She really didn’t mind, no biggie. I mean except for the occasional project thrown his way by his brother, Kyle wasn’t working. Daddy’s assets were frozen. They were going to need quite a spot of cash for a down payment if they were going to buy.
“Some place nice,” he agreed. “Maybe not Dana Point. But how about Bakersfield?”
A home of her own. For now, they were living next to Casey’s place in a shack—what else could you call it? That was getting old fast. They needed money. So: a mattress in the back of the Groom Room, ice chest with beer and, duh, ice, a shelf with plastic cups and airline-type little liquor bottles, radio if they wanted music, boxes of condoms, Kyle driving around Desert Haven, Boron, Mojave, trolling for clientele. Someday it would make a good story. Maybe she’d even write a book.
She thought about it sometimes, the book, the publicity tour, while she lay on her stomach at home—i.e., in the shack—when Kyle wasn’t there. The cat would climb on her back and start treading. Kneading. Those urgent paws, pressing, pushing. The cat purring and breathing hard. Insistent. Pressing harder.
He walked in on them once. What the fuck! he repeated. Scat! The cat ran.
“It does nothing for me,” she assured him. In front of Kyle, the cat was always “it” or “the cat.” Only in private did she call it Stephen, the name of the first boy she’d loved. “It’s same as with the clients,” she said. “They need it. Me? I just wait for them to finish.”
He loomed above her, scowling, not at her, she thought, but the strain of thinking. “You pretend the customers are cats?” he asked.
The client would get in the van. Security panel behind the front seat was there from before when it protected the driver from the dogs. Now they hung a black curtain, too, for privacy. It bothered her that Kyle could hear the sounds she made but at least that meant he’d also hear a call for help. Sometimes they pulled over to the side of the road or into a parking lot. Some men wanted the dome light on. Some liked it off. Some liked the feel of the vehicle in motion, really open it up on the highway. She liked that too, the road vibrations, the feeling she might be going somewhere. None of it was that bad as long as she stayed high. Well, Dr. Tang was bad at first. He’d become a regular and that was awkward, picking him up at the Institute, the place of business of someone she knew socially. But Tang was sweet. He missed his wife and son. She knew all about it. They were held hostage to be sure he went back. The only question in her mind, was China holding them so as not to lose a scientist, or was the US denying them visas to be sure he wouldn’t stay once he’d been used? Governments were all the same. Land of the free. Right, she thought. Tell it to my father. Tell it to the judge. The problem was when Kyle braked hard.
“When I’m with the clients,” she lied, “I don’t think anything. It’s a job. Does anyone love their job?”
Sore point. “You don’t know what it’s like,” he’d told her, “all the people watching and the bright lights and cameras and shit. I thought it would be like, this is work? Fucking for money, but...”
“Tell me about it,” she said. Poor Kyle. Wannabe porn star who couldn’t get it up. Who thought he was specially photogenic ‘cause he wasn’t what he called circumferenced.
The cat jumped back on the bed and she stroked it slowly from the top of its head, down its soft back, up to the tip of its tail. Truth was, she loved knowing she could give furry little Stephen so much pleasure. She really loved the cat.
“How old are you, babe?”
“Twenty-three,” said Yoli.
“Ready for early retirement?”
All they had to do, Kyle told her, was get the broke-down horse trailer Casey left by the storage shed and tow it off-road. Fix it up. “Bobby’s got a girl as useless as I was. I can have her if I give him a cut. She’d live in the trailer and work the van. “I pick a place where you can’t see the highway. There’s no windows in the Groom Room, right? So when I pick her up and drive her back, I don’t go direct. Drive around in circles to confuse her.” No violence necessary. No security needed. Her—eventually their, once Bobby offered him more girls—departure would be discouraged by the fact she would have no idea where she was except for being surrounded by miles of desert, coyotes, and rattlesnakes.
“You figure this out yourself?” she asked.
“Hey, it’s just a start. Once the cheddar starts coming in, I get more girls from Bobby, and maybe buy a nice Airstream or two. They can work right there. How does this sound? Mojave Mustang?”
“You’d need hookups,” she said.
“No, it’s the clients need hookups.”
“For water,” she said. “Sewage.”
“Help me figure a budget,” said Kyle. “Have to pay Bobby something ‘cause he’s still paying Boro. It’s gonna take gas to drive around, and food to feed them. And I guess soap and shampoo and shit.”
“How you gonna convince her to come out here?”
“That’s what the gun is for,” he said.
What he hadn’t figured was that with early retirement, Yoli had nothing to do all day and all night in a place like Desert Haven. Not to mention her Daddy got transferred to RJ Donovan, down by San Diego. A metropolis even if the warden didn’t allow Night Yard.
She left behind her brass bed and half their savings. She took Kyle’s car.
A week after Lara arrived, Yoli was gone.