The door opened and Rose walked into the room. “Time to get up. He wants you to put this on and come to the kitchen, now.” She tossed a kimono style robe onto my bed.
“I have to shower first,” I said, throwing my forearm over my eyes and blinking against the sunlight on my face.
She laughed. “You don’t get it, do you? You do what he says. When he says it. And you’ll be okay. You give him shit, you’re gone.” She jerked her thumb toward the door. “Go.”
I got out of bed and wrapped the kimono around me, grateful to have something that fit. In the kitchen, Isaac sat alone at the table sipping a steaming cup of coffee. Remembering the coffee that had landed on the former house girl, I gave him a wide berth.
“Ah, Mary,” he said. “Your first breakfast.”
I nodded. After last night, I was barely able to look at him, let alone make small talk. I looked longingly at the coffee pot, but without knowing breakfast protocol I assumed pouring myself a cup could buy me a backhand or worse. Rose stepped into the kitchen and I exhaled.
“Get the cereal from the cupboard, put the boxes on the table. Get the milk out of the fridge. You can have a cup of coffee while you work, but you’ll eat with the rest of them.”
A Brady Bunch breakfast…and tonight he’ll ship us out to screw his clients. Elizabeth appeared in the doorway. Isaac pulled out the chair beside him and she took it. A young girl staggered into the room on shaky legs. She’d been heavy handed at the bar yesterday and from the looks of her this morning, a shot in her coffee wouldn’t hurt. Isaac glanced at her, shook his head disgusted and turned back to Elizabeth. When there were five seated around the table, Isaac cleared his throat.
“As you all know, tomorrow night we are hosting a party.”
I was the only one whose head came up in response to his statement. The others continued to read the backs of the cereal boxes or stare blankly at the shapes floating in their bowls.
“I know you don’t always like my parties, but they’re good for business and you won’t have to freeze your little asses off in the back of some schmuck’s car. I have chosen the guest list carefully, only our best have been invited.”
The lack of enthusiasm, except for Isaac’s, made me wonder what his parties entailed. He was grinning like a Cheshire cat, the girls as solemn as undertakers.
“Rose,” Isaac said, “Get things rolling.”
She nodded and Isaac stood. He hesitated at the head of the table and I could feel his eyes on me. I didn’t look up. My mistake. My full attention was what he wanted and I hadn’t given it to him. Isaac always got what he wanted. He stepped up behind my chair, wrapped his long bony fingers around my throat and pressed the back of my head against his crotch. He bent and whispered into my ear, his breath hot on my cheek. “I haven’t forgotten you. The day is young.”
After Isaac went out through the back door the others began to drift from the room, but I was rooted to my seat, not trusting my legs to hold me. I nursed my coffee though my stomach threatened to send it back each time I swallowed. I tried to focus on the party instead of the feel of Isaac’s penis on the back of my head. With one text to Griff I could arrange for Isaac’s holiday gathering to become a surprise party with Griff and John as the uninvited guests. I might not be able to hand over Kira, but I would give them Isaac on a fucking platter.
Rose had just left the kitchen when the backdoor swung open.
“Only the dredges left, I suppose,” Ruth said. She took a mug from the draining rack beside the sink and poured into it what was left in the pot before joining me at the table. “You don’t look so good,” she said taking a sip and grimacing at the mud in her cup.
I shrugged. “Party planning,” I told her.
“Yeah. I have my list of errands.” She took another sip.
“How bad are they?”
“Isaac’s parties? I can’t say that I’ve ever had the pleasure of attending one, but I’ve heard about them and seen the aftermath on the girls. Suffice it to say, they’re not pretty.”
“Violent?”
She nodded. “Isaac invites his highest paying clients, so it’s not the usual guys who have a shred of conscience and need to get home to their wives and kids after a quick blowjob. It’s the high rollers, a lot of cash, drugs, and with that comes the fetishes.
“The girls didn’t look too pleased.”
“I’m sure they’re not, but it’s big bucks for Isaac.”
“How often does he have them?”
“Two or three times a year. Lucky you.”
“I won’t be…”
She raised her eyebrows. “Everyone will. Why would you be an exception? You’re the new girl. They all want a taste of something new.”
Her words hit my stomach like a wrecking ball. And if Isaac liked to be the first then his words about the day being young meant he’d come after me today. Once he’d had me, I was fair game for his guests. I vaguely heard Ruth talking.
