“That girl reminds me of my sister.” Katy watches the girl stride away with visible repulsion.
“Your sister sounds like a swell person.”
This time it’s Katy who laughs.
I scan the room, looking for a place that we might talk. When I don’t find an available spot, I nod toward the bar. It’s mostly empty now so we can grab two stools.
For two hours, Katy and I chat about her school and her dad and her affinity for buttermilk biscuits with honey. We talk about anything she wants, really. And it feels nice. I certainly don’t want to talk about myself, so this arrangement works perfectly. But after a while I notice Katy’s eyes veering to the other girls. The ones offering guitar solos and massages and tango dance lessons. If I don’t do something, I’m going to lose her interest. And her bronze coin. But what can I do? I don’t have access to any of the instruments the girls bought, and even if I did I wouldn’t know how to play them well enough. Then I remember what Madam Karina said about using my gifts.
“Cain, do you have a pen I can borrow?”
Back when I still attended school, I was pretty good with a pencil in my hand. And I can’t help wondering how much better I’d be after learning graffiti art. It’s different, sure, but it’s still translating a picture from my head onto a canvas.
Cain looks at me for a long moment, and then gazes at the curtained door. He seems afraid to lend me a pen, but that’s crazy, right? After hesitating, he meanders over and drops napkins and a pen a couple of feet down. I have to stretch to get them.
“He’s cute,” Katy says.
“He doesn’t really talk.”
Katy grins mischievously. “I don’t need him to talk.”
I give her a scolding look like we’ve been friends for years. She giggles into her soda, the one Cain brought her after she laid a silver coin on the sticky bar. Holding the pen in my right hand, I study the napkin. I have no idea how I can compete with the entertainment behind me, but I’ll give it a shot.
I look once at Katy, decide what it is she wants most in this world. Then I draw. My tongue slides between my lips as I concentrate, and I keep my head down, working. She talks as I work, and I prod her with more questions. My drawing is sloppy, and my hand aches to replace that cold lifeless pen with a can of spray paint. I’d paint the entire room with her name if I could. Make people notice her in a good way.
I’m halfway through the drawing when the singing stops. For the last two hours, three girls have shared the microphone, one after another. I assume they shared the expense and that’s why they all got a turn. Now someone new steps up. A fresh, upbeat song starts on the jukebox, and I turn to see Poppet tapping her fist against her thigh in time to the beat. The lyrics begin, and Poppet starts singing an Adele song.
Katy cringes beside me, probably without realizing it, and the other girls start laughing. At first, their jeering is quiet. Then it grows louder, until you can hardly hear Poppet’s voice over the taunting.
“Shut up,” a girl coughs under her breath.
“Tone deaf,” another one says, louder.
I feel myself moving toward Poppet before I even realize what I’m doing. I don’t know this song, but I won’t let Poppet stand up there alone a second longer.
When she sees me coming, she raises her hands like I’m going to shove her off the mic. Her reaction tells me someone has probably done this to her in the past. I motion for her to stay put and join her in singing the ridiculous song, figuring out the words as I go. Mostly though, I just stand beside her. I can’t sing to save my life. I guess Poppet can’t either. But she lent me a black shirt and this dress I’m wearing, and she doesn’t deserve this kind of treatment.
In the movies, when something like this happens, the taunting eventually turns into encouraging cheers. In this scenario, it gets worse. Girls yell for her to stop the insanity, and a singer from earlier actually tries to sing over us. The guests seem to think it’s part of an act, and so they laugh, too. We’re almost to the end of the song when someone starts in on me.
“The freak is worse than Poppet,” a voice calls from the back. “Look at that lip ring. Who’s her father, Charles Manson?
It’s the last comment that stuns me. I figured if there were one off-limits topic in this place, it’d be parents. After all, how many of us would be here entertaining customers for bronze coins if we had Mommy and Daddy at home to steer us right?
Another girl joins the fun. “Hey, freak, was your mother attracted to murderers?”
