by Laura Leone
"No, I guess it doesn't." Her tone was guarded.
"So this is different. What's between us." He folded his arms across his chest and turned a little away from her, feeling exposed. "And if I could find a different word for it... Then that's what I'd say I want when I touch you." He shrugged uncomfortably. "I guess it looks the same from the outside. But it feels like something different to me."
"Ryan..."
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her lean towards him and extend a hand. He turned away a little more and said quietly, "Don't. Not unless you want to go upstairs together. Right now."
When he didn't feel her touch upon him, he knew what her answer was. There was a long silence between them.
"I want you to tell me," she said at last, "why sex means so little to you. I need to know why you keep company with lots of other women. For money. I want to know how you became..."
"An expensive whore?"
She didn't protest his choice of words. "Yes."
"It's a long story, Sara."
"I think I can spare the time," she said.
"You want to know how I wound up like this—"
"Yes."
"—from the promising start that I had in life?" he said with a twinge of bitterness.
"What was your start in life? You never tell me anything about your past."
How could he make her understand his past? "I should take you to meet that kid," he mused.
"What kid?"
"This kid who stole my wallet."
"You know him?"
"I do now. I found him. Since the last time I saw you. I tracked him down."
"Did you get your wallet back?"
"Yes. With my I.D. and stuff still in it."
"Oh, good! So that's where you've been all day?"
He shook his head. "Yesterday. Oh, and this morning. I went back to buy the kid breakfast."
"You bought him breakfast?" When he didn't reply, she said, "Why? And how'd you find him? What's his name?"
"I don't know his name. He wouldn't tell me." The boy had followed Ryan to a diner in hostile silence and maintained it while waiting for his breakfast to be cooked. He wolfed down the food without even looking at Ryan, and then bolted for the door. "Not that he would have given me his real name," Ryan added absently to Sara. "Not if he was smart."
"Why not?"
"He should be using a street name."
"Why?"
"Everyone's got their reasons."
She drew in a sharp breath. There was a pause before she said, "What were your reasons?"
He glanced at her, a little surprised.
"The other night," she reminded him, "you said something about being able to take the boy off the streets, but not the—"
"Oh. Right." He should have realized she'd catch that. She caught everything. And made the connections.
"What was your street name?" she asked. "Kevin?"
"No. Catherine named me Kevin. Because it sounds..."
"Smart and respectable."
"Yes."
"How old were you when she named you Kevin?"
He drew in a breath and let it out slowly. "I was sixteen."
"Sixteen? My God! You were just a kid, and she turned you into a prostitute!"
"And I was glad," he said. "Grateful."
"Grateful?" She sounded stunned.
"So grateful that it took me years to figure out I was trapped and wanted to escape."
"Why were you grateful?"
He met her eyes. "If she hadn't found me and turned me into Kevin, I'd be long dead by now. Hell, I was nearly dead when she did it."
"How? Why?"
"Life on the street is pretty brutal."
"But why were you on the street in the first place?"
He hesitated for a moment, then said, "Do you want to get dressed and go get a drink? This is a story that really needs a drink to go along with it."
Chapter Ten
He was raised by his mother, who worked full-time as a housekeeper for a wealthy family in Tulsa, Oklahoma. She and Ryan lived in a small apartment above her employers' garage. The two of them had a tight budget but a stable lifestyle. The employers' home was in an excellent school district, so Ryan was getting a good education—supplemented by the religion classes, which his mother, a strict Catholic, insisted he attend without fail.
"In fact," Ryan said dryly, "I was an altar boy."
"That isn't how I see you," Sara admitted.
The employers were kind people. Their children were considerably older than Ryan, and so they gave him old furniture, toys, books, records, and sports equipment that their kids didn't want anymore. Rather than letting him resent his hand-me-down status, Ryan's mother made sure that he appreciated the opportunity to own things which she couldn't have bought for him. And she was so strict that she insisted he offer courteous and effusive thanks even for the occasional item that he really didn't want.
"Then she'd quietly go and give it to someone with even less money than we had," he told Sara.
His mother was strict about everything, in fact: his manners, his schoolwork, his tidiness, his language.
"And, oh, my God, the guilt that woman could inflict if I didn't do my chores or didn't get a good grade on a test."
"Now she sounds like my mother."
He grinned. "If I was rude or got into a fight, then she'd assign me some really awful chore. One time, I had to go around the neighborhood collecting money for some charity, and I wasn't allowed to come home until I had fifty dollars."
"That's a good punishment," Sara said, clearly impressed.
Ryan took a sip of the beer he had ordered at this bar, which was several blocks away from where he and Sara lived. He'd never been in here before and doubted he'd return. He hadn't wanted to be alone in private with her, not right after they'd nearly jumped each other's bones on the stairs; and he didn't want to be overheard in their neighborhood café, where people knew him. So this place had seemed a good choice.
