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Half an hour later, I hear Gil apologizing to the table for having to eat and run. I hear him stammer on about a meeting or some other engagement and, then politely excuse himself. I stand by the doorway in the kitchen leading out to the hallway, and I listen to Leo as he shows his guest out. They are quiet, as I assume Gil slips into his overcoat, and then Gil whispers a jovial, “I’ll call ya when I’m finished up downtown.”
After that, the door closes and the girls start filing in with their empty and half-eaten plates. I jump into false-busy mode and move towards the sink to intercept the girls’ plates. The looks on their faces range from dismay to complete satisfaction. Stitch looks confident and secure in her sexiness, while Bonnie looks like she was ready to hurl up her meal. Tam hands me her plate first and runs over for the second pie cooling on the counter top.
“Full?” I ask as I start scraping the scraps into the garbage disposal.
“You could say that,” Candy groans.
“More like full of it,” Tam snivels, dipping a spoon right into the middle of the pie.
Bonnie sits down at the kitchen table and rests her head on her arm. “I am so tired.”
Juney puts her hand on Bonnie’s forehead. “You still runnin’ a fever. Go to bed, pup, I got your call tonight.”
“You don’t gotta do that.”
“I gottchu babe,” Juney smiles and winks.
Candy giggles, “Uhn huh, ya freaks.”
Juney throws a towel at Candy’s head, “Shut up.”
Suddenly Kitty’s voice blows up in the hallway, “No way!”
“Keep your voice down,” Leo growls.
“No. Not her,” Kitty whispers. At this point we’ve all moved over to beside the door. We are stacked up on top of each other, eavesdropping in on the conversation happening just around the corner.
“Are you standing here trying to tell me what I can and cannot have?” Leo questions.
“Just not her,” she begs. “She’s just visitante. She’s not—”
“I’m sure you’ll figure somethin’ out,” Leo interrupts.
“There’s gotta be another way,” Kitty begs. “Just tell me, I’ll do algo.”
“I know you will,” Leo scoffs, “That’s why I brought you here. And that’s why I’m confident that you’ll get him his girl. ‘Cause if you don’t, I’m closin’ you all down. There’s no goin’ back out there. So, either he gets what he wants, or you all get goin’.”
We all gasp. Then the door slams.
We scatter back to our spots in the kitchen and glance over our noses at one another in silence.
Moments later Kitty slides through the hall door. She heads towards the fridge, opens the door, and extracts the bottle of gin chilling on the side near the mustard. She then makes her way over to the shot glasses and slams a double glass down on the counter in front of her.
“Kit,” Candy whispers, “what’s up?”
Stitch mumbles, “What was all that about?”
“Did he pick?” Juney asks.
“Who’s he want?” Tam wonders out loud for the rest of us.
Kitty pours the shot and takes it between her ruby red finger tips. Her eyes are glassy and somber. She looks around the room. All eyes are on her. And then, with one look, one pause, on me, she whispers, “He wants you, kid.” She tips the glass to her lips and swallows.
We finished our plate. Arnold tossed it in the sink and sat back down. “All right, fugitive,” Arnold began, “why don’t you do an ol’ man a solid and toss a few down the pines with me?”
I nodded.
Arnold shuffled around the counter. I stood up and he looked at me. “Snipe. The state of you,” he demurred. “Come on. Follow me.”
I grabbed Lucy’s bag and followed Arnold back behind the counter to the ‘Employees Only’ door. Lucy and I had always tried to peek in whenever he would waddle in to grab things that he needed. I followed him into the dimly lit room. It was just a regular old storage closet, typical stash; brooms, dust mops, gallons of lane wax, and other miscellaneous items, nothing worth breaking our necks for all those years over.
Arnold started rummaging through a box in the back. “I’m sure I got a fit,” he declared, diving headfirst into the box. Moments later, he came up for air, holding a blue and white bowling shirt. It was one of the Holy Rollers team shirts. He held it up to his chest, displaying the logo on the back, with a cross made out of bowling pins, and a bowling ball sporting a crown of thorns. “If you are hiding out, nothing like a good disguise.” Then he flipped it to the front, displaying the name tag. Cookie.
