Brothel

by J. Boyett

  Joyce let this wild assertion pass. “What about Bryce? Won’t he still object to you being in a place that’s so . . . you know . . . unwholesome?”

  Sherry earnestly and violently shook her head. “Oh, no. Bryce knows that I’m not, like, a hothouse flower. He wants me to be my own woman. And he trusts me to just hang out here. If I tell him I didn’t do anything, he’ll believe me.” Now her eyes widened in appeal. “Please, though. If you say it’s all right for me to hang out there, then Ken and Mal’ll fall in line. But if you sort of, like, withhold your blessing. . . .” And Sherry waited, holding her breath, to see if this calamity would come to pass.

  It had been a shit of a day and Joyce didn’t give a shit about what Sherry did anyway. “Hey, man, whatever you want to do, you know? I can’t tell you where you can and can’t go, right?”

  Sherry flung her arms around Joyce’s neck and squeezed her close. “Thank you!” she exclaimed. When they stepped back from each other, Joyce saw a cartoonishly sly look on the reformed hooker’s face. Sherry said, “And it’ll give me a chance to get back at Ken for that titty-twister bullshit. Or, like, I mean, to watch when he finds out . . . you know . . . what I’ve done.”

  “Sherry, please. Just let it go. For real.”

  Sherry laughed and waved her hand with oh-you dismissiveness. “Don’t worry! I can handle myself. Anyway, I’ll see you back here tomorrow. I already told Ken not to book anybody for me.” She put her hand over her mouth to stifle a giggle. “I can’t wait to see his face when he finds out I’m coming anyway as a spectator!”

  But Joyce was already shaking her head. “Uh-uh,” she said firmly. “Tomorrow’s a day off. You mean the day after.”

  9.

  The day after next, Mal and Sherry were already in the living room when Joyce arrived. The door was wide open and there was no sign of Ken or any johns. Joyce frowned and peered around the room, as if Ken might be hiding behind the furniture. Mal was sitting cross-legged in the armchair, smoking a cigarette, looking annoyed. “What’s up?” asked Joyce.

  Mal ashed her cigarette in a dirty saucer. “We got here, the door was open, the place was deserted. I figure I can give him about half an hour. Any longer and I’ll be late to Foxy’s.”

  “Well, Ken could be up to just about anything.” She plopped down beside Sherry on the loveseat. Then it struck her that Sherry appeared remarkably pleased with herself. “What’s up with you?”

  Sherry held up her palms in a show of innocence. “What do you mean, Joyce?” she asked sweetly.

  Mal looked Sherry up and down in an unimpressed way. “I’ve already asked her. She won’t give.”

  “I have no idea what y’all’re talking about,” Sherry assured them.

  Joyce felt some foreboding, but with savage bitterness told herself that it wasn’t worth worrying over, and turned to Mal. “You mind bumming me a cigarette?”

  Mal pulled out a cigarette and tossed it to her, then sent the lighter sailing after. Joyce had a feeling that Mal had indeed minded, but had seen no advantage in stirring up shit by saying so. The vibe made Joyce feel heavy and wish that she hadn’t asked for the smoke after all. Here it was, though. It would be silly and weird to return it. She lit the cigarette and tossed the lighter back. Last week she had bought a pretty wristwatch at Wal-Mart with her earnings. She checked it now, partly because she was interested in the time, partly to again admire its pretty face. Secretly she hoped that Ken would stand them up, him and whatever johns he may or may not have rounded up. A part of her hoped Ken was dead.

  But such was not yet to be. After a few minutes he walked in, nodding hello to all of them. There were no customers with him.

  Mal crushed her cigarette in the saucer. “So are we fucking anybody today, or can I go back to the dorm and relax a little before I go to work?”

  “Oh, there’s guys coming. I just pushed the time back by half an hour. I hope that’s all right.”

  Mal said, “It’s all right with me, but I won’t be here when your friends show up. If I stick around that long I might be late to Foxy’s. You’ll have to fuck them yourself.”

  “Well, I’ll ask them, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they weren’t down with buggery. These are some pretty good Christian boys, you know. Nothing but the best for my girls.” Ken turned to Sherry. “You think you could help us out? Come out of retirement for a one-night-only gig?”

  Sherry looked very smug and proper. “I’m afraid not. You should have thought of all those little details before you changed the schedule without telling anyone.”

