by Casey Plett
“Raina! Girl!” said Wendy. Wendy said girl at very particular moments. Raina’d stayed in Manitoba for three years to hang onto her place in the surgery pipeline. “That’s wonderful!”
“I’m very, very relieved,” Raina said shyly.
“I’ll have your bed and meals ready when you get back,” chirped Wendy. “I’ll have movies ready, and I’ll wash your fuckin’ dilators, don’t worry about a thing.”
“You’re a sweetheart.”
“And you’re about to be inducted into the Vagina-of-the-Month Club!”
Raina laughed. “That doesn’t make—oh, stop.”
Then Wendy’s phone rang. It was Lila.
“Hello?”
“I need you to help me,” Lila sobbed.
She stopped and motioned to Raina. “Oh no. Lila, what’s up?”
“I was driving a call for Sophie,” Lila heaved. “She never said if the call was good. It’s been an hour, and her phone’s going straight to voicemail. I’m still outside the hotel.”
“Oh shit—okay,” said Wendy. “Wait, Sophie’s working. You mean working-working.”
“Yeah.”
Wendy shook off the surprise. “Okay. Alright. Wait, you drove her? She has a car …”
“It’s in the shop,” Lila said. “Or sometimes her mom needs it. I don’t know.”
“I—” Wendy was disoriented. “Okay. So did you try the door for the room she went to? You want someone to go with you? I can come there. Where are you?”
“I didn’t get the room number.”
A dread that Wendy hadn’t felt for a long time flushed through her.
“What do you mean, you didn’t get the room number?” Wendy said quietly.
“I don’t know, man! She was in such a bad mood!” said Lila. “I asked what’s the room number, like, I said, what’s the room number but then she was shutting the door and she just left—”
“But why wouldn’t you make sure,” Wendy’s voice rose steadily. “Why wouldn’t you make sure you knew what the room number was, Lila?”
“I don’t know! I don’t fucking know. I’m sorry. I don’t know. I’m sorry.”
“Fuck,” Wendy said. “Okay, let’s think.”
“I texted her right after, but she didn’t respond.”
“Stop it.”
“I’m sorry, Wendy, I’m a piece of shit.”
“We’re going to figure this out,” said Wendy. She thought of how her dad would speak. “Apologies and worrying won’t help, you hear me? They won’t do anything. So we’ll figure it out. Is the phone going straight to voicemail?”
“I’m sorry I’m a fucking piece of shit!” said Lila.
“Stop it.”
“I’m sorry!”
“Shut! Up!” said Wendy. She put her hand to her face. “I’m sorry.”
Raina’d been silent, watching Wendy, her face stony.
“Where are you?” mumbled Wendy. “You outside the hotel?”
“Yeah, I’m in my car.” Lila told them where she was.
“Girl? Listen, we’re close to you. We’re by the Ledge. Wait there. You can’t do anything in the next few minutes anyway. Wait in your car, we’ll come there.”
“Her phone’s going straight to voicemail, man, I don’t know.”
“It’s cold. Why don’t you wait in your car? You get warm,” said Wendy. She didn’t realize she was repeating herself.
“Okay,” said Lila. “Who are you with, who else is coming?”
“Lila. You’re not stupid, kid,” said Wendy.
“I’m not a kid, and I am stupid,” snapped Lila.
“Girl? Take a breath.”
“Just hurry.”
Lila was in her car with the heat blasting, looking wrecked and normal as could be.
“You still haven’t heard from her,” said Raina, getting into the front seat.
“No,” said Lila. “Nothing.”
“Was she drunk?” Wendy asked.
“She just seemed unhappy. I don’t know if she was drunk. She misspelled her text—that was weird.”
“I’ve never seen her misspell anything,” said Raina.
“I bet you dollars to fucking donuts she was drunk,” said Wendy. “That girl drinks. Like, she drinks. She might be sleeping it off in the guy’s room. She might be too hammered to call you.”
“Maybe,” Lila said moodily.
