Shella (36 page)

She didn’t say anything for a long time. I didn’t move. “You don’t look any different,” she said. “I knew you wouldn’t. You’re not gonna die slow.”

“What happened, Shella? Why did you go?”

“Ah, who knows?” she said. “I got a whore’s heart. Maybe I just got bored. What does it matter anyway?”

“I’ve been looking for you … for a long time.”

“Why?”

“For you to tell me the truth.”

She opened her eyes. “The truth-truth? The real thing?”

“Yes.”

“I was afraid of you.”

“Of me? Of me, Shella? I never did …”

“I know. When I took off, in the car, with everything
… I didn’t go far. I drove for about an hour, and I got a room. The next day, I got out of the motel and I rented a furnished apartment. A nice studio. There was nothing in the papers until the next day. I could see it was gonna be a while before you went to trial. I figured I’d get work, wiggle my big butt enough to make some money, get you a good lawyer. I knew you wouldn’t want me to come and visit in the jail…. They might be waiting on me … know you had a partner.”

“A partner … sure, that’s right.”

“Yeah. Anyway, I started working. The next thing I knew, you were gone. I found out you pleaded guilty. After they took you down … oh Jesus, John … you expected me to be there, didn’t you? Waiting for you when you stepped out of the gate.”

“I thought you would stay,” I told her.

“I
couldn’t
stay, you fucking moron! What was I gonna do? Buy a house, get a job at McDonald’s … what?”

“I don’t…”

“People like us, we can’t stay in one place. It’s bad rhythm, dumb. You know
that
much, right?”

“I guess.…”

“I was never that far away. Not in my mind. I called the PD, told him I was your sister. He ran it down for me. I knew how much time you had to serve.… I went out on the track, got lost in the scene for a while.”

I must of looked stupid at her when she said that—she kind of shifted gears with her voice. “You remember Bonnie? That skinny bitch I owned back when we had that beach cottage?”

I nodded.

“Like that,” she said. “Most of them, just like that. I did some men too, but not many.”

I looked around the room. It was a nice room. Big and clean. There was a TV set on the end of a metal arm, a stand-up shower over to the side. Behind the bed I could see a pair of tanks, like for propane gas. I took out a cigarette.

“Go ahead,” Shella said. “It doesn’t make any difference.”

I lit the smoke. “Give me some,” she said, the way she used to, moving against me. I handed her the smoke. She took a deep drag, handed it back. She was watching me close. She kept watching until I took a drag myself, then she lay back and closed her eyes again.

I thought maybe she was tired, but she started to talk again.

“By the time I came up for air, they had cut you loose. I took a plane, I was in such a hurry. I didn’t think it would be so bad, so hard finding you. Some man would know where you were, on parole. I could always make men tell me things. I got a room in a real nice hotel. I had a whole bunch of money too, John. Your share. I kept your share for you, all the time. I was all excited. Like maybe the other stuff was over, I don’t know.”

“I—”

“Shut up. Talking makes me tired. Let me finish this piece. I called the parole office. When I asked for your PO, they made me wait a long time. That’s the way they do, anyway.… It didn’t spook me. But when the man came on the line, he wouldn’t give me your address. Not over the phone, he said. I’d have to come in. I knew it then. I put down the phone. It only took me a couple of nights to find the right guy. A guy on parole. I promised him some pussy and he came back to the same joint in a couple of days, after he reported in himself. He told me you hung
up the parole … that you were a fugitive. There was a warrant out for you…. When they got you, you’d have to serve the rest of your time. A crazy move, not like you. So I figured you were coming after me. I ran. I kept running.…”

“Shella …”

“I’m tired now, John. Real tired. I just drift off when I get like this. They’re gonna come in with my shots soon anyway. Just let me go, now. Come back in a couple of hours, okay?”

“Sure. I didn’t …”

“I’m not going anywhere,” she said, closing her eyes.

I don’t remember walking out of the hospital. I think I took the elevator, but I don’t remember. The next thing I knew I was on the bench. The bench where you wait for the bus, where the Indian and Joseph were before. A bus came, but I didn’t move. Other people got on, but I didn’t. I knew people were looking at me after a while. I knew it was stupid to stay there. I knew I was stupid.

I got up and walked. Around and around. I knew that was stupid too. People would notice me. I couldn’t find a dark crowd.

I saw a sign,
TOPLESS
. Inside, the cold came right at me. It must have been hot outside. It was the same as all the other places. The daytime girls are never the best. They’re tired, like they have jobs at night too.

I bought drinks and didn’t drink them, like always. They didn’t really have acts in that place. The girls came on and danced to records. Men watched. Nobody was laughing. It was quiet watchers, mostly.

All the girls looked alike, but I knew that couldn’t be. I guess I wasn’t paying attention.

I sat at the bar until time passed around me. There was no clock there, and I didn’t have a watch.

After a while, I got up and went back outside.

I went in the hospital like I was going in the first time again. The elevator was there. Everything was the same.

Her door was closed. I pushed it open. She was sitting up in the bed, watching. There was a chair next to her bed. She saw me and moved her hand, like I should sit down. I went over and did it.

“You know what I have?” she asked me.

“I … guess.”