“I’ve got to get to work,” she said. “You don’t look so good. Maybe you should lie down for a while.”
The back door closed with a bang and I looked up to an empty kitchen. I could text Griff now to come and get me, save myself from whatever Isaac had in store and avoid the party altogether. But we’d be no further along in finding Kira than we were before. And I couldn’t let the last three days be for nothing. I walked my coffee cup to the sink, poured the rest of it down the drain and started washing the breakfast dishes.
Venturing into the dark basement and hoping to avoid any squeaking, four-legged, creatures, I did two more loads of laundry. Then went back upstairs and dragged the ancient Electrolux down the hallway and pulled it into the center of the living room. No one seemed to notice me over their pipes and bottles of Jack Daniels. I used the opportunity to assess the women, filing details of each one in my head. Later, I’d pass the information to Griff. Some must have family members searching for them.
There were seven women, eight counting Rose, including myself made nine in the house, ten up until last night. Since then we’d lost the drunk girl. Like Isaac said, we were all replaceable and no doubt there’d be new ones arriving. Rose had confirmed what I already knew when she’d said that clients preferred them young. So what was I doing here? I didn’t consider myself young, at least not by Isaac’s definition, but he didn’t know my exact age. I could pass for twenty-five if I had to. Kira had been fifteen when she left home three years ago, making her eighteen now, in her prime by Isaacs standards. I looked around the room, at a guess the current ages ranged from sixteen to early twenties.
The youngest girl was in a lacey, pink bra and panties ensemble. She had tracks on her arm and I wondered if they’d been there before Isaac had ‘rescued’ her. She was playing Crazy Eights with a striking blonde no more than eighteen years old with a body and a face more suitable for the cover of Vogue than this place. She had bruises around her neck in the shape of a handprint.
“Watch it.”
I looked down and saw that I’d tipped over a glass. “Sorry, I wasn’t looking where I was going.” I pulled the handle of the vacuum back, glancing toward the door expecting a reprimand from Rose or Isaac.
“Well maybe you should.” The girl got up off the couch and went to the bar to make another drink. Baby-fine, auburn curls swung across her back, but didn’t hide the red welts snaking over her shoulders. They looked fresh. A few strands of her hair were stuck tight against them.
With all these young girls scattered around the room, it struck me that there was not one smile, no laughter or jokes.
Lunch was canned spaghetti. My choice since I was doing the cooking. I’m a limited chef. Lucky for me Isaac prefers processed food.
“Four girls tonight,” Isaac announced coming into the kitchen while we were eating. He pointed to the ones he wanted. Elizabeth was one and I was disappointed. I’d hoped to get a chance to talk to her tonight. The other three included the girl with the welts on her back, the fingerprinted neck and one I hadn’t spoken with yet.
“Your day will come,” he said to me as he turned to leave the room.
Rose stayed in the kitchen as the others drifted off. She went to a cupboard and took out a bottle of bourbon. Pouring two tumblers half full she motioned for me to take one. What the hell, I thought and as the liquid stung my throat I welcomed the burn. I lifted my glass to Rose for a refill. She smiled and poured.
Ruth swung the back door wide. “Any leftovers?” she asked stepping into the kitchen.
“Shouldn’t you be at the store or with the farm workers?” Rose asked.
“Store’s closed midday, you know that. The women have had their break and are back to work. It’s my turn now.” She lowered herself into a kitchen chair.
I raised my bourbon, offering, but she shook her head.
“Coffee?”
“It’s an endless pot in this house,” I said and poured her a cup.
Rose was right. Ruth didn’t fit. Her body was heavy and awkward made worse by combat boots and ill-fitting clothes. I wondered if she dressed that way on purpose. Her fingernails were bitten and dirty and her hair begged to be washed, but I didn’t believe that she was the dimwit Rose alluded to. I think Ruth knew exactly how to keep herself on the fringes of Isaac’s livelihood.
After refilling her tumbler Rose made some comment about finding better company and left the room. I sat down across from Ruth, glad to have a moment alone with her.
“Where did Lucas take the girl?” I ventured.
She took a sip of her coffee and looked at me over the rim of her cup. “Lucas runs his own business with his own contacts,” she said after setting the mug back on the table.
“He sold her?”
“I guess.”
“To who?”
She shrugged. “Not my problem. What’d you care?”
“I guess I’d like to know what’ll happen to me if I screw-up.”
