“I never really was involved, Bailey.”
“You can’t be surprised at this,” Bailey says, turning back to Michele.
“What do you want?” Michele asks.
“I’ll never understand how you do what you do,” Bailey says. “I will just never understand how you can be this kind of person.”
“I made a mistake,” Michele says.
“Shut up. That’s not my problem anymore.”
“What do you want, Bailey?”
“What do you think you’ll do now? Back to school maybe? Are you staying with him?” Bailey doesn’t even look at Chase. “Is he finally going to take you away from all this?” Bailey tries to conceal the emotion of the moment by sucking down another oyster.
“What the fuck do you want me to do, Bailey?”
“Oh, that’s the nasty backstabbing cunt I’m used to.”
“Fuck you.”
“I want you to stay in the suite for the next week. It’s paid through the end of the month. You were talking about getting an MBA, remember? When his girlfriend was here you were saying you could see yourself doing that and maybe business was something you could pursue because—how did you put it— you had a ‘knack’?” Bailey fingers the lip of his beer bottle. “Or maybe you want to compete with me. Go head-to-head instead of acting like one of your skimming, cheating skanks. We can do that.” He pauses. “No? I didn’t think so. Take the money and clean yourself up. Put this behind you. See a real therapist. Find out why you crave cock so much.”
Michele is still staring at the money Bailey has offered her. “This isn’t enough for anything. What about the house?”
“You mean that house you and your astrologer picked out?” Bailey laughs. “Who did you suck off to get on the list? Who was your inside man?” He pauses. “Do you know what I heard?” He turns to Chase and leans forward. “I heard it was Ted. The fag who stripped at Olympic Gardens and took guys in the back for a hundred a pop. Ted, the meth addict who worked for KB Homes for like a month and convinced you he could get you a house. We’re talking about him, right?”
Michele realizes something and her expression changes. “Have you seen him?”
“Why are you asking? Because he won’t return your calls?” Bailey shakes his head slowly. “What did he tell you he did for them that made you think you could trust him with twenty thousand dollars?” he asks. “Ted drove a fucking golf cart for them. Did you eat idiot toast for breakfast? You’re such a stupid fuck, Michele.”
“Look, what’s the point of this, Bailey?” Chase says. “What do you want?”
Bailey ignores Chase’s questions and continues addressing Michele. “You don’t owe me anything. But if you ever want to make it up to me I need some shit done. Think special favors. Think Rachel. Because right now all you have to show for all the shit you’ve done to yourself is in that little tiny bag, bitch. All of it. You earned it, Michele. Every fucking dollar. I know it’s not what you were hoping for. But it’s what you deserve.”
14
In the Sun King suite on the twenty-second floor of the Palace, Michele takes a shower and snorts two lines. She has a week to get this off the ground and she is determined.
Michele is sitting on the bed, surrounded by room service trays and candles, and she’s going back and forth between her Treo and her laptop. A girl who looks vaguely familiar to Chase sits cross-legged on the carpet, staring at the television. Chase sinks into the massive pillows of the couch and waits.
They had gone to Public Storage on East Charleston. They had opened the locker. As Bailey promised, all the money was gone. Chase asked Michele why she brought the money back to Public Storage after they left with it that day. She didn’t respond. Chase asked Michele why she didn’t leave. He asked her why she didn’t take his calls. “I got high,” Michele said. “I was scared.” Chase asked her why she didn’t accept his offer to drive her anywhere she wanted to go.
“You already do that for me,” Michele said.
The girl in the suite with Michele and Chase is seventeen. She’s from Henderson. She needs the money. She has a baby. She has day-care bills. She helps pay off her stepfather’s gambling debt. She laughs when she says this. The new arrangement is explained and the girl, who was originally hired by Bailey, swears that she will never talk to Bailey again. Michele explains that the new arrangement will be better for everyone: simpler, safer, more profitable. There are four other girls, not including the girl from Henderson, who echoes Michele and agrees that a smaller operation is better. The girl from Henderson keeps taking tiny sips from her soda.
