I sighed and stood, gathering the dirty plates while Mimi wept. Mimi had always been the emotional one, just like Mom. Mom spent most of her life crying. Over men, over bills, over her children’s failures. That’s why, when I was just ten years old, Mom told me in secret, “If either of you girls becomes something, it will be you, Melissa. Mimi—she’s a beautiful, wonderful girl, and I love her more than anything—but she also has weaknesses, like me. She lets others’ opinions of her hold her down. But you, Lissa…you’ll fly off one day. You’ll just spread your wings and take off, and I fear Mimi and I will never hear from you again.” She had laughed, her eyes filled with glittering teardrops. “Think of me when you’re out exploring the world and making something of yourself, all right? Remember what I taught you.”
I stopped in the middle of the kitchen, a surge of rage rising inside of me, more anger than I’d felt since Mom’s death. My hands shook, and before I could even evaluate my reaction, I raised my arms and threw down the plates so hard that they smashed against the linoleum. Several pieces skittered all the way across the room, sliding under the refrigerator and cabinets. I raised a foot and stomped on the larger pieces. I wanted to hear that crack they made when they shattered, wanted to hurt something so much. I wanted to feel like Ezekiel—powerful, invincible. I only wished the plates could bleed, could scream, could beg me for mercy. I wished they had children, parents, families. I wished their fates rested with me, because that would make me important. It would make me feel in control.
“Melissa? Melissa, what was…?”
Before Mimi could get there, I was already out of the kitchen and running out the door, barely acknowledging the bodyguard sitting on the stairs, waiting for me. He didn’t even ask as I took the stairs two at a time. He just followed. And it made me feel better, this minion who had to do my bidding. It didn’t even matter that they weren’t my orders, but Ezekiel’s. As long as it seemed like he was my bodyguard. That was all I needed.
“Where to?” he asked once I slid into the car. I hadn’t even waited for him to open my door.
“The Ralston penthouse,” I muttered. I reached up to wipe away the tears I knew had to be there. But there were none, and I almost laughed.
I was in control. Always in control.
Chapter 35
We didn’t drive directly to the Ralston penthouse, though. When we were just a few blocks away from Mimi’s house, I ordered my bodyguard to turn around and take me to my old workplace. I wanted to pay them a visit while I had an excuse to stay in Metro all night.
I stayed there for a few hours, talking and exchanging current Metro news. Only one tidbit was good—Susan, a thirty-five-year-old waitress-turned-hooker was getting married and giving up the profession to raise the daughter she was expecting in four months. All the other gossip involved cheating boyfriends, abuse, or robbery.
As the night grew later, and the work busier, Katelyn, a girl about my age who started working after I left, strode in wearing a lime green dress with a white faux fur coat. “Did you guys hear?”
“What?” I asked. Katelyn did a double take, unable to recognize me. I only knew who she was from what others had told me about her, and from the picture on the wall. All the girls had a picture on the wall. It was so customers had a choice if they wanted it. Plus, she had a discernible thick Metro accent that all my girls liked to joke about.
Katelyn slapped a newspaper on the counter. “So I was gettin’ cigarettes and a bottle of Fredrico to hold me over ‘til tommorra mornin’, and was talkin’ with this guy at the counter. ‘Parently, some guy was murdered, some big shot guy who was workin’ for the…” She trailed off as her eyes settled on my bodyguard, who stood just outside smoking a cigarette. “Who’s that guy?”
“Who was he working for?” Beth asked, re-applying her lipstick.
Katelyn shook her head. “We ain’t sure, ‘course, but we think he mighta been in cahoots with Blade.”
“Blade?” That got my attention. “Are you saying Blade killed him?”
Katelyn shrugged. “Who knows anythin’? These boys go out and get themselves blown up, and who the fuck knows why, ya?” She pulled a tube of lipstick out of her bra and approached a mirror. “I just stay out of their way and live my life.”
I nodded. Katelyn and her accent came from North Metro, arguably the most dangerous part of town. I didn’t know many people who talked like her; I tried to stay as far away from North Metro as I could. The southern part, where Mimi and I once lived, was known to be the safest due to its proximity to downtown.