“Just don’t and you won’t have to worry about it.”
“Where’s your mother?” I asked.
She looked up surprised at the question. Measured me for a moment and then said, “Gone.”
“Was she…did she…live here?”
Ruth shook her head. “She left him a long time ago. I don’t remember much about her.”
“Why didn’t she take you with her?”
She studied me again, like she was deciding on how to answer. “Didn’t want me.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“Don’t be.”
“My mother didn’t want me either, but she didn’t leave. Instead she reminded me every day just how much she regretted giving birth. It would have been better if she’d left.”
Ruth looked at me and nodded. “I guess we have something in common.”
“What the hell are you still doing here?” Rose walked back into the kitchen.
I cursed her under my breath.
Ruth raised her cup and nodded to the bag she’d left on the counter. “Cigarettes.”
“At least you’re good for something,” Rose said. “Isn’t it time to re-open that little store of yours out in the middle of nowhere?” Rose laughed. “What do ya do all day alone, sit out back and play with yourself?”
“No Rose, that’s your job.”
“I wouldn’t touch you with a ten foot pole.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“Dimwit.” Rose poured herself some coffee, added a splash of bourbon and reached in the bag for a pack of cigarettes. She raised her mug. “Here’s to another day in paradise.”
“You don’t like it, Isaac can make other arrangements.”
“Fuck you,” Rose said. She unwrapped the pack of cigarettes, tapped the end and drew one out between her teeth. Then she sneered at Ruth and left the room again.
“No love there, huh?” I asked.
“I don’t know why he keeps that bitch around,” Ruth said. “She’s useless.”
“She sort of watches over the girls, doesn’t she?”
“Whatever.” Ruth drained her mug and walked to the sink. After rinsing it, she wiped it dry and set it back in the cupboard.
“Thanks,” I said.
“For what?”
“Conversation.”
“No problem. I gotta get back to work.” Before stepping outside her eyes met mine and I saw pity or empathy. It could have been either. It could have been both. She closed the door behind her.
After cleaning the kitchen I went upstairs to gather the sheets from the beds. I didn’t work this hard at my own house, but here, housework was better than the alternative. When I stepped inside my room, Elizabeth was back in bed. I tossed the comforter from my bed to the floor. The yellow and blue floral pattern that splashed across my sheets was nothing more than a memory, the white background now a dingy gray. Creature comforts.
“I need your sheets,” I said to Elizabeth.
“In a minute.”
“What time did you come in last night?”
“You were awake. We talked, or were you too fucked up to remember?”
“I was fucked up but I remember. I just didn’t know what time it was.”
“What difference does time make?”
I tried another tactic. “Where do you go when you leave here?”
She looked at me like she didn’t understand my question. “Where the fuck do you think?”
“I don’t know. That’s why I asked.”
“You’ll find out. Your turn’s comin’.”
“I’d like to know where I’m going before I go.”
She laughed and leaned up on one elbow. “Sit down.” She motioned to the end of her bed. “Once Isaac thinks you’re ready, he takes you to the store.”
“Bennett’s Market?”
She nodded. “That’s where whoever wants you picks you up. Then they bring you back after. Sometimes we don’t even leave the parking lot. Just do what they want in their car, but mostly we go to a bar or a motel, occasionally to the guy’s house. That’s rare ‘cause most of them are married.”
“Does everyone always come back?”
“What’d ya mean?” She looked wary.
“I don’t know. I just wondered if everyone always comes back to Isaac?” I was hoping I sounded vague enough so she wouldn’t think I was fishing.
“Everyone comes back. This is where we live. If you fuck up and Isaac doesn’t want you anymore then you get sold to another house and you work there.”
“And that’s when Lucas comes, right? When Isaac wants to sell you?”
“Why the fuck do you have to know everything?”
I pulled at the corners of the bottom sheet, afraid of pushing her too far. “I guess I’m a little scared. I want to know what’s going to happen to me.”
“Just don’t fuck up. This is a good house. We have clothes and food, booze, pot. A lot of places aren’t this good.”
“Why don’t any of the girls try to leave?”
“Why should they? They have more here than they had before they came. And it’s a lot more than girls have at other houses.”
I cringed to think of what conditions might be wherever Kira was. “Who are the men?”
“Anybody who want to get laid,” she hesitated, “or whatever.” Some I don’t know. Some are regulars.”
“Regulars from St. Bart?”
“No names, Isaac’s rule.”
