“You’re quick as hell, Miss Clara Voyant. I might even sayyou’ve surpassed your teacher. Take anything else this week you want to let me in on?”
I thought of Julie Zale’s purple bandana. It was in my room, under my pillow. Her uncle probably thought he’d dropped it on the boardwalk, that it had been carried away by the breeze. One more piece of her he had lost.
“Nothing.”
“You bring that bracelet over to Zeg tomorrow, okay? And tell him you won’t take less than fifty. He’s been a real tightwad lately, and we’ve got bills to pay.” I nodded, but that wasn’t a part of my plan.
“Lean closer,” Des said. I waited for her to say something else. To ask if I was still willing to do this, to see if I was okay. She wiped her thumb underneath my eye and pulled a kohl pencil from her pocket. “Up,” she said, and I raised my eyes to the ceiling while she ran the eyeliner back and forth, back and forth, rimming my eyes in black. I could feel tears building up but knew that I’d make a mess of my makeup if I let them fall. I told myself there was only one first time for everything. To think of it as one more con—some idiot wants to spend his money on me? Fine. As Des finished my makeup, I had that same feeling again, the fly, crawling across my chin. I tried to keep still, but I couldn’t stand it and twitched to shake it free.
“What the hell?” Des said. She had drawn a black line down my cheek.
“You didn’t see anything?”
“I saw you freaking out. What do you mean? See what?”
“Nothing,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
She licked her finger and rubbed at the mark on my skin. “I need you to be cool about this, okay? We need this cash.”
“I know,” I said. “I will.” She brushed my cheeks with powder and stood back to look at me, smiling at what she had made of my face.
“Hot as hell,” she said, air-kissing near my ear so she didn’t smudge her lipstick. I sat on my hands so she wouldn’t see that they had started to shake.
THE MAN,who I was supposed to call Tom, would pick me up in a black car so we could eat dinner at the Italian restaurant at the Tropicana. I made my way down the boardwalk ramp, careful to place my feet so I wouldn’t get the heels stuck in the cracks, just like Des taught me. The driver got out and opened the door without looking at me. I took a breath and peered into the dark cavern of the back seat. I had seen moments like this a hundred times—the young woman who had been bought, ducking into an idling car that took her away. You could tell the ones who were new at it by the way they took one last glance over their shoulders before they shut the door, while the old hands smiled and pushed their chests out, a thousand-yard stare in their eyes. I decided I wouldn’t look back.
Tom was slouched against the seat, his arms loose at his sides, like this was the most natural thing in the world—a strange young woman sliding into a car with him, someone a third of his age. “Hello,” he said. “Lovely to meet you.” His hair must have been thick and dark when he was younger, but it was thinning at the temples, spangled with gray. He wore a button-down shirt and khakis—he looked like someone’s dad. I checked his hand. If he was married, he had decided to remove his ring.One first time, I said again, in my head. I forgot to hold out my hand, but he picked it up, brought it to his mouth, left a wet kiss on the back. When he wasn’t looking, I wiped the place where his spit shimmered on my skin against the fabric of my dress. I wonderedif the rest of the night would be like that—him putting a mark on me, me trying to rub it away.
He put his arm around me as we walked through the Quarter, and I felt myself tense up and go hot every place his body touched mine. The stores and restaurants around us were made to look like old Havana, and the corridors were decorated with fake palm trees that rose toward a pretend blue sky. I stopped to watch the fountain trickle, and remembered the first time Des walked me through Caesars. I thought it was the most beautiful place I’d ever seen—the columns in the lobby, the statues of helmeted men and their impossibly large horses, the slick sheen of the marble floors. I was six or seven, and she was teaching me how to slide a wallet from a woman’s purse. My small hands would be an advantage, but I had gotten distracted by a fountain just like this one, the layer of coins glimmering under the water. I reached in and scooped up as many as I could take. I still remember the sensation of the cold wet coins in my hands, the way Des laughed when she saw the dampness spreading across my pockets. She used to laugh a lot more back then.
I was staring into the surface of the water when the feeling came to me, the pulse behind my forehead. It flared through my body faster than ever before, and then I tumbled into a vision, like I had hit a trip wire. Images exploded behind my eyes: the smear of streetlights, a pair of hands with little cuts around the knuckles and on the back of the palms, a dust ruffle that skimmed a few inches above a carpeted floor, the dark space underneath it dense with dirt. A sense of needing to scream, that pressure building in my throat. Then, a newborn baby’s cry, high and shrill. The next thing I knew Tom’s face was close to mine, leering, huge. I was too terrified and surprised to hide my gasp.