The door suddenly slammed open, and a very disoriented Cordelia stumbled in. Even Beth, the hardest to surprise, stood and stared in shock. Cordelia did not look good. She’d lost significant weight and her hair looked like it hadn’t been washed in weeks. Her eyes were bloodshot, and there were bruises covering her shoulders. Despite the chilly night, she wore nothing but a bra and a pair of ripped jeans.
“My God, Cordelia!” Beth blurted.
“Melissa!” Cordelia’s jaw swung open, and her hands reached for me. “Melissa, you’re here! I thought I’d never see you again!”
I rushed forward before she could collapse, which seemed inevitable in her condition. She threw her arms around me and slumped when I took ahold of her, sobbing into my chest.
“What—what’s wrong?” I asked her, unsure if I even wanted to know.
“What isn’t wrong with her?” Beth suddenly snapped. “Goddamnit, Cordelia! You’re nothing but a dumb-ass!”
“Hey.” I shot a look at Beth. “Can’t you see she’s not in a condition to be yelled at?”
“Don’t tell me about her condition,” Beth barked. “She comes stumbling in here like that once every few weeks. I’m sick of it. She’s the only one to blame for her ‘condition,’ and I ain’t takin’ her bullshit answers for why she’s so fucked up.”
“Shut up,” Cordelia whimpered, squeezing me tighter. “Please shut up.”
“No!” Beth pointed a quivering finger at her viciously. “You get out of here. You’re not welcome here anymore! All you do is bring your little drug dealer pimps with you, and they give us all guff we don’t need. So go on. Get out. Leave us proper working girls in peace!”
I frowned. “Beth.”
“It’s true.” Katelyn was smoking now. “She brings all these men in wit’ her, and then they hassle us, wantin’ us to work for them. I don’t need no man selling my body for me, thank you very much.”
“Have all of you forgotten? Cordelia is—or at least was—one of us.” I hugged her tightly when she whimpered. “You all consider me a part of this group, and yet I haven’t worked here in months.”
“You aren’t bringing lowlifes through here, making our jobs harder,” Rosa growled.
“You think Cordelia wants to be like this? This isn’t her fault.”
Beth laughed cruelly. “Not her fault? It was her who agreed to work for a pimp. She was tellin’ us all we were suckers for not doing the same. But look at her. They ruined her. I bet they don’t even pay you any more, do they, Cordelia? I bet they just shoot you full of drugs and then let their customers loose on you.”
Cordelia’s whimpering became full-blown bawling as tears soaked her face. Her grip on me shook, but never let go.
“Come on, Cordelia,” I whispered, pulling her out of the shop and onto the street. Cordelia threw herself off me, grabbing onto a lamppost and crying hysterically. I didn’t know what to do, so I stood and watched her. My bodyguard looked on curiously, but he didn’t say anything, either.
“I-I-I want t-to die,” Cordelia gasped, on her knees now. “Melissa, please. Just kill me. Please, kill me.”
“Cord—”
She turned around, glaring up at me. Despite the hopelessness in her eyes, there was some rage there, too. I knew she wasn’t angry with me, but it still felt like I had failed her. The truth was, I’d forgotten about her. I was so consumed by my position with Ezekiel that Cordelia’s problems rarely
entered my mind.
“Look at you,” she muttered, trying to pull herself to a stand by climbing the lamppost. “Look at you, dressed in your fancy clothes with your perfect hair. You’re a goddamn princess.”
I stared at her sadly.
“I bet he treats you like a fucking queen, doesn’t he?”
“Hey,” my bodyguard began, but I held up a hand and shot him a look that said, I can handle this.
“Cordelia, tell me how I can help you.”
“Oh, right, I’m sure!” She blurted out a fake laugh. “I’m sure you can help me with all your money and your finery and your big shot boyfriend. It’s too late now, Melissa. It’s too late for your charity. I’m ruined. I’m dead. I’m done. There’s nothing you can do now.”
“I’m sure there is. Do you need a place to stay? If it’s a pimp you’re afraid of—”
“I ain’t afraid of shit. All that could happen to me already has.”
