BABY FOR A PRICE: Marino Crime Family

by Kathryn Thomas

  “Are you going to take that stripping job?” he asks quietly, as we get dressed.

  If he’d told me not to take it, or if there was any judgment in his voice, my anger would return, flaring with the extra fuel of him ruining a moment beneath it. But the question is curious, his voice too tired for accusation. The sex changed me, I reflect again as I pull my hoodie over my head. I don’t answer, and soon all the girls are out in the lobby, milling around in the after audition party. None of the other girls are dressed.

  Jack Michaels doesn’t look pleased that I am.

  “So, Daisy, did you find it, maybe I should say, fun, but after all, does work have to be fun?”

  He’s tipsy, close to drunk, his eyes scanning the ass of every girl who enters his peripheral vision.

  “No,” I answer honestly. “I didn’t. I’m going to have to refuse the job, Jack.”

  “I haven’t even offered you the job.” He flashes a shaky grin. “So it’s not really in your power to refuse anything, is it?” He shakes his head slowly, sadly. “You try to offer them a chance…”

  Hound, from the other side of the room, smiles secretly at me. I smile back, feeling we’ve crossed a threshold.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Hound

  For the next two months, Daisy and I throw ourselves into this fake marriage game. We visit houses every time she has a day off, sometimes visiting two or three a day, as summer deepens and then begins to wane, as the first hints of autumn make the Texan air just that little bit cooler, that little bit more tolerable.

  “I don’t know if having so many bedrooms is that important,” she says near the beginning, sitting in the jeep, looking sexy and beautiful even in her T-shirt and jeans, sexier and more beautiful than she does in her Shack uniform, in a way. “People get five bedrooms, six bedrooms, and for what? Huge walk-in closets, I guess…” She pauses, her forehead creasing. Her forest-green eyes get this playful look in them, and when she smiles, I can’t help but smile back. “Okay, maybe a walk-in closet would be pretty awesome.”

  Or a library, I think but don’t say. A library with bookshelves stretching to the ceiling, so many books on it that the shelves make squeaking noises when you remove one, each book battered and well-read, a desk on one side of the room with a large wooden chair and a stack of papers. A place where a man can go to think and study without feeling a fool. But I keep it to myself. I haven’t looked at my course website, and I’m dodging my tutor’s calls.

  “What do you want? I mean, all this time, you must’ve had something in mind, right?” She asks this another time, another weekend.

  “Just a place where I can feel…” I cut short, shaking my head.

  “What?” She reaches across and places her hand on my knee. She knows how that makes me less guarded. She must know.

  “I…” Then I tell her, without meaning to. “When I was fifteen years old, a burglar broke into our house and my dad got in his way. My dad wasn’t a weak man, but this burglar was quicker and had a baseball bat, cracked my dad across the head and was about to cave in his skull, it looked like. I was huge, even at fifteen, at least six two, and still growing. So I charged at this man and lifted him over my head and threw him into the wall. Just threw him into that wall and then helped my dad to his feet. Well, after that, my dad was impressed, so he pulled me out of school and put me to work collecting for his business, the same old illegal shit thousands of people are into. So I went to work. I was happy about it, back then. Proud, you know. Felt like a bigshot. And then Mom left, and Dad got himself killed, and Mac took me in, and…” I cut myself off. “None of that matters. The point is this. I just want to live somewhere I don’t have to feel like an attack dog.”

  That conversation terrified me more than any conversation has a right to. Without Daisy even asking me, I offered up the most well-guarded secrets of myself. I tell myself I’ll be more careful from now on, but one night we go to her apartment and lie in her bed and she tells me about how she used to wake up early just so she could watch her mom get ready for work, how she used to love the outfits, and the sense of purpose, and the way her mom would look flustered but in control. When she tells me this, I find myself talking about the one and only time I went up to California to see my mom, uninvited. How I stood at the steps of her stock broker husband’s house, how I rang a bell that echoed through what sounded like a series of caverns, and how when Mom came to the door, she hissed at me to go back to Texas and slammed it in my face. Daisy kisses me, tells me it’s okay. Weakening, both of us. “I never usually talk about this stuff,” she tells me. I tell her usually doesn’t even factor into it for me; I never have, never planned to.

