by JA Huss
I walk to the bathroom entrance and stare at my bedroom doorway.
“Are you gonna go after him?”
I look back at Blue. “No. I can’t do this again either. I spent the better part of two years making sure he didn’t do anything stupid. And you know what? I love him like a brother. I do. But I can’t fight this battle for him. If he wants to go off looking for those people alone, there’s nothing I can do.”
And it’s true. You can’t save people from themselves.
Blue pushes past me and runs down the hallway. I follow her. When I get to the foyer, she’s standing there in her towel, soaking wet, holding the door open.
“He’s gone,” she says, the sadness in her voice clear. “If anything bad happens it will be my fault.”
“Don’t be stupid. He’s a grown man, for fuck’s sake. He can—”
“You say you care?” she yells. “Then go after him!”
“You go after him. He likes you. He’ll listen to you just as much as he will me.”
She looks out at the hallway again. Will she go? I mean, she needs clothes, obviously. But she’s been making do with JD’s sweats and t-shirts all week.
But no. She closes the door with a sigh. “I can’t.”
“Can’t?” I sneer. “More like you won’t. I’m not buying this whole afraid-to-leave-the-apartment bullshit.”
She walks off towards JD’s room. I follow again, and when I get there she’s searching for something to wear. She pulls on a pair of JD’s boxers and a summer t-shirt.
“So obviously you’re not going after him.”
“I can’t leave. If they see me—”
“If who sees you?”
“They,” she whispers, looking up at me with bleary eyes. “They know who I am, Ark. And they don’t care. They know my father would have the power of two governments on his side if I made one phone call.”
“Then make it.”
“I can’t. I can’t go home. I can’t leave here. I can’t do anything. They…”
She stops. And it doesn’t take a mind reader to understand why. “They have shit on you, don’t they?”
She tips her head up and takes a deep breath. “It seems you have a lot in common with them.”
I narrow my eyes at her. “How do you figure?”
“Because they have an affinity for filming girls as well. Only they set us up. They filmed me doing drugs. Having sex. And…”
“Just fucking say it, Blue.” I want to pull her hair out right now.
“And babysitting.” Her words are so soft, I almost miss them. My heart actually skips a beat. Maybe two. “Only it’s not babysitting, Ark. That’s just the code word.”
I’m reaching for her throat to throttle her, but she misunderstands and sinks into my chest, wrapping her arms around me. Holy fuck. Just keep cool, I tell myself. Just keep cool. “What’s babysitting, Blue? Come on now, just tell me. You’ve said this much, might as well get it all out.”
“We weren’t sex slaves, Ark. We weren’t whores, or strippers, or mistresses. They kept us for babies.”
The blood is pounding so hard in my head.
“And when a girl had a baby, they took it and gave it to someone else. They sold them, Ark. And the girl was paid to give the baby up.”
Disgust runs through my veins. Bile rises in my throat. “Did you sell a baby, Blue?”
“No. I never got pregnant.” And then she drops her head and cries. She falls to the floor on her knees. Her hands cover her face and then she lowers her forehead to the ground and wails.
I just watch her for a few seconds, and then I snap out of it. “Come here,” I say, picking up her too-thin body and carrying her back to my bedroom. I lay her down on the bed and climb in next to her as the sadness pours out of her in heaving sobs and rivers of tears.
“Shhh,” I tell her, putting my arm underneath her so I can keep her close. “Calm down, OK?” I drag my fingers up and down her arm to try to soothe her, but she’s lost control.
This is the girl we found out in the rain. This is how she should’ve reacted that day. This is the reaction that never came. Because she never admitted to what happened to her. She couldn’t.
No one knows when Zoey Marshall went missing, but all of North America heard about it the minute they realized. It was on every nightly news report last year. And from what Blue says, that was months after she was actually gone. There were rewards and heartfelt pleas for her safe return on the news by her family. Vigils were held outside the ambassador’s home in DC and her family’s home in Canada.
It was a multi-national affair and lasted about three months. And then no one ever talked about the missing college grad again because she made a YouTube video telling people she was on a writing sabbatical in some rainforest. There was some buzz, but then it all died away. People forgot all about Zoey Marshall. She simply disappeared.
I stroke her hair as she begins to calm down. “We should call them, Blue.”
“No,” she says, hiccupping. “I will not disgrace my father like that. I will not let them read that contract.”
“What contract?” Jesus Christ.
“We all signed one. It was a big production. It was videotaped. And they had me stand up and recite it out loud. Pledging to sell my baby to a man who was present in the room, but wearing a mask to protect his identity. There’s no way I will disgrace my father like that.”
“Why did you do it, though? I don’t understand.” How? How could this girl sell an unborn child?
“I was looking for my best friend, Janine. Remember?” She tips her head to look up at me. “It was fake, Ark. I knew she was pregnant, but then she disappeared. I figured the only way I could have any chance of finding her was to get with the program. They didn’t know who I was back then, I had the fake ID. But week after week of doctor visits and not getting pregnant—”
“Wait.” I stop her here. Because I need to know. “How were they trying to get you pregnant?”