“Yogi told me you were going to work for a pimp, but that wasn’t long ago. How could this happen so fast?”
“I’ve been working for a pimp for a while now.” Cordelia swayed when she finally got to a stand. “I just didn’t tell Yogi. She’s as bad as you are. Always so put together, knows exactly what she wants. A goddamn tranny is less confused about herself than I am. How fucking pathetic.”
I decided that now was not the time to correct her use of tranny. “What are you on right now? Street dust? Something stronger?”
“I don’t know.” Cordelia smiled humorlessly. “That’s what’s so…funny. I never know what I’m on. I’m on whatever some guy gives me. It makes it all so much easier. It makes me forget things. Makes pain so far away.”
“Are you on Blue Kitten, Cordelia?”
“I told you, I don’t know! God, are you a fucking moron?”
I took a step toward her. “Cordelia, come back with me. Please? I’ll get you help. A bed to sleep in. You won’t have to worry about your pimp. You’ll be totally safe—”
“I don’t need you! Don’t you understand? I don’t need charity. I’m going to die. I’m trash. That’s what trash does. It lies in the gutter and,”—she clumsily kicked a plastic bottle, but it only skittered a few inches—“rots into nothing.”
“That’s not you talking. That’s the drugs talking.”
“I am the drugs. There is no difference between the drugs and me. Without them, I’m just dead.” Her face collapsed, and she shuffled over to me. Without warning, she fell to her knees and wrapped both of her arms around my legs, digging her face into my thighs. “I want to die.”
I slowly put my hands in her hair. I remembered when its shine and texture made her proud. Tears rose in my eyes as I watched her tremble and cry. I had failed her. Just like I had failed Mimi, and just like I had failed my mother. Even now, with all this money at my disposal, I was still helpless. If money couldn’t fix my problems, what could? What else was there?
“I loved you so much,” Cordelia whimpered, eyes clenched shut. “You were my best girl.”
“Still am,” I whispered, smoothing her hair back as she stared up at me imploringly. “I’m still your best girl.”
“I love you. I always have.”
I didn’t know what to say to that, so I stayed quiet.
“I would have done anything for you. I kept messing up, I know. All I ever wanted was to make you happy. Be the person who could—who could make you feel like—like an angel.”
“Cordelia, you aren’t making any sense.”
“I love you! Not like a girlfriend. Like—like a lover.”
I stopped touching her hair and pulled away from her, shaking my head.
“Don’t! Please don’t walk away from me! Melissa!”
“What do you want me to say to you, Cordelia?”
“Tell me you love me back.”
“I can’t.”
Cordelia started crying again, the anger gone. She was still on her knees, looking pathetic. I wanted to help her, but I didn’t know how.
“You always told me how you don’t trust men, so I hoped…”
“That doesn’t mean I love women!” I shot back at her.
“But…”
“It doesn’t work like that, Cordelia, and you know that. Disliking one thing doesn’t make you love another.” I shook my head, rubbing my face with a hand. “Why didn’t you ever tell me you were a lesbian?”
“I thought… I thought that one day…”
“What? You thought I’d catch on and we’d ride off into the sunset or something?”
Cordelia bowed her head, sobbing harder. She slumped, putting her hands on the sidewalk. Now she began to wail, and it made it that much harder to keep from lying to her, just to get her to stop. Sure, I was a lesbian, why not? Wouldn’t that be great? To never have to worry about another man’s hands on me, to not crave the day I’d find one who actually loved me. Love would be as easy as finding a woman like me and moving in together.
I almost started laughing because it was never easy. Cordelia was proving that.
“Why? Why don’t you love me?” Cordelia cried.
“You know why.”
“You just said you did!”
“Not the way you want me to.”
“Men won’t ever love you!” She pointed a shaking finger at me. “Never! They won’t ever see you as anything but a—but a cheap whore! That’s just w-what th-they do and—” But she wasn’t able to finish. She was falling apart again, her upper lip wet with snot and her eyes so swollen they almost looked bruised.
I walked back up to her and stood over her. When she looked up, I leaned down closer and whispered, “You think you could do a better job right now, Cordelia?”
