Bowie Baker squinted under the searing light beaming down on him from above, angelically bright. Angelic. Huh. The thought made him shake his head, which would have been pounding if not for the meds they’d shot into his IV. Even with the meds, it still hurt to swallow, to speak.
He wanted to close his eyes against the light, but every time he did, the night’s events started over on a loop. The stupid grin on his face. The way he’d checked himself out in the mirrored elevator panels. How stupidly excited he’d been.
This was supposed to have been the highlight of his career. He’d thought he’d finally made it to the big leagues. A meeting with a sponsor. An actual patron who’d loved Bowie’s solo enough to give money to the ballet just to spend time with him. That almost never happened in small companies like his. And it certainly never happened to dancers like him.
He wasn’t even a principal dancer, had barely made soloist by the skin of his teeth, and spent hours a day trying to hold the line. He should have known it was all too good to be true. Not because good things never happened to him, or because he was a pessimist, but because it hadn’t logically made sense. But Bowie had never been about logic or reason. He was all creativity and feeling. His father said it would bite him in the ass one day.
If only he’d realized he meant literally. This was a fucking nightmare, but it was hard to focus on the things happening around him. The sharp smell of disinfectant, the tug on his IV as the nurse drew vial after vial of blood. The constant paging of doctors overhead and the occasional code blue followed by the squeaking of tennis shoes as the nurses and doctors ran to save lives.
He heard it all but nothing penetrated. He was in a bubble. A bubble of shame and embarrassment and regret. His nurse was a pretty, young blonde girl with a patient smile and huge blue eyes that said she’d seen way too much. Her name was Karen or Katie. She’d introduced herself, but it hadn’t stuck. It was on her name badge but she was on the move too much to read it, especially with one eye swollen shut.
When she saw him looking, she gave him that smile once more. “We’re almost done. I promise. Just a few more things.”
Bowie turned his face away from her to look at the curtain sheltering them from the hospital door. He wondered what time it was. Had the girls waited up? Did they think he was currently boning his way into a sponsorship?
It had seemed funny a few hours ago. They’d teased him, saying his mysterious sponsor with the sexy name probably just had a crush on Bowie and wanted to whisk him away and make him his trophy husband. Bowie had laughed. He’d said if the sponsor was hot enough he’d consider it. It was just a joke.
In truth, looks didn’t matter to Bowie, not really. He was surrounded by pretty people every day and some of those people had very ugly souls. The man who’d answered the door of that fancy hotel suite was ugly, inside and out. But Bowie had been too excited to notice any of the signs, too optimistic and hopeful to acknowledge the ones he did see.
Bowie had even spent the small amount of money he’d tucked away for months just to buy the beautiful suit he’d seen in the window of the consignment shop down the block from their apartment, black fabric with a lux sheen and roses stitched with golden threads. It had been beautiful and unique. Like him. He’d wanted to stand out, to make the best impression.
He wanted to laugh then but was afraid of the sob building just behind it.
The suit now sat in a brown paper bag on a sterile metal tray next to vials of his blood and a sample of his urine. The hospital gown he wore was an unflattering shade of Ciel blue. It wasn’t nearly as flattering as the suit. He shook his head at the dark thought, his lip curling, tugging at the cut there.
“Can you open your mouth for me, hun?”
He did as Katie/Karen asked, shuddering at the feel of the swab as it ran along his cheeks, teeth, and tongue. It was just one more indignity to add to his already monumental list. After his head CT and the glue to hold his cuts shut, a detective had spoken to him while they had prepped the room for the rape kit.
To the man’s credit, at no time had he implied Bowie had asked for it. Maybe the bruises made it easier to believe? Maybe it was because he was a man? He didn’t know.
Once they’d brought him into the room, the nurses had him undress completely while standing on a piece of what looked like tissue paper, then they’d photographed every abrasion, bruise, and bite mark. They’d combed through the hair on his head and crotch.
He’d imagined that would be the worst of it, but he was wrong. Once they had him on his back, the photographs continued, the nurses gloved hands examining his genitals closer than any Grindr hookup ever had, all while collecting swabs from every orifice and crevice for the DNA his assailant left behind. And there was plenty of it. He hadn’t been careful and he certainly hadn’t been gentle. He’d seemed very confident Bowie would heed his advice to keep his mouth shut.
But Bowie couldn’t go home looking like he did, left eye swollen shut, the right side of his face swollen and puffy. He hadn’t seen a mirror in hours, but judging by the way the staff looked at him, he was guessing he didn’t look any better than he had when he’d caught sight of his reflection in the mirrored panels of the hotel suite’s elevator, where he’d been escorted out the service entrance and into an Uber by a man who worked for his attacker.
A tear slipped from his eye, but he quickly wiped it away.
“You’re doing great. We’re almost done,” she said for maybe the hundredth time.
Bowie ignored her words, wanting to laugh in her face but not wanting his lip to split again. His mouth already tasted like metal and…other things. He supposed he should be grateful the man had left his teeth intact. His parents had shelled out good money for them way back when they actually used to speak. He could almost hear his mother’s voice.“I told you not to go out there. I told you LA’s dangerous. Drugs and prostitutes and gangbangers. Dancing isn’t a career. It’s a hobby.”
But it was a career. His career. At least, it had been. His legs and arms felt painfully stiff, like he’d torn every ligament in his struggle, but the doctors said it was likely just swelling due to severe muscle strain. Fighting off an attacker sure did take a lot out of somebody. Too bad he hadn’t won.
He gave another bitter laugh, and once more, the nurse gave him a sympathetic look.
“How do you do this every day?” he asked, hating the sound of his own voice. It felt like he’d spent the night gargling glass. They said he had minor trauma to his throat and vocal cords. Whether it was the screaming or the forced oral sex, Bowie didn’t know.
She gave him a resigned look and a small shrug. “Somebody has to. Whoever did this to you needs to be punished. The stuff in those bags can do that. That evidence helps us find the guy who did this to you.”
Bowie snorted, fire shooting along the right side of his face. “He’s not hard to find. He’s in a penthouse suite at theHotel Beverly, probably sleeping like a baby on a cloud of Egyptian cotton.”
Her eyes widened in surprise. He didn’t blame her. It had shocked him, too. It was just supposed to be a get to know you dinner in a luxury penthouse with the son of an Italian diplomat. It had sounded like a fucking fairy tale. It had certainly sounded better than his usual night of ramen in their cramped apartment over the laundromat.
Some twisted part of him wanted to call his mother and tell her she’d been wrong. Not about LA being a dangerous place, but about who he should watch out for. He passed by sex workers and drug dealers every day. None of them gave him a second look, not even when he was rocking leggings and UGGs and a furry pink jacket. If anything, they appreciated the hustle.
The real threat was always the one you didn’t see coming. The one who laughed at your jokes even while he stared at you with dead eyes, who tried to ply you with booze even after you told them you didn’t drink. The ones who acted like the word no was just a jumping off point for negotiations.