“He fucked me. Every night while I was ovulating. It was like a perk of the contract, I think. He was the leader.”
I have to close my eyes for a moment to process this. I take a deep breath. “The leader of what?”
“The baby-selling ring.”
“And he needed a baby from you?”
“That’s what he said. I didn’t know who he was at my contract party, everyone was wearing masks. It was like a masquerade ball. Everyone but me was dressed up.”
“So when did he find out who you really were?”
“When they discovered I had gotten a Depo shot the day before I was contracted, I thought for sure I’d be in and out in a week or two. The shot lasts for about three months, and there’s no way to stop the effects once it’s given. I thought… I thought I was so smart, Ark. I really did.”
I continue to stroke her arm. She’s calming down, but my heart rate is speeding up. “But they know the tricks, I’m sure.”
“Yeah. It only took them a few days to figure it out with a blood test after they got suspicious.”
“And then what happened?”
“They locked me up. Took my fingerprints. And they said they ran my face through some facial recognition program. But that might’ve been bullshit.”
“So they knew you were Zoey.”
“Yeah. And then the leader kept me as his… personal…”
“I get it. You don’t have to say it.”
“And when my three months was up, he tried getting me pregnant. But it took me months to get pregnant, and then when I was, I miscarried every time.”
“Holy fuck.” I pinch the bridge of my nose with my fingers. “Did you find your friend?”
“No. But one girl remembered her. And can you believe this, Ark? Those contacts?” Blue laughs, but it’s not a happy laugh. It’s a laugh that says there’s more crying ahead. “Those contracts aren’t even honored. Imagine that. A girl sells her baby and she never gets paid. And you know why, Ark? Do you know why she ne
ver gets paid?”
I do know, but I can’t make myself stop her from telling me.
“Because they kill them. They rape us, they steal our children, and then our reward is death.”
“Were they all kidnapped? Or were they there to sell their babies?”
“I was the only one they locked up in the basement, so I can only assume the other girls were there for the money. They kept me company sometimes.”
“And no one tried to help?”
She shakes her head no. “They needed money—”
“Fuck the money. No one needs money that bad.” My shout scares her, making her shrink inward. “Sorry,” I whisper. “Sorry. It’s just, you can’t put yourself in that category, Blue. Don’t identify with them. You’re not like them. You were a prisoner. They were selling their children. It’s not the same thing.”
“I know,” she says in a soft whisper.
But I don’t think she does and I need to hammer it home. “You were a prisoner.”
“I still am.”
“No,” I say, leaning down to kiss her neck. “No, you’re free now, Blue.”
“I’m not though. They have me with that video. No one will believe my story. Not after I lied about where I was.”
“Did they force you to make that YouTube video?”
“What do you think?” she snaps.
Right.
We lie there in silence for a long time. Her breathing slows and she begins to relax. But I’m so amped up I feel like my brain might shatter. It starts to rain outside, making the atmosphere in here even more gloomy. There’s a clock on the wall that ticks off the seconds, and my mind is spinning with options.
But none of them feel right. None of them feel like they will make a difference.
Finally, after hours of lying there, I find myself able to talk. “What do you want to do about this, Blue?” I ask. She’s been so still, I almost thought she was asleep. But no one sleeps with this conversation hanging over them.
“I want to forget it ever happened.”
“What about your parents? Don’t you want to go home?”
She tucks her head into my chest and sighs. “I am home.”
After Blue falls asleep, I sneak out to my office and chain-smoke as I watch the clock. JD has been gone for hours now. And there’s no telling what he’s up to or what he might do. Fuck, if he’ll even show up for work tonight.
Finally, at eight forty-seven, he comes through the loft door. I’m sitting on the couch, my hand poised over the ashtray, ready to flick, when he appears.
“Since when do you smoke in the house?” he asks, closing the doors behind him.
“You had me worried, dude.”
“Since when do I miss work?” he says, grabbing a smoke from my pack on the side table and lighting up.
“You know that’s not what I meant. Please don’t insult me by pretending I was worried about the fucking job. You wanna tell me what’s going through your head right now?”
He takes a seat in the chair off to my left, inhaling a long drag of nicotine, before blowing it out in rings. “I can’t do it, man. I just can’t do it. Looking for them will suck me down a black hole I might never crawl out of. If you hadn’t come along when you did, I’d be dead right now.”
He’s said it before, but tonight it seems real. More real than ever. Because we’re all standing at the edge of something. Something that will change us forever. “Well, she told me a lot, JD. And I think you need to know what her story is before you make any decisions.”
He rolls his cigarette back and forth between his finger and thumb. “I’m not sure it will matter.” And then he looks up at me and his eyes are red. His face is pale. And I know where he’s been.
The cemetery.
“She’s dead. The baby is gone. Maybe dead too. And you know what, Ark? I’m tired of thinking about it. I’m tired of feeling this way about something I can’t change. And all these years you’ve given me the same piece of advice. Let it go. So that’s what I’m gonna do. I’m gonna let it go. Blue is here and maybe she’s not the love of my life, but she’s here. And I like her. I want to spend time with her. And you. We’ve got something good right now. We’re rich. We’re about to fulfill our deal with Ray and start our own site. We’ve got it all. Why fuck it up? Ya know? Why fuck it all up over something that can’t be changed?”