Now he and Sara sat in a shadowy corner at the back of the establishment. Her elbows were propped on their little table as she listened to him. Catherine had trained Ryan never to put his elbows on a table, and he didn't break the habit now. Sara had a glass of wine in front of her, and he knew she probably wouldn't finish it, no matter how long they sat here. She wasn't much of a drinker.
"Where was your father?" Sara asked.
"Well, I thought he was dead. That's what my mother told me. In fact, it was the only thing she'd tell me about him."
"I take it he wasn't really dead?"
"No. One day, when I was eight, he just showed up."
"That must have been weird."
"Very."
Ryan was outside playing one Sunday afternoon when a strange man pulled into the driveway, got out of his car, and, upon seeing Ryan, came over to talk to him.
Ryan knew he wasn't supposed to talk to strangers, but the man knew his name, knew his mother's name, and kept his distance, so Ryan didn't run inside right away.
"Then, suddenly, my mother was shouting at me from the window of our apartment. 'Ryan, get away from him! Come inside! Right now!' So I did—but he followed me. My mother blocked the doorway and wouldn't let him in. She was shouting and making threats. I'd never seen her like that."
The man argued with her, growing very angry. Ryan's mother threatened to call the police, and the man dared her to do so, shouting at her, "He's my son, too! I'll get a court order if I have to!"
After the man's departure, Ryan's mother was extremely upset, wouldn't talk to him, and got angry when he asked questions about the man.
"But he did get a court order," Ryan said. "So she had to let him see me. Which meant she had to tell me who he was."
"Why didn't she want your father to see you?" Sara asked.
"Well, she didn't put it this way at the time, of course," Ryan said, "but he used to knock her around when he got drunk. When he started knocking me around, too, she left him. I w
as less than two years old. Don't remember anything about it."
"And you hadn't seen him since then?"
He shook his head. "My mother never divorced him. I don't know why. That's the sort of question you only think of when you get older. Maybe it was because she was so religious. Or maybe she couldn't afford a divorce lawyer, or my father wouldn't agree to get divorced." Ryan shrugged.
"But now he was back and tried to establish a relationship with you?"
"Not quite. He saw me for two weekends that first month, which was evidently what the court order stipulated. Both weekends were incredibly boring and awkward, I might add. And then he disappeared. The next time he was supposed to come pick me up, my mother and I sat waiting for two hours. He never showed, never called. My mother said she didn't care what the court said, she wouldn't let him see me again. The next time he tried, about a year later, she stuck to that. He made some threats about going back to the courts again. But I guess he never did."
"Was he drinking again?"
"Probably."
"So you never saw him again?"
"Oh, if only that were the case." Ryan took a long swig of his beer. "When I was thirteen, my mother died."
"Oh." Sara conveyed strong sympathy in that one syllable. "How? She must have still been pretty young."
"Not even your age yet," he said, remembering that day. "Aneurysm. It happened instantly. Mrs. Ferugson—the Fergusons were her employers—came home from shopping that afternoon and found her dead in the kitchen. Just like that." He paused. "I came home from school to find an ambulance and a squad car in the driveway. I thought maybe Mr. Ferguson had had a heart attack. Mom always worried that he would. But... then they told me."
"Oh, Ryan. I'm so sorry."
He took a breath. "A few days later, I was sent to live with my father in Oklahoma City."
"That must have been very hard for you."
"Actually, the hard part came when he started beating the shit out of me."
"What?"
"He was drinking a lot by the time I moved in with him. He slugged me occasionally, but—"
"Oh, Ryan!"
"—it was about a year before he really started beating me in earnest."
"Oh, my God."
"So, finally, after the old man passed out one night, I called Mr. and Mrs. Ferguson and asked them to come get me. They'd always been nice to me, and I didn't know what else to do."
The Fergusons were nice to him again. They drove a long distance through the night to rescue the incoherent adolescent who had phoned them for help. Appalled by what he revealed about his life with his father, the Fergusons took Ryan home with them and consulted a lawyer.
"I stayed there for a few days," Ryan said. "But I was taken away from them, and then I was sent back to my father."
"Why?"
"Since my mother had never divorced my father, or filed for separation, or anything like that, my father had a lot of rights over me. There was no record of my mother ever filing any kind of complaint against my father; and there was a record of him having had the court force my mother to let him see me after she'd refused, so it made him look like a concerned and responsible parent." Ryan could have choked on the words.
"Didn't the authorities care that he was an alcoholic who was beating you?"
"My father said it had happened just the one time, and it would never happen again. His lawyer said the Fergusons had colluded with my mother to deny my father his rights as a parent and were involved in this out of spite." He made a disgusted sound. "The Fergusons had no legal right to help me, and I was just a kid, so the system didn't give a shit what I said or thought. So I got sent back to my father."
"What happened?" Sara asked.
"I guess the brush with the law made an impression on my father. It was a few months before he started beating me again. I had to see a social worker once every two weeks. I guess she was supposed to be my 'protection' against him. But when I showed up one day with a fat lip and told her who'd given it to me, she went and bitched to him, and that just made him even madder at me. So I never told her a thing again."