Michele takes a shallow drag off her cigarette. Studying the laptop, she asks the girl from Henderson, “Can you do an eleven? It’s out-call.”
The girl nods and shrugs.
Michele looks at Chase. “Ten-thirty?”
“Ten-thirty,” Chase repeats.
When Chase wakes up it’s a little before ten p.m. Michele is typing a message on her Treo. The girl from Henderson is in the shower. Ten minutes later the girl from Henderson blow-dries her hair. She applies too much eyeliner. She spreads body glitter across her chest and neck. At 10:25 the girl and Michele do two lines of coke off the glass coffee table. They kiss each other on the mouth while Chase watches, his eyes glassy and bloodshot. Chase opens the door for the girl from Henderson.
“Come back after?” Michele asks.
* * *
The week is over. It’s Michele’s last day in the suite. She is pale and patches of acne are breaking out on her chin and forehead. Bailey will not return her calls. Michele wants another week in the suite and she’s willing to pay him for it. Also, Michele and Chase are both considering the same question: what should they do about Rachel, who is here in the suite, flushed and shaking, curled up on the sofa, crying for help, streaks of black mascara smeared down her face. Rachel says she wants to work for Michele. Rachel says that Bailey and Rush put too much pressure on her to take the nasty appointments.
“What do you want me to do?” Michele asks.
Rachel wants to stay with Michele. Rachel wants to work with her again. Rachel wants it to be like it was in the beginning.
“I want to level with you,” Michele says. “It won’t be like that.”
“I don’t care.”
“You can’t stay here.”
“I know you’re doing your own thing and I can totally help.”
“You’re a mess.”
“I have so many cool friends who are totally up for it.”
“Rachel, you’re a mess and I don’t trust you. You shouldn’t even be here.”
“We can get a place. We can get our own place and do it from there.”
“Where? Your brother’s apartment?”
“The apartment’s gone,” Rachel says. “My mother came down to move us out and she took Ronnie to Salt Lake with her. She would have fucking taken me but I disappeared until she left.”
“You should get out of here.”
“I have nowhere to go.”
“What are you going to do, Rachel?”
“I want to go with you.”
Michele seems to be considering this. Chase stands up.
“We’ll get a place,” Rachel says. “Right?”
“And until then?” Michele asks. “Until we find a place?”
Michele looks at Chase before asking Rachel if she can stick around tonight. Rachel nods.
Michele picks up the house phone. She extends her stay in the suite for two more weeks.
The first of the two additional weeks in the suite, Chase is busy. All he does is drive the Strip and 215 and East Charleston and Summerlin Parkway. He takes the girls to houses in the Lakes and Green Valley Ranch and to hotel suites at the Venetian and the Palms. Chase does this without thinking. He takes the money from the girl when she returns to the car. He counts the money out. He slides half of it into his pocket. He takes the girl home or he takes the girl back to the suite if Michele says it’s okay. Chase gives Mi
chele the money after each appointment. Michele gives Chase his cut. They order room service. They schedule more sessions. They respond to calls. They interview girls. Chase takes pictures to keep the Web site fresh. He poses them. He leans them over and with an open hand presses gently on the small of their back where they should arch more. He is not paying attention to his new role. He finds himself watching Rachel. He starts smoking weed again. If he wants to fuck any of them he can. Chase does not care what he does anymore. They are teenagers and he starts to wonder what they taste like.
During the last week in the suite Michele disappears. When Chase finally reaches her she says she’s at the Travelodge on Bonanza. A young girl opens the door when Chase gets there. Chase asks for Michele. The girl lets him in. The girl doesn’t speak. It occurs to him that the girl might have started working for them. Her skin is dark. Her hair is black. It’s neatly combed and falls to her shoulders. She wears a pink T-shirt and low tight jeans. The girl smiles easily. She averts her eyes when Chase asks her if she’s Michele’s cousin because Michele mentioned that her cousin might be moving here from San Salvador. Chase wonders why this girl is in a Travelodge with Michele in the middle of the afternoon. The girl just smiles shyly and then points toward the bed in another room where Michele sits staring at a soap opera. Michele is at the Travelodge on Bonanza trying to clear her head because she’s barely breaking even on the suite and of the five girls working only Aubrey is reliable. Rachel skipped two appointments in one week and each time broke down and apologized to Michele and promised she’d get it together. Michele can’t afford to give up on Rachel because her picture is the reason most men call.
