Tarnished (6 page)

“I did,” she squeaked.

“Did I say you could do it by yourself?” Tony asked. “I can’t send you out like this! You aren’t a bunch of meth-addict whores! Is that what you want people to think? You want people to think you’re cheap? You want us to lose all our business? Answer me!”

“No.”

“It’s no,
sir
. Got it? You won’t be doing any jobs tonight,” he said. “And no jobs means no privileges.”

A tear slipped down the girl’s red cheek, bringing a trail of dark makeup with it.

“The rest of you get out of my sight,” he ordered, turning toward the stairs with disdain.

The room stayed heavy with silence. For a long moment nothing stirred. Finally, they took a collective breath, a mass of girls drawing strength together as they moved to follow him.

I could tell, just from looking at them, which girls were going down to meet their potential new owners. It wasn’t that they’d dressed any differently from the others. They all wore gowns. They all looked polished and expensive. But there was a fever that flashed in some of their eyes that had nothing to do with what they’d just witnessed.

I didn’t need to be told why. While some of these girls would leave for the night to go do some untold job—a job that I couldn’t begin to guess at—they knew they would return a few hours later. They would come back to this room and although it was dingy and stale, with brick walls that they were probably tired of staring at day after day, at least it was familiar.

At least they knew what to expect. For the other girls, who knew? The room that they were headed off to could contain anything.

The procession of them glided down the stairs, each one as light and graceful on her feet as if one of their own trainers had been leading them.

The rest of the girls who had been told to stay behind hovered at the top of the stairs. When the last of the girls had disappeared down the hallway below, they turned to face me. Even though there was space to seat fifty girls, I was suddenly worried that I was taking up too much space, or worse, sitting in one of their spots. I felt like an intruder. An imposter.

But it was like they didn’t even see me as, one by one, they sank back down onto their stiff pillows. The girl who had gotten in trouble for doing her own makeup sat down a few feet from me, clasping her trembling hands in her lap.

A minute later she glanced up, suddenly noticing me. “Why aren’t you dressed?”

“They told me not to.”

“Are you sure?” she asked, glancing back toward the stairs as if she expected the man to come charging back up for me any second.

I nodded.

“Because you don’t want to upset him.”

That was pretty clear. They’d treated us sternly at the kennels. I knew a reprimand when I heard it.

She licked her dry lips. “I’m Kat, by the way,” she said, sticking her hand out to clasp mine.

For a moment I hesitated, trying to remember the name that Ella had made up for me. “I’m Gigi.”

“I know,” she said, and her face softened with a small smile. “Missy told us, remember?”

I was surprised that they knew Missy’s real name. Why had she felt compelled to lie about mine when she’d been honest with her own?

“Is Gigi your only name?”

I opened my mouth and then closed it again, stunned. Did she know?

“Kat is my first name,” she went on, when I didn’t answer. “I’ve had two owners, but the second one only kept me for a year. They called me Vera.” She wrinkled her nose. “I never liked it much. Kat seems like a much nicer name and it suits me better, don’t you think?”

She seemed so guileless, so open, that for a moment I felt almost guilty keeping my own name from her. What would it really hurt to tell these girls who I really was?

“I only had one owner,” I admitted. There couldn’t be any harm in sharing such a simple fact about myself. Missy couldn’t object to that, could she? And besides, it felt good to give a tiny piece of myself, even if that’s all it was.

“You’re lucky…” Kat said, “…that she didn’t bring you here first, I mean. Most of them want to make some of their money back. That’s all they’re worried about. But it sounds like she was just happy to be rid of you.”

“Yes, she certainly never wanted me around. Even from the beginning.”

“Julia says it’s better to be a free agent,” she said. “But I’m not sure.”

“So all those other girls are free agents?”

Kat shook her head. “Not all of them. Some belong to Tony.”

“Do you belong to Tony?” I was trying to keep everything straight.

“Yes,” she said, “but they’ve been here longer. Tony has a lot of permanent clients. Some come here to buy pets to keep, but others don’t want that big of a commitment. If he can’t find a home for a pet within the first six months, then he moves her to the temporary jobs, like the free agents. We’re too expensive to keep on if we’re not bringing in any money.”

“What temporary jobs?”

She shrugged. “Just jobs.”

“Like what?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Like to go to parties and stuff. Most people can’t afford a pet of their own, but they want their friends to think that they can, so they rent one.”

Going to parties? That’s what Missy wouldn’t tell me?

“What else?”