I stumble two steps back. Katy is talking with another girl, and I’m standing in front of everyone, shaking, trying to control the voice in my head that tells me to shut these witches up. To burn them at the stake.
To burn them in their beds.
I’ll find the matches! Wilson cheers.
“I have to go,” I tell Poppet. I run toward the curtained door, but Mercy blocks my path.
“Get your butt back in there. Now!”
I shove past her and race outside. Once I’m standing in the front yard, surrounded by haphazardly parked vehicles, I gasp for air.
Lean over.
Hands on knees.
Breathe.
I’ve spent almost a year on the streets, and Dizzy isn’t the sort to get too close. But the girls here press in until my brain swells. I’m not used to this. Even at school, before my mother homeschooled me, I never had more than a couple of friends. And now I’m supposed to stand in a room overflowing with bodies and sweaty upper lips and smile when they tease me about my parents.
I can’t.
That’s not true. I can. Just not right this second.
They don’t know anything about my parents. They don’t know what my father did. Or what my mother did in retaliation. I realize this, but it still stings. Because what they said back there about my mom loving murderers? It felt like they undressed me. Like I was nude before an audience.
They got close to the truth, didn’t they? Wilson says. But not quite.
I circle the house and discover an uncovered porch. It’s a slab of concrete with a broken ceramic planter and two plastic chairs. On the ground between the chairs is an overfilled ashtray, rainwater turning the butts and ash into a gray pulp.
The chair scrapes across the concrete as I drop down, and my eyes fall upon the guesthouses. One on the left, for the Lilies, and one to the right, for the Violets. They look the same—one story white clapboard, miniatures of the main house, with empty flower boxes on the sills. One of the windows on the Lilies’ house is open, and morose music wafts out into the dry Texas night. I wonder what it’s like inside those houses. Whether the girls treat one another like family instead of competition.
The sound of approaching footsteps hits my ears.
I slouch farther into the chair, as if I can become invisible.
My heart thumps harder.
Cain rounds the corner, a cigarette dangling between his fingers.
Chapter Thirteen
There Once Was a Boy Named Cain
Cain doesn’t seem surprised to see me there. But he does pause, like maybe he planned to come after me but doesn’t know what to do now that he’s here. My gaze travels over his frame. Six-foot-four, I’d say. Buzzed hair. Biceps stretching the hem of his navy blue shirt. And those eyes with hidden layers. I lean to the side and kick the other chair. An invitation.
He remains standing, lighting a cigarette with a silver lighter, gaze set on the guesthouses.
Those houses are hard to look away from.
“I’ll come back in soon.” I’m not sure what his job description entails, but in case it includes ratting out bad investments, I want to make sure he’s clear that I have no intention of giving up. Those girls shook me, but I won’t stop until Dizzy is out of jail. Hell, maybe I’ll make enough after two or three nights to spring him. Who knows how the payment structure works. Maybe each bronze coin you get from a customer is a hundred spot in your pocket. With the sixty plus bucks in my dres
ser drawer, I’d need only four Katys to put their coins in my box.
Pay to the order of Rogers County Jail: $423.52
When Cain doesn’t respond, I keep talking. “Do you know what day we get paid?”
He sits down. Does that mean he’s staying?
“You don’t talk much, do you?”
Cain looks at me, and a warm current rushes down my spine. He looks like a mutt that’s been kicked one too many times. The question is how long he’ll continue tucking tail, and how long until he uses those powerful jaws. Then again, maybe all his biting is over. The second I think this is the second my teeth grind. There’s nothing that makes my blood fire quicker than when easy targets get picked on. Like what happened with Poppet inside.
That makes two of us.
Cain looks up at the sky, holds out his silver lighter and says, “I could light a fire if you’re cold. I have some lighter fluid beneath the kitchen sink.”
I smile at his joke, because it has to be ninety degrees outside, even with the sun long gone.