* * *
Chase tries talking to Michele about harmless things. He tells her that Hunter is planning to go to Oregon. He tells her that Hunter is going to stay with his brother who has work for him cutting down trees (Chase does not tell Michele that he has been thinking about joining him). This activates something in her. Michele sits up and reaches for a cigarette. “When you talk to the pirate remind him that he still owes me two thousand dollars.” She says this slowly, her eyes trained on the television. “And I thought the pirate was going to Hawaii. I thought he was going to Hawaii because he wanted to surf.”
“No, it’s Oregon.”
“Oh,” she says, still staring at the television. “I thought it was Hawaii.”
“Michele, are you okay?” Chase asks.
Michele doesn’t answer, just stares blankly at the TV.
“I want to tell you something,” he says. “I drove Rachel last night. Did she tell you?”
Michele’s response comes slowly. “No.”
“She’s setting up her own appointments.”
“I didn’t know.” Her voice is thick and drugged.
“We need to figure this out.”
Michele just nods. “I was thinking we could go to your father’s house,” she says at one point. “We could drive across the desert to California. We could start over there.”
Chase begins to back away from her. She notices.
“Where are you going?”
“Aubrey needs a ride.”
“Oh.”
“Someone’s got to run this thing.”
“We could drive all the way to Malibu.” She pauses. “Would you ever want to do that?” she asks. “With me?”
“He sold it.”
From the driver’s seat of the Mustang Chase watches Hunter leaning against the railing at the edge of the Desert Breeze Skate Park, talking to a girl who is nearly as tall as he is. Thin dark clouds reach across the sky like fingers on a giant hand. Hunter is surrounded by guys riding waves of concrete and girls in tiny shorts and pastel tops. Hunter leans in closer to the girl. When he turns toward the parking lot and pulls his hair back from his face, he is looking directly at Chase sitting alone in the Mustang. Hunter raises a hand and lowers it. He walks over but doesn’t get in the car.
“Are you going tonight?” Hunter asks.
“I don’t know. Are you?”
Hunter sighs. He runs his fingers through his tangled hair. He stares out across the scorched asphalt and says he needs a challenge, though after a pause, he adds that he’ll likely end up at the suite because he always seems to.
“I’ll see you there,” Chase says nonchalantly.
“Where, the suite?” Hunter asks, surprised. “You’re still fucking around with that? Dude, enough.”
“Michele is so out of it she thinks you’re moving to Hawaii,” Chase says as they watch a boy tumble off his skate-board and fall hard onto the concrete. “She says you owe her money.”
Hunter asks Chase to come with him to Oregon.
“Why?”
“We’ll get a place in Eugene. It’s a college town. There’ll be tons of women.”
“Oregon?” Chase asks. “What the fuck would I do in Oregon?” But he realizes that in asking the question he has answered it.
“Come with me, dude, seriously.” Hunter stops when he sees the expression on Chase’s face. It’s hopeless.
“Michele says you owe her two grand,” Chase says.
“So you’re collecting for her now?”
When Hunter sees that the expression on Chase’s face hasn’t changed, he grimly turns away. “She’s killing you and you’re letting her.”
“I’m doing fine.”
“You really think so?”
“I sold three paintings,” Chase lies. “That’s something.”
