The King and the Courtesan (19 page)

I grinned. “So. The zoo, right?”

* * *

“I don’t recall the zoo being this depressing.” I took a slurp from my drink as I watched the polar bear pace back and forth in his tiny space, panting and agitated. I could sympathize with him. I knew what it was like to be trapped in a life you couldn’t escape. At least the temperature was comfortable. Although I feared the polar bear wasn’t faring so well in the heat.

I was dressed in shorts for the first time since Ezekiel hired me. I figured there was nothing wrong with it, because I’d have plenty of time to slip into something more appropriate by six o’ clock. Now I could sit how I liked, and my feet were in comfortable sneakers, ones Roger bought me on the way over.

Roger was still in a suit, and I’d teased him during our drive.

“You aren’t blending in very well.”

“That’s not the point. Ezekiel would kill me if he saw me in business casual.”

“Can you at least take off the jacket? You must be dying in the heat.”

He’d refused at the time, but now the jacket was off, tucked in the crook of his elbow. He’d rolled his sleeves up his forearms, drawing attention to his hands.

“Roger?” I asked, taking my eyes from the polar bears.

“What?”

“Why aren’t you wearing a ring?”

“What?”

I pointed to his left hand. “No ring.”

“I’m not married.”

“You
aren’t
?”

“Wait.” Roger turned eyes to me. “What do you know?”

“Um…” I rubbed the back of my neck and pressed my lips together. “You see, the thing is…when I took your wallet out, it kind of flipped open and I saw—I saw a wedding photo. So if you aren’t married, that means…”

Roger sighed heavily. “Okay, then I am married.”

“What?”

“Look, Ezekiel doesn’t want people knowing about my personal life. That’s why I take off the ring for work. But look.” He dug beneath his collar and pulled out a gold ring on a string that was unmistakably the kind given in marriage. “I wear this when I’m not at work.”

“So you
are
married? Your wife isn’t—”

“She’s alive, yeah.”

“And you’re together.”

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Again, because Ezekiel didn’t want anyone to know. It’s dangerous. If people know you have loved ones, they can be targeted. And that would not only endanger her, but also Ezekiel, and me, as well. So as far as anyone knows, all of his employees have no friends, no family, and no lovers. It’s easiest that way.”

There was hypocrisy in that, of course. Ezekiel had me, and I was most obviously a lover. He wasn’t keeping me a secret. But perhaps that was the point. I was his trophy courtesan, the woman he paraded around to prove to other men that he could.

“What?” Roger asked when I stared at him.

“I just can’t see you—you’re
married
?”

Roger snorted. “That shocking, huh? Well, there are some women who find this mug attractive, be they few and far between.”

I didn’t reply. Roger wasn’t exactly hard on the eyes, but I wouldn’t admit that to him.

“You’re really that surprised?” Roger asked, amused by my silence.

“I just…I don’t know. Somehow you don’t seem like the marriage type. You work for
Ezekiel
. I mean, come on…”

Roger sobered. “Let’s keep moving.”

We went below to watch the sharks swim in their pool. The crowd was strangely sparse down there. I watched a hammerhead sway about leisurely, moving across the glass until he turned at the edge and swam behind a rock. They all looked far more peaceful than the poor polar bears. It was like they didn’t know they were swimming in a tiny tank instead of a big ocean. Hell, they probably didn’t care. I envied them for that.

“Her name’s Bahiya.” Roger crossed his arms and leaned against the wall opposite the sharks. “We’ve been married about a year now.”

“Oh.” There was nothing I could think of to say. Roger’s voice was even, but I noticed a tidbit of affection there. Most people I knew growing up weren’t married, and if they were, they weren’t as happy as Roger sounded.

Roger uncrossed his arms and shoved his hands in his pockets. “You said you saw the picture in my wallet?”

“Yeah.”

“She was born in Jahral, but she came over when she was sixteen. So she still has a bit of the accent.”

“She’s really pretty.” Well, she
was
. Jahralian women tended to be like that. Maybe it was just a stereotype, but almost every Jahralian woman I’d ever met was good-looking. The men were, too. Something about their purple eyes gave them a certain mystique.

“She is.”

“How’d you meet?” Judging by Roger’s tone, there was a dark side to this story, but I wanted to linger on the happy details a little longer.

