by Saul Black
“I can’t find my purse,” Joanna said. She was shaking.
“You’re strung out,” Abigail said.
“How can I not find my purse? Jesus Christ, it was right there on the couch.”
“Sit down,” Abigail said. “I’ll look for it.”
Joanna ignored her, carried on rummaging frantically. She had on a black T-shirt and a denim jacket. Panties and unmatching ankle socks. There was a plum-colored bruise on her left thigh.
“Where is he?” Abigail asked.
“He had to go to Jersey. Fuck. Fuck.” She stopped and looked at Abigail, glassily. Her face was moist. “Did you take it?” she asked.
“What?”
“You took my purse.”
“Mom, for God’s sake—”
“You took my fucking purse.”
Joanna went to Abigail’s room. Abigail followed her. Joanna was on the floor, looking under the bed.
“Mom, stop for a second, will you?”
“Why do you do this? Why do you do this to me?” Joanna got to her feet and pulled back the comforter. Nothing. She stood there, trembling, mouth open.
Abigail went to the kitchen and unhooked her mother’s purse from where it was hanging by its strap on the edge of the door.
“Here,” she said, tossing it on the bed.
Joanna snatched it up, hunted, found a twenty-dollar bill. Her face thrilled.
“You know about it, don’t you?” Abigail said.
It was the strangest thing. She hadn’t thought she was going to say that. The words were out before she could stop them. You know about it.
There was only a split-second fracture in Joanna’s eyes—but in that split second the world shifted for Abigail. It wasn’t, she understood, that Joanna did know. It was that even if she knew, it might not be enough to make a difference.
Something between them, the invisible umbilicus that had always been there in spite of everything, snapped, silently. For the first time in her life, Abigail realized she was absolutely alone.
She thought of her mother being dead. And realized without horror or even surprise that it would open the door to something, a dark space in which, because she would care about nothing, anything would become possible. She tried, immediately, to unthink the thought—but it was too late. She felt old, suddenly.
“What?” Joanna said. The split-second fracture was gone. Now she was back in the flow of urgency, clutching the purse and the twenty, moving toward the door.
Abigail felt the thought forming and knew there was nothing she could do to stop it.
I hate you.
It was pure and clean. The stale air she’d been breathing her whole life was replaced, suddenly, by a cold, fresh alternative. She felt empty and light-headed.
“Nothing,” she said, as her mother pushed past her.
* * *
Abigail woke to the sound of the phone ringing. Either from exhaustion or from the aftershock of the truth, she’d slept long and without dreams. The light and the sounds of Grape Street said the day had been up and running for hours. Her body was sweetly rested and alert. She got up.
As she entered the living room, the answering machine picked up the call. It was Larry.
“Joanna, for Christ’s sake where are you? I’m still in Jersey, but I’ll be back around four. I got a big job for you tonight, so get your shit together.”
He hung up.
Joanna’s bedroom door was half-open. Abigail could see her mother’s bare leg outside the covers.
She went to the kitchen and drank a glass of water. Then refilled the glass and took it to Joanna’s room.
Her mother’s face was turned away from her, the thick blond hair half covering it. She was still wearing last night’s T-shirt and denim jacket.
“Mom?”
Joanna didn’t stir. Abigail sat down on the edge of the bed and set the glass of water on the nightstand. Outside in the street below, someone went past on a skateboard.
“Mom, wake up.”
She put her hand on her mother’s knee to give her a shake.
And the moment she touched the flesh she knew Joanna was dead.
It wasn’t just the coldness of the skin. It was that the sound of her own breathing caught up with her, suddenly, the loud absence of any other breathing.
The room had known. The whole apartment had known, while she’d been sleeping, with the day growing bright and warm outside.
She moved Joanna’s hair off her face. There was a small brownish stain next to her open mouth. Abigail pulled the comforter back. An empty syringe and a length of thin rubber tubing on the mattress. These objects were witnesses, too, bright and distinct with what they’d seen.