  “When I was nineteen,” she says one evening, talking quietly into the darkness as we both lie in bed, “I went to my dad and I told him I wanted to go back to school. I was scared he was going to say no, but honestly, when he said yes I was even more scared, because that meant I had to try and make it a reality. And I did. I really tried. I looked into online courses and night courses. I even booked a couple. But the day it came time to pay, Dad was at my door, telling me about his good friend and how he’d played a few hands of poker with his good friend and how now his good friend needed the money back. I deleted my account on the online course website. I ignored the calls from the night course place. I paid him. I didn’t look back. At least, I tried not to.”

  “What were you going to do?” I ask her, reaching across the bed and laying my hand on her shoulder.

  “You know? It’s odd. I can’t even remember now.”

  Then there’s Dean, a constant elephant in the room. I know that Daisy is looking for him on her own. I know that she’s paid a private investigator. And I’m still trying to find him through Denton. But more and more, I’m starting to believe that he’s dead. It doesn’t make sense that a man like Dean could just disappear so that experts can’t find him. He isn’t trained military, he isn’t an enforcer or a boss or anything like that, he doesn’t have huge reserves of cash. “He’s lying at the bottom of a pit somewhere, man, but if you wanna keep payin’ me, keep payin’ me.” Denton tells me something similar every time I visit him. At first, I told him to just keep looking. Now, I don’t say anything. I know he’ll keep looking and I know he’ll find nothing. Words aren’t necessary. But I think Daisy believes me when I tell her I haven’t done anything to him. Mac, though…Mac is angrier and more distant every time he calls me in for a meeting. He sends me on more jobs than he used to, sometimes two or three a day. More than once I have to call Daisy and cancel because I barely have time to wash the blood from my hands before going out and getting some more.

  But today none of that matters. Today, we’re looking at another house. For me it’s becoming less and less about the houses—though I still want one and intend to buy one—and more and more about just being with Daisy. The fake marriage charade never truly comes alive until we’re at a house, with the smiling face of the realtor bringing out the performance in Daisy. And it is mostly Daisy who comes alive. I play the role of reserved husband; Daisy brings life to the room.

  The realtor is a heavyset lady with thick purple-framed glasses wearing a body-hugging turquoise dress, walking with surprising skill in six-inch turquoise heels. Her name is Miss Stone and I think it’s pretty fitting. She smiles, laughs, but there’s a fake, lifeless air about her. She leads us around the house with a professional, no-nonsense attitude, perhaps hoping to intimidate us. But I know better than that. If Daisy and I ever go to a house and there’s a problem, Daisy picks it out right away. Sometimes she tells the realtor like she did that first time. Sometimes she just tells me and we go on our way.

  “So, have you been married long?” Miss Stone asks.

  We’re in the kitchen of a four-bedroom house that is like something out of one of my daydreams. As I walk around, I mentally put up bookshelves, mentally place desks, before remembering that I’m done with all that.

  “We thought it would be better wi
th a baby on the way!” Daisy exclaims, doing her fake-marriage giggle, reserved for realtors. She places her hand on her belly, her baggy T-shirt crumpling under it.

  She’s never taken the lie this way before and for a second it throws me sideways. Why would she take it here? Maybe she’s getting bored of the plain-old fake marriage story and wants to spice it up a bit.

  “A baby. How wonderful.” Miss Stone smiles.

  “We think so, don’t we, dear?” Daisy turns to me, smiling. There’s something off about the smile. Is she shaking?

