After Maggie had a few days of rest, Armando told her that she would start working the next night. “Trinity is gonna take ya out and get ya started. She’s gonna teach ya how to lure men in and how much money you should get.”
Maggie, no longer willing to argue, nodded. “Sure, Armando, whatever you want.”
Armando smiled to himself. Another bitch wrecked, he thought. This is just too easy.
Maggie knew that everything happening to her under Armando and Rock’s control was just as wrong as all the things John William and Myles had done to her. She also knew that Thelma had Seth at her home, and suspected that Armando would keep true to his word and kill the boy if she didn’t do everything he told her to do. She had been having sex against her will since she was kidnapped. She hated every minute of it, but over time, she’d come to accept it as a way of life. It’s just what she did, she told herself. It was not who she was.
That night, on Kensington Avenue under the train tracks of the El, Maggie realized that being a streetwalker wasn’t easy. They stood in the cold in high heels and short skirts. They were forced to flirt and smile at all the scum-sucking maggots who happened to look their way. Maggie was intrigued by the prostitutes who fought over customers, and she gawked at the strung-out drug addicts who oozed onto the streets from small alleys with nothing on their minds but the next fix.
“OK, this guy walking toward us. He’s a regular. I want ya to smile at him really pretty and ask if he wants to go on a date. Understand?” Trinity pressed.
As the man approached, Maggie plastered a fake smile on her face. “Hello, sir. Would you like to go on a date?”
“Ha! What’s with the sir shit? Trin, who ya got here, Mary fucking Poppins?” the scuzzy man yapped. “Sure, honey, I’ll go on a date wit’ cha.”
“What are ya lookin’ for?” Trinity asked him.
“With this little hottie? How much for a regular?” he asked.
“We got a special tonight since she’s new and all. Fifty bucks,” Trinity said confidently. “Ya know that’s a fuckin’ steal, too. Just look at her.”
The man rubbed his chin and took a long visual drink of Maggie. “Yeah, OK. But she better be good for that kind of money.”
“Yeah, she’ll be good,” Trinity promised.
Trinity leaned into Maggie. “Take him back into the weeds in that open lot. Keep walking ’til you see a small path on your left. Follow the path and you’ll see a mattress. Make sure he uses a condom; we don’t need no pregnant bitches ’round here. Do him and get back here fast.”
Walking through the tall weeds with the stranger, Maggie realized that this was the first time since John William had kidnapped her that she was roaming free. Little did she know that Armando was watching her every move after she left Trinity’s side. They never let new girls go off on their own for the first couple of months, not until they could be trusted.
Once they reached the mattress, Maggie turned and looked at the man, waiting for instructions. “What the fuck are you looking at? Let’s go; get undressed,” he told her.
Maggie quickly undressed, shivering in the cold night air, and sat down on the edge of the mattress. “You’re kiddin’ me, right? What the fuck are you waiting for? Lay down on the damn mattress,” he said, losing his patience with her inexperience.
He stood over her and quickly slipped on a condom. The cartel also required the men to wear condoms, but only to keep their property disease free.
“You’re sure a beauty,” the john panted, once he was on top of her.
When he finished, he stood quickly, took out fifty dollars, and threw it at her. By the time she got back out on Kensington Avenue, Trinity had another customer waiting for her. “Give me the money,” Trinity stated. “Take this next guy back. He wants a blow job. Make sure you get twenty-five bucks when you’re done.”
Maggie’s first night was horrid. She serviced someone every forty-five minutes. She’d done all the same things with men during her captivity, but here, in the open, she felt like a creepy-crawly bug in the night. When it was time to go back to the house, Armando came to walk with her.
“You did pretty good tonight,” he said, taking the money from Trinity and counting it on the way back to the car. “Tomorrow, I wanna see ya do better. It costs a lot of money to keep ya happy. Ya already owe Rock ten thousand bucks for buying you out of that whorehouse you were livin’ in,” he explained.
“But no one told me I had to pay Rock back. I didn’t even know how much money he had to pay,” Maggie stated sheepishly. She had no idea how she would ever be able to repay ten thousand dollars. Then she spoke without thinking.
“Maybe my parents would pay Rock for me. I could call them and ask,” she offered, with a glimmer of hope that she could speak to them again.
But as the words passed Maggie’s lips, she realized it was the wrong thing to say.