“I probably shouldn’t tell you.”

“Come on.” I smiled in encouragement, perching my butt on the edge of the cement bench poking out from the tank glass. “Tell me. Are you afraid of me judging you or something? I’m a druggie prostitute. Doesn’t give me much room to judge.”

“Fine. We met at a local alcoholics’ therapy group.”

“An…
you
were an
alcoholic
?”

“Yeah. Sort of.” Roger chuckled. “Not a hardcore one, but it’s really embarrassing to think about. I got arrested on a harassment charge because I beat up some guy when I was drunk. I was let out with a fine and I had to attend ten of these therapy sessions with a bunch of other guys. Well, Bahiya was our counselor. She’d never been an alcoholic, but apparently her father had, so she was emotionally invested in the whole thing.”

“I have a hard time believing this. You look some kind of weird nerd.”

“Hey,” Roger chided playfully with a smile. “Be nice.”

I slipped my hands between my thighs, leaning forward with interest. “So you
aren’t
a weird nerd?”

“I can be. I like some nerdy stuff, but ever since I was little, I’ve always gotten into trouble. All through school I was sent to the office for beating up kids who made fun of me. I just couldn’t keep my fists to myself. I was quite a wild kid in high school, so that’s why my parents suggested the army. They thought it would do me some good. And it did, I think. You only have to kill one man before you never want to hurt a person again.” He sobered halfway through the story and cleared his throat. “Though I guess you’ve seen for yourself how I tend to have a knack for hurting people.”

“I’m sorry.”

Roger’s breath rattled when he sighed. “I’m dealing with it. I use excuses to feel better about it. Most of the people who attack Ezekiel are low-lifes. So far, I haven’t had to injure any innocents.”

“So what does your wife think of you working for Ezekiel?”

“She doesn’t know about it.”

“Wh—
she doesn’t
? How can she not notice something like you being gone for weeks on end?”

Roger wouldn’t look at me. “She’s sick.”

“Oh.”

“She’s been in and out of the hospital for about eight months now. She told me she was sick before I proposed to her. In some way, I feel like I proposed
because
she was sick, and I didn’t want to waste any time.”

“When you say sick…”

“Brain cancer.”

“Oh. Wow.”

“It’s a constant battle, both physical and emotional. One day the doctors tell her she’s gonna pull through fine, and then other days the doctors say they don’t have hope. She’s a wreck, I’m a wreck. At first we thought—” Roger took a deep breath. “At first we thought she wouldn’t make it. Not with such catastrophic hospital bills. The government laid me off because of budget cuts, so I didn’t have a job, and she couldn’t keep being a therapist, as ill as she was. We thought—we thought the hospitals would turn us away and she’d have to die.”

It all made sense now. A great sense of sobriety overtook me, and my heart ached.
Oh, Roger
.

“Ezekiel,” I whispered. “So that’s why you work for him.”

“He found me and promised to pay all the bills if I became an employee.”

Tears rose to my eyes, not so much over Roger’s ailing wife, but because this was such a common story in Metro. A relative or lover got sick. No one could afford the bills. They started trafficking drugs or selling sex to pay for it all. Our own mortality was rubbed in our faces every day, and the only way to shake it off was to sell yourself. Sell your body so someone else can keep theirs. It was a vicious cycle no one wanted to address. They told Metro to take care of itself.
You guys got yourselves into this nasty business
, the rest of the city told its slums.
Get yourselves out
.

“So far, he’s kept his word. I haven’t told Bahiya about Ezekiel. I’m not allowed to. I wouldn’t want to anyway. If she knew…” Roger shook his head. “She thinks I have a security job keeping enthusiastic fan girls off a local celebrity.” He snorted. “She’s been suspicious as to why it pays so well, but honestly, she’s got so many other worries that she’s just thankful money isn’t an issue anymore.”

“I’m sorry, Roger.”

“It isn’t your fault.”

“I know. I’m just saying…”

“How do you think Ezekiel knows? How do you think he zeroes in on desperate people and takes advantage of them?”

“That’s how he’s made so much money so far.” I hugged myself. “Knowing weaknesses and targeting them.” I met his gaze. “So how’s your drinking record been since Bahiya?”

Roger chuckled grimly. “She made sure I was high and dry, and I’m kind of glad. Ezekiel would never tolerate a drunkard in his employment. I haven’t touched alcohol in two years. I don’t miss it much.”

