The Lost

by Cole McCade

  But not today, she thought as she stopped outside a pawn shop. Not today.

  Several digital cameras sat in the window display, mostly new, all with price tags in the triple digits. She gnawed at the inside of her lip, then stepped inside the cluttered space. A dozen reflected doppelgangers peered past the contents of mirrored displays, like wild animals stalking her through a forest of other people’s cast-offs. A bored-looking older woman leaned against the counter, her weight resting on heavy arms that made Leigh think of a baker’s, thick and powerful, yet soft and shining a rich dark brown. She popped her gum and read a Harlequin with dog-eared pages; tattoos spidered over every visible inch of skin, tiny dots and thin swirling lines of black—as if she’d been born a work of art, patterns stamped into her flesh, creating a secret language of divination with the whispers of the universe hidden in between.

  She eyed Leigh without much interest, then looked right back at her book. Leigh scrubbed her palms against her thighs and stepped up to the counter.

  “Excuse me,” she said softly. No matter how she tried she couldn’t beat the manners out of herself, trained to be a lady. “I was wondering if you could help me.”

  The pawnbroker glanced up again. “Buying or selling?” Every syllable was punctuated by the air bubbles in her gum folding and compressing under her teeth until they popped, pink moving against the glimmer of one square of gold past generous lips. Her T-shirt read Maxi above a glistening airbrushed Camaro that stretched blue and bright across ponderous breasts, and Leigh wondered Maxi it was short for Maxine.

  “Buying…I hope.” Leigh gestured toward the window. “Do you have any cheaper cameras? I don’t need anything special. Just a lot of memory.”

  “How cheap?”

  “Fifty-three dollars.”

  Chawing on that gum like it was chew tobacco, Maxi frowned; Leigh half expected to see a gum spittoon behind the counter. “Let me check.”

  Maxi tested the locks on the register and the cases, gave Leigh a measuring look, then ducked into a back room, trailed by the rattle of beads on the tips of braids that swung against her back. Leigh waited by the register, hands in her pockets, shifting restlessly enough that the plastic Dollar Store bag dangling from her wrist rustled. A few minutes later the woman emerged with a battered Sony, scratched and scuffed but fairly new.

  “Can let you have this for twenty. High-capacity SD card for another five, up to a hundred and twenty-eight gigs. It’s a twenty-thirteen, works just fine, but it’s too beat up to go in the display case. Fuck, only gave the guy five dollars for it.”

  “It doesn’t have to be pretty,” Leigh said, just a bit too quickly. “It just has to work.”

  Maxi cocked her head, then shrugged and flicked the camera on. It came to life with a flicker, the viewfinder screen glowing in full color. The woman tapped an on-screen folder and pulled up a slideshow. Pictures of a man with needle tracks down his arms, and a girl who looked too innocent—and too drunk—clinging to him. Leigh turned her face away, then winced when Maxi snapped a picture, flash burning in the corner of her eye.

  “See?” The woman showed her her own image, her uncomfortable, hurt grimace, the pale straggles of hair against dark clothing. The poster child for the damaged little girl Gary called her. She hated the sight of her own face, and dropped her gaze to her feet.

  “Works,” Maxi continued. “I can clear out the memory for you before you go. Runs on two double-As. Throw in an eight-pack for two bucks.”

  “Okay. Sure.” She toyed with the threads inside her pocket, picking at them. “Can you copy pictures from a phone, too?”

  “Let me see your phone.”

  Leigh handed over her TracFone, but had trouble letting go. Prying her fingers away felt like giving up her most prized earthly possession. Maxi turned the dented flip phone over, checked the charge port, then nodded.

  “MicroUSB. Sure. I’ve got a cable that’ll fit this. Total’s twenty-seven for the camera, memory card, and batteries, if you want it.”

  Leigh pulled the wad of bills from her pocket and peeled away a twenty and a ten. “Throw in a second pack of batteries.”

  “Sure. Give me a few.”