“I know you’re scared, girl,” Wendy said. “I know you’re scared, but nightmares don’t happen as often as you think. In this business. I’ll bet you her phone’s dead, and she’s just sleeping in a big bed up there. Or maybe she’s in the bar. She’s probably in the fucking bar. Did you check there?”
“Yes. She’s not there.”
“Hm.”
Wendy put her hand to her face. “Hate fuckin’ asking this … has she ever done jib? With calls? Have you seen her doing jib? Like, at all.”
“I don’t think so.”
“You sure?”
“No,” said Lila distractedly.
“Uh-huh.”
“Could we talk to the hotel people,” muttered Raina. “Find out which room she went into? Cameras, maybe.”
“They won’t do it,” said Lila.
“No?”
“I went to the front desk guy. I thought I’d pretend she was on this blind online sex date, right? Like, hey, my friend was gonna text me when she got to the place, but she didn’t give me the room number and she never called me and I’m worried about her, and do you have, like, cameras maybe? Could I maybe see if she came in and maybe which room she went into or something? The guy just fuckin’ laughed. Ass motherfucker! He told me to go home. He had this big fuckin’ smile on his face! He kept saying, go home.”
“That was a good idea,” Wendy said.
Lila didn’t respond. “My phone’s about to die,” she said after a silence.
“Where’s your charger?” Raina said.
“At home. I can’t plug it in. What if she calls—I can’t let my phone die!”
“You should charge your phone,” said Raina instantly. “I know you want to stay. But you should charge your phone.”
“I’ll stay,” said Wendy, picking up Raina’s signal. “You two go charge your phone and get warmed up.”
Lila turned around. “But what if she comes out? I can’t have her come out without someone here.”
This hotel has other exits, Wendy thought, but said nothing.
“I’ll stay outside,” she said. “My coat’s warm.”
“It’s cold out,” Lila said. “But okay. See you.”
Wendy stood outside the front doors. Air was leaking in through her scarf and up her sleeves. She was so, so cold. She looked up and down Portage. She walked into the hotel. Two exits in the back, one of them an emergency exit and one not. She got a text from Raina:
You know that besides police there’s nothing we can do anymore.
Wendy clutched her face and leaned into the wall. She paced up and down the block, keeping an eye on the front doors. Then she went through a back alley—had Lila walked around here?
She saw a dumpster.
She swallowed and looked inside.
Garbage.
A street guy was watching her. Wendy nodded hello. The guy looked at her hard. Wendy said, “You see a very tall girl come through here at all tonight?” Described her. The guy looked at her hard again. Shook his head. Wendy stared at him. The guy stared back. Wendy slunk off down the alley, the only sound her boots on the ice. She checked another Dumpster.
Wendy turned down the next street over. A multi-level parking lot on her left. She went in. The light was bright white and yellow. Two neon-jacketed attendants, both male, inside a glass compartment. They turned to look at Wendy, and she nodded and raised a hand. A few cars in the lot—
There was a coat on the ground.
She knelt down. It was faux-fur, beige, with toggles. Wendy’d never seen Sophie wear a coat like this—but it was big, and Sophie’
s usual winter coat was frumpy and worn, and this was a little sexier, so …
Wendy took off a glove and pressed her hand to the coat. It wasn’t cold.
She put her glove back on, then her hands inside the coat to warm them and think about this.
“What are you after?” said one of the attendants, suddenly towering over her.
“Did you see a girl come through here?”
“No.”
“She stole my coat.” Wendy adjusted her lopsided toque. “This is my coat.”
“You have a coat,” said the attendant.
Wendy glared. “This is my friend’s,” she said slowly, “that I’m wearing. I just borrowed it. I couldn’t come out here without a coat on, could I?”
“Okay.” He didn’t move.
“Neither of you saw anybody?” she said, loud enough for the other attendant to hear. “Neither of you saw a girl come through here? Red hair, pretty tall?”
The other attendant laughed. “She wasn’t here.”
“So—no?” Wendy was starting to lose it.