Abigail sat very still, knowing nothing except that last night she’d thought about her mother being dead and now here was her mother, dead.
I hate you.
In the street outside, the rear door of a delivery truck opened up with a soft roar. Abigail imagined the driver climbing in the back with his clipboard, looking for the right package. And the person the package was for coming to the door, signing for it, taking it inside, opening it. Maybe it was something they’d mail-ordered, or maybe it was a nice surprise.
She thought of her mother saying: I love you so much.
For a long time she drifted into this, knowing nothing.
But eventually she came back. She heard the delivery van start up and drive away and somewhere else a police siren whooped, once, as if asking a question.
She imagined herself returning to this room, to her mother, to everything that was real. But somehow in the meantime there was this unreal time to be got through. She thought of calling an ambulance, imagined herself answering questions, watching while the medics loaded Joanna onto a gurney and wheeled her out the door. Things would follow from that, the authorities, something would be done with her. Vaguely, she accepted that at some point these things would happen—and yet she couldn’t accept that they would happen right now. Picking up the phone was not in her power. Every atom of her failed at the thought.
She looked at the clock. 3:22 P.M.
I’ll be home around four.
If she went away and came back later this might turn out not to be real at all. She knew this was impossible and that she had to give it a chance to be possible.
* * *
It was a Friday and the city was winding down, people leaving their offices early. She could feel the mood of tired celebration even in the thickening traffic. She walked without knowing where she was going, though it was a gentle necessity to keep moving. Some instinct said that if she walked long enough she would eventually arrive at the next thing to do. She hadn’t eaten since yesterday morning, and now her hunger was like a friend keeping her company. Her face throbbed in the warm air.
She found herself outside their old house in Harrowgate. A pretty black woman in a sundress of tiny red and white flowers was watering some potted plants on the side porch. All the woodwork had been repainted in a pale blue that made her think of a rare bird’s egg. She thought how strange houses were, that people came and lived in them and had all their conversations and meals and dreams—and then moved out to go somewhere else and some other people moved in. Houses were helpless things, being invaded and abandoned. They must have a kind of wisdom, she thought, though they could do nothing with it.
* * *
Zeke was outside his apartment building, tinkering under the hood of his car. Abigail would have thought she’d forgotten where he lived, yet when she saw him it felt inevitable. He looked exactly as she remembered, still with the maroon suede jacket and white shirt and black Levi’s. His face had the same smooth calm, like a wood carving. For a moment he didn’t see her. She stood on the sidewalk watching him doing whatever he was doing to the engine.
Then he looked up and noticed her. He didn’t recognize her immediately—then he did, and smiled.
“Holy moly,” he said. “Look at you, all grown up.”
Abigail didn’t answer. Something was happening.
“Your momma still sleeping with the enemy?” he said.
She was thinking of herself masturbating in the bathroom, wearing her mother’s makeup and shoes. Larry had said to her, once: You won’t ever wash clean, princess. Don’t waste the soap and water.
“Hey,” Zeke said, straightening up. “You spaced out, kiddo?” With a kind of reflex, he looked up and down the block. Then back at her.
“I need some money,” Abigail said.
Zeke laughed. “Who doesn’t?” he said. “You got a direct approach, I’ll give you that.”
“Can you loan me fifty dollars?”
“Can I loan you…?” He laughed again. “Holy shit, girl.”
“I’ll pay you back.”
Zeke just stood there, smiling and shaking his head, as if his disbelief were a delight to him.
“I’ll pay you back,” Abigail repeated. “I swear.”
Zeke put his hands on his hips. “You are sensational,” he said. “How old are you now?”
“Eighteen,” Abigail lied. She didn’t know why she lied, only that she had to.
Zeke, still smiling, turned back to the engine, made a final adjustment, then unlatched the hood, lowered it, let it drop.