  Leigh fidgeted while Maxi hooked the phone up to a laptop. Little animated pages flew across the screen from one folder to another while the woman dug out a memory card, still in the plastic, and shrink-wrapped packs of batteries. Leigh tucked them away in her Dollar Store bag while Maxi switched the phone for the camera, connecting it to the laptop. She paused, eyeing the screen before studying Leigh shrewdly; the tattoos arching over her brows and under her eyes turned the pale amber irises strange and catlike and all-seeing. She pivoted the screen so Leigh could see. A picture of that beautiful little boy filled the desktop; in the photo, he looked down at his hands, busy in the playground sandbox. She’d snapped that shot over a year ago. He’d been three. The day had been gray and overcast, and his nanny—the old nanny, before the pretty redhead but after the blonde—had been trying to coax him inside. Leigh swallowed, a thick lump in her throat.

  “Your son?” Maxi’s harsh, nasal voice gentled.

  “Yeah.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Elijah,” Leigh whispered; she hardly ever let herself say his name, when it felt like a prayer that her lips could only get dirty.

  Maxi assessed her thoughtfully, then offered a sympathetic smile. “You must love him a lot.”

  “Yeah.” Leigh’s answering smile was watery, wavering. “You have no idea.”

  Once the transfer was finished and the old files deleted, Leigh tucked the camera into her shopping bag and left, hugging the bag close to her chest. She felt like she’d just wiped away someone else’s memories and replaced them with her own. As if her own were more important. As if she had the right to overwrite someone else’s life with her collections of moments. She wondered briefly where the man and that girl were, then pushed it away. Stories like the one in those pictures never ended well, and she’d seen enough unhappy endings that she didn’t need to spin the rest of the tale out in her head.

  The pancakes still sat heavy in her belly by the time she made it to Gary’s with the sun high in the noonday sky. He skulked around her, a beaten dog, while she stowed her new purchases upstairs in her backpack, then headed down to wash up behind the bar. He didn’t apologize again, but it was in his drooping ears and slumped shoulders and the downward turn of his wrinkled, too-soft mouth. She wouldn’t embarrass him by pointing it out. By tomorrow it would pass, and he’d be back to snarling goddammit, girl every other word.

  The bar opened at four, and by four-fifteen the first blue-collar barflies drifted in, calling it an early day and drowning the construction lot blues in a Michelob while the game blared from the TV. They always watched with such fixed, dull interest. Leigh had a feeling they saw less of the plays and referee calls and more of red vs. blue, simple and easy and hypnotic. People ran up and down a field or court, fighting over a ball; picking a jersey to cheer for was just about picking the right color without questions of politics or morality or ethics. Just more imaginary value, but it was therapy for people who spent their days welding rivets and pouring concrete so their kids wouldn’t go to sleep complaining about the aching holes in their teeth.

  They didn’t really see Leigh, the ghost who gathered their empty bottles and wiped the rings of condensation from the bar. She didn’t mind. These men were almost never her marks. These men had families: tired wives who stocked shelves at Wal-Mart and came home to unruly kids and a dirty house and a half-drunk husband too bone-weary to lift a finger. Leigh had no place in the middle of that, even if these working stiffs might see her as a temporary balm on the drudgery of it all. She wouldn’t do that to their wives, their kids.

  And she wasn’t anyone’s back-alley therapy.

  But when the evening crowd started to trickle in she stripped out of her hoodie, folding it up and stashing it behind the bar. Her paper-thin spaghetti-strap tank top
stretched tight over her body and bunched above the waist of her little skirt, baring her arms and swaths of naked skin through the slashes cut across the black cotton. People saw her, then. Frat boys grinned and tried to catch her eye. Businessmen in tatty suits feigned indifference as beady eyes tracked her across the room. As she hauled a bin of dirty shot glasses behind the bar, Jimmy tried to swipe a hand under her skirt. She danced out of reach with an ease born of practice. He grinned.

  “C’mon, baby doll. Why can’t I have a little taste?”

  “Because I don’t want to puke when I have to see you again tomorrow,” she retorted, answered by Gary’s snorting laughter.

