Chapter 13
The first thing they did, they switched rooms. GreenBlo gone, business was down so much girls were already moved on, leaving rooms vacant.
“They think they need to stick to the schedule. Blue room. Red room. Babe the oxen. Babe the baseball player. Like I give a shit. I only had one other guy today and he didn’t want to switch. Too much trouble, but I got that. I mean, he had an oxygen tank and all. Someone beat up like that tells you they don’t want to move around too much you just tell them ‘whatever you want, baby.’”
Faye telling him all of that during the room switch, being careful to keep quiet while in the hall. Now they occupied the ‘Babe Ruth’ room. Right away, Faye propped the window open. The gutters were barred, keeping the windows from sliding up too high. Window raised, resting on a catch, Faye inhaled, made a sound, appreciating all that good clean forest air.
“All these rooms with windows, but she’s sweating the details, like some accountant is going to penalize her, like any of the people in Portland give a shit which room we’re fucking in. Sorry. I mean, treating patients.” She pointed at the window, a hornet droning at the mesh. “Don’t worry. There’s bugs, wasps, but the screens keep them out.”
“I’m not worried.”
“You just always look worried?”
“Could be.”
“Maybe it’s just your black eye.”
“Yeah.”
“Though…That’s more than your eye. That’s half your face.”
She held a pack of cigarettes up.
“You smoke?”
“No.”
“You mind? It’ll ease me up before I work on your shoulders. Your back. Whatever your trouble spot might be.” She held Sipe’s eye, smiling like they both knew what his trouble really was.
He hadn’t seen enough of ‘Paul Bunyan’ to figure out what distinguished it from any other room. Nothing in the ‘Babe Ruth’ room carried on a sense of nostalgia or baseball theme. A little portrait painting of a baseball bat on the door, that was it.
A large plastic white chair, something from someone’s summer deck, sat in front of the now propped window. Faye sat on it, crossing long bare legs at the ankle. Her toenails were painted the color of wet clay.
After her first exhale, smoke going out the slit the raised window allowed, Sipe asked, “You said girls were leaving?”
“Right and left. You know it.”
“Don’t take this the wrong way. You’re nice looking and all, but a buddy of mine told me if I come out this way I ought to ask for a girl name of Serenity.”
Faye nodded. Her kinky black hair was up in a bun and nodding made the dangling crescent-shaped earrings bob back and forth.
“Little superstar.”
“How’s that?”
“Our little superstar. Diva, I guess. It was bullshit. Bonnie telling us she was 18, easy, and she’d tell you she was 20, but you see some girls without makeup, I mean if you aren’t already sure, you can tell.”
“How old was she?”
“Probably 16. Or an olllld 13.”
“Jeez.”
“Mm-hm. Pretty baby. Crazy baby.”
“Crazy?”
“She’d start crying. Or talking in tongues, some poor guy banging away at her and then all of a sudden she’s going on like Satan’s possessed her. Some guys complained, some guys got off on it. Kid bored to begin with. Or had daddy issues of some sort. Lucky she didn’t do that to some guy that wouldn’t have it. Start beating on her or something. Maybe see her being all crazy and then try and out do her. I guess this isn’t the city though. You guys have more manners out here.” She looked at him, sucking in smoke then blowing it out over her shoulder. “But you’re just a visitor, like me, right?”
“Right.”
“What brought you out to the middle of the middle of nowhere?”
“Things.”
She laughed.
“Forces beyond your control. I get you. Where you from?”
“Here and there.”
“Oh,” she said, “I got it. I got it. I say the same thing a lot of times when people ask me that. Guys enjoy that. The exotic touch. Mystery.”
“You know where she went?”
“Who?”
“Serenity.”
“Jesus. Can’t let go, can you, baby?”
“Curious.”
“That what happened,” she lifted her chin towards Sipe. “Your little beauty mark there, all over your face?”
“Car accident,” said Sipe. “Dashboard.”
“And bad as you look, I ought to see the dashboard? It like that? Uh-huh.”
She focused on the cigarette, blowing a couple serious streams of smoke towards the window. Sipe wondered how a girl otherwise super-skinny could have a little belly roll, just a little one. It’d melt away when she stood. Like a magic trick. She had more belly than breast almost. An incurable case of the munchies maybe.
“It’s just, you know, my buddy will probably ask me about her,” said Sipe.
“You want to be sure and have something to tell him. The facts?”
“Sure.”
