Selling Out

by Amber Lin

  I didn’t move from my seat at the window as she came in and set the tray down. She opened a package of saltines and put them in the canned tomato soup, stirring them around with the spoon. It was sort of sweet, aside from the whole kidnapping-and-forced-prostitution thing. She hadn’t been the one to do them, but she was helping. Or maybe she was just as much a pawn in this as I was, unwilling, unthinking. Sometimes it was easier to pretend not to care. They couldn’t subjugate a carved piece of marble.

  “You eat,” she said.

  I looked out the window. A familiar rhythmic sound started up against the wall behind me. Thump, thump, thump—the sound of a bed frame hitting the wall, the impact of flesh hitting flesh. Henri’s business may be in trouble, but there were still clients who came here to visit with the girls. I watched the men enter the building, heads down. I heard them through the walls. Even in the shitty part of town, hooking was good business. Maybe especially here.

  “Now,” Jade demanded.

  I was a little worried about her. She looked tired, desperate—coming apart at the seams. No matter their collusion, she hated Henri. Working for him must be wearing on her.

  “Come eat,” she said, pleading now. “You look sick.”

  Hmm, maybe that would keep the clients away, if my threats and my vehemence weren’t enough.

  Thump, thump, thump.

  Staring out the window, I spoke softly. “Why, Jade?”

  Agitation rolled off her in waves. “You understand this. Business.”

  “You were the one who sent me after him.”

  “And you failed,” she cried. “You were supposed to save us.”

  A throaty groan came from the other side of the wall, then fell silent.

  “No.” My whole life I had been saving people. I didn’t expect gratitude—they were my sins as much as my accomplishments. But I was done with that. “I can’t save anyone.”

  “You change mind.”

  Jade frowned at me one last time, the wrinkles in her face crowding out her eyes.

  “Henri come today. Don’t give him more reasons to punish you.”

  She turned and left.

  So he was finally coming to deal with the problem child. I continued to stare outside as a car rolled by. A flash of green eyes caught my eye in the window. I started in my seat before realizing they were the eyes of a kid, his nose pressed to the glass.

  A black Escalade pulled into the parking lot across the street. Two men in suits emerged from the front seats, then one, slightly shorter, from the back, his gold-scrolled vest glinting off the sun. Henri.

  I remained in my seat by the window, though I could no longer pretend to be unaffected. My heart raced; my teeth clenched. It was facing down an army, naked and bound. Not a question of pain but how much. No doubt of failure but how far.

  As usual, two men preceded him. They pulled me up from the chair, flanking me on either side. Their fingers were like iron bands cutting into my arms.

  Without looking at me, Henri strolled to the window. He looked out at the pitiful display and snorted.

  “This would never have happened if you had stayed put, you realize.”

  If he blamed me for his turn in fortune, he was delusional…and giving me far more credit than I deserved. Still, it wouldn’t save me. Nothing could, in the face of his wrath.

  He pulled a gun out. With a handkerchief, he wiped the barrel of the weapon. He was a showman, and so was I.

  “Why are you doing this?” My voice shook.

  He looked over at me, his mouth a flat line. “You can do better than that, Shelly.”

  “Please,” I whispered, not knowing whether the plea was real or fake, finally realizing it didn’t matter at all. When I said the words, they became real. When I lived the lie, it became me.

  He pointed the gun at my chest.

  This was it. I swallowed hard. There was no escape, no one to distract him. Nothing at all to barter with. He knew I’d never work for him again. My body was useless to him, my mind hardened against him. My life, forfeit.

  The metal was cold. His eyes were cold. What a mess it would make.

  “Why her?” I whispered.

  “Why you?” he said. “Eat or get eaten. That is the choice we all face. Look at Jade. She was one of you before. The prey. Now she is like me. Predator.”

  But Jade didn’t look like a predator. She looked hunted. There was another way out. Marguerite had done it. She was neither predator nor prey but her own person, one of pride and mercy, and she didn’t conform to Henri’s animal kingdom. She operated outside of it, tearing down its structures with her very presence.

