by Anne Conley
Not today. There were already too many words weighing her down.
Chapter 19
From the Houston Chronicle: December, 1994
Editorial: Local Star Quarterback a hero after uncovering a sex-slave operation
Local high school student, eighteen-year-old Adam Bookenhaven was at a party Friday night, when he heard about a “surprise” upstairs for members of the football team. The party was a celebration thrown by a fellow teammates’ father, Rusty McClemmons, for their spectacular state win.
What will send McClemmons to jail though, was not only providing alcohol to the team members and their under-aged friends, but also the “surprise,” a fifteen-year-old girl. The girl, who will remain nameless, as she is a minor, was “rented” by McClemmons for the night to entertain the football team and tied to furniture in the master bedroom.
When Bookenhaven arrived at the room for “his turn,” he realized what was happening and untied the girl, bringing her home with him before calling the police. After investigating, the police discovered the girl was part of a prostitution ring led by Douglas Manning, who insists on being called The Man. The fifteen-year-old’s prior arrest record indicates she’s been prostituting herself for Manning for at least four years, apparently against her will.
This forced prostitution is a form of human slavery, the likes of which is akin to something seen in movies, not real life. Federal laws have been enacted against it since 1910; however, that was more against the kidnapping aspect, as the sexual servitude part is too taboo to be discussed politely at dinner parties.
This girl is now a ward of the state, a tool in an ongoing investigation against a ring of pimps. A girl who will, by legal precedence, probably not be financially restituted for a lost child-hood, unless she finds a particularly idealistic attorney willing to take on a civil suit on her behalf.
While Bookenhaven’s selfless endeavors saved this girl from a life of sexual servitude, enabling her to have a chance at normalcy in a decidedly abnormal world, the odds are stacked against her.
Justin was home when she got to his house. He answered the door wearing pajama pants and a t-shirt, hair tousled. His eyes widened at the sight of her before they dropped to his own shuffling feet. He seemed embarrassed.
“Did I wake you? I’m sorry.” Charlie twisted the hem of her own t-shirt as she spoke, suddenly nervous. She was afraid he would get the wrong idea about her visit.
“No, you didn’t. Come in.” He opened the door and stepped back, watching her carefully. “Let me go get dressed real quick.” Watching him walk to his bedroom, Charlie was afraid if she sat and waited in his living room, she would lose her nerve and just start yelling at him for his stupidity.
“It’s fine. Just…hear me out, okay?”
He stilled his movements and turned to her. “Okay,” he nodded.
“Look…I know you think you love me. But all this stuff you’ve been doing isn’t love. It isn’t even the actions of someone in love. You have a different reality than I do, and you need someone who shares your reality. I don’t even know which one of us is in the right reality, but that stunt you pulled the other night…” She took a deep breath. Charlie was getting a little too enthusiastic about what she was saying, and she forced a calm she didn’t feel into her voice. “That wasn’t healthy behavior, Justin. You need to find someone who will bring out the good in you, because I know it’s there. You need to find someone who will make you want to do good, and be good. I’m not that girl. She’s out there—” Charlie spread her arms wide. “—not here,” she pointed to herself.
His eyes pleaded with her. “There’s nothing I can do to convince you this is real?”
“This isn’t real. Not for me. Real love doesn’t look like what you’ve been doing. It doesn’t smother, or dictate.” She didn’t know where this sudden authority came from.
“I’m sorry, I’ll do better.” He came closer, but she stood firm, her back rigid, unflinching.
“No, Justin. What we have isn’t healthy. I shouldn’t have ever agreed to try it with you. I wasn’t in a good place when I did. You’re not the right guy.”
“And Les is? Does he make you happy?”
She thought of last night, and the cocoon of safety she felt around him, snuggled into him while she’d slept. She nodded slowly. “Yes, he’s made me happier than anyone else ever has.” It was still a shame she couldn’t do it with him, too. Not while The Man was around.
Justin swallowed and nodded. “I understand.” He lowered himself into a nearby chair. “What you say makes sense. And it’s what the psychiatrist at the hospital said, sort of.” He looked at her. “I’m going to start seeing him regularly, and they’ve put me on some medicine.”
“Good. You probably need it.” She wasn’t trying to be mean. Lots of people needed medication to even out moods. She was one of them. He seemed to understand she meant it kindly, and wasn’t being mean-spirited, because he nodded again.
“I just wanted to drop in and check on you, and make sure you understood that you can’t come see me anymore, not in that capacity, anyway. If you need a—” she swallowed, “—friend, I’ll be here. But otherwise, that’s it. You understand?” She concentrated on keeping her voice mellow. So far, so good.
“I understand, Charlie. And I’m sorry. For everything.” He looked chagrined, and Charlie felt the insane urge to hug him. But she didn’t.
Instead, she turned to go. “Well, I have my own appointment with a shrink, so I need to head out.”
“You going to talk about me?” She could see the shame in his eyes, and felt a strange need to reassure him.
“Not much, no. I’ve got other stuff on my mind right now. I just wanted you to know that I’m not your ‘one’.” She used air-quotes on the last word, feeling a little stupid. “But she’s out there.”
