Whenever La Costa saw AJ, he made her skin crawl. Plain and simple, he was bad news.
Panther and AJ liked to frequent a dance club where La Costa went on Friday nights herself, called The Copa. It was a neighborhood haunt just off the Strip, where she could let loose and dance without anyone bothering her. It was a chance to get out on the shiny-lighted dance floors just like everyone else, to get lost in the pulsing strobe lights and heart-thumping dance tracks of the seventies-style retro discothèque. There, in a crowd of hundreds of people, nobody knew her name. That’s how she preferred it.
On occasion, La Costa would run into Panther—late, presumably after she had worked a shift or two at one the casinos or highway strip-clubs. The venues where she worked were constantly changing. Strung out and still with her stage makeup packed on, Panther would stumble into the dance club with AJ, who led her around by her coked-up nose.
Oddly, their presence always instantly commanded a table to be cleared, when there was barely standing room to be had in the lounge or on the crowded dance floors. An entourage of eight or more would soon join them. Shady-looking goons like AJ, and their stripper girlfriends in flimsy halter tops and hot pants.
La Costa knew a porn actress when she saw one. And, frightfully, Panther fit right in, making a drug and drunken display of herself on more than one occasion.
That was always La Costa’s cue to leave.
* * *
The night that La Costa heard shouts—once again—coming from outside Panther and AJ’s apartment, was for her, a turning point. La Costa approached the door once they were inside to see if Panther was okay. She had not seen or heard from Panther in days, which was not unusual. But when La Costa heard Panther’s desperate screams and bursts of shattered glass that sent every dog in the complex barking, she could not ignore it. She high-tailed it back to her own apartment unit and called 9-1-1. Who knew what AJ was capable of? She dialed the police and waited, praying that they would hurry.
Through the peephole in her door, she could see AJ back on the balcony, shouting obscenities and delivering violent kicks to their apartment door. The sound of Panther’s pleading cries emitted from the parking lot, where she had since run frantically for cover. Legions of squad cars met them on the hot asphalt with their sirens blaring and lights flashing.
La Costa sighed with relief and then turned out her porch light. It would be over and forgotten by the morning.
Until it started up again.
It was always about sex, or drugs, or both. Either Panther was not putting out enough, or just physically could not keep up with AJ’s reckless escapades. But when AJ had successfully put Panther in Urgent Care with a fractured wrist and multiple contusions, La Costa could not stand idly by any longer.
“Leave him, Panth. Leave the bastard, or die. It’s as simple as that.”
“I . . . can’t,” the defeated young woman said, wincing from searing pain that was far stronger than the paltry drip of Tylenol that she was hooked up to. “I have nowhere to go. Besides, he’s my acting agent. He’s representing me.”
“Acting? For skin flicks? Panther, he’s pimping you. Don’t you see that?” La Costa said. “You’ll move in with me. You’ll get a steady paying job. Forget all about the men’s clubs and this porn acting that he’s pushing you into. I’m serious, Panth, but I’m only offering this if you promise to quit all of it. Everything.”
Panther did not know what to say. She simply blinked back the tears that burned her swollen, bruised eyes. No one had ever showed her such unconditional kindness. No one. La Costa was not just anyone. She was a true friend. “I can pay you back. It will take some time, but—”
La Costa smiled. “Hey, you helped me out once too, remember? If it weren’t for that, I wouldn’t be here. I mean it. Now it’s my turn to help you out—all the way out.”
They were the exact words that Panther wanted to hear. Fortunately, she didn’t lose the baby through it all. She would be needing her dear friend’s kindness more than ever. More than La Costa could ever begin to imagine.
Chapter Fifteen
Spring – 1997
When AJ first heard about the baby, he delivered a beating so severe to Panther that she ended up at Valley Medical for injuries incurred while attempting to flee from his pounding fists and unremitting verbal assaults.
She had been packing her things to move in with La Costa, and he caught her.
“Where do you think you’re going?” he said, standing like a mountain, blocking the path from the bathroom to the bedroom door.
She had just finished zipping up her cosmetic case when he pushed her hard against the bathroom sink, causing her forehead to hit the mirror.
“I’m going away! Me and my baby are leavin’ here and ain’t comin’ back!”
“You’re what?” AJ was incredulous. He stood, stupid and silent at first, and then saw the suitcases stacked by the bed. His lips quivered and then broke into a grin. “Naw.” He chuckled, eerie and manic. “Aw, HELL NO!” he said, pounding his giant fist into the wall.
Panther slid beneath his massive arm, still stuck in the drywall, and ran in the opposite direction of her belongings, toward the front door.
“Stupid, goddamn bitch! You whored yourself to someone else—that’s what happened! Didn’t it? Fucking liar! You think I would want you to have my kid?” He grabbed her arm with a gigantic hand and twisted until she begged for him to stop. He could have easily snapped it off her body like a twig. “Fucking garbage! That’s what you is, whore! Now you’ve gone and done it. Well I ain’t payin’ a fucking dime for your bastard-dick runt, I’ll tell you that!”