  “You’re wrong,” I said, a little stronger. Because I could be like her, even here, facing death. Circumstances would batter me, but they wouldn’t break me.

  As if to prove me right, he told the men, “Let her go.”

  I was sure I hadn’t heard him right, until they did. Both men released me, and I wobbled on my feet.

  Henri held the gun out in the flat of his palm. “Take it.”

  My gaze slid to the guys beside me. They looked as confused as I felt, but they knew better than to question him. Unlike me.

  “Why?” I challenged. “So you’ll have an excuse to kill me? So you can say it was in self-defense?”

  “I don’t need an excuse to kill you,” he said gently, as if explaining it to a child. “I’m giving you the chance to become the predator. Take it,” he repeated.

  Gingerly, I picked up the gun. Though I was hardly well practiced, my hands fell into the proper arrangement. Right fist around the base. Left hand pointed down. Only put your finger on the trigger when you’re ready to shoot.

  I aimed it at Henri’s heart, finger on the trigger. The men beside me tensed. If I killed Henri, they would kill me. For some insane reason, he had put his life in my hands, but he had second-strike capabilities here. If he went down, so did I, and in that way, our fortunes were still tied together.

  My hands were shaking. Marguerite wanted me to do this. So did Jade. Why did it fall to me? I wasn’t strong enough. They had made a mistake putting their trust in me.

  My finger tightened on the trigger. I pulled. A loud bang. The recoil.

  Henri smiled. “Good girl.”

  Relief claimed me. A blank. It had been a blank, and Henri wasn’t dead. It was perverse to wish him well, but he had already turned me into a prostitute. It was a relief that he hadn’t also turned me into a murderer.

  It didn’t hurt that I also got to live.

  Henri took the gun from my limp fingers. He turned it back to my forehead and shot—one, two, three. All blanks, though the sound was real and terrifying. Each shot sent a puff of hot air from the barrel to the center of my forehead.

  I slid to the ground, a boneless, breathless puddle.

  “Now that we both understand each other, we can talk.” He sat down across from me, resting one ankle over his knee. There was an uncomfortable silence before he finally spoke. “Jade tells me you refuse to work. She says you haven’t been eating.”

  I closed my eyes, struggling to gather myself. So this would be a face-off with words instead of bullets. At least this was a game I could play. “I’m not hungry.”

  “You’re too skinny,” he observed.

  “That’s my exit strategy. I’m going to stab you with my hip bone when you rape me.”

  “I like this. It shows you still have spirit.”

  “Since when are you concerned with my spirit?”

  “Always, Shelly. I do not sell lifeless bodies. The clients do not come here to rape an unwilling woman. Well, most of them do not. That is not your value to me. They pay for you because of how you look and how you act. For who you are.”

  I couldn’t help it. I laughed. “They don’t know who I am. Neither do you.”

  “Not completely. That is part of the mystery. But there is something there; that much we can tell. It drives us to learn more. The men who pay five hundred dollars to sleep wit
h you do not want a wet cunt to slide into, Shelly. They want a chance to understand what is inside you. They fail, and so they come back again and again.”

  “Hmm.” He didn’t look high, but I wasn’t ruling it out.

  “I am telling you this because right now you are not worth anything to me. You are dead like this.”

  “So, this was all an explanation for why you’re going to kill me?” As if I could follow the twisty sex logic and agree with him: yes, yes, I’m better off dead.

  He made a frustrated sound. “I do not want you dead. I do not want to break your spirit either.”

  I was doubtful.

  “I have never tried to do that. I have never raped you either, have I?”

  “You haven’t,” I agreed cautiously. That didn’t mean he couldn’t start. Certainly, holding me captive was not promising.

  “I want to make a deal with you. You work for me. You don’t die. In return, I will call off the cops on the girl.”

  I blinked. Claire.

  “Well?” he asked, eyebrow raised.

  “I guess…I want to say yes. I just want to know why. Why did you do it?”

