The guy beneath me finished his Budweiser, tossed back a shot and said, “Let’s go.” Shoving me off his lap, he took my elbow and led me to the men’s room, inside the stench of urine made my eyes water. Booger, as I’d heard him called at the bar, unzipped his pants then reached for mine.
“Get the fuck away from me,” I said.
He wrapped his hand around my neck and held me against the wall. “A feisty one,” he laughed and slipped his other hand into the waistband of my jeans.
I brought up my knee fast and made contact with his thigh, missing my mark.
“Cut the shit, bitch,” he said and landed a right hook against my stomach.
I vomited the two whiskeys I’d just downed onto his forearm. They dripped from the sleeve of his flannel shirt onto the floor.
“Jesus Christ,” he said letting go of me and walking toward the sink.
I leaned against the wall for a minute to catch my breath. My vision was blurry from a lack of oxygen, whiskey or both, but I could still see the tiny window above the urinal and wondered if there was a similar one in the ladies room and if I could fit through. “I have to go to the bathroom,” I said.
He nodded toward the urinal. “Go ahead.”
“I want to go to the ladies room.”
“Ladies.” He scoffed at the word then nodded toward the door while he rinsed the vomit from his sleeve. “Get the fuck outta here. But don’t think I’m done with you. You got a lesson comin’ before the nights over. I’m gettin’ my money’s worth.”
I slipped past him. Inside the ladies room Kira and a girl I didn’t know were peeing. Stroke of luck, I thought. I stood on the toilet and checked the window. Locked of course.
“Are you really that stupid?” the girl asked. “You think they haven’t thought of that? Even if it was unlocked Myles is outside patrolling.” She laughed and disappeared out the door.
“I’m breaking this and we’re getting out,” I said to Kira.
“She’s right. Someone will hear us.”
“Not over the music. And Myles can’t cover the whole building at once. This is our chance and we’re taking it.”
“We can’t fit.”
She was no more than a hundred and ten pounds and I wasn’t much more than that. The window was about twelve inches high and eighteen wide. I took off my sneaker, slid my hand inside it and punched the window as hard as I could. Glass shattered and splintered around my arm. I pulled back through, a thin line of blood appeared on my forearm. I drove my shoe into the glass again, widening the opening. I glanced at Kira, she was pale and breathing in short gasps.
“Hurry,” she said.
After punching out as much of the glass as I could, I slipped my shoe back on and stepped up onto the back of the toilet. I reached both arms through first then my head and shoulders. I reached for something to hold onto, but my hands kept coming up empty. Digging my elbows into the frozen ground I pulled myself through. Jagged glass on the edge of the window ripped through my t-shirt and into my stomach. Adrenaline drove me. I was almost all the way out tasting freedom when something solid connected with the side of my head and everything went black.
TUESDAY
I could hear the women’s voices. Julia and Louise. I listened for Kira. They were speaking too softly, their words indiscernible. It was dark as pitch, not even a shadow. I felt the mattress beneath me and realized I was home and then cursed myself for calling it that. Something touched the side of my head. It was then I realized my eyes were closed. I turned. Mistake. Pain streaked through my skull, radiating into my neck and shoulders.
“Don’t move.” It was Julia’s voice.
I tried to form a word, just one…Kira. I wanted to know if she was okay, but my mouth would not oblige.
“Shh,” Julia said. “Don’t talk.”
Something touched my head again. This time I didn’t move. It was cold. Ice wrapped in a cloth. The women’s voices were slipping away. I gripped at the mattress trying to keep myself present, but the room fell from my grasp.
When I woke again it was quiet. This time my right eye cooperated and I could see the dim light shining in the corner of the basement. I turned my head toward it and rolled my body to follow immediately regretting the movement. Nausea enveloped me and I swallowed the acid in my mouth. For once I was glad I hadn’t eaten. The room was empty. It must be night, the girls at work.
