“They pay you to let them take you out on dates. Buy you nice things, take you out to good dinners.”
“Men pay you to let them buy you stuff? Come on, Des, that’s not all they’re paying for.” I had lived here my whole life; I’d seen how this kind of thing worked. Young women in short dresses getting into the back seats of strangers’ cars, disappearing into the night. In this town full of people who wanted to win and drink and take? No way an opportunity for generosity was what they were paying for.
“I’m serious! There’s all these online services, but with me at the club, we could do it that way.”
“I’m underage.”
“They’ll like that even better, trust me.”
“If it’s so good, why don’t you do it?”
“Ava, so many women do this, okay? It’s how young girls pay for college these days. No one can afford that shit otherwise, and there’s no harm in it. Let some moron buy you nice dresses, have a steak with someone here and there. I would love to do it, but no one wants to go out with an old hag like me.”
“You’re thirty-eight. That’s not old. And I still don’t see why anyone would want to do that—blow money on a stranger. What’s in it for the guy?”
Des sighed, rolled her head in slow circles. The little bones in her neck popped. “Some guy, probably married ten years, bored out of his mind, gets to go to a restaurant with a pretty little thing on his arm, order a good bottle of wine? It makes them feel powerful, alive. Men are like that; they need their egos fed constantly, the poor, stupid louts. Try this, just once. You hate it, we’ll try something else. But it sure as hell would be nice to pay the electric bill. To not have to hide when Bill comes knocking, right?”
Bill was our landlord. He had come around two weeks ago to collect rent. Two months’ overdue. Des and I hid in the bathroom in our apartment above the shop until he stopped yelling.I know you’re in there. You need to give me my money or else, Desmina. I mean it this time.
“Fine,” I said. At least when I saw my mother again, I’d be able to tell her that I did whatever it took to keep the shop going. I could say that I had tried to preserve what she had started. I was going to do it even though the idea made my heart race. Even though I knew full well I was probably saying yes to more than Des had described.
Des squeezed my wrist. “That’s my girl. You’ll need this.” She raised her hips off the chair so that she could wriggle something from the pocket of her shorts: a driver’s license, with the name “Clara Voyant” on it and a photo of Des on the left-hand side. Of course. Of course she had already banked on the fact that I would say yes.
I lifted the ID to my eyes. “Des, come on. This won’t work anywhere. And why didn’t you use my real name?”
She ignored me. “Come upstairs.”
“But what if a customer comes?”
“It’s dead out there. And we’ll be back in an hour, tops.” She rose from her chair and thumped up the stairs.
I called after her. “Des, come on! How are we ever going to fix the shop if we just bail in the middle of the afternoon?” But she was already gone. I dragged our chalkboard inside, drew the red curtains across the windows, and locked the door.
I found her in the bathroom, mixing water and brown powder in a plastic bowl until it formed a muddy-looking concoction. She saw me watching and held up a box of henna hair dye.
“I need to change my hair? No way.”
“You need to match the ID.” Des shrugged. “You really like it brown?”
“It’s just …” I had never thought about it, not really. Des had been dyeing her hair the same bright red my entire life. In the photos I had of my mother, her hair was the same color as mine, a medium brown. Nothing special, maybe, but it tied us together in a small way, and maybe I treasured that more that I’d thought. “Nothing.”
“Well, sit down, then.” She gestured to the toilet. I sat and closed my eyes as she rubbed the mixture into my hair with her fingers. She worked the color from my roots through the tips of my hair, pausing now and then to wipe a stray streak of dye from my skin. It was the gentlest she had ever been with me.
With my hair still wet, it looked the same, though I could make out a flare of color at the tips. I sat in front of the mirror and waited. Slowly, as the dampness lifted, I could see the change. Gradual, and then sudden, a new me sprang up, stepping into a new life.It’s only hair, I tried to tell myself. But I also knew that wasn’t exactly true. I didn’t trust Des not to turn me into someone I wouldn’t like.
AFTER DESleft for the club—heat stifling and no appointments in the book— I locked the shop again and walked to the library. Des and I didn’t have a computer and we used burner phones, adding minutes when we could, so when I needed to know something I walked the eight blocks to use the library’s internet. On the way, I passed two more posters of Julie Zale: one tucked under the windshield wiper of a parked car, another taped to the library’s front door. Even in the photocopied pictures, her smile seemed to shine. I felt the same tug in my gut as when her uncle came: What made her run? Here I was, hoping to run toward love—California, my mother. What about being loved had been intolerable to Julie Zale?
There were only three other patrons at the library, and no one seemed to be doing anything that looked like work. A womanread a day-old newspaper. One man had his feet up on the table, trimming his fingernails. Even the employee at the checkout counter was asleep with her chin in her hands. I had come to search about my mother—a habit I indulged once a week—but this time I googled Julie Zale first. Her uncle had made a website where people could leave information by sending in an anonymous form, if they thought they knew anything or if they’d seen her. It showed the photo from his posters, but others, too: Pictures of Julie running in a meet, her eyes narrowed on the finish line. Julie at junior prom in a beaded blue dress, a flower in her hair. Julie sticking her tongue out while wearing a pink feather boa. I found more websites that mentioned her name, mostly articles from the local papers bragging about her track meet wins, her nomination to All State, the way she broke the record in the 400-meter at an event last fall. Even though she was probably in trouble, and maybe even in worse trouble than me, I felt jealous of her. She had a talent that made people love her, a talent that a whole town was proud of. I had a talent, too, I guessed: I could see things now and then that most people couldn’t, but it felt like a burden. Most of the time, I would have given it away.
Next, I found her Facebook page. More photos of her running track, her in a yellow sundress, eating an ice cream. A shot of her giving a piggyback ride to another girl in front of a pretty redbrick school, the kind that I had only ever seen on TV. I scrolled through the comments people had left behind.
Julez, we love you. Come back home, babe.
J, you are missed. I hope wherever you are, you are safe and sound.
I’m a stranger, but your story caught my eye. God Bless You.
I knew why I wanted to leave, but why would a girl like that just pick up and go? I took my tarot deck out of my bag, shook the cards from their red silk pouch. You weren’t supposed to ask the cards a question about someone else’s fate if they hadn’t requested it, but I couldn’t help it. I’d only pull one card. Just ahint, I bargained.What really happened to Julie Zale?I shuffled the deck and the cards stuck together in the humidity.