  “Yes,” I say, making sure to keep my face fake-husband composed. When we walk through this door, I stop being Hound and I become Henry, respectable Henry Roscoe, a man who sells advertising space in newspapers and websites, a man with a respectable, if boring, job, who works hard and plays by every rule society has ever set. Respectable Henry Roscoe would never even go five miles per hour over the speeding limit. “We are very happy.”

  “A child is always a blessing,” Miss Stone says.

  “Oh, a blessing, what a wonderful word!” Daisy cries, her voice loud in the close confines of the bathroom. Even the bathroom is incredible, with a marble bathtub and decorated in a nautical style, with shells and things like that. The sort of place you can’t imagine taking a dump, but still, I’m sure I’d get over that. “Yes, we do feel blessed, don’t we, my sweet husband?”

  She’s laying it on a bit thick, even for the fake marriage routine. Of all the times we’ve done this now, this is the most melodramatic she’s been.

  “Yes,” I’m forced to say, when Miss Stone turns her stony eyes to me. “I feel very blessed.”

  “I was really shocked at first,” Daisy goes on, looking at me as much as at the house or Miss Stone. “I was terrified, in fact. I was so, so scared. You know, I just walked around and around in a circle like a dog chasing my tail!” She winces, as though aware she’s talking very fast, but then goes on anyway, apparently unable to stop herself. But it’s still the character she’s playing, I remind myself. Isn’t it? “I mean, how are you supposed to react to news like that, in this day and age? When everything is so difficult for everybody. I’m not saying my life is as hard as somebody’s in, like, a third world country or anything. I’d never say that. But with all the money, and the stress, and the…Wow, what a lovely study this would make!” She enters the room, twirling in a circle, and then begins pointing all over the place. “Just imagine, Hou—Henry, just imagine what we could do with this. A desk here.” Pointing. “Maybe a blackboard here if we want to jot anything down. Wouldn’t a blackboard be funny?” Pointing. “Some nice blinds for the window, so the sun can still come in but doesn’t blind us.” Pointing. “Imagine, a cot over there, so the baby can sit in with us when we’re studying!”

  She turns her shaky gaze to me.

  I nod. “Sure, it would be lovely.”

  Miss Stone looks between us, trying to figure out what’s going on. I resist the urge to shrug. I have no idea, I want to tell her.

  Once we’ve done a tour of the entire house, Daisy turns to Miss Stone and says, “We’d like a few minutes alone, please.”

  Miss Stone nods stiffly and walks out the front door, leaving me and Daisy in the lobby.

  “What do you think?” she asks.

  “About the house?”

  “Yes! About the house!”

  Is she drunk? I’ve seen Daisy drunk a couple of times these past few weeks, but usually she just gets sleepy and chilled out. Is she on something else? I’ve seen enough speed-heads in my line of work to recognize it when I see it. I don’t think Daisy’s on it—she just seems fuller of energy than anything else—but the fact that I’m not sure freaks me out.

  “I love it,” I tell her honestly. “It’s easily the best house we’ve visited.”

  “It is, isn’t it?” She walks into the living room. “Just look at this place. I love how it’s not all made-up, already preened and pruned and made pretty. I’d hate that.”

  Following her, I say, “Where did that pregnancy story come from, Daisy? You were playing it pretty straight, but you’ve never brought it up before.”

  And then I remember how a few days ago we were at her apartment and I was sipping whisky and she only drank lemonade. A thought enters my head, but it scares the hell out of me and so I push it deep, far down, and focus on Daisy instead.

  “Well…sure…” She watches me vaguely, and then sweeps into the kitchen. That’s what it’s like: sweeping, twirling, dancing away and forcing me to follow her. “I’m not much of a cook. I’ll be the first to admit that. But I can imagine just giving it a go in here. I’d have my cookbook propped up there, and I’d have my chopping board here, and…” She turns back to me, a shy smile on her face, the smile that drove me crazy about her to begin with. “Do you think I’m taking this a little too seriously?”

  “No.” I wrap my arms around her. She’s hot to the touch. “You can take it as seriously as you want. What is it, Daisy?”