  “You know why. Those men threatened to tell everyone what had happened. My girls attacked them, stole from them. And maybe worst of all, left without delivering the goods. I would have been ruined. I didn’t like the way they spoke to me. I sent some men over to take care of it. I blamed it on you, and the cops could run you to ground, where I’d be waiting.”

  “It was pretty diabolical,” I admitted.

  “Thank you. It would have worked, except word had already gotten out. Fucking social media. Combined with the news and the fact that my top girl had gone missing, clients started going elsewhere. Once that happened, I had cash-flow problems.”

  I felt a little like some sort of criminal therapist, listening to his sob story. How does that make you feel? I should ask. Instead I prompted, “So, the girl.”

  “There are two things I want. One, for you to work for me again. And two, for that bitch of a girl dead. But I will settle for the first one.”

  “Why did you take her at all?” I asked.

  His eyes looked into the distance—into the past. “Everyone makes mistakes. Old ones that haunt you.” He came back to himself. “I am not going to explain myself to a hooker. Take the deal or no.”

  So much for all that shit about my elusive spirit. “I’ll take it.”

  “Good. Your first client will arrive tonight.” He stood, shaking out the crease in his slacks. “That means you must eat.” He turned back at the door. “And Shelly, if you do not obey me…I will track her down myself.” An enigmatic smile lit his face.

  Something unsavory roiled in my gut, and I hadn’t even eaten the soup yet. After he left, I forced myself to eat. Two days of not eating and an entire bowl of soup left my stomach distended and sore, but I finished it as a show of obedience. It was a good deal, and one I hadn’t been expecting. I had assumed I wouldn’t be able to help Claire from here, at his mercy, with no leverage at all. Now I had a chance to save her, and all I had to do was the same job I had done for years.

  I wasn’t sure if I could. I had resigned myself to death, to rape. But consensual paid sex?

  Unbearable.

  There was a mirror each prostitute must wear. A man thought he was using me? No, I was using him. His physical impulses, his money. He was the one being manipulated. A woman looked down on me? No, I looked down on her. She spread her legs for free. She was the cheap one. The mirror was a shield, and mine was gone, shattered by a few brief hours of true happiness, of real sex, of realizing that the only person I was tricking was myself.

  But I had to do it, for Claire. For myself, because this was the goal I had set, to protect her as no one had done for me.

  I watched from the window as Henri and a few other men walked to the black Escalade across the street and took off. The door opened, and I turned, expecting Jade. Instead it was Jenny, from the hotel suite party that day. I sucked in a breath of surprise and relief. “You’re alive.”

  She glanced down the hallway and then crept inside. Her step was unsteady, pupils dilated. I wondered if she’d been the one I’d heard through the wall, getting banged. I wondered if she had even felt it, as high as she probably was, though it was for the best if she couldn’t.

  “I can’t stay long,” she mumbled. “I have an appointment.”

  I held her hand. It was shaking. “What is it?”

  “I heard what Henri told you. Don’t believe him.”

  A sick feeling turned my stomach. Of course it would be foolhardy to trust someone like Henri, but in this position, I didn’t really have a choice. “Why not?” I managed.

  “That’s the same deal he made with me.” She shuddered. “My…my boyfriend stole money from him, too much to pay back. Henri promised he would forget his debts if I agreed to work for him.”

  I could guess where this story led. “And?”

  “And he shot him, right in front of me. I’ve been hooking for him ever since.”

  * * * *

  I kept the tomato soup down, but barely. When dinner came, I almost threw up from the smell of grilled chicken alone. Jade relented and took it away. I showered and shaved and put on makeup that came standard with each room. The same garish colors for every girl, the same skimpy clothes. I dressed with a lacy black bra and matching thigh-high stockings, a black silk sheath and high heels. Rituals I had done countless times, but they didn’t steady my mind this time.

  They didn’t numb me.

  A silver Jaguar parked in the lot across the street, conspicuous in its luxury. Men had streamed in and out all day long for other women. But I suspected this one was for me. If Henri was going to make a deal like that, he must have lined up some heavy hitters. I would be his road back to the top, the star of the show, motherfucking Winnie-the-Pooh.

