Selling Out (17 page)

I had been fooling myself that this was about protecting
Ella. That was a fringe benefit to what I really wanted: to nail Henri. If I
could take down my father in the process, all the better. Both seemed
impossible, like trying to touch the twinkling lights above me. But I had never
had so many people fighting for the same purpose before. I had never had so
little to lose.

Allie and her daughter were away from me now, under Colin’s
protection. My obsession with Luke was threadbare, exposed as physical
chemistry and a perverse desire to see myself fail. And then there was Ella,
whose lower lip trembled in response to my rambled life’s tale.

* * * *

I frowned at her. “Don’t cry over me. There are sadder
stories every day.”

“But I’m not holding their hands,” she said thickly, tears
pooling in damp spots on the silk pillow.

I pulled my hand free and wiped the dampness from my palms.
She needed to get herself under control. She needed to calm down. No, I did.

“Tell me about yourself, Ella. I told you about me, things
I’ve never told anyone. Now it’s your turn.”

“Is that all this was about? Make me feel guilty so I’ll
trust you?”

“Yes.”

She soured. “Sometimes I think you’re the most selfless
person I’ve ever met. Other times, I think you’re a manipulative bitch.”

“Why can’t I be both?” I asked mildly.

“Fuck you. I’m not telling you anything.”

“Such language. Come on. Telling you about my dad fucking me
has got be worth something. What’s your name? Your real name.”

“Fine. You care so much? Claire. It’s Claire.”

I suppressed a smile. It was too sweet for her and just
right. “Claire?”

“I know. It’s like an old lady’s name.”

“Kind of old-fashioned.”

“Whatever, it’s stupid. But you know what? It doesn’t
matter. Claire was a problem child. Ella is the prostitute that couldn’t. I
fail at everything. It doesn’t matter what my name is. I’m nobody.”

I swallowed. I should have seen her hurt. No, I had seen it
and ignored it. “You’re somebody, Claire.”

“Don’t call me that. I don’t want to be her anymore. I’m
nothing but a pain in your backside. You don’t like me.”

“Sure I do.”

“You didn’t know my name until two seconds ago. You don’t
even know me.”

“You like Philip because he makes you feel safe. You figure
even if he beats you, he’s strong enough and possessive enough to make sure no
one else does. You like nice things, which is why you steal them. It’s simple
really, but the psychologist your parents pay for tries to turn it into
something about your self-esteem, like maybe if you win a cheerleading trophy,
you won’t care anymore. But the truth is, you like power and money and having
these things when other girls don’t. You want to be a good girl and have
everyone love you for it, except you know you’ll never succeed, so you push
them away before they can reject you. You’re scared and you’re sad, but most of
all you’re lonely, and you’d rather risk death than be alone.”

Her eyes were wide and luminous, as deep as the sky above
us.

“That’s you,” she whispered.

Shit.

“Just tell me why you’re helping me,” she said in a rush.
“If this is some sort of new-age training program for escorts or hazing the new
girl or something like that.”

I stared at her wide, owlish eyes, incredulous at her
thought process. Although maybe it was a relief—for a second there, I’d thought
she was uncannily intuitive. “That’s ridiculous. This isn’t a game. I’m trying
to help you.”

“I know. I mean, I think so. You have this way of talking
and looking at me like you really see me, and I want to believe what you say.
But then I think you must do that for everyone, right? Everyone thinks you
really like them. They want to believe it’s true. That’s why you’re so good
at…”

“Whoring?”

“Sex.”

“Same thing. If you want to believe something that comes out
of my mouth, believe this: you’re safe here.”

“Then what was that before? You and Philip. I know you were
doing it. Fucking.” She forced the word out. “If you have to have sex with him
to keep us safe…to keep me safe, I don’t want that.”

“It was consensual.”

She looked doubtful. “You’re telling me you have paid sex
and recreational sex?”

Hmm, when she put it that way, it sounded excessive. In
fact, I didn’t understand it myself, how I ended up having sex for money, how I
just couldn’t stop. I was trapped in the fun house, the mirrors showing ever
more incarnations of me fucking for money, distorted depictions of my
depravity. I couldn’t escape. Philip was a sleek tiger, lethal within his cage,
and Henri the ringmaster. The only player I didn’t understand was Luke. He
wanted to protect me, and he wanted to punish us all, and I wasn’t sure which
one would win out. He looked at me with grave sympathy, an experience I both
hated and craved, and yet at other times, though he tried to hide it, I felt
his bone-deep revulsion.