“Yeah. I’m gone, John. My T-cell count’s down below two hundred.”

“You have money?”

“Money? It doesn’t make any difference now. That’s why they moved me to this private room. That’s the way they do things here. It bothers the other patients to see someone go out—makes it harder to swallow all the bullshit about a positive mental attitude.”

“How …?”

“How
what?
What difference could it make now?”

I didn’t say anything for a while. “I did a lot of things,” I told her. “I did a lot of things, trying to find you.”

“You always did a lot of things, John.”

We stayed quiet after that. I smoked a couple of cigarettes, shared them with her. Nobody came in. The sun shifted lower in the sky but it was still coming in her window.

Maybe I fell asleep. I heard her voice like it was in the middle, like she’d been talking for a while.

“I went too far, honey,” she said. “I went too far. I hated them so much. I still hate them.”

“Who?”

“My father.”

“Did you …?”

“No. I never saw him. But I kept seeing him. You understand what I’m saying? I just kept seeing him. I was working as a domina. I never had sex. I never had sex since you went down, John. You believe that?”

“Yes. I was just …”

“What?”

“I was … confused.”

“That’s you. Confused. You’re always confused, aren’t you? I’m surprised you made it this far. People always use you.… I thought you’d be used up. All used up. It’s funny, huh? I know how things work, you don’t. And I’m the one—”

“Shella—”

“I never had sex with any of them. Not real sex. I never made a whore’s mistake, either. Whores’re stupid. They think because a man will pay them to piss on his face they can laugh at him. I knew a whore got herself killed doing that. You can’t laugh unless you’ve got control.… It doesn’t matter who’s paying.”

“It doesn’t—”

“Everything matters. Everything gets paid for. My tricks, they could get off being whipped, when I hurt them. Sometimes they’d finish themselves. But I never let anyone inside me. I could have stayed on the phones. There’s real money in that. Talking to freaks. Plug in a credit card and
close your eyes and you get what you want. But some of them, they wanted the real thing. And they paid more for it. A lot more. It used to help me too. It was enough, for a while. I’d put on my outfit and make them lick my boots, tie them up, blindfold them. It felt … powerful. But as soon as it was over, they’d get dressed and they wouldn’t look at you. They’d go back to being in charge. They got what they paid for. No matter what you did to them, they were calling the shots. Using you, the way they always do.”

I touched her arm. The bones in her arm. “You don’t have to do that anymore.…”

“I never
had
to do it, John. Remember what the little gangster in New York used to call you? Ghost? That’s what I was, a ghost. It wasn’t real. Spanking. That’s what some of them call it. Spanking. Like the way you’d do a kid. Some of them did it. To kids, I mean. Some of them go both ways. Like AC-DC, but with the whip. Switch, they call it. If you’re a switch, you’ll give it and you’ll take it. I never took it.”

“I know.”

She acted like she didn’t hear me. “I worked the dungeons first, but then went out on my own. They have such a cute name for it. Domestic Discipline. One day, I had one of them tied up. Before we started, he showed me pictures of his little girls. Two little girls. Told me how he spanked them when they were bad. He had pictures of them. With their pants down. He told me maybe he’d bring them over to me. For discipline, he said. He wanted to watch. I was working on him. Saying the words. Like dancing. I saw his face. It was him. My father. Tied up and he couldn’t move. I could see his hard-on bulging and I wanted to cut it off.”

“It’s all right,” I told her.

“Shut up! I need to finish this. You came all this way to hear the truth.… Sit there and take it. Take it!”

I moved my fingers along her arm, trying to find a vein. Her skin was so pale I could see through it.

“I beat him to death. Halfway through, he got it. Knew I wasn’t going to stop. There was a gag in his mouth. A good gag, big rubber ball. I don’t know if he choked to death on the vomit or his heart just stopped or what. But I could smell when he died. I ran out of there then. I was scared. Scared of myself. But I went back. Right back to it. I did a lot of them, John. A lot of them. All over the country.”

“It’s okay.”

“Okay? Yeah, it was okay. I could have kept going forever. Worked my way through every freak in the world. I never would have gotten sick. I was taking a lot of pills. For the pain. I had to keep moving, once I got started. I wasn’t running from you anymore, just running. I had to do a lot of them before I’d find the right one. See his face. But once I got one done, I had to go. Right then, go.” She took a deep breath. Something rattled inside her when she did it. “They knew about it. They had to know. They knew. One of them even asked me, are you her? They knew someone in the underground was killing them. But I never had any trouble getting clients. Never. I got bigger, stronger.”

“I saw a picture,” I told her.

“Yes?” she said. Then she closed her eyes. I thought she was going to sleep again. I sat there, watched her. Then she started talking again, but it was a whisper. Not like she was weak, just telling secrets.

“I got to need it. More and more. I saw his face all the time. Once I must have passed out when I did it. When I came to, he was there, all tied up and bloody. I left him there, went into the bathroom to take a shower. Then I saw it. Blood. On my mouth. All over my mouth. Then next time I did it, I stopped pretending. Stopped playing. I drank their blood. It was the best, sweetest, purest thing I ever did. That’s how it must have happened.”

It was getting dark in the room. When she went to sleep, I stayed right there.