I went over the details that I could remember, but there wasn’t much. The frozen ground, the shards of glass against my stomach and then nothing. I ran my palm beneath my shirt and felt the torn skin below my ribs. Something sharp was embedded above my hipbone. I winced as I pulled it free and held it up in front of my face. A piece of glass a half-inch long. I studied it considering its value as a weapon against them…or myself. I slipped it into the pocket of my jeans. I woke sometime later to the girls returning, their feet were heavy on the wooden stairs. I stirred and Julia knelt beside me peering into my face.
“You’re awake?”
I started to nod, thought the better of it and whispered, “Yes.”
“I wasn’t sure you would still be with us,” she said lying beside me. “Thought he might have killed you.”
“Who?”
“Myles. The butt of his rifle, he almost drove it right through your head. I thought you were dead when he threw you into the van.”
“Kira?”
“Sold.”
The room closed in. I forced back the scream that rose in my throat and waited until I could breathe. “To who?”
She shrugged. “Who knows? He and Myles brought you both back here that night. Clive threw you down here and kept Kira upstairs. Haven’t seen her since. That was two nights ago. You’ve been fading in and out.”
“Did he kill her?”
“I doubt it. She was worth too much to kill. I’m sure he sold her.”
I closed my eyes, too devastated to speak. I’d had her and I’d let her slip away. Now we were both missing, two of the millions of lost girls. I thought of Amy and hoped Griff hadn’t told her anything. It would kill her to know what was going on. My big plan to be a hero had failed on all counts.
WEDNESDAY
The next morning when the bakery bag hit the floor I was able to open both of my eyes…progress. Julia handed me a bagel and I struggled into a sitting position. My head throbbed with every bite, but I hadn’t eaten in days and hunger outweighed the pain of chewing. I’d just swallowed the last of it when the door at the top of the stairs opened and Clive came halfway down.
“You,” he said pointing at me. “Come upstairs.”
“Shit,” Julia breathed beside me. “He’s gonna make you pay.”
I stood hunched over keeping one hand on my thigh for stability and worked my way over the mattresses and across the room to the stairs feeling like a sheep on its way to slaughter. Crawling up the stairs doggy style, I straightened at the top and followed Clive down the hall into a living room strewn with empty bottles and overflowing ashtrays. Myles sat in a chair with a bottle of Smirnoff’s between his legs. He laughed when he looked at me. I hadn’t seen my face since he’d hit me with the butt of his rifle and didn’t want to. Before I’d made it to the center of the room, Clive planted his boot in my stomach, driving me back toward the doorway. I hit the wall and sank to the floor gasping.
“I told you, my girls don’t leave.” He lifted me by the front of my shirt twirled me around and shoved me backward into the room.
I fell in front of Myles who drove the pointed toe of his boot into my chest with enough force to lay me on my back. Clive leaned down and grabbed the neck of my shirt, pulling me to my feet. Once I was standing, he punched me in the stomach. Blood filled my mouth and I spit it onto his rug.
“Clean that up, you whore,” he said and kicked my feet out from under me so I landed hard on my butt. Pain shot through my head. He knelt beside me, put his palm on the back of my skull and ground my face into the carpet where I’d spit the blood.
A towel landed on the floor beside me. “Wipe up the mess you made,” he said.
I reached out with one hand and rubbed the towel in the vomit. Smearing it over the rug.
“Jesus. You’re worthless. Get up.” He wrapped his hand around my upper arm and pulled me to standing then shoved me toward the hallway and back to the door that led to the basement.
As he turned the knob, I lifted my hand and raised one finger asking him to stop a moment.
He laughed. “You want to speak? Go ahead, if you can.”
I looked at him and he waited. I pulled together any strength I had left to form the words. “Why didn’t you kill me?”
He smiled and leaned close to my face. “Because you’re gonna make me some money first.” Then he lifted his boot placed it against my stomach and sent me somersaulting down the steps.