  A man dressed in all black crossed the street with long strides. I waited, imagining him stepping inside the darkened door, paying Jade at the front desk, being escorted up the stairs. I imagined his wife waiting for him at home, wondering why their sex life sucked. Or maybe she was relieved.

  Footsteps approached down the hallway.

  “This one,” I heard Jade say through the door, and then it opened.

  A man. Of course it was a man, but it took me a second to recognize him out of context, as he was wearing a sleek business suit. I barely stopped myself from saying his name.

  Major.

  Jade must have caught the recognition in my eyes. “You know him?”

  I forced myself to shrug. “An old friend.”

  At least it felt like a million years ago. I felt older too, or maybe just wiser.

  She knew I meant client, but her eyes narrowed. This was my first client since my kidnapping, after all. If I screamed rape, they’d have a hell of a time keeping it quiet. At some point, they couldn’t kill every client who talked shit about them. It was bad for business.

  We kept to our roles, though. Major with raw lust in his eyes. Me bored and mildly fearful. We must have been convincing, because Jade nodded and shut the door.

  I opened my mouth to speak, but he gave a short shake of his head, then glanced at the door. Jade was listening.

  Rising, I went to take his jacket. Before I reached him, he shrugged it off and handed it to me. I took it from him, feeling the weight and shape of a gun wrapped inside.

  I raised my eyebrows. What’s this?

  He raised his back in unspoken challenge.

  Okay, then. As I laid his jacket on the side table, I slipped the gun underneath the seat cushion.

  “How much time do we have?” I asked in my usual voice. It was a customer question to ask at the beginning.

  “Thirty minutes.”

  Oh, how the mighty had fallen. Once, my time had been sold by the evening. Hourly rates were available, of course. But half hour? I was a little offended. I guess a soul was worth something after all.

 
Major’s expression was hard; his eyes glinted. Jade would have interpreted that as lust, or good old-fashioned cruelty. I knew it as tension. He was nervous, which meant I was nervous too. He glanced at the bed, then turned away and sat down in the chair Henri had used. I sat across from him.

  “What… ” I tried to think of something innocuous, something I would ask as an escort when all I really wanted to do was pin him to the ground and ask him if he’d heard anything in the news. “What would you like to do tonight?”

  “See, I have this problem.”

  “You do?”

  “I don’t want to come too soon.”

  “Oh.” I made a face that I hoped was sympathetic, even though it amused me that he was using premature ejaculation as a code. He and I were cut from the same cloth.

  “Right.” Humor danced in his eyes. “You understand how it would be, with those urges to finish quickly. But sometimes I think it’s better to go slow. Don’t you agree?”

  “However you want to do it,” I forced out.

  “How accommodating,” he said, his expression sardonic. “I don’t like the girl to come too quickly either. In fact, not at all while I’m here, you understand? If you need to go, you do it after I leave.”

  “Okay.” I drew out the word, not quite sure what he meant.

  “Right after I leave.”

  “Oh.”

  He stood and wandered over to the window, looking outside. He tapped lightly on the windowpane, seemingly casual. “I think it’ll be a shattering climax.”

  It took me a second to register. He wanted me to jump out the window. Right after he left.

  Oh hell, no. I shook my head frantically. “You know, I don’t think I’m a shattering climax kind of girl.”

  He smiled wolfishly. “Tonight you will be. You’ll go just the way I came.”

  I followed his line of sight to the Jaguar in the parking lot. I understood the plan, such as it were. I should jump out the window and head for his car. But God, this was a horrible idea. The only thing more horrible than doing it was not doing it.

  “Now come to the bed, sweets. I paid a lot for my time, and I intend to walk away satisfied.”

  After thirty minutes of moaning for me and two hundred and forty push-ups for Major, we were ready. Jade came and knocked at the door to bring him back down. He was sweaty and panting, clothes askew. I was armed with a few more directions he’d been able to squeeze out during exhales.