by Gina Kincade
She stopped thinking. It was easier that way.
It also didn’t work.
In the darkest of nights, with a heavy heart to match, she wondered how she had ever fallen so far from grace.
She’d had such good intentions—noble, in fact.
She looked to the sky as her life swallowed her whole. There were no friends there, no saviors, no answers, and no islands.
The only signs of God were the tears He shed and left to dry upon the glossy beaten pavement, amongst the gutter garbage and stolen dreams.
On Broadway corner, she stood, lighting a cigarette. Drawing the comforting smoke into her lungs, she felt alive. She pictured her image in her mind’s eye. She knew she was a tall curvaceous woman with a Mediterranean look and she didn’t belong there. But, she stood in front of the small storefront hot dog stand and he tipped his head towards the stairway. She straightened her tight red leather vest which displayed her ample cleavage in the plunging V-neckline. She played the part to hungry watching eyes and she wiggled her full hips in the tight zippered leather mini. She was convincing but scared. As instructed, she took the dark stairs down into the bowels of the basement, illuminated at the bottom by a single bare bulb. She gathered her steely reserves, took a deep breath. Casually, she closed the umbrella and descended, leaving it on the threshold outside a seamy dirty door, busted at the bottom where it had been repeatedly kicked open. She knocked lightly with long elegant fingers fisted into a nervous ball and told herself it wasn’t anything she hadn’t done for free in the past.
But, tonight…she felt hopeless. She didn’t feel alive anymore.
A victim of her own bad decisions, she couldn’t seem to stop the falling cascade into oblivion. She was beautiful, intelligent, charmingly confident but painfully self-doubting. A soft touch, a kind word or unsuspecting gentleness won her loyalty.
However, tonight, money bought her love.
She tapped on the soiled door at the bottom of the shadowed black abyss, sighed, and donned a sultry smile she did not feel. She did not hesitate to enter when the door opened.
The yawning darkness matched her soul. Someone kicked the door closed and slapped her ass.
While her eyes adjusted, her other senses exploded. The room was rife with a heavy sweet but stale smell of Tiparillo cigars, dirty laundry and fetid body odor. The noises from footsteps at the hot dog stand above fell into cadence with her hammering heart and the odor of sour fryer oil and burnt hot dogs gathered like a fog around the ceiling just waiting to descend and consume.
He pushed her shoulder and buried his fingertips in her flesh painfully. So it began.
“Turn around; lemme see whacha got.”
She looked at him, flatly. Then turned her back to him. She didn’t wiggle enticingly or squirm cutely. She didn’t care. She knew her waist was cinched and small, flaring to smooth, full and rounded hips that graced long lean shapely legs. Her shoulders were narrow and her back strong. And she knew the power of her body.
“Take off the vest.”
She unzipped the front of her vest, shrugged it off, and folded it over her arm before she turned slowly. She knew exactly the response her breasts would evoke. They always did. No man ever expected them to be quite so full, quite so perfectly round, and still so pert under the weight of such rising fullness. Every. Time. There, his breath caught.
“Now…the skirt,” he added hungrily. His eyes salivated.
It was the first chance she had to get a good look at him. He was disgusting. His appetite was carnal. Need oozed from his sweaty pores. His face was oily and glistened with a crusted near-beard. He stood in his underwear in white socks in front of a TV that was running a reel of silent porn images. The sweat added to the remains which marked his soiled Dego t-shirt. She looked him over with a blind scrutiny, avoiding the obvious rise in his grubby striped boxers. She wanted to throw up.
But, she knew she had him. She settled herself in a squared off position, her heeled feet separated comfortably with her hands on her hips.
“First, let me see what you’ve got.”
He hooked his thumbs in his underwear and started to drop them to the floor.
“No, not that. The money.”
He turned and walked grumbling under his breath to the Goodwill chest of drawers against the wall by the bathroom door. While his back was to her, she looked around the room. Her eyes darted as she assessed her surroundings quickly before he turned to face her.