“Hey there, twitchy little thing, aren’t you? Don’t worry. I don’t bite. Let’s keep moving, shall we?” It took me a second to remember whose voice it was. His big teeth gleamed when he smiled. I forced myself to smile back. I was hot all over, and aswe walked away, I reached down and dipped my fingers into the water, dabbed some of it on the back of my neck.
I felt exhausted, battered as though I’d taken a fall. As we walked in the direction of the restaurant, I looked back over my shoulder, to see if there was a child nearby. It actually wasn’t unusual to see a baby in the casinos, a mother perched at the edge of the gaming floor, absentmindedly pushing the stroller back and forth with her foot while she played the slots. But I didn’t see any children, only tourists posing for photos, the women making kissy faces, jutting their hips, awkward and wobbly in their too-tall heels.
Tom gave his name to the hostess, who narrowed her eyes at me, and I felt her measuring me as she studied my makeup, my hair, my dress, my heels, but she turned to Tom with a smile so wide it must have hurt. When we’d sat, Tom ordered a bottle of foreign-named red wine.
“Very good,” the waiter said, like Tom had passed a test. I wondered if men everywhere congratulated one another on such stupid, trivial things. What did people enjoy about wine? I hated the bitter taste of it in my mouth, the way it made my limbs feel looser, my attention drifty and unpredictable. That was it? The feeling that people seemed to crave?
I tried to think of things to say, but all I could think about was how I wanted to leave. Des had already received half of his payment up front—$250—and I would get the second half from him at the end of the night. If I ran, we’d still be okay. But Des would be furious with me for losing out on the other half of that cash. Her moods snapped these days, as fast as rubber bands. Forming sentences felt impossible, my head filled with air. I watched Tom take a sip from his wineglass, watched his mouth move, but all I could hear was that shrill, horrible wail. I forced myself to smile, like an idiot, and right away he looked confused. My head hurt from the wine and from the noise. I couldn’t concentrateon anything other than how I could make that sound stop. The wail rose into a shriek. It was so piercing that my hands jumped to my ears.
Tom frowned. “I didn’t know I was so boring.” This time he didn’t look confused, only angry. I remembered what Des said, about men wanting to go out with women who make them feel important. I was failing, and we hadn’t even gotten our dinnersyet.
I jumped again when a busboy came to the table to fill our water glasses from a big silver pitcher. Des told me this restaurant would be fun, but everything felt alien and threatening. The way the waiter smiled at me, like he knew exactly who and what I was. The silverware that gleamed from every tabletop, bright slashes in the candlelight. The way a man came and briskly wiped the bread crumbs from the tablecloth, like I’d done something wrong. Tom’s mouth was moving again, and I understood that I was meant to be not just listening, but flirting, touching, talking, and yet all I heard was the baby screaming. I spoke over him, excused myself to the bathroom, and he narrowed his eyes at me as I stood.
I locked myself in a stall and took deep breaths, as slowly as I could. I couldn’t afford to mess this up. I splashed some water on my face and counted to ten, to twenty, to thirty. When I got to fifty-five seconds, the crying stopped. I could hear the bathroom attendant singing to herself. She had a low, pretty voice. She smiled up at me as I washed my hands, but as I smiled back it occurred to me that we might be alike: doomed to smile even when we were trapped.
Back at the table our food had arrived. Tom was sawing into his pork chop. The waiter came by to ask how we liked our dinner, and I hated the way he looked at me. I picked at my pasta—a dish that Tom had ordered for me—but I hadn’t been tasting anything at all. I took another bite and nodded, hoped that would answer his question. I knew I was close to failure, that so far I had been anything but the kind of girl Tom wanted me to be,the kind of girl Des had sold him on—flirty and giggling, dumb and sweet. I had to force myself to meet his eye. I wondered what would happen if he wasn’t happy with me, if he could ask for his money back. Or worse, if he could get Des and me in trouble. Everything was on my shoulders. I touched the pearls on my bracelet and reminded myself to breathe.
“What do you do?” I asked.
“What do I do?” he asked back. He smiled but his voice was snide.
“Uh, yeah. What’s your job?”
“Insurance,” he said.
“That sounds interesting.”