“No.” They were both snickering. “You got a boyfriend maybe? Native guy? ’Cause he came running through earlier. Boy, he was worried about something. He was having a bad night. That your boyfriend?”
It took Wendy a moment to realize they meant Lila.
“You sure it wasn’t him?” They looked like they were having the time of their lives saying this to her. “He was tall. He was upset. Bad night for him. But it looks like you got your coat. So you can go now.”
Wendy stood there for a beat. She wanted to lunge at them. Her brain fused. “’Bye.”
Wendy paced for almost an hour in the end. Raina texted periodically:
Lila’s phone is charged. I think she is doing better. Be back very soon. We are Facebooking with some other friends.
No one has seen her. Still worried.
Her phone’s still going to voicemail.
They returned, and Wendy bundled into Lila’s car, shivering herself warm, her cheeks like splattered tomatoes.
At first no one spoke. Then Raina said flatly, “Well, we can call the police and tell them what we know, which is almost nothing, and then they are involved and have her name. And ours. And it could be extremely, extremely bad for every one of us, including her. Or, we can wait till morning and see if she turns up. And I don’t want to do that either. I am also not sure either of these choices will do more for Sophie than the other.”
“It’s been three hours since she went in there,” said Wendy. “Right? I have that right?”
“We checked Backpage in case she reposted her ad,” said Raina. “But no.”
“That wouldn’t matter,” said Wendy. “You can set that automatically.”
“Oh.”
Wendy was shaking. “I don’t fuckin’ know. Is there anywhere else she would have gone? Somewhere around here if she got out with no phone?”
“Club 200?” suggested Raina.
“She met a trick at 200 once,” Lila said.
“We’ll check there. We can ask. It’s a thing we can do,” said Wendy.
They drove over, and Wendy ran in. Red and white circles of light hit her face. Dozens of people, boys in undershirts and girls with sidecuts.
Wendy recognized: A straight guy, looking drunk, standing at the VLTs (had he been a client back in the day? maybe); a sweet trans guy couple who, for a while, regularly had Wendy over for dinner; a twink she’d been drunk with a thousand times at bars like this and never seen anywhere else. None of them knew who Sophie was. The bartenders knew Sophie but said she hadn’t been in. Maybe they didn’t notice, though, they said. It’d been busy.
Through every part of the bar Wendy pushed, wanting to physically turn the back of every head of short red hair. There were so many strangers and old familiar faces, but no Sophie, and so few people who even knew who Sophie was, knew her name—
For fuck’s sake.
“Hey!” she poked her dad, spinning on the dance floor.
“Kid!” said Ben. He put an arm around her. He was wearing a suit, his nice one, black and pinstriped in silver. The DJ was playing a sped-up remix of Sia. It was almost last call. He was drunk.
She was speechless. Then she screamed, “What are you doing here!?”
“I love partying with fags!” he bellowed. “You know that! You met my friend Brian? You gotta meet my friend Brian!”
“I gotta go. Sorry!”
They went back to the hotel and sat with the car running. The snow plows would come around soon.
“Maybe there’s a different person at the desk now? It’s probably the best chance we have,” Raina said.
“Yeah,” said Lila.
They sat in silence for a minute. Then Lila said, “Wendy, you should go, hey?”
“I should?” said Wendy. “You’ll know if it’s the same guy or not.”
“You’re a white girl, Wendy,” said Raina.
“Right. Sorry. Got it.”
Wendy tried the same thing Lila had on the man behind the desk, a tall tanned blond guy who looked like his parents owned the place. She recounted her story, eyes pleading and voice wispy and afraid. The man chuckled. “Yeah. We can’t do that. You realize, you understand. We can’t do that. I don’t even have access to the cameras, okay? Look, I’m sure your friend’s fine. If you really think I should call the police, I will, but I’d sure hate to have to do that. Do you want me to call the police?”
Back in the car, Wendy said, “We have to just go in there and start fuckin’ banging on doors.”
Lila was already getting out of the car. “Raina, wait here.”