“Here.” He shoved the money at her. “Twenty-five dollars.”
“Yea, thanks. The initiation is cheap. Don’t think for a second that I am.”
“What?” He looked puzzled by her comment then shrugged it off. “You are tonight.”
His eyes locked on her as she bent to put the money in the band of her thigh-highs. As she rose, she pulled the zipper up from the hem to her waist. She took her skirt and her vest and hung them on the bathroom door hook. It looked to be the most sanitary spot in the room.
“Give me a minute.” She walked into the bathroom, swung the door and pulled her diaphragm case out of her handbag. She put her heel up on the toilet rim. The seat looked permanently fused in the upright position by the piss and the grime. She added spermicidal gel to the cup and inserted it. She turned to the sink to rinse her hands and thought better of it when she saw the condition of bowl. She used toilet paper and threw it in the toilet. She tapped the door open with her foot.
Dickhead was already on the bed.
She walked elegantly through the squalor of empty hot dog wrappers, hamburger bags, and beer bottles to the bed and threw the coverlet back on the right side. She got in and with that final single move, she descended into the very depths of the nightmare she owned.
He lay on the bed in his T-shirt, grimy socks, and no boxers. He flaunted his erection proudly as he played with it near the base to keep it hard.
“Suck it!” he ordered.
“Suck it yourself. Twenty-five dollars gets you pussy, not my mouth. You think I’m stupid? You want the pussy or not?” She stood boldly with her feet planted and ready for anything.
“I want it. Come here and lay down.”
She got on top of the sheets and opened herself to him. When he bucked and jerked for the last time, she pushed him off of her before his sweat dropped onto her face. She got up and went to the bathroom, took her travel douche out of her handbag and filled it with water. She straddled the toilet and flushed him out of her and down the sewer where he belonged. She hooked the diaphragm and pulled it out, leaving the spermicidal to sanitize herself. She dressed.
She kicked open the bathroom door again, revolted at the thought of touching anything. She thought better of it and returned.
She walked over to the piece of shit still sprawled on top of the bed, his limp cock dripping post-come onto his hairy thigh. She pulled a photo from her purse.
“Have you ever seen this girl before—five ten, a ginger with hazel eyes and legs to China?”
“I may have. Who is she? What’s it to ya?”
“None of your business, asshole. I asked you all polite and nice. I just want a straight answer.”
“What’ll I get if I tell you?”
“It depends upon the answer you give me—and it’d better be the truth.”
“Yeah, I seen her. She worked for Bobby Trothers in North Beach. A real looker. He sent her to me to ‘taste’, just like he did you tonight. She was sweet and eager. She liked shit, man. Couldn’t get enough of my friend…” and he palmed his flaccid penis, leaking the last vestiges of his manhood on the grimy sheet.
She felt sick.
“Hey, don’t go. We’re just getting started! You want a beer, some weed? Hey, come back…That was the truth! You said I’d get something if I told the truth. I told you the truth. That’s all I know about the baller. She came, she fucked, she sucked and she liked it, man—then she left. Hey…wait—come back.”
“Fuck off. You got way more than you’re worth
, dickhead. And I’ll puke if I let you touch me again.” She zipped up her leather skirt and donned her vest.
“I’ma gonna tell Bobby you fucked up, you stuck-up cunt! He’ll get you just like he did that bitch in your picture.”
“Bobby, huh? I’ll tell him you said so, asshole.” And a chill crawled down her spine.
She closed the dirt-stained door wearily behind her and leaned against it while the scumbag ranted on the other side.
She felt disgusted.
When she took the stairs to the street, the air smelled clean since it rained. She took a deep breath to cleanse her lungs from the foul stench. It was searingly cold, and fresh after the rain. She spat in the gutter, as much to mark this spot as eradicate the bitter taste of humiliation.
The things she’d do…
But, she felt…exhilarated. An odd feeling she had not expected. She thought she would feel dirty and sick, remorseful, but she was actually exhilarated. She had fucked the devil incarnate and made it back alive.