“Prostitution isn’t black or white. If our goal was just to
get off, we could curl up with our hands and be done with it. Sex is about
wanting something from the other person, whether it’s affection or intimacy,
security or money. I’ll admit I owed Philip something, but I wasn’t coerced. If
I had said no and meant it, he would have listened.”

She frowned. “When do you say no and not mean it?”

“We’ll save that lesson for another day, grasshopper.”

* * * *

I suspected Philip hadn’t left at all. He could have been at
a meeting or at another one of his houses, but given his fascination with Ella,
I figured he would stay close. Which meant he was probably in the basement.
True to paranoid form, it was a fully decked-out storm shelter, probably
designed to withstand a nuclear explosion. Probably filled with the latest
gadgetry and every comfort. Though in my mind, the basement was darker and
definitely damper, like canal-woven caves in
The Phantom of the Opera
, and there he dwelled, hiding his face,
listening to the sounds from above and feeding off the gaiety.

With a closed-circuit audio feed, most likely.

So we would give him that. It gave me the opportunity to
patch things up between Allie and me. I went downstairs to call her from the
kitchen.

“Hello?” Her tone was guarded. Clearly she had checked
caller ID.

“Hey, sweets. How’s my best girl?”

“Don’t let Ella hear you say that,” she said, though I could
tell she’d loosened already.

“I was talking about Bailey,” I said, referring to Allie’s
daughter.

“She’s fine. She learned the Hulk smash. The cat is not
happy.”

“You let her watch
The
Hulk
?”

“Nah, I think she learned it from a boy in school.”

I tsked. “Goddamn boys in school. They’re a nuisance.”

“Tell me about it. I think Colin’s going to have an aneurysm
when she hits middle school. And the situation with Ella isn’t helping any.”

“Her name’s Claire,” I said absently.

“Oh yeah? So she’s talking to you.”

“A little bit. But I need my best girl on hand for tonight. Emotional
support.”

“You need emotional support?” Begrudging curiosity laced her
words. “This I’ve got to see.”

“Don’t sound so eager to see me fall, you bloodthirsty
bitch.”

“I don’t want to see you fall, but if you tripped every once
in a while, I might believe you were human like the rest of us. As long as I’m
around, I’ll catch you.”

Pretty sentiment, but she wouldn’t be around on Saturday.

“Come over tonight,” I demanded. “Girls’ night in. Poor
thing has been cooped up here for days with only Adrian for a friend.”

“Poor thing,” Allie said and meant it. She had never been
partial to his formal charms.

I waited in the kitchen for her to arrive, poking at the
contents of the fridge. Plenty of fruit, seedless grapes and chocolate-covered
strawberries. Various spritzers and organic colas. Some homemade chicken salad
in a Tupperware container. A far cry from fuzzy tacos.

“Need anything?”

I jumped and turned to see Adrian standing behind me. “You
surprised me.”

“Sorry,” he said, contrite. “I forget sometimes.”

“Forget what?”

His smile was wry. “That this isn’t my room.”

I looked around the kitchen. It was more his room than
anyone else’s. “It’s yours,” I said. “I just feel comfortable enough with you
to invade your space.”

“Invade away. Are you hungry? I can make you something. I
was about to get dinner started.”

“Let me make something for you,” I said on impulse.

“You can cook?” He sounded doubtful.

“I have lived alone for many years now. Surely you didn’t
think I subsist solely on the fruits of my illicit labor.”

His face screwed up in disapproval. “I figured you subsisted
on prepared foods from the grocery store with a frequent helping of takeout.”

Bingo. And men had called me mysterious. Ha! I was an open
book. “Look, just let me give it a shot. There’s plenty of food in here. And
you’ve cooked for me so many times. I want to return the favor.”

“That was different,” he hedged. “I’m paid to do that.”

“I’m paid to do things too, but sometimes we like to have
things done for free.” He got a speculative and slightly lustful look on his
face. “Don’t think too hard about that. I just want to do something nice for
you. Is that so strange?”

