CAROLINA’S GOT ON a tight red skirt and red-bottom shoes. Her hair is red as fire, tight in a bun at the back of her neck, straight and shiny. She didn’t polish her nails. But they neat and clean, low cut. She ain’t got on much jewelry. Just a gold chain, white posts in her ear. She look important, out of place in this part of The Fount just like the stains on the basement rugs and the walls that they never bothered to paint.

She walk by the freight elevator, past the steps, past a double-decker washer and dryer and a vending machine that sell pink and purple condoms. She writing on a sheet of paper. Checking things off when she say I don’t got to worry about buying condoms ’cause they provide me with ’em.

I quit walking. “Huh? Hold up, what?”

It’s a requirement, she say. People are pigs, nasty—them her words, not mine. “You get an infection, we don’t make money.”

I walk until I’m ahead of her. Standing in front of her, facing her, I tell her she musta made a mistake. Got me confused with somebody else. “I’m Char.” I got my hand on my hips, my back straight. “Charlese. I’m supposed to work the bar, make the drinks. Not—” I look at the machine. “I don’t do that.”

“Do I need to call Anthony?” She walking again.

I try to keep up again, explain again. “No … no, ma’am. But Anthony told me—I’m doing him a favor. Some girl ain’t show up, he said. I’m supposed to serve drinks. That’s all he asked me to do. I don’t know nothing about doing nothing else. That ain’t me.”

We turn up another hall that only got two light bulbs, no covers. There’s about forty rooms on this floor. And it smells … foul. I hear noises coming from behind them doors, men who sound like bears.

A dungeon—that’s what this remind me of. The kind that castles sit on top of. Mr. Bobbie gave me a whole coloring book full of ’em once. I drew in snakes and crocodiles, colored the water so black it looked like the devil lived in it. JuJu said that wasn’t my best work.

I turn around and start running. Maybe she ran track, the 400 like JuJu. ’Cause when she catch up to me, she still in her heels, not even out of breath. Before I know it, she turn into one of them guards at county. So, I do what she wants. She got the pistol, not me.

JuJu always said I never knew when to be quiet. This time I keep my mouth closed and my eyes open. I try to remember every room number I pass, every person that go by. Some of ’em work here. Wear uniforms. Empty trash. They listen to music, walk, push carts. Act like they don’t see me.

She stick the key in the lock, chains the door once we inside. Room 387 got double beds, a brown pullout couch, a flat screen, and orange rugs that went out of style a long time ago. My back’s against the door when she put her things away, tells me to sit.

“I … I can make … rum and Coke, gin with vermouth … uh … uh …” I can’t think up nothing else I’m good at making.

This room is for her, Anthony, and the driver, I hear her say. If I feel unsafe in the room next door, knock twice on the wall. She put her hand out. “And give me your purse and phone.”

“No … I got a baby. If she get sick—”

“I tell him all the time. No kids with kids. But he— Never mind.” She mumbling something about family.

She rolling her eyes. Taking my purse. Going through my phone. Asking where I hang out online. I don’t know why she need to know. But I tell anyhow. Then she tells me that whatever the customer wants is what I’m supposed to do. I think about noises in the hall, men in the parking lot. Before I know it, I’m in the bathroom throwing up in the toilet—twice.

She good at showing up without you hearing her coming. “Do that again and”—she whispers in my ear like somebody else might hear her—“I’ll tell him. You want me to tell him? He likes you … says you are the smartest, prettiest girl he knows.”

Sour spit dribbles down my chin when I stand up. “Don’t. Please.” I turn on the faucet, splash water on my face, in my mouth.

She open the bathroom cabinet. Takes out toothpaste and squirts it on the brush. “Here. And quit crying. Girls like us—”

“Like us?”

“I worked my way up. Started at thirteen. Now I got a Benz. A kid in Catholic school. Don’t you want nice things?”

I do.

Her face get so close to mine, I see glue on her lashes. “You should be glad you ain’t gotta give it away for free no more.”

“I’m a virgin.”

She smiles. Says at least Anthony done one thing right.

Carolina watches me brush. Once I’m done, I follow her into the bedroom. She takes a seat at a computer on the desk next to the wall across the room. My eyes go from the chain on the door, to the window, to the balcony, then back to her. “Anthony said I’m like his daughter.”

“Anthony is a businessman. All he cares about is making money.”

“But—”

She coming my way again. Standing over me, she seem taller … a giraffe looking down on grass. “He lent you money?”

“No. He gave me that money.”

“That means you owe him money.”

“But he said—”

“You owe him money, yes or no?”

“Yes … I guess.”

She got a smirk on her face, her arms crossed when she say, “Then pay up. Two thousand dollars plus interest. You pay now, you can leave now.”

I don’t got it, I tell her. Plus, it wasn’t no two thousand, not even a thousand, I don’t think. “And he didn’t say nothing about interest or paying it back.”

She sitting next to me when she run her finger down that yellow paper on her clipboard. She stop when she finds my name. There it is, Carolina tells me. In black and white. What I owe circled in red.

My name seem wrong there, misspelled when it ain’t. But what choice do I got but to give her what she want—my full name, plus the middle one, my social security number, address, and where I went to middle school. They need to know everything about me, she say, ’cause if I run, they coming for me.