Almost like every other night. Only tonight she’d learned a little more…a lot more, actually.
She walked the five city blocks through North Beach to her apartment, took a shower, nearly scrubbing her flesh off of her soul. When she was satisfied, she got out and clorox’d the tub. She rushed to the toilet and vomited. After she brushed the foul remains of breath from her teeth and mouth, she gargled. Then she tossed her favorite oils and beads into the clean porcelain tub, filled it with water and stepped in to soak his latent fingerprints off of her body. She washed her hair then slipped under the water to rinse the last hour from her life.
She didn’t want to think about anything else. But, she was sure that Bobby would hear something about the brief visit with his buddy. She went to bed purged, sanitized, refreshed.
She would deal with Bobby Trothers another day, when she was clear-headed—when she was stronger.
When she awoke the next afternoon, she rose to the sounds of life in the street below. She felt restless and troubled, but she loved that sound; people going about their business, shopping, dining, yelling frustrations at cabbies. She loved the vitality of the city in the daytime and living on the edge at night, skirting the dangers, slipping in and out of the dark side and crawling with the worst society has to offer on the underbelly of the city’s adult district.
She felt alive, as though she’d beat the odds every time she ventured “over” and made it back unscathed. She really wondered just how long she could cheat her destiny…which made her all the more eager to do it again. But, tonight would be the pool halls and dive bars where she felt the most comfortable, the least threatened.
When she came to the city to bury her sister, she packed up all her things and went through her life that was now in small boxes she kept in her apartment. She went through Tati’s little black book, one by one. Brianna knew the answers were in her sister’s life, between the pages. That’s how she found Bobby Trothers. He was next. She cultivated a relationship with Bobby and Bobby liked to talk—especially about Tatianna. She’d been away at school and she wanted to know how she had gotten to the streets a hundred and fifty miles away from college.
Seems her roommate was a bad influence and had a boyfriend junkie that worked in a photo shop. He repaired cameras. He had all sorts of talent when it came to cameras and hookers and unsuspecting men, married and on business from some bum-fuck Podunk town, USA.
Tatianna got pregnant her first year in college. Bobby gave her the money for the abortion but turned her out for three months before she had it. She thought Bobby was Tati’s ‘friend’ of sorts, if such a thing was possible on the streets.
She never thought it was Bobby.
Flipping a trick, even a friend of Bobby’s as a favor, was disgusting and exhilarating—revealing—but she wasn’t sure she wanted to slither in the gutters of nightlife on a regular basis. Maybe, that’s how Tatianna felt—in the beginning. Brianna certainly didn’t need the money. But, one thing she was sure of…it wouldn’t be the last time, she would just pick her own marks in the future and go with it, if the feeling moved her. She didn’t have to like the guys or even feel attracted to them. It wasn’t about love, or attraction or even sex. It was about superiority and subjugation—conquest. It was about control.
She was better’n any man she ever met and proved it any night, sometimes every night—sometimes more than once a night. It was a short trip for her from the dive bar to the sewers. The slugs were abundant and the pickin’ so easy. She would have to think on it and see how the spirit moved her.
She would also have to think about how to deal with Bobby. But, that would come later. She needed to put things into perspective and balance.
She went to the window above the street, the same window she sat at the night before. Day people were so different. They had purpose. They dressed, acted and even walked different than the nightlife she encountered. She never saw a day person with a swagger or attitude, they were too intensely focused on doing what they’d set out to do, or getting wherever they were headed. She wondered if they would be easy to take, too. She leaned over and opened the window wide and inhaled the humidity of the fog that was just burning off from the morning. The air was new and crisp, fresh and clean.
She sat in the window at the small dinette table and watched the busy life of the drones below her and she picked up the phone.
“Charlie, it’s Brianna. What’s on today?”
She listened to the specials from the d’Italia menu that Charlie recited.
“Send me up some Dijon chicken and strawberry salad with arugula and strawberry vinaigrette, please, Charlie and put it on my bill.”