Kat’s face brightened a little. “There’s this old man that comes in a few times a week just to dance with one of us. He’s really old and Julia complains that he smells like mothballs and urine, but I think he sounds sweet. His wife died a few years ago and he really misses her. They used to be ballroom dancers when they were younger. So now he rents out one of the rooms for an hour or so just to dance.”

“That
does
sound sweet.”

“Yeah,” she said, smiling. “So they aren’t
all
bad.”

“What do you mean?”

The smile fell from Kat’s face. “Oh…it’s nothing.”

“Are some of them bad? You can tell me.”

She looked down at her hands, picking nervously at her nails, and her face darkened with unease. “We aren’t supposed to talk about it. I shouldn’t have said anything.”

“But someone must have told you,” I pressed.

“No. It’s nothing. You probably just misunderstood me,” she said. “All I meant to say was that if I don’t end up getting sold, maybe I can be the one that dances with that old man. That was my main talent.”

She continued to stare into her lap, refusing to meet my eyes. So that was it? She wouldn’t tell me either.

“Do you want to get sold?” I asked, not wanting the silence to consume us.

She raised her eyes again, smiling softly. Was she relieved that I’d changed the subject?

“Some girls say it’s dangerous to be in the market for a permanent home since we can’t control who buys us next, but I don’t know. The kennels didn’t do a perfect job either. We all ended up here, didn’t we? Maybe I’ll be lucky this time.” Her voice broke and she turned away.

I placed my hand on her shoulder. The tenderness in this small touch surprised us both. “I’m sorry,” I said, pulling my hand away.

She shook her head. “I don’t mind,” she said, bunching up her skirts and scooting a little closer. “It feels nice sometimes. Just to know we aren’t alone.”

We hadn’t been allowed to share affection with each other like this when we’d been in the kennels. They’d been afraid that we’d grow too attached to one another, that the separation once we’d been placed in our new homes would be too difficult for us, so they wouldn’t allow friendships to grow between us. In the kennels we were equals. But we weren’t friends.

Things were different outside the kennels. Take away the cold white walls that separated us, and it blossomed so easily, this affection, this want to be held, to be loved.

Kat lowered her head down on my shoulder. “I’m just going to close my eyes for a minute,” she said.

It didn’t take long for her breathing to slow. Her head grew heavy, dropping lower on my arm. The warmth of her body, so close to mine, opened an ache inside of me. The pain was deep, wedged between my ribs. It felt like it was breaking me open, trying to push its way out of me. I knew what it meant to be held. I knew it. I’d claw my way across five hundred miles for the chance to feel the weight of Penn’s arms around my shoulders. Ruby’s adorable head in my lap.

I glanced down at Kat, at the sweet, trusting smile on her lips that twitched while she dreamed. For the past week, all I’d thought of was finding my way back to Penn while innocent girls like Kat dreamed of having any future at all.

When had I become so selfish?

Chapter Six

O
utside it grew dark.

Across the room, the other girls looked like they had fallen asleep, too. Gently, I lowered Kat’s head down onto one of the pillows beside me.

Missy told me to be careful who I talked to, but she hadn’t said anything about staying put. She might not trust me enough to be able to handle one of these stupid jobs, but she couldn’t expect me to just sit here doing nothing. If I wanted to be useful, I’d have to leave this room.

The stairs creaked softly beneath my feet as I made my way down to the first floor. It was probably safer to poke around on the second level. It would certainly be easier to come up with an excuse if somebody caught me, but I also knew there wouldn’t be anything worth finding up there.

I needed something valuable to add to my meager collection of belongings. I’d pull my weight any way that I could and if stealing was the only way, fine.

I paused at the bottom of the stairs. The corridor in front of me was dark, even though a bit of light spilled out from underneath half of the doors that lined it. Those were the workrooms. Missy had said so. My curiosity pulled me toward them. I wanted to know what was going on behind those doors, but I didn’t have time for it. Not yet. If Tony had anything valuable, it wouldn’t be in one of those rooms.

I turned left down the dark hallway. There was no light on in the office that Missy and I had visited earlier. I paused in front of the door and pushed my ear up against it. At the refugee center, I’d been surprised to learn how well you could tell if a room was occupied. Even whispers carried.

But there was nothing. No talking. No whispers. No soft shuffle of bodies. I tried the handle, half expecting the door to be locked, but it twisted beneath my hand and I slipped in, closing it quietly behind me.