When I hit the bottom I didn’t move. I couldn’t. I stayed there curled in a ball feeling lucky. I used to think luck meant hitting the lottery or avoiding the flu. Now luck meant, not raped, not dead.
I maneuvered myself into a sitting position, propped up by the basement wall. The others looked at me. Julia started to get up, but I raised my hand to stop her. Sitting here was as much as I could do at least for a while.
I let my hand fall to the floor beside me. It landed on something scratchy. I took it in my fingers and lifted the thing to see what it was. A bag, the bakery bag, empty of course, but across it in blue letters, Campbell’s and beneath it, Grand Falls, New Brunswick. Why hadn’t I thought to look at it before? Or had it not been there? Had Clive switched shops? It didn’t matter. None of it mattered. It was there now. Tears came to my eyes. I knew where I was. Now I just needed a way to tell Griff.
SUNDAY
Three days passed without Clive pointing at me to shower and get ready for work. But by the fourth day the side of my head had decreased in size according to Julia, and my face looked almost normal except for the yellow and purple skin beneath my eyes. My head still throbbed and my vision was blurry in my right eye, the remnants of a concussion, no doubt. But I could breathe again. The cuts on my stomach from the shattered window were healing and I still had the sliver of glass in my pocket should I feel the need to add new ones. Just knowing I had the ability to do so was comfort enough.
Clive descended the stairway and this time, after singling out Louise and Julia, he pointed to me. “Shower time,” he said. When we reached the door to the bathroom he nodded to the shirt I was wearing, a shredded mess of blood and vomit. “Give me that,” he said.
I hesitated.
“Now.”
I slipped it off and let it drop to the floor.
He kicked my filthy t-shirt into the corner of the hallway, handed me the bag he’d been carrying and nodded me into the bathroom. “Hurry up,” he said, then lit a cigarette and sat in the wooden chair outside the door.
When Louise was finished Julia looked at me. “Go ahead,” she said.
I stepped into the shower stall and closed my eyes reveling in the sensation. Water rained down on my skin, cleansing the stench of dried blood and erasing the fingerprints of my trespassers. The curtain pushed aside and Julia stepped in behind me. She didn’t speak. She rubbed soap on a cloth and washed my back and then my hair. I hadn’t felt kindness in so long that it crushed my guard. I fell against her and let her hold me. Neither of us spoke.
“Hurry up,” Clive pounded his fist against the door.
We dried and dressed quickly. My new blouse was a pink and blue floral design with buttons down the front and sheer enough that I longed for something, anything to put beneath it. We followed Clive back to the basement and waited while the others showered. Then we drove the same route we had the last time I’d been in the van, a long twisting stretch through darkness. The leaf less limbs of the trees reached across the road like arthritic fingers. Myles was again in the passenger seat, a rifle across his knees. He laughed when I stepped inside the van.
“Gonna behave this time?” he asked.
I’m not the religious type. I never even talked to God as a kid. Not even on those nights when Amy and I were alone. I figured if God knew everything then He sure as hell knew what Amy and I were dealing with and He should have stepped in and done something without waiting for an eight year old to ask. So why I was praying now, inside this van and why I thought He’d hear me now if He hadn’t then, I wasn’t sure. But I couldn’t handle another set of hands on me or another dick with a dick. I was losing clarity of the fact that I was on a job and I was not one of these girls.
When we pulled into Rusty’s a dozen or more cars were in the lot. I hoped Booger wouldn’t be there. I hoped nobody would find me attractive. My face still advertised the leftovers of a beating. I told myself that no one would want me so I could convince my legs to hold me up as I walked from the van to the building. Inside, I slipped away from the others as they walked to the middle of the room for the men to appraise them. I sidled up to an empty stool at the edge of the bar and hoped to blend in. The bartender noticed, but didn’t say anything instead he poured Jack Daniels three fingers high into a dirty glass and set it in front of me. At first I thought he was being kind, but then he leaned in close and his stale beer breath hit my face. “I’ll take a break soon and you and me are goin’ out back.”