But the elevator wouldn’t open without a room keycard, and the guy at the front desk saw them and kicked them out. “If you come back in here again,” he said, looking at Lila, not making eye contact with Wendy, his voice wavering and darting like he was on coke or trying not to look scared, “I’m just going to call the cops! If you come back. Okay? Your choice!”
“What can we do?” said Wendy, back in the car.
Eventually Lila said, “I guess I can take you home.”
Raina and Wendy went into the house and up the stairs and stood in the kitchen looking blank.
“Are you going to sleep?” said Wendy.
“Yes,” said Raina. “I still have my shift tomorrow. Unfortunately.”
“I’ll keep my phone on and charged. I’ll try to keep calling her.”
“Okay, dear,” she said. “You know Lila is too, though, yes?”
“Yes, I know she said that.”
Raina shuddered and drummed her fingers on the wall. “Is there anything more we—”
“What, what could we have—what?” screeched Wendy.
“Yes. Okay. Let’s just—” Raina shook her head violently. “I’m going to pray this is better in the morning.” She started up the stairs to the third floor. Her raven-coloured hair shone black against the stair light. “It’s three in the morning, Wendy.” She went up, and Wendy looked at the wall on the landing.
Only then she realized: The coat. She had brought it in without even thinking to ask Lila. She texted her immediately but didn’t get a reply.
Wendy curled up on the bed, rounding herself into a husk and clenching her skin.
After half an hour, Lila called.
“She’s here. We’re at my house.”
“Oh my fucking God thank fuck what happened?”
Lila whispered into the mouthpiece, “Hold on.” Wendy heard her walk into another room.
“It’s fucked, man. When she got to his room, he took her phone away. And he was huge and drunk and wouldn’t let her leave. So, thank fuck, he eventually fell asleep, then she ran over here. She just got out.”
“Oh my God—how’s she doing?”
“Scared. She says she’d never been so scared in her whole life. She’s fine. Like, physically. I mean, she said he was rough—but, like, she doesn’t need to go to the hospital or anything. Is what I’m saying.�
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“Can I do anything?” Wendy said, dazed.
“We’re just having a beer,” said Lila. “Girl’s probably gonna sleep soon. She’s staying over. She’s jittery, but I think she wants to sleep.”
“Okay. Hey, Lila, was she wearing her coat?”
“What?”
“Was she wearing her coat? Her coat you picked her up in.”
“The grey one. Yeah. Why?”
“No reason. Okay. Tell her I love her.”
“Okay.”
“I—I’ll tell Raina all’s good when she wakes up.”
“I gotta get back to her.”
“Okay. ’Bye.”
Wendy curled herself into the bed again, tense with the years of doom and helplessness that she kept quarantined belched up through her like a backed-up drain. She thought of her feet soundlessly running up the stairs and past Raina’s door through the third-floor living-room window; she could easily and silently open the window, then back up and sail headfirst out into the sky with enough force so that when she landed—run run run run up the stairs go do it DO IT GO NOW—
She snaked a hand out from under the covers for her whisky and drank. She drank and drank and drank—though not wildly. Really, she never drank wildly. The gulps hit her stomach with a sludgy thud and flowed out from her centre like lava. Glug, breathe, glug, breathe, and she did this until she stopped, stopped, stopped, stopped, stopped.
13
Wendy woke up at noon. She had a day off. Outside the kitchen window, kids across the street played in red and purple snowsuits looking like multi-coloured stars.
She texted Lila and Sophie. No response.
She made her bed for once. She did all the dishes in the kitchen. She added Feeney’s to the coffee. One of the quiet cis girl roommates was listening to CBC again.
Upright at her desk, she scrolled through the Internet on her computer. Nothing from Sophie or Lila there either. Facebook said: What’s on your mind, Wendy?
Wendy put on her boots and coat and walked south. She went down to the river and sat and stared at the ice. A family in matching orange Michelin-man snow jackets skated down toward the Forks. There were beer cans in the sticks of bushes.