THE DEBT BOX SET, page 61
Her hair was longer. And she looked thin. Thinner than I’d ever seen her. But beautiful. Fierce and bright—the way she always had. And I’d worried that maybe I wouldn’t feel what I wanted to feel for her. Or wished I would feel for her.
The love and the affection. The trust and faith. But she walked into that room and it was all right there—as well as pride. So much pride and gratitude for what she’d done.
She stopped, halfway across the room, her eyes on Ariella, and I’d wished that our little girl was wearing the pretty pink dress instead of the striped sleeper I’d had in the diaper bag.
But then Rosa looked at me and, dry-eyed, she shook her head.
“Are you okay?” I asked, getting to my feet, tripping over the diaper bag.
“I can’t do this,” she said. “I thought I could but I can’t.”
“What…what are you talking about?”
She turned and walked to the door, said something to the guard there.
“Rosa!” I yelled, and picking up on my agitation, Ari started to cry. “What are you doing?”
The guard opened the door and she was slipping through. She was walking away.
“Rosa!”
“Don’t bring her back. Please. I can’t… Don’t come back.”
“You’re joking. Rosa.”
But then she was gone.
And until last Sunday that had been the last time I saw her.
She’d written, a letter a week. I knew she’d graduated high school and she was taking college-level classes. She mentioned therapy a lot. She had work in kitchens that she didn’t mind. At the end of every letter she asked how the baby was.
She didn’t use her name. Just the baby.
I sent pictures and drawings. Updates and long letters about Ariella’s first words and first steps, trying, really trying, to make her a part of it.
But I could feel the chasm, a hundred and fifty miles and four years away—I could feel the distance she was putting between us. And I kept the faith that she’d come out and we’d fix it. It was hard, but I’d held onto the faith with both hands.
And now she’d been out six months and no word.
“Daddy,” Ariella said, pulling on my hand while at the same time using her feet to climb my leg.
“Okay,” I said. “Let’s go.”
One way or another, I was done waiting for Rosa.
11
NOW
Rosa
Clearly, I should have taken the money. If I had taken the money, maybe I wouldn’t be here.
The goddamned Diamond Club.
It took all of two weeks. Two weeks to burn through my savings, pay my next month’s rent, and fill up my BART card. My PO was cool about my losing the job, but the days went on and the only work I could get was a telemarketing gig in Oakland that I needed a car for.
I mean, I was ready to work, but why did it have to be so hard?
So two weeks after thinking I would never work at the Diamond Club, here I was at the Diamond Club.
“Don’t say I told you so,” I said as I stepped inside the dark interior.
“Wouldn’t dream of it,” she said, hugging my slightly resisting body. “I’m just glad to see you.”
I forced myself to relax in her arms and even managed to hug her back for a second before stepping away and looking around.
The club was like every other strip club I’d ever dragged my half-brother out of. Funny, I got kicked out of the house for getting pregnant at sixteen, but my brother tucking a small fortune into G-strings all across the city didn’t even raise my father’s eyebrows.
A figure-eight stage dominated the middle of the club. A pole on each end. There was a big bar along one wall and another smaller bar on the other side of the room.
“What’s up there?” I asked, pointing to a second floor with windows and a little balcony looking out over the stage.
“It’s for the private shows,” she said. “They get bottle service, but you never have to take it up there. The girls take it with them.”
“Lucky them,” I said.
“It’s not like that. Really. It’s all really legit. If you have trouble, JJ will take care of it. He’s like Dom, but meaner,” she said.
“How is Dom?” I picked my nails like I didn’t really care. But I did. I missed Patsy’s.
“Good, but you can tell he misses you. We all do.”
The moment was there for me to say—I miss you, too. But the words were all clogged in my throat.
“So?” Cindy asked, her arms out, like she was showing off her house. “What do you think?”
“I think…” I’m totally freaking out and absolutely making a mistake. “It’s gonna be great. When do I start?”
“You need to talk to Randy, first. But it’s just a formality.”
“Randy?”
“Manager.”
Right. This was where shit was going to go off the rails and I was going to have to kick a man in the nuts for getting handsy.
