before I blow. My policy, payment before any service is provided.”

  “Of course, forty bucks, right?”

  “B.J. only, right?”

  He answered with a nod.

  “Then yeah, now you can pay me.”

  He pushed into his front pocket and pulled out the cash he tried to give me earlier. And like every prick in a business suit, he slipped it between my tits. I have hands, asshole. To make a big deal out of his classless actions would have been just wasted time, it wasn’t worth the argument. I pulled a rubber from my purse and tossed it at him.

  “I don’t do bareback; cap your cock.”

  Most of the time I’d put on a show, prop the rubber between my lips and teeth and roll it down as I went to town; but, fuck it, not this time. He wanted something like that, at least offer me your car or take me to a hotel room, but behind the juniper bushes? His dick wasn’t getting special treatment. He ripped open the package, pulled out the rubber and started to roll it on, I could smell that motherfucker the minute it hit the air . . . cough syrup, cherry flavor, just my luck.

  “MY FUCKING FEET are killing me!” Sybil moaned as she plopped down on the couch. It was four thirty in the morning and all I wanted to do was shower, wash off the residue of the night and go to bed.

  “Imagine being on your feet since three thirty in the afternoon. Talk about fucked up, I hate afternoons.”

  I sat next to Sybil, kicked off my heels and started to rub my toes.

  “I don’t know why you keep on going to Preacher’s Square,” she pushed.

  “Because I just love being picked up on by snot-nosed pimply middle schoolboys, that’s why.”

  Sybil knew Preacher’s Square was the best place to catch up when funds were falling short for the month. It was a necessary evil in our profession, but we had to go where the money talked and the bullshit walked and trust me, everything about selling sex is ripe with bullshit.

  “Was the take at the Square any good?”

  “Five hundred thirty-five bones. Listen, I am beat. I’m gonna take a shower and hit the sack. We’ll talk more tomorrow.”

  I felt like I was hit by a truck. Not only did I pull off the nonstop suck-n-fuckfest down at the Square, but then I went straight to my evening pavement. Tonight I upped my prices and pulled in a couple foreigners; they paid big bucks to watch me masturbate. Whatever turns you on and pays my bills. My entire take was fifteen hundred bucks. I had one condom left when I called it a night and it wasn’t the Magnum; like I said, hit by a truck.

  After my shower, I got ready for bed while I watched the time tumble past five thirty in the morning. It was a quarter to six and I was wide awake. Sure my body was exhausted, the tequila and pot were wearing thin in my blood but my mind wouldn’t shut off. This was the time when childhood memories would come at me with a vengeance; I had no way of containing the dusty clouds of delusion. Keeping my heart on lockdown only produced a selfless, cold-hearted bitch who believed if she didn’t invest, she wouldn’t lose. Preservation was my only friend. The problem with that was when I was exhausted and the haunting memories boiled to the surface to punish me, there was absolutely nothing I could do to stop them. Like the imprisoned child I was, these were the nights that shattered me.

  ‘You’re making me do this my little Rosalie. You give me this sickness, you see, you keep causin’ all of this in my body.’ He grabs his sickness. His eyes are dark, his fingernails are sharp.

  Pain.

  Searing pain.

  Tears roll down past my temples, tangling in my hair.

  Tangles.

  I’m cold.

  I’m in my bedroom alone. All alone, a moment seared into my soul, another vision, feeling, my body purging my past.

  I get out of my bed and pace back and forth across my room.

  “I can’t keep it in any longer,” I yell at myself in the mirror. I’ve done my best to hold it in for three long years. I never told a soul. I’m being eaten from the inside out.

  My stomach twists at the thought of telling anyone. I can’t. But I need to.

  ‘Rosalie, you think by holding in your secret for three short years, anyone is going to care? Wake up girl, nobody cares.’ The voice in my head pipes up and betrays me.

  “My stomach hurts, I can’t stop the truth from bubbling out. I have to tell someone,” I holler out loud.

  I need the voice to understand.

  It’s me, it’s me that needs to find a way to stop feeling so yucky so dirty for what happened.

  ‘Then what? What do you think anyone’s going to do with that information? It’s too late to do anything. Keep it in your soul. No matter what. Trust me,’ the voice in my head snaps.

  “I won’t. I’m twelve now and I’m stronger! I have to tell someone. I have to get the poison out of my mind. I can’t take it anymore.”

  ‘Rosalie, nobody can know about my sickness. You understand? You are the only one who knows. It’s our little secret.’ His words sear across my mind.

  “I don’t wanna die.”

  ‘You won’t if you keep this just between you and me.’

  The traffic in my head is too much. Memories—words—voices it’s all too much.

  ‘Three whole years later? What’s going to happen? Nothing, that’s what. Get over yourself; people get hurt. You suck it up and move the fuck on, little girl.’

  Cracking in half, everything draining from my soul.

  ‘Our secret.’

  Torn . . .

  Apart . . .

  In Seconds . . .

  I rubbed my eyes, hoping the harder I pressed my fists into my sockets the horrid visions in my head would stop. Fuck, I didn’t need this tonight. It had been six months since my last episode. Six months of freedom from the nightmares. The repulsive feeling curdled my stomach, my heart was in a race it couldn’t seem to win, no matter how fast it was beating. My memories created a desert in my throat that day. It s
hattered the peace I’d tried to embrace in my adulthood. A hope with a sliver of peace only available to little girls who had found their voices as adults.

  I was the little girl who sweated out the poisonous recollections from her flesh night after night. Tonight, the memories drenched my skin, dampening my clothes. The only physical shift I could manage was rocking back and forth. I pulled my knees to my chest, wrapped my arms around my legs and surrendered to the fact that the act of one monster, one hour, of one day, eleven years ago, destroyed a lifetime I was entitled to have.

  Pushing myself, I got up and walked around. I figured if I changed my physical place in the world, maybe it would change my reaction to it. I couldn’t pinpoint why my body betrayed me or my mind fucked with me so hard, other than pure exhaustion. I didn’t want to be that little broken girl anymore. I didn’t want to own the ache that scarred more than my physical body anymore. I just wanted to pick up my life from the point where I shackled my heart in iron locks with steel chains. I wanted to pull out the weeds of hate that were buried deep. Weeds that sprang from the collateral damage of a childhood tainted by a despicable fuck who chose to capture my innocence and hold it for ransom my entire life.

  “Ro? You okay?” Sybil whispered shifting to look at me from her bed.

  “I just couldn’t sleep,” I answered. The problem of sharing a studio apartment with someone, was that our beds were merely steps away from each other, only separated by an open space we conveniently called the living room.

  “You having those dreams again?” Sybil propped herself up on her elbow.

  “Yeah, but I’ll get through them. Nothing I haven’t dealt with before.”