“I’ll tell you something,” he said. “I believe you. Even as a kid you were a serious little soul. If I loaned you fifty bucks I’m pretty certain you’d pay me back.” He leaned against the car, took out a cigarette, and lit it. The daylight had gone while they’d been talking. Abigail was seeing Larry standing over the bed. Her mother just as she’d left her. Somehow, with the lighting of Zeke’s cigarette, she knew she wouldn’t go back to the apartment. The chance she’d given it to be a dream was over. The street and the world beyond it gathered its reality, hard and clear and beyond any argument.
“Trouble is,” Zeke said, blowing out smoke through his nostrils, “I won’t be here to collect. I’m leaving.”
“Where are you going?”
“Sin City.”
She didn’t understand. He grinned.
“Las Vegas, sweet pea. Entertainment capital of the world.” He put his hands together as if in prayer. “Where a fool and his money are easily parted, forever and ever amen.”
In Manayunk, Larry would be doing things. Whatever things it would take to make none of it cling to him. She could sense the mass of his lies like a rapidly growing organism only a couple of miles away. You won’t ever wash clean, princess. The girl who’d killed her mother by hating her.
That wasn’t true.
But its truth was in her anyway. It gave her what she’d been waiting for.
“Take me with you,” she said.
* * *
Prostitution was something to her, a kind of homecoming. She hadn’t known she was looking for a life to give shape to her rejection of life, but when she began it was like slipping into a set of dirty clothes that had been waiting for her to come and claim them. It helped her perfect the art of never quite seeing herself. Her consciousness remained otherwise occupied, though she couldn’t have said what occupied it, except superficially: a movie; a great vanilla shake; banter with the croupiers; looking good in a new dress; room service on a client’s tab. She gave herself a working name: Sophia. People didn’t expect a blonde to be called Sophia, for some reason. It added a curiously valuable frisson.
For nine months she worked the Strip, the casinos, for Zeke, who, after the first time, didn’t touch her. He fucked her once, experimentally, to see what being her mother’s daughter had made of her. Didn’t like the result. She knew he was a little afraid of her.
Eventually she shed him. Got a fake ID and started working for an agency. She was good. Most tricks, she knew within a minute what she was looking at. Men either hated women or worshiped them and hated themselves for it. Either way, hatred was the currency. She had a numb curiosity about it. A man might start as a worshiper—oh, baby, you’re so sweet, you’re a fucking angel, how can you be such an angel?—but she generally knew ahead of time if he was one for whom the worship would segue into hatred—that’s right, move your ass, bitch, show me what a filthy little cunt you are. She wasn’t infallible: More than once she misjudged a trick and ended up taking a beating, one of which left her with a concussion and a lost molar, another in which she narrowly escaped a knife—but she forced her instincts to improve by giving them no alternative. If she got the wrong vibe, she walked. Very soon she had all of them, men, calibrated. Some vaguely functioning analytical part of her said she ought to relish the genuine masochists, but she found them frustrating. There was one guy, for example, who paid her five hundred to whip him until he was bleeding, then piss in his wounds while he jerked himself off. Her curiosity, initially engaged, was derailed by the absurdity of him having to get in the bathtub because he was worried about the hotel room carpet. These slapstick accents took her back to herself. Comedy towed the larger world and life’s generosity back in—and it was the larger world and life’s generosity that she didn’t want.
She got to the end of a good year. Almost subconsciously for months she’d been creating order for herself based on a very simple logic: The better she was at what she did, the more in demand she would be, and the more in demand she was, the more she could charge. The more she could charge, the more money she had, and the more money she had, the more she could control her life. If anyone had asked her, she would never have admitted to a need to control her life. In fact she would have said the opposite, that she lived to see where life would take her. Yet by the time she turned eighteen (twenty-two as far as the agency was concerned), she had a rental apartment in North Cheyenne, a tiny battered Honda, regular health checks, and a list of clients for whom no one but “Sophia” would do. She moved through her time as if it were a bridge collapsing behind her with every step she took. She lived as if there were nothing to look back at.