“What happened to your arm?” he asks, sobering. His voice sounds like tires over gravel. It holds a surprising amount of authority for a boy who keeps his head down. Maybe boy is the wrong word. I seldom get the right word on the first attempt. I try again—
Young man.
That’s two words. But it fits him better. I’d put him at twenty. Maybe older. Maybe old enough to put a cold beer bottle to his lips in broad daylight.
I don’t bother hiding my arms. If you put blade to flesh, you better be ready to show the world, because they’re going to see eventually. “It’s a body count. Unmarked graves.”
Cain chuckles. “You’re not as scary as you think you are.”
“Who says I think I’m scary?”
He looks pointedly at the piercings in my eyebrow, my lip, the silver loops climbing my left earlobe like poison ivy. I wonder if Katy felt insulted by my calling attention to my ears when she’s got only the one. Man, what a sick thought.
“Thanks for being cool to me,” I blurt out.
“I’m not.”
“You kinda are.”
He stands up like he doesn’t like where this conversation is headed. My skin burns with shame. There I go again with my attachments. Someone so much as looks at me and I want to snare them with my octopus arms, suck on their salty skin, and pull them underwater.
You’ll stay as beautiful with dark hair and soft skin…forever.
That’s a song about someone drowning their companion to keep them for eternity. I’ve never been one to remember lyrics. Want to play name that song? Don’t put me on your team.
But that song I remember.
Cain narrows his eyes like he’s searching for something. “Why did you come here?”
I debate whether to confess, and decide it couldn’t hurt anything. Maybe he’ll tell the madam and she’ll advance me the money so I can get Dizzy out sooner. So I explain the situation. I tell him about Dizzy and about living on the streets and about how I need to help him.
The whole time I talk, I stare at my hands. Now I look up and find Cain studying me.
“Your friend, Dizzy, he’d do the same for you?”
“Of course,” I say too quickly. “He absolutely would.”
Cain doesn’t respond. He just studies my face, the cigarette in his hand forgotten. I can’t stay still with him looking at me like that. Because by him not speaking, he’s actually saying too much at once. Causing questions to pop up in my head like termites chewing through hundred-year-old walls.
Dizzy would do the same for me.
He would.
The front door to the Violets’ house opens and a girl’s laughter rushes across the space in an unexpected tidal wave. Cain sees who’s standing in the entryway, and he leans over and stubs out his cigarette in the untended ashtray. He digs his hands into his pockets, turns a massive back to me, and strides away.
Taking his place is a girl I’ve seen before. Red lipstick. Commanding gaze.
Lola the Violet. Lola the Top Girl.
Her hair is black and her eyes are lined with a heavy hand and she walks on the tip of her toes. “What are you doing? You can’t be back here.”
Before I can respond, she leans sideways and spots Cain in his rapid retreat.
“Was that Cain?”
“It was,” I say. “Why can’t I be here?”
She holds a hand to her forehead like my presence is making her ill. “Because I said so, new girl. And what I say goes. Now be a good maggot and go back inside.” Lola analyzes my face and nibbles her plump lip. “You won’t be here long, you know. Not pretty enough. So don’t stress out about it. That’s a favor, me telling you that. Don’t forget it.”
Anger simmers in my belly, but I can’t properly experience it in all its reckless magnitude. Because Lola is exotic, and untouchable, and someone you want to examine in detail even as they torment you. It’s like a lion chasing you across an open field. You’re going to die, but there’s a part of you that wants to turn back and see this glorious creature attack, even if you’re the victim.
Lola has a ring on each finger and arms like cattails shooting up from swamp water. She’s painfully thin with a high forehead and wide mouth. She uses that mouth to smile at me. “You know why Cain is here, right?”
She pauses so long I feel the need to shrug.
Lola flops down in the chair next to me, rubs her hands over her exposed thighs. “He killed someone. He’s a killer.” She glances back at the house. “A Bonnie and Clyde kinda thing. But without the Bonnie.”
I don’t believe her for a second. This morning someone implied that Cain was a serial killer, too. I didn’t believe them, either. I know a thing or two about dangerous people, and Cain isn’t one of them.