My eyes adjusted to the dark. There was only one small window on the wall behind the desk, but I knew better than to turn on a light. I moved quickly and quietly across the room. Already my body was learning the tricks of this new talent: breath control, like singing; balance, like ballet; the fine art of observation, like drawing; and most importantly, nimble fingers, just like playing the piano. I smiled to myself. Who could have guessed that for all those years, our trainers had actually been cultivating thieves? Pets. The perfect little stealing machines.

The desk was cluttered with junk: papers and old soda cups, sticky notes and grainy photocopies. An ashtray overflowed with old cigarettes, and the remains of a half-eaten sandwich dried in the middle of an open notebook. I scanned the items, pocketing one of the many ballpoint pens that littered the desk.

Somewhere, not too far off, a man laughed. My heart quickened, reminding me that I didn’t have time to be picky.

My eyes traveled down to the desk drawer. Is that where Tony kept his secrets? I tugged at the handle and it jerked open a few inches. Even in the dim light, I could see the shiny barrel of the gun. I’d never seen a real one before, but I’d seen enough of them on the Kimbles’ television shows to recognize it. The bad guys always had them, didn’t they? Even in real life.

I slid the drawer shut, wishing I’d never seen it. This wasn’t the sort of thing I’d wanted to find.

I pulled the pen back out of my pocket and left it on the desk. I didn’t want to take anything from this room. I just wanted to leave.

Back at the stairway I paused. Light still shone out from under the doors of a few workrooms, beckoning me.

I stopped at the first door and placed my ear against the wood. The muffled hum of voices buzzed back, but the words were too quiet to understand. If I could just make out a sentence or two… I held my breath, listening. My hands twitched at my sides. I could just crack the door a little bit, peek inside.

I twisted the handle. Ever so gradually, it turned beneath my hand. I knew how to do this. I would be so delicate with it that no one would ever even see it moving. Bit by bit the handle turned and after a minute I pushed the door forward ever so slightly, just enough to peer through the slit.

The room wasn’t huge, just a small box no bigger than the rooms we’d grown up in. But the furnishings weren’t anything like the ones at the kennel. The walls were a deep crimson red almost the same color as the thick Persian rug that lined the floor. In the middle of the room there was a bed mounded with expensive looking pillows. On it, a girl reclined. She wore only a silk scarf, draped delicately across her body. My face flushed as my gaze traveled over her, not because I’d never seen another pet undressed before, but because someone must be paying to see her this way.

The slit in the door was only big enough to see part of the room. Ever so slightly, I eased it further open. A chair came into view. On it, a man sat bent over a large sketchbook. His hand moved frantically, like it couldn’t get the graphite down onto the paper fast enough.

“Move your chin to the right,” he said. “Not that much. Good. Right there.”

I stepped back, pulling the door shut.

One of the jobs was posing for drawings? We used to pose for each other back at the training center. Not with our clothes off, but I’d seen pictures of classical art. This wasn’t anything new. Was Missy really so worried that I wouldn’t be able to handle posing nude?

K
at was still asleep when I collapsed down next to her.

All I could think about was the gun. I could imagine the cold weight of it in my hand as I pulled it from the drawer. There was nothing stopping me from going back for it. I wanted it, more than any of the other things I’d ever stolen, but it frightened me too much.

After a while there was the soft shuffle of feet and the creak of stairs. Kat opened her eyes, rubbing them as she scanned the group that trailed into the room.

“They took Lacie?” she asked, sitting up. On the side of her face there was a red crease from one of the cushions. It reminded me of the way Ruby used to wake in the morning with lines from her pillow creased across her cheeks.

The girls moved slowly to the wardrobe, helping each other climb out of their dresses. I could tell that they wanted to leave them there, wadded on the floor, but they were too accustomed to being responsible and so they lifted them, smoothing out the wrinkles before they hung them back on the rack for next time.

“Which one was it?” Kat asked.

“The man from Ohio,” one of the girls answered, clearly understanding what Kat meant.

“Did he look nice?”

They looked at one another like they were trying to come to a consensus. Finally they all gave a small shrug. Maybe they were deciding to be positive. Or maybe they couldn’t come to a conclusion at all.

“Was it bad?” Kat asked. She stood and shed her own dress, too.

“Do you remember last week, when that man with the black hat came?” one of the girls asked. “Remember how he made us open our mouths so he could check all of our teeth?” 

“Yes,” Kat said. “He wore those rubber gloves.”

“This was like that,” the girl said. She pulled on a pair of pants and a long-sleeved shirt and curled back up on a pile of pillows across from me. “It took a long time. He was very thorough.”