The girl behind the desk at Bally’s asked Chase how long he’d be staying and since he didn’t know he simply told her a week. She asked him if he had proof that he was eighteen and warned him that she couldn’t give him a room unless he was. Chase was sixteen but his fake ID said he was twenty-one and from Arizona. The girl behind the desk told him it was a pretty bad fake ID but Chase must have looked so tired and worn out that she felt sorry for him. The sympathy turned to flirting and the girl told Chase she could get fired for doing this so don’t trash the room. She asked where he was really from and Chase said Green Valley. She told Chase her cousin lived in Green Valley. Because Chase was from around here the girl gave him a suite for the single-room rate. He was shaky from not eating and needed to lie down. He didn’t want to be alone. He asked her where she went to school because she looked so young. She said UNLV. Chase told her she looked like his sister. The girl blushed, flattered. “She’s dead,” Chase said.
It’s the Fourth of July. It’s the last night. The suite is crowded and dark. Chase has to wait for his eyes to adjust. He looks around for Hunter but can’t find him. The entire room is filled with young girls. Michele is in the bedroom on her cell. When Chase walks in she clicks it shut. Rosa, the dark girl from the Travelodge who turned out to really be Michele’s cousin, sits next to Michele, smoking a cigarette and staring at the laptop. On the screen is a photo of Michele sitting on a chair wearing a sheer black body stocking with her head thrown back. Michele is twenty-one on her Web site. Michele and Chase exchange a look. His expression says: you promised me you would get it together, you promised me that you’d use this night to turn the corner. Most of the girls in the suite know Michele and they say hi as Michele leads Rosa around by the hand. The music has gotten louder and the vibe is less relaxed than when Chase first came in. When Chase spots Bailey from across the room he realizes that everything is pointless and the world is wrecked.
Bailey throws his arm around Chase, drunk, and gestures across the room. “She wanted me to see this. She thought it would intimidate me.” Bailey considers a cluster of girls in the corner. “It’s impressive,” he says. “Let me get your opinion. Right there, her, with the hair—the black chick?” Bailey keeps motioning into the darkness of the party. “Sixteen. Goes to Durango.” Bailey pauses. “What do you think?”
“About what?”
“Would you do her? I mean, I know you’ve had a thing for that.” And then Bailey leans in and says carefully, “By the way, Michele told me what happened and I’m wi
th you.”
“You’re with me on what?” Chase backs away.
“Hey, there’s no way I’m having a kid at twenty-five,” Bailey says. “I’m just saying I’m sorry how that turned out.” Bailey wraps his hand around the back of Chase’s neck. Chase is not afraid of Bailey but the fact that he knows about Julia and their lost child scares him. Bailey keeps asking him about the sixteen-year-old black girl from Durango. “I mean, you’re a good judge. Would you do her?” Chase is tense and when he starts to pull away Bailey tightens his grip.
“I’m actually glad you’re still around,” Bailey says. “Forget all that drama.” Chase feels so weak that he can’t help but let Bailey pull him even closer. “Forget all of it,” Bailey says into Chase’s ear. “You’re still a bud. You’re still my friend. You can stay as long as you want.”
Chase could hear the cold air pouring through the vent over the bed and the muffled hum from the generators and fans below the window, which vibrated when helicopters passed too low. He could hear a maid in the hallway singing to herself in Spanish and the clang of silverware and dishes from room service trays being collected. When someone knocked on his door he just stayed where he’d been frozen for the last hour: on the edge of the bed, elbows on his knees, hands clasped as though in prayer. Whoever knocked always went away. Carly had been dead a week.
Michele came over and spent days in the suite, watching movies and drinking brandy. They promised that they’d take care of each other no matter what happened and they both cried and Michele told him how protective Carly was of her when they ran away. When Michele and Chase fucked she kept her eyes open the entire time. She sat over him and said nothing. She barely moved her hips. She just stared at his face and they stayed like that for a long time until he was able to come and then she collapsed on his chest and he fell asleep crying. When Michele woke him up she said she was scared for him and Chase told her he was scared, too. All Chase wanted to do was wait for the sun to set and drive the Mustang convertible across the desert and listen to the mix tapes Carly had made and read through her old notebooks and the letters she wrote to some guy in the marines she dated who dumped her and all the bad poetry she wrote about drugs and rock stars.
The Delivery Man Page 21