Brianna paused while he repeated the order back to her.
“Yea, thanks, Charlie. Whenever is fine.”
Brianna tidied up a bit, emptied the ashtray and wiped down the table. She actually spent little time here so there wasn’t much more for her to do on a daily basis than keeping the bathroom, that little kitchenette with the enameled table-top clean and making her Murphy bed. She didn’t cook, didn’t enjoy the same little pleasures most people do. She didn’t even own a TV. She saw the world at night and it wasn’t pretty. She didn’t need to hear or watch any more than she already did to be informed. Her nightly ‘friends’ talked nervously enough, almost incessantly, to keep her informed.
She did, however, have her peach-faced lovebirds. She loved them, loved how they loved one another. They slept at night while she was out and entertained her during the daytime, nesting and chewing lengths of newspaper into adornments and tail feathers. They were a private pair, her lovebirds, and they hated her. She was an interloper, an intruder in their personal revelry. She turned her attention away from the birds.
She found comfort in the muted, ordinary sounds of life as it should be on the street below wafting up to her apartment. She preferred the gentle repetition but could not resist the night. If she could but learn to deny her self-indulgence and live the simple life of the predictable that scurried in the daytime streets below, would she be happy? Could she ever be happy? She felt the listlessness of resignation tapping at her conscience. She would never be happy if she only lived for the night.
She sighed and started to fold the dry sheets.
And then it happened. There was a knock at the door, soft but persistent.
“It’s open, Charlie,” she called.
But it wasn’t Charlie from downstairs. It was Bobby Trothers and a pair of beefcake bookends that ran with him.
“Hey, Bobby.”
“Hey, gurl…”
“Whaddareyoudoinhere, Bobbie? This is my home. You got no business with me in my home. It’s daytime, for God’s sake!”
“I got any business I say I got witchu, gurl. And you disrespected me.”
“What? How? I never disrespected you!”
“I asked you to do my friend, one little favor for all I have done for you, and what do you go and do? You tell the mutherfucker you won’t s
uck his cock?”
“Have you ever been in that dickhead’s apartment? It’s a sewer, Bobby. I said I’d do him for all you’ve done for me, as a favor to you, Bobby—outta respect. But, I wasn’t gonna do him all night, not in that cesspool—not ever—no matter how beholdin’ I am to you, Bobby.”
“You ain’t got that right, gurl. You do what I want you to do until I say we’re even.”
“I don’t think so, Bobby. I squared with you last night by fucking your greaseball buddy. No one calls what I do with my body, not even you Bobby. I do what I want when I want and I say we’re square. Now, you can go. This is my home.” She thought she saw his eye twitch and a subtle gesture of his head.
“Oh, really? Do you now, gurl…?”
That’s all she remembered.
That was all she wanted to remember.
***
She woke to blood everywhere. People were dashing and darting, yelling, wrapping, poking and probing. There were tubes and needles everywhere. She couldn’t move. The powerful lights hurt as she tried to open her eyes. Her right eye was swollen shut. The dank taste of metallic was sweet and yet salty in her mouth. She raised her hand to her mouth and felt the swell of her lips dry and tight against the pain. Her right wrist to her elbow was already in a soft cast. How long had she been here?
“She’s coming around…”
“Wha…” she tried to say, but heard nothing.
“Ms Denton…Brianna…you’re in the ER at SF General. My name is Dr. James. You were assaulted in your own apartment. The police are waiting to talk to you. It was pretty close there for a while but you’re strong and apparently pretty determined. You’re going to be alright now. There are lots of people here to care for you, so all you need do is concentrate on getting better.”
“How…” she heard that, she was sure, but it was barely above a whisper. She wondered how the man with the heart-shaped face and blue eyes found her here and why was he talking to her? She was hallucinating. She drifted in and out. She tried to reach for his face and saw her arm floating by itself in the exam room. Her fingers touched the heart-shaped face and then it was gone.