“I won’t tell him you said anything.”
She looked me dead on. “I said, no names. It’s Isaac’s rule.”
“You’re loyal to him.”
“He’s good to me. He makes sure I get good johns. No freaks. I don’t get beat-up and I don’t have to do any weird shit. Just have sex and get paid. He treats me like his daughter.”
Father of the year, I thought. “What about the scars on your shoulders?
“That was a one-time thing. Isaac promised never again.”
“What about Ruth?”
Elizabeth laughed. “Ruth’s a joke that Isaac doesn’t find funny.”
“What’s her role in the business?”
“There isn’t one. She runs the store, plays go-for, handles the farm workers and keeps her mouth shut. Isaac has as little to do with her as possible and vice versa. As far as he’s concerned, I’m his daughter, not her.”
I left my sheets in a pile in the middle of the room and went to gather from the other bedrooms. I’d milked all I could from Elizabeth. If I kept questioning her I ran the risk of her mentioning something to Isaac. Rose was another possibility, but I was leery of her too. Her age was already against her, she couldn’t risk giving Isaac another reason to dump her if he found out she was talking.
Most of the girls were in the living room so I was surprised when I walked into a room to find someone in bed. It was the girl whose drink I’d tipped over with the vacuum, the girl with the auburn hair and welts on her back. She rolled toward me and winced as she did.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
“I need a wet cloth from the bathroom,” she said. “Warm.”
In the bathroom, I ran a face cloth under the hot faucet, wrung it out and brought it to her. She lay on her stomach. “Put it on my back,” she said.
I lowered the blanket to her waist and groaned when I saw the welts up close. They were fresh all right, pulpy and oozing. Patches of dried blood mapped her back. “What’s your name?” I asked.
“Eve.”
I started to wipe it and she flinched.
“Sorry.”
“Don’t wipe it. Lay the cloth over my back. When it cools get another one.”
“You sound like you’ve done this before.”
“He always asks for me.” She whimpered, like the child she was.
“Can’t you tell Isaac what’s happening?”
“He knows.”
“And?”
“When I complained he said I was ungrateful. He said the client is one of his best and pays a lot for me and that he can always send me somewhere else. Someplace where I won’t have it this good. The client strips me naked, beats me, and then he’s done. No sex. Isaac’s right. I should consider myself lucky.”
Her warped assessment brought tears to my eyes and I heard myself saying the same thing to Amy twenty-five years ago. It was Christmas and I hadn’t gotten the pony I’d asked for. In fact, Santa had missed our house altogether. Amy presented me with a plastic Pinto with a thick black mane and a white tail that fell past its hooves. Real or not, it was the most beautiful pony I’d ever seen. I fell asleep feeling like the luckiest girl in the world.
“Do you want something to eat?” I asked Eve. My offer sounded futile, worthless given the stakes, but I wanted to help her in some way. I wanted to take the surrender out of her eyes and relieve the pain of a girl who believed luck was getting beaten instead of raped or a plastic pony instead of a mother’s love.
“Toast,” Eve said. “And a glass of whiskey.”
In the kitchen, I buttered the toast and carried it on a tray into the living room. I poured a tumbler half full of Jack Daniels and set it beside the plate of toast then I poured one for myself.
I set the tray down beside Eve’s bed. She reached for the tumbler and downed it then picked up a piece of toast and carefully turned on her side, leaning up on one elbow. “Thanks,” she said.
I gathered the sheets from where I’d left them on the floor. “I have to do the laundry,”
“Will you bring me another one when you come back?”
I took the tumbler from her outstretched hand and left her with a fresh compress on her back. But before heading to the kitchen, I took a detour into my bedroom. As I hoped, Elizabeth was gone and I grabbed the moment to text Griff. These opportunities were few and far between. I went into the bathroom and took the cell phone from its hiding place in the closet.
No info on Kira. 9 girls. One sold. “Lucas” is the middleman. Girls work at Bennett’s Market. Stebbins involved. Big party Friday night. Lots of clients. Will send the details.
I added the descriptions of the three girls I’d seen earlier, and included Rose and Elizabeth asking that he check runaways and missing persons, hoping for a match. Then I told him I was safe and that I loved him. And then I threw up. Maybe it was because my body wasn’t used to booze for breakfast, or because of the description Ruth had given me about Isaac’s parties or because Isaac had promised to come back for me today. Maybe it was all three.