  By last call, she’d just about settled on a pretty young thing whose easy drunk smile and starched collar said junior salesman. Single, from the empty ring finger—or at least no girlfriend serious enough to calm restless eyes that said he didn’t commit, and couldn’t express an honest emotion if he tried. He’d probably faked more than enough when dollar signs were involved.

  He’d have a decent starter apartment. Clean. Somewhere she might enjoy a bath, and maybe even share his bed instead of slipping away to the couch. She liked the way his shoulders slouched back and his hips slung forward, knees spread wide and lazy, cock tight against his slacks. He’d be clumsy and overeager and rough with his blunt short stubby fingers, but that sort of desperate grasping had its own pleasure.

  She kept one eye on him and the other on the door. Every now and then it opened to let someone stumble out or bring someone straggling in, momentarily admitting the wheeze and grind and honk of street noise, potentially letting in a better prospect. She wouldn’t mind Mr. Junior Salesman, though he wasn’t quite what she wanted tonight. But he’d noticed her watching. His hot little glances and the speculative way he lingered over his gin said he wouldn’t take much work. She didn’t normally go for the solo drinkers; there was usually something going on there, some powder keg she didn’t want to set off—but he didn’t have that look that said three more drinks and she could end up another body found in a dumpster.

  By closing time, she’d made up her mind. She didn’t want to be here, still bussing empty shot glasses, when the doors locked. That ache between her thighs had grown worse, a hot prickling need that said while he couldn’t ease that clawing inside her, he’d do in a pinch. She kept eye contact with her mark, her practiced little smile playing about her lips while she swiped crumbs from a table—but her smile fell away when the door swung open again.

  Stark tattoos. Pale gray eyes. A slow-swinging gait like he was scouting the edges of enemy territory. She didn’t know his name, but inside her head she called him Blackbird Pond and hated the memory of how he’d looked at her. Everything inside her came up the back of her throat. Leigh turned away quickly, clutching the rag and praying to high hell he hadn’t seen her.

  Keeping her back to the door, she hurried behind the bar, and risked one peek over her shoulder before she ducked into the back stockroom and slumped against the wall. She pressed her hand over her chest and swallowed hard, as if that could push her heart from the tip of her tongue back down where it belonged.

  She peered around the doorframe. Blackbird Pond had settled on a barstool, and was lifting a hand to Jimmy. Leigh cursed under her breath and caught Gary’s arm as he passed, pulling him back into the storeroom.

  “The fuck, girl?” He tugged from her grip, scowling. “What’s your problem?”

  Leigh jerked her chin toward the bar. “What’s he doing here?”

  “Hart?” Gary asked, and Leigh bit back another curse.

  She didn’t want to know his name.

  Didn’t want a name to go with that low deep pulse in her belly, and that simmering fury that threatened to burn the cool soft skin of her calm to ash.

  Hart.

  She could taste it on her tongue, and it was already a part of her.

  “Dunno,” Gary continued with a diffident shrug. “He comes by now and then. Usually after you’ve…uh…” He looked uncomfortable. “…made other arrangements for the night.”

  “Can you make him leave?”

  “Paying customer.” He eyed her shrewdly. “Why are you so eager to get rid of him?”

  Leigh bit the inside of her cheek, then shoved off from the wall and stepped back out front. “Nevermind. I’m getting out of here.”

  She dug her hoodie out from under the bar, keeping her gaze on her hands—but she didn’t have to look to know Hart was right there, and he was watching her. She shouldn’t be able to feel someone’s gaze like a physical touch, a thing with crushing and sharp-edged weight to it, yet his was a jagged finger of ice trailing over her skin, threatening to cut deep.

  And for once, she hated the goosebump chill tingling along her flesh.

  Shrugging into her hoodie and zipping it to just under her breasts, she lifted her chin and slipped around the bar, weaving through the last crowd of hangers-on to Mr. Junior Salesman’s table. As she slid up to perch on the lacquered wood with her legs dangling over the edge, he grinned, wide and crooked and just a little sloppy drunk. Maybe she’d be his good Samaritan and offer to drive him home.

  “Hey,” he slurred. His breaths puffed out in stinging gin clouds. “Wondered where you’d gone.”

  “Had to close out so I could leave.”