He nodded again, and she wondered what sort of medication they’d put him on. He was acting so sedately. It was completely out of character for him.
Pauline’s office was in her home, a fact Charlie found outrageous. What sort of mental health professional let all the crazies know where she lived? She’d brought it up before to the woman, who laughed her off with a wave, insisting most of her patients were dissatisfied house-wives suffering from depression and feelings of inadequacy. Hardly gun-toting sociopaths.
Still, Charlie worried.
Pauline seemed to treat every appointment like a social visit. Charlie supposed it was to put the patients at ease, and today, she actually appreciated it. Usually, she was in a hurry to get the obligated visit out of the way so she could get her prescriptions refilled. Most people balked at the idea of taking pills their entire life to retain control of themselves, but Charlie always felt a sort of anxiousness when her scripts ran low, as if she would get a case of the crazies as soon as that last pill was gone. So she religiously went to her scheduled appointments, and sat through them, like a duty to fulfill.
But today, she still felt the heaviness of the words needing to get out. And she wanted them out. Hopefully, Pauline would take the weight of them, with her glasses and her notebook.
After seating herself on the wicker furniture on the porch, and accepting the proffered lemonade, Charlie started.
“The Man’s apparently out of prison. He’s been calling me, but I didn’t know who he was, and I’ve been talking to him.” She swallowed nervously, knowing she shouldn’t be embarrassed of her actions with the caller, but she was anyway. And that was odd for her. “He was a dirty caller that I played along with.”
Pauline’s eyebrows rose, but she sat silently, waiting for Charlie to continue. “We got off with each other, but I thought he was somebody else. Now that I know who he is, I feel so dirty again. I really thought I’d gotten over all that. But he’s always made me so dirty—so dirty, I can take a million showers and only manage to lighten the shade of my skin, but the dirt is still there. It’s bone-deep, and I don’t know how to clean myself afterward. And he was th
ere last night, so he knows where I am, and I don’t know how to process that information.” She knew she was babbling, probably not making any sense, but she was spouting words, trying to get them off her chest. To her credit, Pauline seemed to be following along.
“Are you in danger?”
Charlie shrugged. “I don’t think so. I mean, what value does a thirty-six-year-old woman have to a man like that?” Images of Les came to mind. Les pushing past Justin to kiss her possessively. Les punching that drunk guy at the wedding in the mouth. Les holding her hand after she fainted last night. Les crawling out of his upside-down truck to hug her with total abandon. Les strumming his guitar softly to chase away her demons in the motel room.
“Then there’s Les. Well, he’s a customer. But I was on my way to California and ran into him. He had an accident, and his truck was messed up, so we rode together. I spent more time with him in the last two weeks, than I have ever spent with anyone else. Ever. He wanted to come with me today.” Les would keep her safe.
Pauline just looked at her, her expression unreadable, as usual. Charlie knew she was bouncing all over the place, from The Man to Les, but Shrinkage was keeping up admirably.
“The thing is, everything that I’ve spent years getting over have surfaced again…The nightmares, Adam, my parents, The Man…All of it has come rushing back at me. And this guy likes me and is trying to get me and makes me feel safe and I don’t know what to do with that.”
Charlie watched as Pauline made a notation in her book, and then removed her glasses. “Have you actually seen The Man?”
She told her shrinkage about the banquet, and about Les taking her home and sleeping with her while her fingers fidgeted with the plant in the pot next to her, pulling out dried leaves from the dirt, sweeping them onto the table.
“So, The Man has threatened you, and Les is acting protective of you, and you don’t know what to do with that?” Charlie nodded. “Why?”
Charlie thought hard about her answer, knowing it would be the crux. “Because he reminds me of Adam.”
“In what way?”
“He wants to save me.”
“From what?”
“He knows there’s something in my past I’m not telling him. I know he wants me to open up, but I can’t tell him everything.”
“Why not?”
“Because he wouldn’t understand. He grew up in a loving household, with parents who didn’t sell him to the highest bidder. He still has lunch with them every Sunday, for Christ’s sake.”
“Okay, so he likes you. How do you feel about him?”
“I don’t know. He’s different from all of the men I’ve had sex with. He’s someone I would like to know better, but I’m not sure how to let him in.”
“What are you afraid will happen, Charlie?”
She started ticking on her fingers, “Rejection would probably be number one. I haven’t been rejected in nearly twenty years. Then there’s always the fact that he may want to be with me, but doesn’t know how, and I’ll end up hating him. There’s my business. And the Refuge. What if he wants me to stop doing the rescues?”
Pauline was the only human being she had voluntarily told about her rescues with the Refuge of Light. And the only reason she’d done it was because of the doctor/patient confidentiality clause.
“And then there’s always the ‘what if it turns out like Adam and me’?”
“Those are all valid points, and things that are reasonable to worry about. But the real question I have is this: You are twenty years older than you were when you were with Adam. What makes you think you’d act the same way? You’ve been through years of therapy, you’ve grown an incredible amount in that time, and you understand human relationships better. Why do you think you’ll treat Les the same way you treated Adam?”
