I have to write fast. I have to write it down before I chicken out and stop writing and someone gets hurt. I can already feel the words build up inside me like a water behind a dam, and I’m scared of what’ll happen if it breaks. I’ve already been punctured or perforated or whatever other p-word you want to use, and the pressure makes everything in there come out at a high pinhole power that flattens everything in the way. I want to fill all the cracks and crevices on earth with water, then break them open and wash the whole world away, leaving behind a clean, empty beach of damp sand and maybe a few seagulls to cry their sadness to the wind.
I went down to the Haidou Hotel and headed for Lucian’s office. The hotel was busier than it had been before. Music and voices floated out of the bar, and lots of guys, some in suits, some in polo shirts, were hanging out in the lobby. Lucian’s office door was open a crack, and I hesitantly pushed it open. He was typing something on his laptop, but he looked up and gestured me in with a little smile.
“Eryx told you,” Lucian said. He got up and came around the desk. “Good. Let’s get you oriented, Danny.”
“Uh, okay,” I said, a little nervous for some reason. “What am I doing?”
Lucian steered me out of his office with a hand on my shoulder and guided me up the hallway to one of the ground floor rooms, number 008. “This is one of the rooms we don’t rent out. I’ve got a uniform for you, and you can try it on in here.”
He opened it with a keycard from his pocket and I went in with Lucian right behind me. It was a simple room—double bed, closet, night stand, sliding glass door, bathroom. The curtains were drawn across the glass door. It smelled old, and the bed was a little saggy. I wondered how many thousand people had slept on it over the years.
Lucian opened the closet. Hanging inside were some white polo shirts and black slacks on hangers. He tossed me one of each. “Try these on, see if they fit.”
I looked around uncertainly. “Here?”
He rolled his eyes. “You can go in the bathroom if you’re body shy, kid.”
His expression made me feel stupid, but after what happened with Myron, I didn’t feel exactly comfortable changing clothes in front of him, so I went into the bathroom, shut the door, and pulled off my t-shirt.
“So where are your parents, Danny?” Lucian asked from the front room. His voice came through the crack under the door.
I hesitated a second, the shirt still stuck over my arms. “They don’t know I’m working here,” I said. “They wouldn’t like it if they knew I was working in a bar, but I need the money.”
“Understandable. You’re not supposed to work in a bar unless you’re eighteen, but hey—what the cops don’t know . . .”
“Yeah.” I shucked my shorts and pulled the white polo shirt over my head. It was a little small.
“How long have you lived in Aquapura?”
“Not long,” I said. What was up with this guy? I thought he was someone who handed out low-paying jobs and in return didn’t ask questions.
“You get along well with your family?”
I pulled up the slacks. They were snug, too, and I could barely zip the fly. “Um . . . I don’t really like talking about my family, you know? It’s . . . embarrassing.”
“Sure, sure. You got that uniform on yet?”
“It’s a little tight.” White on top and black on the bottom, I emerged from the bathroom, a penguin popping out of a refrigerator. “Do you have a size bigger?”
“Let me see you.” He was sitting on the bed. I didn’t want to come close to him. I felt naked and covered with dirt, and his eyes were on me. Lucian made an annoyed gesture at me, though, and I made myself walk over to him. The tightness of the unfamiliar clothes wrapped me in a fabric prison. “It looks good to me.”
I stretched out an arm. “Hard to move.”
“When did you run away from home, Danny?”
The question caught me completely off-guard. “Run . . . away?” I stammered.
“I know you left home, kid. I see the signs. Eryx was the same way.”
“What did he tell you?” I asked, getting panicky. What if he called the cops? They’d make me go back to Michigan. To Myron.
“He didn’t say much,” Lucian said. “Don’t get your undies in a bunch. I have lots of runaways working for me.”
I sighed a little, feeling relieved. “Okay.”
Lucian stood up, put both his hands on my shoulders, and leaned in to me. I flinched at the invasion of my space, but didn’t back away. “You just do what I say, and everything’ll be copacetic.”
“I’ll . . . do what?” I was nervous again.
“I have a lot of special guests who come to this hotel, Danny.” A smile slid across his bearded face. “They want special services, and you’re going to help provide them, just like Irene and Eryx provide them.”
“Eryx does? What do you mean? What kind of services?” Now, while I’m writing this, I can’t believe I was so dumb or blind, but in the hotel room, standing there in those stupid tight clothes, the answer didn’t occur to me. Maybe I didn’t want it to.
“The difference, Danny,” Lucian went on, as if I hadn’t said anything, “is that here, working for me, your pictures won’t be spread all over the Internet.”
It felt like the world dropped away and I was hanging there. I was the Coyote from the Roadrunner cartoons, only now noticing that I was standing on nothing but thin air. Lucian knew. I thought back to his laptop, the one he closed every time I walked into his office.
“Yeah,” he said, reading my expression. His hands were still heavy on my shoulders. “I’m on the web site. It’s a real small world, kid, and I recognized you and Eryx the moment you walked through my door. I’ve seen the shower video. Good stuff. Now you’re gonna work for me. You’ll work as a busboy in the bar and restaurant, and when one of my clients wants to see you, you’ll do whatever he wants in his room. No questions asked. I’m happy, my customers are happy, you earn some extra money, everyone wins.”
My mouth was dry and my heart was pounding so fast from fear I thought it would explode. “No. I’m not going to—”
He slapped me hard across the face. My head snapped sideways and pain smashed my cheek.
“You’ll do it here or you’ll do it for your step-daddy,” he said in a calm, deadly voice that would kill a rattlesnake. “One call to the sheriff, and you’ll go right back to him, you and your little step-bro both. And before you get any ideas about telling the cops yourself, ask yourself who they’ll will believe—a respected local businessman, or some teenage street trash?”
I didn’t have to say anything because the answer was obvious. And I didn’t want to go back to Myron. My cheek still hurt.
“Think of it this way,” Lucian said reasonably. “Here you get paid. With Myron you don’t. It’s going to happen, Danny, you may as well accept it. I watch all my special workers, and they don’t have a choice either.”
My throat closed up, and I felt like I was going to cry if I said anything, so I just looked down and shook my head. Every line and lump in my body showed through my shirt and slacks. Suddenly I knew why he’d given me clothes that were a size too small. I felt naked and exposed, like I’d been peeled.
“Get undressed,” Lucian ordered.
Fear stabbed me one more time. “What?”
“Do it.” The deadly tone was back. “Unless you want more than a slap. And don’t even try to make a break for the door. I’ll have you on the floor in two seconds, and you’ll learn what real pain is, you little fuck. Do it. The trousers, too.”