The sun was starting to set. We were losing light and the snow was piling up. Simply said, it was beginning to feel like we were running out of time.
Willow sighed against the window, leaning her head against it. Her breath fogged it up, creating a damp mist that reflected the city lights. They were distorted and messy, exactly how I felt. “I don’t want to suggest this, Price. It’s the last thing I want to do. But what if he’s… working?”
My fingertips found my inner arm, digging into the flesh as I scratched across the top layer of skin. I didn’t want to think of it as a possibility. Crew said he made a promise and that he would keep it. He promised me he wouldn’t for at least the full six months.
But we were running out of ideas. “That, or he’s lying frozen in a ditch.”
“Shut the fuck up.” Willow reached across the center console to slap my arm hard. “We got two options,” she growled, her accent slipping into full throttle. “Either we start lookin’ at ditches and lookin’ for bodies on the streets, or we start looking where he’d be workin’. I don’t want to believe it, but I also don’t wanna believe the worst-case scenario.”
I squeezed my eyes shut. My arm burned from the constant friction of my nails. I placed both hands on the steering wheel, gripping it until the leather cracked beneath my palms.
What other options did we have? He wasn’t answering his phone, he didn’t have friends here he would’ve gone to see, and no family, either.
“Fine,” I conceded. “I know a couple of hotels or motels we can check.” And who knows, maybe he is there, but he isn’t working. Maybe he went there to cool off.
The windshield wipers struggled against the amount of snow. We had no choice but to drive slowly, inching down the streets cautiously. The temperature had plummeted, bringing us close to single digits.
Our first stop was Moe’s Ass Shack, as I so delicately called it. The first time I spoke to Crew, he’d thought I was going to take him there. The tired man at the front counter claimed he hadn’t seen him. It cost me a hundred bucks cash to get any info at all from him since he “cared so much about privacy.”
I was sure he cared about narcs rather than privacy, but I digress.
Next, we tried the hotel on Cross Street. The woman at the counter was much more forthcoming with information, though it was disappointing. She hadn’t seen Crew either.
The snow was too much. It was past dark, and we were close to the only ones on the roads.
“Maybe we should stop. Go to my place to see if he’s gone home or something.”
I picked at the skin on my arm, freshly red with a few streaks of blood brimming on the surface. My fingertips were caked in it, the grooves of my nails flooding with it. “I have one more idea. I’m not giving up that easily.” My words were clipped and harsher than they should’ve been. Couldn’t she see, though? If we stopped, it was like we were giving up.
Crew needed someone who wouldn’t give up.
Willow placed a gentle hand on my arm, the one I was absentmindedly using to scrub my skin raw. “Don’t accuse me of giving up on my best fuckin’ friend.” She was speaking softly but concisely. “If we stay out here much longer, we’re gonna get stuck. You have to know that. We get stuck, we’re just as screwed as C. Now, what’s your next idea?”
I shrugged her hand off, pulling my sleeves down immediately after. She was right, no matter how little I wanted to admit it. The storm was pushing hard, threatening to consume us alive. If we kept going for much longer, we’d be losing our battle with Mother Nature.
Taking ten times longer than it should’ve, we made it to our final destination for the night. Maybe tomorrow we’d go on foot, but hopefully, Crew would turn up before then.
The moment I scanned the street, I realized something humbling. Something I foolishly hadn’t considered before. Though we were under a dangerous and potentially fatal snowstorm, the street I picked Crew up at on our first night together was lined with people.
Each person I focused on looked more miserable than the last. Some were huddled together, sharing what looked to be jackets as they hovered their asses above the ground, sitting in a squat so they wouldn’t touch the snow. A few hunched bodies began to worry me. They were sitting fully in the snow, their backs against the walls, and they weren’t moving.
Willow gasped from beside me, putting sound to what I was feeling. I zeroed in on the people who weren’t moving, willing, and begging for them to move. Twitch. Brush their hair out of their face—anything toprove that, not only were they not Crew, but they were alive. All five of them had hoods over their heads, covering themselves like a turtle’s shell. I would never understand the human need to be quiet during something stressful. The way we stop breathing while waiting for it to resolve.
We were in the truck, where no one could hear us. Nobody was even looking our way, yet I sat in my seat, holding my breath until I began to see spots in my vision, and my chest began to burn.
“Just move,”Willow pleaded. She sounded terrified, an emotion I’d never seen from her before. Willow was always levelheaded, albeit mostly pissed with me. If she was losing her resolve, what did that mean for me?
A person appeared from the left. They were tall and wearing a thick coat acceptable for the weather. I watched as they bent down towards one of the people Willow and I were watching.
The person finally lifted their head, the other four flinching at what I guessed was the sounds of their voices. Willow and I both sighed in relief at the sign of life. I took a few extra ragged breaths, willing my heart to calm its incessant racing. The person in the thick coat looked to be a client propositioning the person on the ground. None of the people on the street were Crew.
Logically, I knew from the beginning what Crew and the other sex workers were doing. It was dangerous. A lot of them were homeless or being sold by people who had complete power over them. I knew that, but I don’t think I ever understood it. Crew told me once that the life aged a person: their skin, their hair, their souls…
Emotionally, I never thought about it that often. It was dumb of me not to. Stupid to live my life thinking I understood shit I could never truly understand.
Seeing these people freeze on the side of the road, desperate for work or shelter for the night in the form of a shitty, roach-infested hotel room the clients would undoubtedly pay for. Crew told me he was lucky because he had a home, but was he really?
How many nights had he spent in the cold, waiting for someone to come along and punish him the way he thought he deserved? How many times had he gotten soaking wet from a torrential downpour, just so he could get some money and the bruises he thought he needed?How often does he think to himself that he deserves worse, deserves what the more “unlucky” ones have?