I do know. But I also know what he really wants to hear. That we’ll get those fuckers. That we’ll make them pay. That we will take every last one of them down. He wants to hear that because that’s what I’d want to hear if it was my girl who was killed and my baby who was missing.
“I hear ya,” I say instead. I’m not a hero. I’m the Prince of Porn. I sell come down a girl’s throat. I sell face fucks in public places. I sell filthy videos that degrade women and use my friend’s cock to make money.
I’m not the hero he’s looking for. I am scum.
“Still wanna work tonight?” I ask him after a few moments of silence, puffing out smoke rings.
“Why the fuck not,” he says, getting up to stub out his cigarette in the ashtray next to me. “Why the fuck not.”
“OK.” I nod. “Grab my gear bag. I’m just gonna go let Blue know we’re leaving and what time you’ll be back.”
“How’s she doing?” he asks, looking down the hallway to my room.
“I’m not sure, actually.” I open my mouth to tell him who she is and what she really did, but he turns away before the words can come out. And then I lose my nerve.
Maybe it’s better he doesn’t know. If he knew who she was, he might do something stupid.
It’s a risk I can’t take.
I leave him to gather our gear and walk down the hallway, trying not to make my boots thud too hard on the floors. I don’t turn the light on, I just walk over to the bed and sit down next to her.
“Is he OK?” she asks.
“I think so,” I tell her back. “We’re gonna go to work tonight. I go to Ray’s to edit after each shoot, so I won’t be home until tomorrow morning. But JD should be back a little after two. You gonna be OK?”
“Yeah,” she says.
“Don’t say anything to him when he comes back tonight. About who you are. Where you were. That kind of thing.”
She turns her whole body so she can look at me. “Do you really think that’s a good idea? Considering how… connected we are?”
“I do, Blue. I wouldn’t ask you to keep secrets if I didn’t think it was absolutely necessary. But it is. Please trust me. It is.”
She nods her head at me and then her tired eyes win the battle she’s having with fatigue.
“We gotta get you a phone tomorrow,” I say, leaning in to kiss her. “And clothes. And shoes. Shit, we have a lot to do tomorrow. So try to sleep.” I place my palm against her cheek and feel wetness. She’s still crying.
“I’m sorry,” she says, the tears coming out freely now. “I’m so sorry.”
“Why are you sorry, Blue?”
“For being a part of that. For being part of the thing that tore his life apart.”
“It’s not your fault. You were trying to save your friend and you got in over your head.”
“I was stupid. And naive.”
“It’s over now. JD wants to move on. He wants to move on with you. And me. Give this shit a go. See where it takes us. And I’m all for that too. Sometimes you just gotta drop that baggage you’ve been carrying around and leave it behind.”
“I feel like my baggage is inside me, Ark. It fills me up and overflows.”
“I know, baby. I know. But every day that goes by, a little bit of it will evaporate. And one day you’ll wake up and realize you’re OK. It’s over. And they can’t get you ever again.”
“But they can get me. They’re not far away. Maybe right down the street. Sometimes I hear the bells—”
“Shhh,” I say, leaning down to kiss her wet cheeks. “Don’t do that, Blue. You’ll stay inside for now. They don�
�t know you’re here. No one saw us take you home. No one’s seen you in the building. We’re going out alone tonight and they’re not gonna know. We’ll find a way to get you a new ID and then we’ll go from there.”
She relaxes and I sit with her another few seconds before leaning down and kissing her on the lips. “I’ll see you tomorrow. JD will be back in a few hours. Just get some rest.”
She nods to me in the darkness and then I get up and walk out, closing the door behind me.
JD is standing in the hallway, a few paces off. I hold my breath and wait to see if he heard me tell her to lie to him.
“She’s OK?” he asks.
I exhale my relief. “She will be. Just sleep with her when you come home, eh? Take her into your room. Don’t let her spend the whole night alone.”
He nods at me and then hands over my bag of camera equipment. “It’s still raining so I put it in the waterproof bag.”
“Thanks, man.”
“Yeah,” he says. “No problem.”
And then we leave the condo together. Going out to do what we do. And I don’t know about him, but I’m feeling pretty damn ashamed of how I make money right about now. The whole walk over there I talk myself up.
It’s just temporary.
You’re gonna make a difference.
Things are moving fast now.
Don’t give up what you’ve worked so hard to get.
Be strong and finish what you started.
And by the time we walk up to Aldo, the big German bouncer manning the door to The Sanctuary Club, I believe it.
“Hey,” Aldo says, sticking out his hand. I shake and he thumps me on the back a few times before moving on and doing the same thing to JD. “What time will you need us?” he asks in his thick accent.
I look at JD and shrug. “We probably need to throw back at least half a dozen shots before we get this party started. Let’s say twelve thirty.” I pull out an envelope with his take in it from the bag JD packed. “Here you go, man.” I study the line outside—which wraps around the building—and the level of noise from inside—which is pounding—and make a decision. “All six guys watching tonight, Aldo. They seem a little rowdy.”