“I guess so.”
Jasmine and Trudy exchange glances.
“You don’t like him?” Jasmine asks.
“Do you like Sven?” I ask instead of answering.
Trudy shrugs. “He’s okay. He pays for stuff and takes us out a lot.”
“Are you his girlfriends?”
Trudy nods. “Yeah. We’ve been with him about two years. We work for him too.”
“Doing what?”
Jasmine scrunches her nose in a cute way as she giggles. “You’re funny.”
Am I?
“Maybe you could work with us too if you don’t like Leon. Sven could negotiate a deal with Leon.”
“Leon won’t let me go. No way. He’s too possessive.”
“Oh?” Jasmine says. “You don’t work for him?”
“What do you mean by work?”
Trudy gives me a pitying look. “You really don’t know, do you?”
“No.”
“We recruit people,” Trudy explains. “To join our team.”
“And what does your team do?”
“Whatever Sven tells us to do,” Jasmine says, raising her arms to the music. “Usually we party with whoever, and then fuck his friends and colleagues. We’re party favors.” She grins. “That’s what he calls us.”
Oh. The meaning finally sinks in. “And you like it?”
“Hell yeah,” Jasmine says. “We get booze and drugs and all the sex we want, plus he buys us nice clothes. We have a real nice bedroom at his apartment too. It’s nicer than what we had before we met him.”
“That’s good.” My stomach sinks. Is this my future? Once he takes what he wants from me, am I going to be offered to anyone he wants?
“You don’t want to be with him, do you?” Trudy asks. “We could talk to Sven for you.”
“No, don’t do that, please. I’m fine. I just want to enjoy dancing.”
“Cool,” Jasmine says. “Let’s have fun.”
The three of us form a little circle, Trudy and Jasmine thankfully blocking Leon’s view of me, and for a few fleeting seconds, I consider just taking off and running for the door, but then what?
After the song changes, Jasmine yells out, “One more song?”
I nod, smiling happily. This is as close to freedom as I’ve felt in months and I like it.
Someone bumps into me from behind, and when I turn around, my jaw drops. It’s him. Carnage.
“Do you have a phone?” he says, getting right to the point.