  Ken shook his head in a show of remorse. “I know it,” he confessed. “I know it. It’s just that I’m a little off-kilter right now. See, I had some heartache yesterday. But Sherry can probably explain all that shit to you. Can’t you, Sherry?”

  “Fuck,” said Joyce. “Goddammit, Sherry, what’ve you done?”

  Sherry had been busy attempting to combine an innocent gaze with a gloating leer—now she looked startled and uncertain. Mal had apparently decided to stick around for a while, as she’d lit a fresh cigarette and was gazing coolly at Sherry, who flexed her jaw and said, “Why don’t you ask Ken?”

  Ken was leaning back against the window, elbows resting on the sill, feet planted where the TV should have been, studying Sherry as he spoke to the other two. “Y’all know my girlfriend Melissa, right? Anyway, you do, Joyce. And then I came to find out yesterday that Sherry does, too. You know, Melissa’s called me a lot of names. But yesterday she called me something that I figure she must have had to look up in a thesaurus first. I’m, like, so proud to have increased her vocab.”

  Mal, bored, said, “What did she call you?”

  “Whoremonger,” said Ken.

  Joyce groaned.

  “What?” Sherry demanded. “It’s true, isn’t it? She had a right to know, didn’t she?”

  “Jesus, Sherry,” said Joyce. “You didn’t just tell on Ken. You told on us! You told on me!”

  Sherry paled. But instead of apologizing or even conceding the point, she placed her hands tightly on her knees and faced forward. “You would want to know. Imagine if it was your boyfriend, and especially if you were just a high school girl. Imagine how she would have felt if she’d found out later, by accident.”

  “I don’t give a shit how some stranger might have felt,” said Joyce. “I just care about what you did to me!”

  Ken shrugged and went on: “So me and Melissa are through, which is too bad because I’d just got her up to where she could suck a decent dick. Now she’s going to go off into the world and suck some loafer’s dick, and he’ll get all the fruits of my fucking labor. That’ll be my blow job he’s getting.”

  Still not looking at anybody, Sherry primly said, “Well, you just should have thought about that.”

  Ken waved his hands, as if to say that that was neither here nor there. “I guess I can’t complain too much about people telling the truth, even if I personally don’t see much point in it. The thing is, though, Melissa also ‘found out’ that I was cheating on her.”

  “You’re not?” asked Mal with mild surprise.

  “Well. She was under the impression that I was doing it regularly, and with a very specific person. A certain blonde-haired, blue-eyed, voluptuous whore.” He compressed his lips and shook his head, disheartened by the wicked behavior all around him. “Now, I don’t know where she could have gotten that idea.”

  All eyes turned to Sherry, who raised her chin and actually closed her eyes as she haughtily explained, “I believe what I said was that you had been coming on to me.”

  Ken showed no emotion. “I’m still in the dark here,” he said.

  Sherry made it clear by her face that his weaseling was pathetic. “The groping?”

  “Uh-huh,” said Ken. “Well. Okay. I’ll see if I can work with that. Um . . . I’m groping for your meaning. Is that what you’re trying to say?”

  “Everyone in this room has seen you feel me up.”


  Ken looked from Joyce to Mal. “I guess I throw myself upon the mercy of the court,” he said. “Witnesses?”

  Mal looked right at Sherry and said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Sherry stared open-mouthed at Mal. Then, her eyes welling up, she turned to Joyce in appeal.

  “No,” said Joyce. “Sorry, Sherry.” Really, though, she wasn’t, as her clipped tone made clear. “If you’re being serious you’d better explain what you mean.”

  Sherry stared at her, truly uncomprehending. “He felt me up.” She whispered, because her words were meant for Joyce, and because she was ashamed. Even so, Mal and Ken could easily hear everything she said. “On my boob. You were there.”

  Joyce stared back. Finally she said, “Are you talking about the titty-twister?”

  There was a sharp snap of mirthless laughter from Mal, and Ken slapped his hand on his forehead and left it there a while, his head tilted back. Joyce laughed too. “What?” demanded Sherry, humiliated and furious. “What?”

  “Never mind,” Ken said, “all’s forgiven or whatever. I can see how someone could make a mistake like that, if they were the same type of person as Sherry.”