“And the other man?”

“He didn’t stay long,” the girl said. “I guess he didn’t see anything he liked.”

We all sat for a long time in silence. Their faces were blank, but mine probably was, too. We didn’t wear our emotions on our faces. Maybe they were trying as hard as I was to block out things that they’d seen, things that they’d done.

“Maybe
none
of us will get sold again,” someone said quietly after a while.

Next to me Kat sighed. “Maybe,” she echoed.

I
fought to stay awake, but my eyelids were too heavy. The weariness from the past few weeks draped over me like a blanket. Thick. Suffocating. Each time I closed my eyes, I saw the glint of the gun barrel in Tony’s drawer. Maybe it had been a mistake to leave it there.

I had no idea what time it was, but Missy still hadn’t returned. Somewhere, she was doing a job as a free agent.

She could sing. I hoped that’s what she had been asked to do. I pictured her, in her bright green gown, up on a stage with soft lights twinkling down on her. Behind her, a band would play and she would open her mouth and the words would pour out of her, clean and pure.

W
hen I woke, Missy was standing over me. In the dim morning light that leaked past the sheets that covered the windows I could see that she still wore her green gown, but her hair was mussed and there were dark circles under her eyes.

I moved, sitting up stiffly. My back ached from lying in such a peculiar position for so long.

Sometime during the night, the other free agents had come in and gotten undressed, although I hadn’t heard any of it. Missy must have been the last one. Two jobs. I guess that meant that she’d been out working all night long.

“Help me unzip,” she whispered, turning around.

As soon as I’d freed her from the dress, she kicked it into a pile on the floor and collapsed onto the cushions beside me. She didn’t bother to hang it back up. She didn’t bother to slip back into her regular clothes. She simply tucked her arms beneath her head and closed her eyes and before I knew it she was asleep.

I scooted closer. It felt strange to stare at Missy while she slept, but I couldn’t look away. She was different asleep. The mask that she wore during the day slipped away. Without the sassiness and bravado, she looked so much more vulnerable. She looked small.

I studied her face, wanting to find some clue there about where she’d been tonight, but it was blank, wiped clean.

One by one, the other girls awoke and by the time Tony brought up a pot of oatmeal for breakfast, Missy was just beginning to stir.

I grabbed a bowl and sat back down at her feet.

“You aren’t going to get me some,” she groaned, rolling onto her back.

She was still only dressed in her undergarments.

“Do you want to get dressed first?”

She glanced down at herself as if she’d forgotten what she was wearing and shrugged, rubbing at her eyes.

I handed over the food I’d just gotten for myself and she grabbed the bowl without so much as a thank you, shoveling a spoonful into her mouth. “I’m starving,” she said.

“I see that.”

“We’ve got to get out of here,” Missy said. “Tony is driving to New York this morning to pick up two new girls that another market doesn’t need anymore and he said he’d give us a ride.”

“But we just got here.”

“This is good,” Missy said. She sounded annoyed. “You know, you could stand to be a little bit more grateful.”

“I
am
grateful.”

I just didn’t want to leave before I had a chance to go get that gun. A gun was power. And that was exactly what we needed.

She set down her bowl with a
thud
. “Oh, give me a break. You don’t even know what to be grateful for,” she said. “You’re completely clueless.”

She stood and walked over to her bag, snatching out her old clothes.

“Then tell me.” I followed close behind. My hands shook at my sides. “You refuse to share anything with me, and then you act like I should be able to read your mind. Like I should just
know
. Well, I’m sorry that I’m not as worldly as you, Missy, but you aren’t protecting me by keeping things a secret.”

“Trust me, you’d rather not know.”

“I know it’s not as bad as you’re making it seem,” I said.

“How do you—?” She reared around to face me, her eyes narrowing. “You went down there, didn’t you? What did you see?”

I took a step away from her. “I saw a job.”

“What? Tell me what you saw?”

“I saw a girl posing. A man was drawing her…nude.”

Missy laughed darkly and rubbed a hand over her face. “Oh, there’s far more to the black markets than just that.”

“You don’t have to try to protect me,” I said. “I can pull my weight around here. I’m not stupid.”

“Stop fighting me on this, Ella!” she snapped. “This is the last we’re going to talk about it. No jobs! Got it? You ask again and I’m gone.” She finished tugging on her tights and pulled her shirt over her head. When she finally looked back at me, the fight had drained from her eyes. “Grab something to eat. We’ll leave in half an hour. I don’t want to miss this ride.”