“Frankly, yes,” he muttered, although he left when I shooed
him away.

Damn. I wished Allie would get here already. I really
couldn’t cook at all. I couldn’t even figure out why I wanted to do this,
except for a burning desire to please—the same desire that always simmered
beneath the surface, now burning white-hot, fanned by my lingering unease from
the gun I’d gotten yesterday and my trepidation about tomorrow night. I would
get to see Luke again. Then after it was all done, I would return here. I would
come back, but something compelled me to fix things with Allie, with Claire,
with everyone before I left, tying a knot in the loose, winding threads before
they ran out.

Claire found me in the kitchen, and together we prepared a
big grilled steak to share and asparagus, something fitting for a last meal.
Claire, Adrian, and I ate together, a mishmash family, human trinkets collected
by a reclusive owner. Allie arrived with dessert, as she most often did, and we
all four feasted.

Although Adrian was just as comfortable with a girl’s night
as me, maybe more, he excused himself, perhaps sensing the particular gravity
of the night’s festivities. I wished the mood were lighter, my apprehension
further from the surface.

At least Claire and Allie seemed mostly unaffected. They
chatted as if they didn’t notice my quietness, as if they had known each other
forever. I loved that about them. They were both so vibrant, fighting and
laughing their way through life. I paled in comparison, a single note in
contrast to their harmonies, a single trick to perform again and again.

As they bent their heads together, their laughing faces lit
by the glow of a laptop, I noticed how much they looked like each other. Both
petite, both brunettes. Claire’s face was thinner, her nose a little longer,
but the resemblance was remarkable. It wasn’t an altogether uncommon look, but
uneasily, I wondered if I would still have saved Claire if she hadn’t looked so
much like Allie.

When Claire looked up at me slyly, I had to ask. “What are
you two up to?”

Allie grinned. “Claire wanted to see him in uniform.”

Claire smacked Allie’s arm. “Hey, that was you.”

I came around the laptop. On the screen, the CPD’s Web site
was pulled open to Luke’s profile. He stared unseeing at the camera, his green
eyes more of a misty hazel in the camera’s lighting. He seemed younger than I
remembered, but possibly the picture was old. His youth didn’t detract from his
severity. And in his full uniform regalia, he looked very upstanding. The very
opposite of what a prostitute could aspire to have for herself.

Both Allie and Claire waited expectantly. Claire seemed a
little nervous, as though I might get mad at them. Allie looked mischievous,
probably expecting the same thing but knowing she could handle me.

“Well?” I raised my eyebrow. “What are we rating him?”

“Eight out of ten,” Allie said. “Would let him bang my best
friend.”

“Next,” I said.

Luke blinked off the screen, taking his solemn sexiness with
him. The next guy had olive skin and a Hispanic heritage. More than that, he
had a gleam in his eye that was sadly not wicked at all.

“Four out of ten,” Claire said. “Would steal his wallet but
not his rosary.”

“You can tell religious fervor from his face?” Allie asked
doubtfully.

I concurred. “Virgin Mary tattoo on his back.”

The next listing was a butch female cop and then another
man, older but with a decidedly roguish smile.

“This one’s a good tipper,” I remarked.

“Follow the formula,” Claire said.

I examined the picture, mentally comparing him to hundreds
of other men. “My guess is…good hygiene. Corny dirty talk.”

“I’d hit that,” Allie said. “He has a silver-fox thing going
on.”

“Oh no,” I teased. “Are you panting after a cop? I should
tell Colin what you’ve been up to.”

“No, don’t.” Her voice filled with playful fear. “I wouldn’t
be able to walk for a week.”

Claire looked up sharply.

“It’s a figure of speech,” I said to soothe her.

Allie’s face softened. “I didn’t mean it that way.”

“So you’ve never really been sore?” Claire demanded. “It
never really hurts?”

“Not the way you’re thinking. Not with someone who cares about
you.”

Allie’s eyes clouded over, and I wondered whether she really
believed that. If so, she had healed more than I realized. More than I had.
Years ago, our friend had hurt her—raped her. We had both been shell-shocked.
He had cared about her. Not enough, though. Not in the right way. No, I still
didn’t understand. Who could comprehend evil? Who understood what made friends
and fathers do what they did? Claire’s quiet questions disrupted my thoughts.