  “It’s not a mistake, motherfucker!”

  But Ken was already walking out of the room. As he went, he said, “Hey, y’all stick around, I want to show you something.”

  “I’m going to go hang out in my dorm room before I go to work, Ken,” said Mal.

  “Naw, hold up, trust me,” called Ken from the depths of the apartment. “It’ll either be fun or interesting, I promise.”

  “No,” said Mal, and stubbed out her cigarette. “No more bullshit, man!” Joyce felt both satisfaction and fear at seeing Ken get to her.

  Ken popped his head back into the room from the kitchen. “Come on. Stick around. This’ll only take a few minutes. And if you miss it, you’ll just want to be filled in later.” He snatched his head back and was gone.

  Mal pursed her lips as she gazed at the wall. Then she lit another cigarette.

  Sherry sat with her knees tight together. “He did feel me up. He put his hand on my breast.”

  Wearily, Joyce said, “It’s not the same thing, Sherry.” Her mind was elsewhere. It had only just occurred to her to wonder if Atchley had actually raped her. Not legally, of course. If he had raped her, it seemed to follow that Ken had raped her, too. She hoped to discredit that notion before her friend-cum-pimp re-entered the room. . . . Could she have somehow raped herself?

  Sherry wouldn’t leave the whole titty-twister thing alone. “Well, why isn’t it the same thing?”

  Joyce spread her hands. “It just isn’t.” Mal continued to smoke and silently, expressionlessly watch them both.

  Ken came back into the room with an old black tape recorder. “Guess what,” he said, “I figured out how to record telephone conversations this morning.”

  “Oh yeah?” said Joyce, speaking only because she knew that if Ken were met with silence, he would go off on some massive tangential “joke” about them not replying. “Who’d you call?”

  He peered at her with faux suspicion. “Who says I’ve called anyone, huh?” Slumping deeper into the loveseat, she groaned. “Just joshing with you,” Ken said. “I’ll let y’all listen for yourselves.” He pushed the play button on the machine—a fuzzy hiss filled the room. Ken stood like a schoolchild giving a recitation, but with the tape player instead of his mouth. His hands were clasped before his crotch, and from those hands hung the black tape player. They heard the hum of a ring tone. It was surreal to hear such a normally intimate, ear-cupped sound, magnified so. There was a rattle, then a sleepy, disembodied voice: “Hello?” Joyce noticed that Mal was studying Sherry.

  Ken’s voice followed, although for a split-second it was difficult to identify it through the distortions of the machine. He addressed the callee respectfully by his surname, preceded by a “Mister.” Joyce had never heard him do that with anyone before, and she knew that this man, whoever he was, was in for it. Then she realized that the surname was the same as Sherry’s.

  They heard the man say, “This is he.”

  “Hi,” said Ken. He could sound so pleasant. “I’m a friend of Sherry’s. You’re Sherry’s dad, right?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Oh, good. I’ve been trying to reach you for a while now. There are lots of people in the Little Rock phonebook with your same last name, you know. I called, like, three of them before I realized that I only needed to call people in the nice neighborhoods. Pretty stupid, huh?”

  Sherry’s dad sounded annoyed. “Who is this?”

  “Uh, I told you. I’m a friend of Sherry’s up at CAU. Actually, sir, it’s Sherry I’ve called to talk to you about.”

  “Is Sherry in some sort of trouble?”

  “Oh, well, you know. Define ‘trouble.’ Moral trouble, for sure, if you count that sort of thing. Which I assume you do, because I’ve heard y’all’re such devout Christians. The rest of the family, I mean, not Sherry so much.”

  Now Sherry’s dad was awake and pissed. “Sherry is every bit as religious as. . . . Who the hell is this, anyway? How dare you call me up and say these kinds of things about my daughter? What’s your name?”

  “Hey, man, I may be a stranger to you, but Sherry knows me. I’m her pimp.”

  “You’re her what?”

  “Her pimp, man, her pimp. Sherry fucks strange dudes for a living.”

  Sherry seemed to have departed from the realm of normal time, her mouth forming a slow-motion silent scream. Joyce was on the verge of telling Ken to turn off the tape player when the conversation was picked back up and Joyce shut her mouth, like a rabbit shutting its eyes to hide. “What did you just say about my daughter?” asked Sherry’s dad in a soft, dangerous voice.