He lunged at her with a broad-sided kick and struck her squarely in the chest, just missing her abdomen. She went down with a wail. “It’s yours, AJ, I swear!”
“There!” he said, kicking her in the back. “It’s probably a retard anyway—I’m just helping its vegetable ass out a little.” AJ rearranged his pinky ring and smoothed his trousers because brutally beating pregnant women caused things like pinky rings and pant creases to move out of place. He grabbed his car keys and sped out of the complex, leaving Panther writhing on the floor, coughing up blood.
She tried to pull herself up but collapsed back down onto the worn-out carpet in a heap. Luckily, La Costa, having heard the commotion and shouting, ran up the cement stairs to find her. Someone in the complex had already called the police.
“Jesus Christ, Panther!” La Costa screamed when she saw her there, broken and bleeding. “Hold on, Panth. Help is on the way!”
* * *
Miraculously, the baby would be all right. But Panther had decided that once she moved in with La Costa, she would be careful to keep mention of it under wraps, just until she could decide exactly what to do next. Telling La Costa would only complicate things. In spite of everything else uncertain, she did know that paternity could be determined, and that when it was proven that the baby was AJ’s, maybe he would feel differently about it—about her—and her potential to make bank with her talent and acting skills as planned. If all else failed, she figured, she could always sue the bastard for child support. Either way, she couldn’t lose. The baby was her meal ticket, and she wasn’t going to do anything to jeopardize that stroke of luck!
Chapter Sixteen
Panther was thirty thousand dollars in debt from maxed-out bank cards, a number of unpaid personal loans, and a severely overdue car note on a nineteen ninety Corvette that she wrecked not three weeks after she drove it off the lot. Not to mention, thousands that AJ claimed that she owed him for “business expenses.” It was more money than she could ever make waiting banquet tables at the Crystal Palace Hotel, a job she had taken at La Costa’s urging. She was issued a matronly waitress’s uniform and was instructed to purchase comfortable white shoes.
“Ugh!” Panther lamented. “I’ve never worn a pair of comfortable shoes—ever! How am I supposed to serve people dressed like a nun?”
La Costa laughed. They
had a deal. Panther would be schlepping trays of roast beef and spaghetti dinners at weddings and corporate shindigs for the hotel’s catering department, where the only cheesecake served would be on dessert plates, and La Costa would provide a safe home.
Panther agreed in exchange for the room and board, but in a word, she hated it. During the week, she also worked in the hotel’s gift shop selling T-shirts, plastic playing cards, dice sets, and little shot glasses that said: Welcome to the city of Lost-Wages!
Soon she would have to quit teaching the fitness classes at the Y on weekends, as she would be beginning to show. Pregnancy was so inconvenient! A strong, healthy baby, however, would be her ticket to Easy Street once AJ was proven to be the father. Then, he would owe her, and she would have no problem using her little “trump card” to apply the pressure. Other than this aim, the thought of becoming a mother was the farthest thing from her mind.
La Costa enjoyed having her old roomie around. In fact, it was, at first, just like old times, minus all the booze and wild parties. There was a second-hand sofa on which Panther slept in the living room, and La Costa emptied a few dresser drawers and halved some closet space for her to hang her things. They shared the bathroom and divided the real estate in the fridge right down the middle.
La Costa introduced Panther to the economics of shopping second-hand thrift shops and yard sales for everything from canned soup to clothing. “Living on a budget sucks,” Panther complained, missing the seven to fifteen hundred dollars she had pulled in on weekends spent at Baby Doll’s, the last gentlemen’s club where she had made serious bank in her post-Mink Kitty heyday. This was so much more complicated than she had ever imagined. Plus, she was utterly exhausted—all the time. She especially hated living on mac and cheese and canned chili all the time.
“But at least you are safe and well and free to do what you please,” La Costa reminded her. “So, life here is not exactly brunch at the Bilaggio these days, but nobody’s bustin’ you in the face either. Doesn’t that make you feel empowered?”
Panther persevered, feeling nothing but tired and trapped, while La Costa spent more time with her bible and taking English composition classes, nights at the University.
It was all just a means to an end for Panther. She had heard through the grapevine that AJ went out to California with Zander, the film guy, to put together a film crew. They were to begin shooting a series of adult videos for the promoter of E-Rotica, an outfit out of West Hollywood, who was selling to the new cable markets. A film that she had been promised the lead in at one time.
As soon as she was free of this scene, Panther vowed, she would be well on her way to the West Coast herself, where, she was certain, her future awaited her. She would get back into her groove after the baby was born, and then show the world what she was really capable of doing. She wanted to be where the money and connections were happening, not hopelessly stuck in the hellhole she was currently in.
She was going to be a screen actress, and nothing—and no one—was going to stand in her way. The trick simply being, to bide her time until then.