But in the spring of her second improving year, something in her changed. It was as if life had lulled her into accepting it could get better, seduced her into a dream of expectation, a fantasy of hope. It was as if life had been on the verge of making a fool of her—and she’d spotted the ruse just in time.
She started doing coke. She’d always drunk, and occasionally shared a joint with some of the other girls, but hitherto she’d stayed out of Class A. Couldn’t afford the compromised judgment. Risk assessment depended on clarity. Then one night, when a client had chopped a half-dozen lines and invited her to join him, she did. No premeditation—just a reflex kicking in. The drug gave her a sense of hurrying with delight toward something that would change her forever, like rushing through driving snow, happy and magically impervious to the cold.
Naturally it ate into her money—and her professional competence. The good second year eroded into blurred decisions and bleak comedowns. She lost first the apartment, then the car. Moved into a rented one-room. There was a satisfying soft flow to it, like a receding tide she’d been waiting for.
As with Joanna, her looks endured. She was a lithe, striking creature. A current of glamor crackled in the green eyes and fabulous blond hair. One customer said to her: You’ve got the most exquisitely formed hands and feet of any woman I’ve ever seen.
But her arms ached, putting on her makeup. She got a urinary infection. In the clinic waiting room the fluorescents’ buzz was deafening. When she vomited there was no one to hold her head, as she had her mother’s. And all the while the Vegas neons and bleached afternoon skies offered her a bright, flat endorsement, as if they were happy she’d come back into her correct alignment, her proper mode.
She went with sleepy deliberation further away from herself. When she wasn’t working, she wandered the malls or drank tequila in the casinos, where there were neither windows nor clocks and time dissolved in the coin-gobbling slots and the subdued jabber of the tables. Any noise was preferable to silence.
Joanna’s ghost wasn’t with her, but as the weeks and months passed, Abigail
had a sense of her mother somewhere not far off, as if each of them inhabited different rooms in the same big civic building.
* * *
“Hey, angel, buy you a drink?”
She’d sensed the approach from her left. She was at a joyless bar of black and red vinyl, walls plastered with music posters, on the north side of the Luxor. Her dealer had called ten minutes ago, postponing till midnight. Four hours. Time bristled and fizzed ahead of her. Her rule was agency work only. She turned.
Dark hair, blue eyes, tall, well dressed. Coyote-handsome, comfortable in his own charm.
“No thanks.”
“Come on, that glass is just melting ice.”
“I’m waiting for someone.”
The word “waiting” hurt, stretched the four hours to a vanishing point, an empty desert road. She realized her need was visible, tried to gather and tighten her atoms.
“No problem,” he said. “I’ll leave you to it. But thanks for bringing a splash of beauty to an otherwise lousy day.”
He moved back to his stool at the end of the bar. Ordered a screwdriver and salted peanuts. Turned his face up to the wall-mounted TV and began to watch the soccer game with a pleasant smile of benevolent superiority.
On her way out a few minutes later, he said: “If you’ve been let down, I can offer you more than a drink. No pressure. Just saying.”
* * *
His name was Karl, and his Audi was in the Luxor’s lot. As soon as she got in, he gave her a hit from a little silver tin and snort spoon. “It’s not altruism,” he said. “It’s just more fun with company.”
All the way from the bar she’d kept up an inner mantra: It’s okay, it’s cool, you’re all right … but after the coke’s first glittering lift it faltered, and she relaxed into the Audi’s dark embrace, the pixels of her spirit vivified.
His house in The Lakes was a sub–Frank Lloyd Wright structure of flat roofs and white walls, cut, it seemed, into the side of a slight hill. Inside, glass and steel and big, lonely looking furniture. Native American art. Copper pans hanging from the kitchen’s suspended rails. Granite patio and kidney-shaped pool out back, a garden of cactus and dark cypress trees.