I was proud of Roger. What was it like to tackle an addiction and win? I wish I had the bravery to try. If Ezekiel hadn’t dangled drugs in front of me, would he have achieved such control?

“It wasn’t easy,” Roger stated, watching my expression. “But I had my parents and Bahiya behind me. Couldn’t have done it without their help.”

I thought of Mimi. She’d love to see me off the drugs, but as far as helping me… I didn’t think she had the willpower. However, my girls at work could help me through it—at least the ones who weren’t addicted. Cordelia couldn’t help, but Yogi and the older ladies could. A few of them beat their own drug addictions. Too bad I couldn’t go to them now. I missed them.

“Do you have more pictures? I’d like to look at them.”

Roger handed me his phone. I’d grown used to my own high-tech device by now, so I had little trouble finding the photo album. And while I wasn’t much of a sentimentalist, I wanted to
aww
at some of the pictures. He and Bahiya did look very happy and cute together. I never imagined Roger as much of a romantic, but whenever the camera caught him looking at his wife, I saw love in his eyes. To me, it seemed like a good marriage.

Then again, what did I know about good marriages? No one I knew had one.

Compared to that one night of violence, nothing of much importance happened for most of the week. I had the days free, so while I sometimes went on little romps around the city with Roger, I was often left alone in the hotel room with some books and my drugs. I never really found out what Ezekiel did all day, but I had no real interest in finding out. Nights were spent going to shows or occasionally gambling at the casinos. Ezekiel, however, was not a big gambler, and I think it was because there was too much risk for his taste. He’d win some, lose some, then wander away in disinterest. Often, he’d head back to the room and seek out my usual services. By now I had a map in my mind of Ezekiel’s scars, but I never asked about any of them. I didn’t really care to know. After watching him fire a bullet into a man’s brain without a flinch, there wasn’t much ambiguity to the scars’ origins.

The last night of our stay was spent at the fight club, watching carnage. I didn’t eat much—loss of appetite could be blamed for that. Roger didn’t eat much, either, and I wondered why fight clubs bothered him when he could apparently break a man’s neck without a qualm. I never found out, but I guessed that maybe it was because breaking a man’s neck was quick and painless. Watching men pummel each other to exhaustion was like watching torture. Killing a man required a cruel streak. Torturing one required indifference.

It all came down to Kennedy and JoJo, the men Ezekiel had told me to watch from the beginning. Two men who owed him money had bet on each. One of those men was going to be able to pay Ezekiel back with prize money. The other was going to sink even further into debt. I tried not to think about what would happen to the latter.

The fight lasted longer than the ones before it, and there was plenty of gore to satisfy the sickest person’s desires. Both men’s faces were bloody and raw like undercooked meat, yet they continued to fight—even when wounds broke open on their knuckles and they could barely gasp through the blood dripping into their mouths. I stopped watching after a while and excused myself to the bathroom.

When I came back, the fight was over. I didn’t lament missing the climax. One of the men was on his back, not moving. The other was screaming and running in circles around him, fists pumping the air. Kennedy was taking home cash and fame, while JoJo had possibly died.

Ezekiel nodded at Bruce and Garrett, taking a sip of his wine. Simultaneously they stood and slipped into the crowd. Ezekiel finished off his drink and rose. He threw a look at Roger, and in turn, Roger turned to me.

“Let’s go,” he said gently, taking my arm.

“Where are we going?” I asked as we headed toward the exit without Ezekiel.

“Back to the room. Ezekiel will meet us up there in a few minutes.”

A few minutes? Didn’t he need a few hours to finish up with his business?

I was seated on the couch, sipping champagne, when Ezekiel came into the hotel room, removing his jacket as he walked. Behind him followed Bruce and Garrett, along with two other suited guards who Ezekiel must have hired as temporary thugs. They hauled two men with them. Both were dressed in shoddy replicas of brand name suits, and neither looked comfortable. One was loosening his necktie nervously. The other was sobbing and red-faced, barely able to keep himself on his feet. The more composed one stopped at the edge of the steps that led down to the TV and couches. The other was shoved forward toward Ezekiel. He stumbled and landed on his chest in front of Ezekiel, who surveyed him indifferently.