But in the back room Cindy sat with me as Randy, a thin man who looked like Bruno Mars in a beard, looked me up and down. I was wearing my best jeans and a T-shirt that wasn’t a size too big. As far as sexy clothes went—these were my best.
“You’re Rosa Burns?” he asked.
“Yep,” I said. And for a second he seemed baffled. “Were you expecting someone different?”
“I never know what to expect any more,” he said. “I’ve got some ground rules.”
“I love a good ground rule.”
“Smart alec. That’s not my favorite trait in an employee,” he said.
I immediately stopped smiling.
“No drinking on the job,” he said. “I don’t care what you do off hours, but you don’t drink here.”
“I don’t drink anywhere,” I said. I was a very boring ex-con.
“No using,” he said. “Here or anywhere. You want to smoke some weed on your own time…” He shrugged. “Anything harder and you’re gone.”
“Okay,” I said.
“You’re late twice and you’re gone.”
I nearly smiled but managed to just nod.
“You’ll get crap shifts to start but if you do all right, I’ll give you some weekend hours.”
“I don’t work Sunday mornings. Sundays at all, really.”
“They’re busy days here.”
“Big after-church crowd?” I asked and Cindy poked me in the back. “Sorry,” I said.
“No Sundays. You start tomorrow night. Cindy will get you your uniform.”
“Thank you,” I said, and Cindy and I turned for the door and walked back out into the hallway, making a detour to the dressing room. One wall was lockers, the other was mirrors with tables and chairs set up in front of them. There was a long rack right down the middle, full of hangers and scraps of lace and spandex and feathers. A sexy cop uniform. A plaid skirt that must belong to a Catholic schoolgirl look.
There were a couple of girls there, drinking coffee and putting on makeup, but mostly chatting. Cindy introduced me around and the girls seemed plenty nice. A little cagey, but I was giving them the same vibe. The truth was, we were all women who’d seen some shit, and we didn’t go running into anything.
Funny, but it felt a little bit like I had to land in the dressing room of a strip club to find my people.
The uniform was a pair of hot pants, some fishnets, and a gold vest about two sizes too small.
“Cindy,” I said, looking at myself in the mirror. “If I bend over I’m gonna flop right out of this vest.”
“Duct tape helps,” she said. She stood behind me and yanked on the bottom hem of my shorts. “I knew you had a cute little body under that Patsy’s shirt, but I had no idea it would be so cute.”
My body was just a vehicle to me these days. Like a car. A thing that got me from one place to another. There was a time I’d fully loved my body. Maybe because Marco had loved my body. God, he had loved my body. And because my body had grown Ariella so well. But after she was born, it had become an empty thing. A waiting space.
I ate when I was hungry, which wasn’t often. I walked a lot because I didn’t have a car and the streets of San Francisco were no joke. And frankly, I could thank my mom for these boobs. And legs. And the butt.
She’d been curvy and proud of it. I was curvy and…indifferent.
But in the mirror I did look good. My tummy poked out over my shorts in what I thought was kind of a sexy way. I turned sideways and let myself admire my boobs, the curve of my ass.
My red hair looked dark in the low lights and my skin wasn’t quite so pale. Mostly I looked like a stranger.
I felt oddly…turned on. By the sight of myself like this. And it took me a second to even recognize the feeling. The sudden warmth and heaviness in my body. Between my legs.
Not since Marco. Really. It was like my body just turned itself off.
And now here it was flickering back to life.
In the back room of a strip club.
Apparently, I had more in common with my half brother than I thought.
“You look good, Rosa,” Cindy said.
“I do.” It came out more like a question and Cindy laughed.
“You got boots?” Cindy asked.
“I have rain boots.”
Cindy stared at me in the mirror. “You know, I can’t ever tell if you’re joking or not.”
“I am not joking,” I told her.
“Here,” she said, pulling open a locker and grabbing a pair of high boots with a heel that looked like it was gonna kill me. “You can borrow these until you get some of your own.”
I made myself say thank you without sarcasm.
“Will you let me put a little makeup on you?” Cindy asked. “Just to see how it all works?”
“Sure,” I said and stood still while Cindy fussed with mascara and lip gloss.
“How is your son doing?” I asked.