  She pulled another smile from her repertoire. She had a thousand of them, painted on like lipstick, and this one said God, you get me so hot. It wasn’t quite a lie. Maybe she only wanted the idea of him, just like White Russian Jesus the other night; maybe she only wanted the hard heat of narrow hips clasped between her thighs and that plunging savage feeling that let her forget herself for a few minutes longer. But that idea of him still clenched her insides slick with anticipation, her nipples sensitive and tight and pushing against her tank. She let her hand rest atop her thigh, close to the hem of her skirt, fingers grazing the fading bruises that were all that remained of White Russian Jesus. Mr. Junior Salesman’s washed-out, watery blue eyes dropped to her fingertips, and his tongue caught between his teeth.

  Too easy.

  Leigh propped her boot on the edge of his chair—right between his thighs, her toe nudging the heavy weight of his cock through his slacks. He hissed, and her smile widened.

  “You want to get out of here?” she asked.

  He lunged clumsily to his feet and knocked his chair over, just as eager as all the other little boys. “Fuck yeah.” He righted the chair, then picked up his jacket. “Let me settle my tab.”

  “Don’t worry about it.” She hooked her fingertip in his belt-loop and pulled. “I know the owner. Let’s just go.”

  He didn’t even argue. He just trailed after her. Such a good little boy, breaths hot on her nape.

  And with every step Hart’s gaze drilled into her back, until she could almost taste gunmetal in the back of her mouth.

  She swept out onto the street without looking back. People like Hart didn’t understand. They lived by daylight rules. Rules that said should and could when Leigh wanted nothing but the damned and bloodied artistry she created when she did things people said she shouldn’t, couldn’t.

  Cars lined the street, cozied up to parking meters—including the Firebird she’d seen at the garage. Hart’s. She deliberately looked past it and scanned for the kind of mid-sized sedan she just knew Mr. Junior Salesman would drive; the kind that looked good enough to say he’d bought it new, when he’d really leased it used.

  “Which one’s yours?”

  His hands curled against her hips, dragging her back against him. Pungent gin breath washed over her hair and burned her eyes. “Forget the car,” he whispered thickly in her ear. “Let’s do it right here.”

  “No.”

  Leigh jerked free, but he caught her arm and spun her in a dizzying whirl. Her ankles tangled and he backed her up against the wall of the building, shoving her with his stomach thrust forward like a battering ram, crowding her with his heat and stink and the lumpy jut of his cock
stabbing against her belly, nosing against his slacks. Her breaths stuck in the back of her throat. Her head thudded back against the wall, hair catching and pulling on the gritty brick. He leaned over her, bracing his hands to either side, his breaths blasting her face and cold wet flecks of spittle snapping against her cheek.

  “C’mon, baby. I need it and I don’t wanna wait.”

  Leigh pushed against his chest, but he was immovable. That solid thick weight she’d wanted pressed against her became a cage, a prison, trapping her where she didn’t want to be. She didn’t want this anymore. Not like this. Not in plain sight on the street, where instead of goddess of the gutters she was just a sidewalk whore.

  And not with him.

  “Not in public,” she hissed, twisting and trying to squirm past his bulk. His arm blocked her, hard as the brick at her back.

  “Girls like you don’t care who looks. Stop being a bitch.”

  He sneered. She shoved his arm and ducked underneath, but he grabbed her elbow and dragged her back, kicking and struggling and sucking in muggy nauseating breaths that smelled like alley garbage, tasted like bile, and curdled sour as milk in the pit of her twisting stomach.

  Coarse hands shoved her back against the wall, pinning her shoulders. She arched, biting back a sheer furious scream, her heart a scuttling insect running fast on scrambling legs. “Get off me!” she snarled, and he laughed.

  “Those thighs ain’t sayin’ no.” His knee forced between her legs, pushing up against the crotch of her panties, rubbing her own wetness against her. Wetness that had gone cold and clammy, when there was nothing about this she wanted. She made the choice. She called the shots, and she didn’t want the soft rubbery pouching lips descending toward hers, glistening with saliva, parted on rasping breaths. “C’mon. Just a little sugar.”