I stand up. “I’ve got to go.”
“Hey, new girl. Don’t come back here again.” Lola laughs, then grows serious. “Don’t come anywhere near my place. You stay with the trash where you belong.”
Wilson slams himself against the inside of my skull, stretches toward her breakable body with all his might. Before he can get his way, I follow Cain’s path and make my way back toward the main house. Behind me, Lola laughs again. She sounds almost crazy. But it doesn’t dampen my interest in her.
I can’t help wondering what it is Lola and the other Violets do with their customers in that guesthouse, away from prying eyes.
You know, Wilson says.
But I don’t know, not for sure. How could I? They’re there and I’m here and that’s that. No reason to question things.
Don’t be stupid, Domino.
When I push open the door, I stumble across Madam Karina backed against a wall, Mr. Hodge kissing her neck. The madam sees me and lightly pushes him away, blushes, though she doesn’t seem embarrassed.
I rush past the two and back into the entertainment room before the madam or Mr. Hodge can ask why I was outside.
Chapter Fourteen
We Are Sisters in the Dark
I spend the rest of the night making up for lost time. I do my best to regain Katy’s attention, and when that doesn’t work, I try my hand with different customers. Shockingly enough, none of them want a picture drawn on a napkin. I need real paint and an easel to have a shot at scoring those bronze coins.
With my conversation with Cain, and then Lola, heavy in my head, the evening ends. It’s one o’clock in the morning, and Madam Karina comes in to thank everyone for the spectacular night and to show the guests to the door. As coins clink into the money box, I stand still. The other girls do, too, as if we can somehow make out whether a coin fell into our own numbered slot.
Mercy yawns and waves her arm over her head. “We’ll clean up Monday. Fifteen minutes until lights out.”
The girls file out of the room, and Poppet finds me near the back. “Thanks for what you did, but you know the girls were just being funny, right?”
“They weren’t being funny, Poppet, they were bei
ng jerks.”
Poppet grabs my elbow, and I stop. “No, they were being funny. I’ve been here almost a year now, okay? I’m one of them. They may tease me, but they also care. I have friends here, understand?”
Poppet’s body is locked with intensity, and her fingers dig into my arm. She needs to believe what she’s saying is true, even though I know it’s not. “Hey, my bad. It’s not like I know what I’m talking about. If you say they’re your friends, then they’re your friends.”
She smiles, but the truth lies in her eyes. “You must be exhausted. If I were Madam, I wouldn’t have made you work on the first night.”
Poppet and I trail after the other girls and enter the community bathroom. It’s a white tiled room with two toilet stalls and two showers. Not nearly enough for ten girls. Four sinks line the wall, but only three have running water. “I would have worked tonight no matter what.”
“Oh, yeah? Do you need the money for something specific, or are you a lifer?” Poppet is rubbing the mascara out from under her eyes with toilet paper and water. I don’t bother doing the same. I leave my makeup on my pillow where it belongs.
Mercy flips the light switch repeatedly. “Five minutes, hussies.”
Poppet uses the restroom, and then we go to our room. Candy is already in bed, but she’s awake and watches us crawl into our own beds. Poppet puts on matching shorts and tank pajamas with flying pigs on them, and offers to lend me a pair. But I’ve done enough taking from her. So I pull on Dizzy’s shirt and sleep in that alone.
Mercy’s voice rings through the night once more. “Lights off.”
Poppet reaches over and turns off the lamp on our vanity. The room grows darker as down the hall, other girls do the same thing. Mercy marches toward our room, and every few seconds I hear a spontaneous popping sound. The girl with blue-black hair stretches into our room, grabs the door handle, and slams it shut.
It’s quiet in the room for thirty seconds before Poppet resumes our conversation. “So you never answered me, Domino. Are you working here for a reason?”
“Shhh,” Candy hisses.
I flip Candy off in the safety of the dark, and say, “No particular reason.”
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