Chapter Seventeen
Panther caught La Costa off guard not two months later. They were in the supermarket picking through the produce, stocking the cart with the usual weekly allotment of frozen entrees, corn chips, and diet soda. The fruits and vegetables were a vain attempt to balance out the otherwise trash diet of quick-fix foods like pizza and toaster-tarts they existed on. La Costa had noticed as of late, however, that Panther had taken a particular liking to eating in great and astounding quantities. At first, La Costa decided that depression had to be the cause, making Panther overindulge, but as the weeks and months passed, she just kept on gaining. Soon, however, it became apparent exactly why.
“How many months?” La Costa asked, picking over the skins on some sickly tomatoes. “Three or four, I’m guessing?”
Panther shoved her hands into the pockets of her denim overalls and shrugged at the watermelon. “Yeah, I guess it’s more like five, though.”
“Jesus Christ! Panther!” The outburst startled a small child, who was staring at the two of them curiously from the basket seat of his cart.
Neither said a word at first, just glancing around at anything but each other. La Costa struggled to force down her fury. “First, I rescue you from that bastard, and then I take you
in . . . help you get a job. And this is how you thank me? By keeping secrets?”
Panther feigned tears. It was easy. She felt like shit, and so it was easy to cry. Her bottom lip quivered, and she buried her face in her hands. She looked like a broken doll.
“I’m so sorry, Cos. Oh, God, I just don’t know. I don’t know what I’m going to do. I’ve never been so scared in all my life.”
La Costa felt Panther’s anguish, more than she could say. But, at the same time, she chastised her for slipping up. “Where was your head? Why didn’t you use protection?” She pushed the cart and launched it down the soda aisle, Panther following along like an obedient puppy.
“We did,” she lied. That’s what HE thought too!
“This is great . . . really great, Panther.” It was all she could do to not simply repeat the obvious, like a mother of a teen daughter who had just broken the unbelievable news, standing there with doe eyes holding a bag of potato chips.
Silently, they moved over to the deli counter, Panther with tears now dripping down her cheeks. La Costa ripped a number from the dispenser. It was going to be a long wait.
“It is AJ’s, isn’t it?”
She knew that La Costa hated AJ and would never have anything to do with him—under any circumstance—let alone helping to raise his child, so she lied again. “No. It’s a guy at the gym. At least, he was a guy at the gym. I told him about the baby and never saw him again. Word has it that he has a wife and family out in Tucson.” Then, Panther delivered the hook. The words that would clinch the deal. “I don’t think I’m going to keep it. I’m trying to build up the nerve to—”
La Costa’s heart pulled in her chest. All she could think of was the day that she sent her baby boy away on a cool breeze, into the ocean, writing his name on a cross in the sand, wondering if his tiny body might have been carried by the current to—who knew where? It was more than she could bear to imagine. She was young then, and scared. Panther wasn’t afraid, she was wasteful, and as usual, she was just looking for an easy fix.
The emotion, which had been previously locked deep in the vault of La Costa’s soul, seeped into her now, prying the bolts and forcing the hinges of her memory to burst open. She would not allow it. Not ever again, and certainly, not now.
It was all La Costa could do to hold her tongue. She had enough money saved to register for another semester of night classes at the University in the spring. Her plan was to take a creative writing workshop and try her hand at fiction writing. She had kept a journal for the past two years and loved the therapeutic release of spilling it all onto the page. Be that as it may, this was far more important, and she would just have to find a way to convince Panther to let her help her. That’s all there was to it.
That night Panther awoke to the sound of La Costa’s muffled sobs coming from her bedroom. She slipped from the couch, wrapped a blanket around her shoulders, and crept in the darkness. Tentatively, she paused at La Costa’s door and peered in.
“Cos—?”
The crying stopped.
Panther stepped into the room and saw La Costa sitting up in bed, her knees folded close to her chest. She was clutching a small piece of cloth, stroking it pensively, and seeing something both heart-warming and devastating in it at the same time. Panther approached her friend and said nothing, letting the moment give way to a flood of emotion. La Costa’s grief was unsettling. In that moment, she too, felt the sudden and uncontrollable urge to cry.
Panther reached to touch what she could now see was a receiving blanket. It was perfect and unused. Together, and for friendship’s undefined reasons, Panther ca
me to immediately understand more than La Costa’s pleading eyes could say. No further words were needed.
Finally, when they both finished hugging and crying, Panther leaned back and spoke toward the ceiling. “I’m sorry, Cos—I didn’t know. Do you want to tell me about it?”
She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter now . . . not anymore. But I’ll tell you, Panth, not a single day goes by where I don’t think about him.” She choked on the words that grew dry in her throat.
Panther touched her hand to assure her that she did understand.
“I’m really scared,” Panther said, biting her thumbnail and waiting. She was more frightened than she had ever been in her freewheeling thirty years. “I can’t have no kid, you know what I’m sayin’? I ain’t the mothering type. And alone? We’d never make it.”
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