Cordelia stared up at me with her big, wet, dark eyes, her lips trembling. We held gazes for about ten seconds before more tears leaked out, sliding down her cheeks in thin rivulets. Then she shook her head.
I held out my hand. “Come with me, Cordelia. I’ll get you cleaned up.”
Just as Cordelia’s hand fell into my palm, there was a squeal of tires. A car with thumping bass pulled up by the curb and two men leapt out, both wearing leather jackets and ragged jeans. One looked all too familiar.
“Who the fuck you think you are?” shouted the unfamiliar greasy guy with a ponytail. He strode right up to Cordelia as if I weren’t there, grabbed a handful of her hair, and yanked her back to face him. “Who the fuck you think you are, you little slut?”
Then he slapped her, and she began to shriek again. Without thinking, I shoved him back.
“Who the fuck you think you are?” I snapped as he reeled in shock. “Big man you are, huh, beating up on a tiny, drugged-up girl?”
My bodyguard grabbed my arm and pulled me back, as if expecting an altercation. Just when he began to put himself between Cordelia’s abuser and me, a much calmer voice said, “Well, if it isn’t Melissa Thatcher.”
I looked up at Blade, lounging against a defunct parking meter with a gun in his hand and a cigarette in his mouth. His eyes lingered on my body with no concern to propriety. “You clean up nice.”
“Shut up.”
“Sure is a pretty dress for this neighborhood. You got some rich boyfriend or what?”
He didn’t know. He didn’t know about Ezekiel. My girls knew, but they certainly wouldn’t take the time to tell Blade about it.
“This him?” Blade pointed to my bodyguard. “Nice suit, man. Though I gotta admit, you sure are a dumb-ass for wearing it around here. Not the best part of the city to be boasting wealth, if you know what I mean.”
“We should go,” my bodyguard insisted under his breath.
I ignored him, because I couldn’t resist shooting back, “None of your business, Blade. You let go of Cordelia.”
Blade turned to his ponytailed friend. “What do you think, Jericho? You need the whore or what?”
“She has a name,” I growled. “Use it.”
Blade walked closer, shoving his gun into his
belt and pulling his cigarette out of his mouth to blow a plume of smoke toward me. I’d forgotten how tall and big he really was. But I refused to back off. For once in my life, I didn’t need to be afraid of him. I had a highly trained bodyguard who showed no signs of intimidation. Even if Blade did manage to kill me, Ezekiel would find out and hunt Blade down like a bloodhound. And he’d kill Blade in the grisliest way possible.
It would be a small service to the world, even though I died,
“You a tough girl, Melissa? Huh?”
“Tougher than you. At least I don’t need a gun to shake up a scared prostitute.”
Blade chuckled, then spit to the side. I heard the saliva splat just to the right of my designer pumps.
“Wow, you grew some claws since you stopped coming around. Where’d you get the bravado from, huh? Your new man? He teach you to be such a tiger?”
“No, but he told me how to sniff out a coward.”
“I’d be careful who you’re calling a coward.” He hadn’t shaved in a few days, so he looked even more unkempt than usual as he leaned toward me.
“Leave Cordelia alone.”
Blade tried to step closer. My bodyguard angled his body between us. With a sneer at him, Blade said, “No.”
My sense of hopelessness climbed higher. “She’s not useful to you anymore, Blade, and you know it.” I wasn’t exactly sure when Blade started pimping. Maybe he was simply helping out his gross friend. Either way, it made me sick to think I’d ever slept with him. “Just let her go.”
“Sometimes really desperate men will pay a few bucks to fuck her.”
“Yeah, well, you also have to pay to put drugs into her, so I don’t think you’re coming out even.”
Blade turned to Jericho. “Hey, man, it seems Melissa has better business sense than we do. ‘Mazing, isn’t it?”
Jericho just smirked.
“What are you gonna do if I don’t let her go, huh? Stomp that foot and bitch to your little man friend here?”
I didn’t think Ezekiel would care about taking revenge for me, especially if it was in the interest of a destroyed, drug-riddled prostitute. So I didn’t even think of using Ezekiel as a threat. “Do it for me, Blade. I meant something to you, once, didn’t I?”
The King and the Courtesan Page 28