Charlie chewed on the inside of her cheeks. “Because he’s so much like Adam, it’s almost scary. I mean, not in looks or anything, but other ways.”
“What ways?”
“He’s funny, and incredibly nice. He’s always helping people. He’s on the board for the Refuge of Light, did I say that?” Pauline shook her head, but her eyebrows rose almost comically. “The thing is, I just had this talk with Justin, my latest…whatever…and told him to find someone that makes him good, makes him do good…” She dropped her face into her hands, looking for words.
“Why is that significant, Charlie?”
“You know why that’s significant. I think Les does that for me, but I just can’t let go. I can’t let him in.”
“Can’t or won’t?”
A rude noise escaped Charlie’s throat. “Now you sound like him.”
“Have you had this conversation with him?” Charlie nodded. “What did he say?”
“He talks big about faith. Faith in God and humanity…I just don’t know.”
“Why don’t you open a dialogue with him?”
A tear trickled from the corner of Charlie’s eye. “Because I’m tired of hurting.”
Pauline crossed her legs. “So when you’re alone, or in one of your sex-only relationships, you don’t ever hurt? Are you better off alone?”
“No…I don’t know…sometimes.”
“Do you think everybody feels that way sometimes?”
Charlie shrugged.
“Well, you need to go to the police about the reappearance of The Man. He shouldn’t be contacting you at all.” She removed her glasses and stood. “I’m afraid our time is up, Charlie. I’m sorry about that. Do you have a better idea now of what you need to do?”
Reluctance filled Charlie as she nodded, unsure if she was reluctant to admit it or if she was reluctant to leave.
Charlie left Pauline’s with more questions than answers firing up her mind. She liked the way she felt around Les, but how much of it was great sexual chemistry, and how much of it was real feelings? If she opened up to him, who was to say he would accept her past and not try to change who she was trying to become? Who in the hell was she trying to become?
She came home feeling restless. Her mind refused to settle, and she couldn’t find peace in any part of her house, not even her bedroom, which she had designed and decorated to be a sanctuary for herself. When she had won the unprecedented civil settlement against The Man and her parents, Charlie had invested in herself, buying her house and starting her business. She’d furnished it simply, but with real wood antiques, more of her own attempt to establish permanence in her life. She had lovingly restored the old furniture she’d found at estate sales and bought simple, yet good-quality bedding in colors that soothed her. Some might think the dark colors would be less than peaceful, but she usually found her room calming, her own sanctuary.
Not today.
Wrapped in thoughts of self-doubt, her mind was a tumbling mass of uncertainty and fear. She couldn’t focus on any one thought to banish, so her mind whirled through thought after thought of what ifs and how comes. All wrapped in a huge layer of self-pity.
Throwing herself on her bed, Charlie heaved a sigh and cocooned herself in her blanket. It was only five o’clock, and she knew a nap this time of day was pointless, but she was ready to start over and try again tomorrow. It had been a long time since a visit to the shrinkage had sent her to bed, and she hoped her progress wasn’t regressing.
Chapter 20
An estimated 100,000 American children are trafficked for sexual exploitation in the United States every year.
—www.refugeoflight.org
Les was unusually nervous about playing at the Gin tonight. He’d written some new stuff, and was anxious about the reaction. Mostly friends of his, the crowd was usually responsive, but these songs were different from his usual fare. He had to admit, most of his original songs weren’t really all that original, but this one came to him on the trip with Charlie. And he wanted her to hear them.
Not allowing himself to think too hard about it, he fired off a text.
L: What are you doing tonight?
He did
n’t have to wait long for a response, which was good, because you can’t take those back and he’d left the ball in her court. By sending this text, he was telling her he couldn’t be trusted to leave her alone. Even though just the thought of leaving her alone was killing him. What if whoever had scared her so badly came back when she was at home alone? And what did he want with his Charlie?
C: Nothing.
He was still terrified for her. Whatever had happened last night had scared her enough to make her faint, for Christ’s sake. He wanted her with him, but she’d rebuffed him this morning. Before he lost his nerve, he responded.
L: I’m playing at the Gin tonight and would like you to come. Since I’m playing, it wouldn’t be a date or anything, just us in the same room together. No big deal.
Well, that sounded stupid. As soon as he hit send, he wanted to take it back. But he couldn’t. He couldn’t tell her what being in the same room with her did to him. He couldn’t tell her his brain quit firing when she was around. He couldn’t tell her she was on his mind every waking minute of every day. He couldn’t tell her he wanted to protect her from whatever she was scared of.
Nope. Couldn’t tell her any of that.
Les had to admit, he liked boundaries. He needed them, always had. They were clear delineations of what he could and couldn’t do. Women with no boundaries were scary. Everything is a fine until he messes up, and then it’s a screaming temper tantrum? Les didn’t like not knowing what to expect. He respected Charlie’s walls, even though they were putting a damper on the things he wanted to do with her. He wanted to talk to her, laugh with her, sit quietly and listen to music with her. He wanted to watch her dance while he played for her.