  “Dude, keep up. I said she’s, like, a whore, and I pimp for her. I recruit the guys she fucks and I also do security. It’s interesting work, you know. Not exactly what I had in mind when I picked my major, but, hey, God hands you lemons, slice them up and stick them in your Everclear. Anyway, I’m a people person.”

  A mysterious rhythmic noise had been interfering more and more with the fuzzy sound of Ken’s voice. Now Joyce realized that it was the sound of Sherry’s dad’s increasingly ragged breathing. “How dare you,” he gasped. “You little fucking bastard. . . .”

  “Whoa, whoa, Brother Whatever! Remember Whose presence you’re speaking in. Don’t you know that whenever two or more people gather in the name of God, He appears? Well, you and me are gathered in the name of Fuck, and that’s all the God I’ll ever need.”

  “You cruel little shit. What makes you think you can call me up and tell me lies about my little girl?”

  “Uh. What makes you think I can’t? Anyway, don’t call me a liar, dude. I’m so totally on the level.”

  “Bullshit. Don’t you ever call here again.”

  “Hey, hey, hey! Don’t hang up yet! Look, man, I’ll prove it to you. When Sherry was a little baby, you used to give her baths, right? Like in the sink or some cute shit like that?”

  “Shut up. Shut your filthy trap. I’m warning you.”

  “Don’t warn me. Now, see, if you’d said ‘begging’ instead of ‘warning,’ it might’ve made a difference. And also, ‘please shut your filthy trap.’ Anyway, when you were being all paternal with naked baby Sherry, you must have noticed that little birthmark high up on her right inner thigh. You know the one? Just a few inches away from her labia? Well, that’s how far away it is now, at least. Back then who knows. Well, I mean, you do.”

  Sherry’s dad made a funny noise. Joyce didn’t think it was a word.

  “Don’t get mad at me, man, I didn’t put it there. Anyway, I haven’t seen it, but all the guys who’ve fucked her have told me about it, and, believe me, that’s an awful lot of guys. Like, this sort of leathery brown square patch, although one guy said it looked like a swastika, and another dude actually wanted a refund, because it looked like
a smushed booger. But don’t worry, we don’t give refunds on your daughter’s pussy. See, sir, I stick up for Sherry’s honor.”

  Sherry’s dad was wheezing and he had trouble yelling: “You . . . fucking . . . keep your hands off . . . .”

  “Huh? Dude, I told you, I haven’t fucked her yet. But, anyway, I told you I’m calling to try to get you to steer Sherry away from some bad decisions. See, she found this real pushover john who says he loves her and shit like that, you know how us guys are, and so now she’s talking about quitting. Normally I wouldn’t much give a shit, since, frankly, she’s kind of a bitch. Pardon my saying so, sir, but maybe if you’d kicked her in the belly a little more when she was growing up, she wouldn’t be so spoiled. But anyway, my point is that it seems sort of shitty to let her retire now, because I’m just about to introduce a dental plan for all my girls.”

  Sherry lost it for real right when her father did. He exploded into impotent howls and, upon hearing her father reduced that way, Sherry emitted a sound that made Joyce jump: a low, mournful, defeated groan, a pure sonic distillation of suffering. With a thrill Joyce realized this was the first real glimpse she’d ever had of someone’s soul. Sherry leaped off of the couch, nails going for Ken’s eyes—Joyce had no chance to yank her back, so she stuck out her leg just in time to trip Sherry and send her sprawling onto her face at Ken’s feet. She landed pretty hard. Joyce glanced sheepishly at Mal, who was holding the bridge of her nose between her thumb and forefinger and shaking her head. Meanwhile, Ken expressionlessly studied Sherry’s reactions as her father’s rage continued to spew from the speaker, spurred on by Ken’s delighted voice. Sherry, mouth against the carpet, set up a howl, but then it seemed like some invisible force cut off her windpipe. Ken said, “You got my Melissa to break up with me? I got your dad to break up with you. Tenfold, baby.”

  Sherry roared. “Why’d you tell my daddy?!!”

  Joyce winced. She tried to say something, but her mouth was dry, and she had no clue what to say. Mal was rooting through Sherry’s purse, a girly bag with a brand name stamped on the side. “What are you doing?” Joyce demanded, shouting to be heard over the commotion.