"I feel sick," Sara said. "Ryan, why didn't an adult help you?"
"The Fergusons tried, but..." He shook his head. "They couldn't help. There was no one."
"What about relatives?"
"My mother was an only child and her parents were dead. I didn't know how to contact any of her other relatives. And I never met anyone in my father's family."
By now, Ryan seldom attended school and was failing. He couldn't sleep, he was depressed and scared, losing weight. He'd made no friends since moving in with his father. He had no one and nothing.
"And then my father got sloshed again one night, and this time he tried to kill me."
"Ryan!"
After all these years, the memory of that night still made his back sweat with fear. "He was chasing me around the house, knocking over furniture, hitting and kicking me. He was screaming that he was sick of me, he wanted me dead, he was going to kill me." Ryan clenched his fists. "I was so scared, I couldn't even speak. I really thought he was going to do it. I really believed I was going to die."
There were tears in her eyes as she reached for one of his clenched hands, ignoring the "no touching" rule they had established earlier.
"I ran outside, trying to get away from him. But he was right on my heels, screaming that he'd break both my arms, he'd teach me to talk back, he'd kill me." His father's enraged, terrifying bellows filled his head again. The curses and the threats. The screaming, irrational violence. "'You're dead, boy!' he kept shouting at me." Ryan rubbed his brow, feeling shaky as it all came back to him. "There was all sorts of equipment in the yard. I don't know why. I never saw him use any of it. It was all rusty and ruined. I picked up this piece of machinery... I guess it was about the size of a toaster. I don't know what it was for."
When he fell silent, she prodded gently, "What happened?"
He took a breath. "I turned around, and when he lunged at me, I smashed it into his face as hard as I could. He screamed and staggered back. His hand was over his face, like this." Ryan demonstrated. "In the light coming from the porch, I could see blood start trickling down his face, from underneath his hand." Ryan paused for a moment. "And then I hit him again."
"That may have saved your life," she said quietly.
"That's what I thought," he agreed. "He passed out. I got his wallet and took all his money. Then I went into the house and threw some of my stuff into a duffel bag as fast as I could. I don't even remember thinking. I was like a machine or something. No thoughts, just actions."
"You were in shock."
"I guess I was. All I knew was that I had to get out of that house forever, and quick, because when he woke up, he'd kill me, for sure. When I looked out the window and saw him start moving, I stopped packing, just took what I already had, and ran."
"Where did you go?"
"Bus station. I walked all the way there. It took me until dawn. I looked at the schedule when I got there, to see which buses were leaving in the next hour. And I bought a ticket for the one that was going farthest."
She closed her eyes and lowered her head. "That's how you wound up here."
"I had this idea in my head that I had to get out of Oklahoma. That he'd be able to find me or they'd be able to send me back to him if I stayed in the state."
"How old were you?"
"Fourteen."
She made a distressed sound, "What did you do when you got here?"
"The usual. I slept in the bus station until the cops bothered me. Then I started sleeping in lobbies, public bathrooms, alleys, a cemetery, wherever. I tried to look for a job, but you can't get one when you're underage, dirty, and have no home and no I.D." He shrugged. "I became a street boy. I figured out how to survive. I ate out of dumpsters. I waded into traffic to wash windshields." He wondered uneasily how much to tell her. "I shoplifted... And I picked pockets... And I, uh..."
"You w
ere a thief?"
"Yes." He added, "And I was better at it than the street boy who stole my wallet the other day."
"Did you look for help? Until you went to live with your father, you had a normal life and a good education. But you were so young, of course... Did you know there were social agencies and shelters?"
"My experience of social agencies was that they'd send me back to my father. And shelters were worse than the streets, Sara. At one, I had to strip, let them check me out, treat me like dirt. It was filthy and crowded, and, uh, I had to stand, sleep, and shower with my back to the wall. So to speak."
"Oh," she said faintly.
"At another, some guys regularly smuggled in weapons—a knife, a club, a pipe—and beat up anyone they felt like beating up." But they'd learned not to pick on him. He'd survived his father's assaults, and he certainly wasn't going to let some street punk kill him—or take away what few belongings he possessed.
"It's like Lord of the Flies or something," Sara said bleakly.
"I've never read it."
"I suppose this explains why you don't like cops."
"Living on the street, you learn fast to avoid them. They don't help you. They just move you along or try to lock you up." He thought back and said, "There was a church that sent its members around to give us—kids on the street—food, some clothes, and these kits that had things in them like toothpaste, deodorant, and combs. There was another church where we could go for hot meals... but I wouldn't go unless I was really hungry, because some adult would bother me as soon as I sat down there."
"Bother you?"
"Ask for my story. Ask how they could get me off the streets."
"Why was that bad?"
He sighed. "Different reasons. For the first year, I was always afraid my father would find me."
"Do you really think he was looking?"
"Not hard." Ryan shrugged. "Maybe not at all. But I was a scared kid who thought that every social worker and cop in the country had my photo and would send me back to him as soon as they recognized my face or learned my real name."