“We gonna actually do it, mister?”
“Maybe.”
“Mm-hmm.” Like Faye already knew he just wanted information. “We can talk. I don’t mind. I’m pretty mellow. I was smoking a joint earlier. I mean that’s part of why we moved over here. I got a sister she’s allergic to marijuana, the smoke at least. I figure she’s allergic probably other people are, too. Bonnie, she gave me shit for doing it. Thinks I’m stoned, that’s why I wasn’t answering her text. I was like, look, it’s not my fault if the room ringer doesn’t work. That’s her brothers’ fault, not me. They’re losing their shit over every little last thing because they thought this was going to last. They invested in it, got money from Portland, got some girls from Portland, and now they can’t meet their monthly payment. And it’s my fault? Excuse me?”
“Is that part of the reason Serenity left?”
“What?”
“She didn’t like the way she was getting treated?”
“I don’t know. See, I didn’t see much of the other one. Ty? The other Ruchert? I don’t know what he thought of her. Bret seemed to treat her pretty good. She’s local, you know? Me, Cassandra, Wanda, we’re all foreigners. And I mean that like, you know, we’re not from around here, and you know, we aren’t white. Well, Cassie not so much, but Wanda, she looked like Tina Turner, I mean young Tina Turner, right?, and I look like the way I look, so we don’t get the pass white people give white people.
“But I know something fucked up happened a couple weeks ago. Something money related. That little room behind the front counter, they shut the door and Bret and Bonnie just screamed at one another. Well, Bonnie did. Bret’s so big he doesn’t have to. I’m all the way back here and I could hear it. We all could. Family squabble. That’s something, you get so pissed off you scream loud enough it vibrates on down all those logs and into the rooms.”
“And that’s when Serenity left?”
Faye squinched up her face.
“Right around then, yeah.”
“And the others, too?”
“Wanda’s just over in Portland for a week or so. She’s supposed to be recruiting, Bonnie and Bret asked her, too, since she’s over there already, but she’s not going to fucking lie to anyone. She’ll tell them this thing over here is dying. I mean, far as I can tell it’s dead. All this pussy available and no one gives a shit? I mean I guess the back-up plan is to get local girls to work here. Cheaper, but if they’re crazy like Serenity…”
Faye laughed. She worked it up, hitting high-pitch noises Sipe had heard from other people that smoked weed.
“Sorry. It’s just, I know the kind of girls Bret would try and get to work here. Or not that, more, the only ones he could get to work out here, when I fin
ally get out, when Wanda does, too. I’ve seen what they’ve got around here. The locals. I mean, they’d look like Bret, but with a wig on, some lipstick. Oh shit. Not pretty. Not pretty at all. Guys would be coming in here and the girls would be posing at the doors, showing it off, and it’d be like you were at the zoo whorehouse, looking at the animals inviting you in. Like an ape, a fucking ape in lingerie. Oh shit. Oh shit.”
Faye laughing hard enough tears leaked out from her eyes. She blotted with the back of her hands. Once she seemed under control again Sipe asked if Serenity had any customers she seemed close to.
“Like a getaway guy? You know what that means? Ok. It’s the type of guy that proposes you leave your job, runaway with him? Become his angel? Whore to angel just easy as 1-2-3. Those guys are full of shit. Usually they got a wife and kids. They get caught up in the moment and think about taking off with some girl they just paid to fuck and by the time they’re halfway home they know it’s all so much bullshit. Probably freak out, thinking the girl is going to take it as being real, a done deal and all.
“I mean any girl with sense knows bullshit as it’s being fed to her. But her…A kid…I mean, there was one guy that made the rounds, and made it sound good, like he did it to me and to Wanda and probably all the others, telling them how he could change their lives. He was sick of this place, this little corner of nowhere and was meant for bigger things. Slick. Real slick, but some little girl, someone susceptible to something like that like her, our little Miss Serenity, she might’ve gone for that, talked herself into it as much as those kind of guys talk themselves into it.”
“You remember his name?”
“Oh yeah. Quinn. I want to say Dobbs as the last name. Most guys don’t advertise the last name, but he thought it was real important somehow. Dobbs. That sounds right, but don’t hold me to it.” She shrugged. “I guess I can’t blame her. If she did. I mean if she did. If I was young and dumb and kind of broken I’d take Prince Charming’s hand. I wouldn’t put him under the microscope. I’d believe because I had to believe in something.”
The Lipless Gods Page 14