  “What do you mean?” She speaks into my chest.

  “You know what I mean. You’re acting weird.”

  “Says the seven-foot giant!” She steps away from me, looking like she might shout, but then softens. “I don’t even know what that means. My head’s all over the place this week. I’m such an idiot…”

  “What are you talking about?”

  She lays her hand on the belly of her T-shirt, her baggy T-shirt. “Isn’t it obvious?”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Daisy

  I remember going to the store muttering under my breath, “Are you serious? Are you going to be one of those women who poops out a kid and has no idea how it happened?” I remember tearing open two separate pregnancy tests, peeing on both of them, and then looking down at the positive signs and going out to the store to get two more. I remember sitting in the doctor’s office to get confirmation. Five days late until it occurred to me…And then, this morning, I remember sitting up in bed whilst Hound was sleeping (we spend a few nights together a week, now) concocting this crazy plan to pretend to be pregnant, to make it all seem like part of the plan, just to see how Hound reacted. But as the day wore on, as I sat silently in the jeep and went over what I would say, I guess the nervous excitement became too much. Until we were in the house and I started dancing around like some broken weathercock.

  “What do you mean?” he says, squinting at me like I’ve just spoken Latin. “What are you trying to say?”

  I stroke my belly. I just want him to guess. Whenever I have something I want to say to somebody, like the time I told Dad I wanted to start studying again, I always just want them to read my mind so I don’t have to actually say it. The saying it part is the problem, the part when you have to form the words on your lips and listen to them come out of your mouth, the part where you have to turn what has before existed only in your head into something real. “Hound, really?”

  He shakes his head. I get the sense he’s purposefully not saying; I think he knows, but doesn’t want to be the one to say it.

  I sigh, closing my eyes, summoning my courage. “I’m pregnant,” I say, opening my eyes. “I’m pregnant with your baby, Hound. I’ve been wanting to tell you for days, but I didn’t know how. And then I got this crazy idea to—”

  My cellphone starts blaring from my pocket. I want to ignore it, but these past two months I haven’t missed a single cellphone call, even at work. It could be about Dad.

  When I answer the phone, I’m surprised for two reasons. Firstly, it’s Sarah’s voice coming from the speaker. Secondly, she doesn’t sound gloating, or mean, or snide. She sounds quiet and solemn and even respectful.

  “Hi, Daisy,” she says. No nickname. “I…err…well, I’m the only person here who can make this call, really. Marsha’s off sick today.” She pauses, and then adds: “I’m not happy about it.”

  I’m being fired. Goddamn it. I find out I’m pregnant and I’m being fired. But then, if I’m pregnant, I won’t be able to wor
k at The Lady Shack anyway. Oh, they make a big deal about “allowing for all kinds of lifestyles” but I’ve never seen a pregnant woman in tiny shorts with her belly bulging out of her Shack tank top. The eerie thought that somehow Steven found out about my pregnancy comes to me. I shouldn’t have worn a baggy T-shirt. Stupid, I’m not showing yet. Steve spied me, somehow, somewhere, and now…But none of this is true and I know it. My mind is spinning to try and make what Sarah just said not true. “Daisy? Daisy? Are you there? Are you okay?”

  She said: “Your dad’s here, Daisy. He’s beat up really bad. He can hardly talk. I don’t know what happened to him. He mumbled something. Steve thinks he said he was attacked. I don’t know who by. I don’t know, well…There’s an ambulance on the way. Daisy? Daisy?”

  Fire fills my head, burning on my tongue, the fire of two months spent with the man who had something to do with hurting my father. I’ve been an idiot. I’ve been an over-trusting idiot. I’ve been an absolute moron. I think of all the times Hound and I have had sex over these past two months—I can’t think of it as making love, not now—and the anger makes it so thinking is difficult. My head aches with it. My pulsing temples feel like they might burst from my skin. I hang up the phone and stare at Hound. The change in my expression must be shocking. He takes a step back, looking at me uncertainly.