“Right,” I gurgled.
He tossed the shirt over to me and went back into the box. He came out again, victorious, holding up a black and grey sweater. “Never fit me quite right.”
He walked towards me and handed me the sweater. “Lane six,” he said. Then he walked out and closed the door behind him.
Arnold always bowled on lane six because it was the closest to the door.
The shirt smelled like moth balls, or a used vacuum bag. I looked down at the t-shirt I was wearing. There was a bloody hand print near my waist, and other random blood splotches here and there. This was one of my favorite shirts. Lucy gave it to me for my birthday last year. It was a Green Monkeys team t-shirt from one of our favorite game shows. It was an endurance competition for kids. It aired on Saturday mornings. We’d watch it over bowls of corn flakes and laugh every time someone fell.
I slid the shirt off and held it close to my chest before stuffing it in the bag next to Lucy’s shoes. I wondered for a second what had happened to my mother’s bag of belongings. If anyone even bothered to pick them up, or if they’re in the hospital’s medical waste dump? As I was buttoning up the shirt, I couldn’t help but to giggle—if Lucy could see me now.
It didn’t seem real. I was still waiting. Waiting for her to open the door and ask me how I snuck in here, or waiting for her to yell for me to hurry up because our fries were getting cold. I was just waiting. I closed my eyes and tried to picture her face: her thin checks, her freckles, her eyebrows, her hair. It seemed so unfair that someone as wonderful as her, someone as remarkable and promising, was never going to accomplish any of her goals. That no one else in the world would ever get to know her, and I hated myself, knowing that there was nothing I could do about it.
The old sweater was just as baggy as the shirt. They hung off me like old skin, but it felt nice. Warm. Comfortable, even. I picked up Lucy’s bag and opened the door. I stared down at my buttons as I walked out, just now realizing that I was missing one on the Holy Rollers shirt. All those old ladies, and nobody managed to sew the button back on, that just didn’t make sense.
I looked up. Arnold was at lane six placing his ball on the return rack.
“Hurry up,” he demanded. “Lane’s getting’ cold.”
I progressed towards him, still fiddling with the button issue.
“Now you look like someone I can put a wompin’ on,” Arnold boasted, holding up my size eight red and blue shoes.
“Sure,” I agreed. By the time I got down to Arnold, who was standing near the score table, I’d decided to give up on the whole button debacle. Buttons were overrated. I’d always preferred zippers.
I looked up at Arnold. He was looking up over past me towards the door. “Pssst,” he whispered, “you weren’t kidding were ya?”
I turned to see what had grabbed Arnold away from his visualization of cleaning the floors with me. It was Sheriff Webster.
He looked at me with sorry eyes, partial disappointment and partial pity—the worst eyes.
“Ele,” he breathed in deeply, “come on. I gotta take you home.”
I looked back at Arnold. My heart was racing.
Arnold walked up and stood beside me. “Evening, Sheriff.”
“Evening, Arnie,” Sheriff said, not moving any closer to us.
“I don’t want to go home,” I whispered to Arnold.
“To what do I owe this pleasure?” Arnold’s voice carried back over to the sheriff, who was a good twenty yards away from us.
“Just came as a favor to a friend. We been lookin’ for that one. One of my officers said that he’d seen her walkin’ along the highway in this direction.”
“Snipe and I were just about to go ten rounds. You want in?”
“Maybe another time,” Sheriff Webster assented. “Ele. Now come on. It’s time.”
“Arnie.” My sigh was desperate.
Arnold looked over at me and whispered, “Most difficult bird to catch.” He winked.
“Ele,” Sheriff Webster’s voice echoed in the alley.
“Hold your horses, Tubs,” Arnold, visibly upset at this point, barked back. He looked over at me and smiled. “Remember. Do it right the first time.”
I nodded. “On purpose.”
“Goodbye, Snipe.”