I swallowed the JD in two gulps. He filled my glass again and winked. “You ain’t no cheap date,” he said.
Two men bellied up at the other end of the bar. “Hey Rusty,” one of them yelled. “I’m thirsty. Get you tired, old ass down here.”
Rusty cackled and winked again. “Don’t you go nowhere, sweetheart, old Rusty’s gonna take care of you and visy-versy.” He cackled again and moved toward the two men.
In front of me on the bar was a small, yellow pencil, the kind they give you when you play miniature golf. Rusty was still at the other end, shooting the shit with the two draft beer guys. I reached for the pencil, my heart beating a hole in my chest and waited for Myles or Clive to grab me from behind. I wrapped my hand around the pencil, slid it back to me and into my pocket. Nothing. I exhaled.
The door beside me swung open and I jumped. Two uniformed police stepped inside and surveyed the room. I almost started to cry. We were saved. I was just about to slide off my stool when Rusty was back in front of me. “Well, well, well, Officer Jarvais, where the hell you been?”
The cop stepped up beside me. He was fortyish and needed a shave. The veins in his nose said he liked to drink. “Enjoying yourself this evening?” he asked me.
I nodded. His breath smelled like ham and cheese.
“Give me what she’s having,” he said and tipped his head toward my glass.
Julia appeared on my right. “Michael,” she said.
His eyes lit up. “Julia, I didn’t see you when I came in.”
He took his drink from the bar then Julia’s elbow and together they walked toward the darkened hallway that led to the bathrooms.
I looked for the other cop and saw that he hadn’t moved from his stance just inside the door. He was young, so young he looked more like a kid on Halloween wearing his dad’s uniform than a real cop. I pegged him for a rookie just out of the academy, clean-shaven, fair complexion, scared and uncomfortable. Maybe…I thought.
“I got an empty seat,” I called to him.
He looked my way. “No thank you ma’am. I’m fine right here.”
They had to be on the take, at least Jarvais was, that much was obvious and this kid was getting his initiation into life as a small town cop. Free booze and sex and in return the cops looked the other way when it came to doing business at Rusty’s. Or they partook in it like Jarvais. This kid was learning the ropes and not too happy about it from the look on his face.
I slid off my stool and walked up close to him. I had to take a chance. “Please,” I whispered, r
unning my hand over his crotch to make it look good to anyone who might be watching. “I don’t want anything. I need help.” I took him by the hand and pulled him toward the bar. “C’mon, what’s one drink?”
He followed me, his confusion obvious.
“What’s your name kid?” Rusty asked.
“Marshall,” he said. “Officer Marshall.”
“Well then, Officer Marshall, what’ll it be?” Rusty set a small, white cocktail napkin in front of the cop and my mouth dropped open. There it was again…luck.
“Just a Coke,” he said.
Rusty laughed. “Ain’t nobody drinkin’ just a Coke in my establishment. He filled a glass half full with Coke and topped it off with Myer’s Rum then set it in front of the kid and moved away to another customer.
I put my hand on Officer Marshall’s thigh.
“Don’t,” he said.
I nuzzled his neck. “I’m going to give you a number and you better call it. And you better not say a fucking word to anyone, not your partner, not anyone. I’m not one of them.”
He looked at me, confused and lifted his drink pretending to take a sip.
I slipped the napkin into my lap and glanced down the bar for Rusty. He was at the other end filling glasses. Behind him, in the mirror I could see Clive. He was sitting with his profile to me and I prayed one more time that he wouldn’t look my way. I slipped the pencil from my pocket, wrote Griff’s cell number on it and Rusty’s Bar, Grand Falls, New Brunswick. Then I crumpled it into my palm and shoved my hand into the cop’s crotch. When he reached to stop me, I slipped the napkin into his hand. Our eyes met and for the first time I could see that he understood. I leaned into his neck again. “Please,” I whispered.
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