I was one of them now; family. It seemed so simple. Easy. Like this was what I was here for. This is why I was born. God, or whatever, made me this way, gave me this body, this smile, this hair, but it was never mine. It never felt like mine. Everyone I ever loved left me, abandoned me here on this earth, like I was nothing, but now, I wasn’t nothing; I was something. I was something to them. I was worth something. I was a call girl. Someone beautiful, someone they wanted. I was Cookie. That’s what I told myself. But it didn’t take long for me to realize that even the most beautiful things can turn to filth under the right lighting.
He chose me. They did everything but wrap me up in a big red bow when they delivered me to Gil, a respected client of his. Boss told me that if I ran, he’d kill us. He told me if I complained, he’d kill all of us. He told me that if I did anything that he didn’t like, he’d send me back to whatever shit hole I came from with a toe tag and a few new holes in my head. So I obeyed. I stayed, but I disappeared, somewhere deep within myself, where I no longer existed.
As Gil wraps the tear drop diamond around my neck, making sure to caress my shoulders and back with his coarse hands as he did so, it doesn’t seem like a gorgeous gem at all. It feels like a leash. And even though I’m standing there, in the dazzling black gown he’s picked out for me, staring back at the two of us in the mirror, all I see is filth. All I see is a dirty old man, and me—his whore.
“Don’t you like it?” Gil asks, smiling at my reflection in the mirror.
“It’s nice,” I whisper.
“Nice?” Gil surges as he makes his way back over to the mini bar, “I bet you’ve never seen a diamond that big.”
“I’ve never seen a lot of things.”
“Do I sense an attitude?” he asks.
I shake my head and paint on one of those fake, sexy smiles that Juney taught me on my face.
He clinks two cubes of ice into a glass before showering them with scotch. He lifts the glass and holds it high into the air. “To you, my pet.”
I smile.
As he sips, he splashes a lime into my cup of gin and carries it over to me. He forces the glass into my hand. “Drink.”
I do as I am told. I nervously place the rim of the glass between my lips and choke down my second drink of the evening. After all, it’s our one month anniversary. Gil flew us both to Miami. I think of running every day. Every time we step outside, I think of kicking off my heels and running deep into the swamps so that the alligators can help me disappear, but it’s only a thought. I know what Boss will do if I follow through with it, and I can’t have any more deaths on my conscience.
Deciding to be taken, or rather, letting myself be picked, is the first of many things that I begin telling myself I’m doing for my girls. For my friends. Gil takes care of me. He brings me nice things, tells me nice things. Anything, along with a hefty sum of money to Boss, to insure that I keep coming back to his downtown penthouse three times a week to play girlfriend. I was ushered up each night through a service elevator by his judgmental henchman, whose name I never bothered to learn.
It’s not selling out. It’s just selling. It’s just surviving. One day, when the time is right, I’ll get away. I’ll get away, or I’ll die trying.
After finishing his fourth scotch, Gil saunters over to the CD player to fiddle with the music. A few more drinks. If I can get a few more drinks in him, I know I won’t have to stay awake all night under his sweaty body, pretending to be asleep. He decides to put on yet another Pavarotti. They all sound the same to me. I make my way over to the bar and pour him another stiff drink. Gil creeps up behind me and cups my breasts. They are, in fact, one of his favorite assets. He runs his hands down along my waist and hips, slowly grinding my ass.
“Here.” I swivel beneath his grasp to shove the scotch in his face.
He snatches the glass, downs it in two gulps, slams it on the bar top, and breathes the harsh vapors on my neck. “I want you,” he whispers.
“You have me,” I sigh.
The snoring, that is usually what alerts me—what tells me it’s over. I slither out from under him and slip quietly into the bathroom to wash myself. On numerous occasions, in the beginning, I’d cry into his expensive bath towels. Bathrooms have become my safe harbor. I curl myself into a ball on the floor in the bathroom and close my eyes, wishing myself back into my bed at the house in Chicago, back into my mother’s arms, back into Lucy’s bedroom. Back where I was once safe.
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