“Good,” she said, lighting up. “He was with me last weekend. He’s really into the stars and stuff, you know? There was this meteor shower on Friday night, so I didn’t tell him where we were going. We went to Point Lobos and we had a blanket and some snacks and we just laid there and watched the stars until he fell asleep.”
“Cindy,” I said quietly. “That’s amazing.”
“Yeah,” she said with a huge grin. “I thought so, too. How is your Sunday morning doing?”
I blinked at her and she blinked back. “That’s what you’re doing, right? Visiting your kid?”
“How’d you know?” I whispered.
“The way you looked when you came into Patsy’s every Sunday,” she said. “Like you’d just seen the best thing and the worst thing all at the same time. Happy, but gutted, too. I just…I knew what that look meant.”
“I haven’t been able to go,” I said. “The last two weeks. I’ve been trying to find jobs.”
And last time I went, he’d seen me. I couldn’t risk that again.
“You can go this Sunday. I’ll loan you my car,” she said, and I smiled at her. Really smiled at her.
Cindy stepped back and looked me up and down. “Damn girl,” she said. “You have any makeup at home?”
“Chapstick,” I said with a shrug.
Cindy shook her head at me like I was a lost cause and then put the mascara and gloss in my bag. “A welcome to your new job gift,” she said.
“Cindy,” I said, feeling suddenly overwhelmed with gratitude, which was deeply uncomfortable and unfamiliar. It had been a long time since anyone had gone out of their way to help me without wanting anything from me in return. “You’ve been so nice.”
“Yeah,” she said, with a cocky grin that broke the charged atmosphere. “I have.”
“Thank you. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
“You’re welcome. Now look at yourself.”
I looked at the whole of myself. The long hair gleamed red in the low lights, my brown eyes looked huge. My lips were so full and red.
Marco would die if he saw me like this. Or he would have. He probably had a girlfriend. Or at least some kind of friend with benefits. He probably wouldn’t feel a thing if he saw me like this, except maybe pity.
Nah, I thought, tossing my hair over my shoulder. I look too fucking hot for pity.
And god—it felt so good. I’d never been a girl who dressed up to show off her body. But I’d always liked the way Marco looked at me when I had on something tight and short. Like he just couldn’t wait to get me in the back seat of his car. And I used to love to tease him…making him wait for it. Both of us, really.
We’d fall on each other in the back of that car like we dying.
“You look ready, girl,” Cindy said, smiling over my shoulder in the mirror.
Yep, I looked ready. But the question was—for what?
12
NOW
Marco
I lifted my head as carefully as I could. So carefully the pillow didn’t move. The sheets didn’t make a sound. My daughter, my beautiful little Ariella—the bedtime tyrant—was finally, finally asleep!
I left her single bed like a ninja, no sound. I swear the air didn’t even shift as I rolled out of that bed and walked silently to the door. I left it cracked, the way she liked, and in the hallway I checked my watch.
Not bad. Twenty minutes tonight. There’d been a time last year I thought she’d never get to sleep in under an hour and that I would spend most of my life clinging to the edge of her single bed praying for her to close her eyes and just be quiet.
So stubborn, that girl. Just like her mother.
Evening was falling and the shadows were deep in the corners of our apartment. A tiny one-bedroom with a den that I rented for an astronomical price. But it was close to Berkley, where I was going to school. Close to my parents so they could help out, and within driving distance for Gretchen, Ariella’s babysitter, who had been with us since the day Ariella arrived in my life.
I had put off getting our own place for a while. Too long, really. If my life had been different, I would have been out of my parents’ house after graduation. But independence was highly overrated when you had a baby to worry about. Hoping…well, hoping for something that was never going to happen.
In the kitchen I grabbed a beer, the light from the fridge cutting a big swatch out of the darkness. I’d finish a little more work and then head to bed. Ariella was in a 6:30 a.m. wake-up pattern, and if I stayed up too late studying, those early mornings were hard.
I hadn’t gotten a whole lot of furniture yet. A couch, a table. A lamp I turned on by pulling a small golden chain. A pool of light opened up beneath it, sending shadows scurrying to the corners.
“Marco?”
“Jesus Christ!” I jumped back, beer sloshing over my hand. “What the—”
A man sat on my couch. A total stranger wearing a gray suit and a black tie. He held up a hand as if trying to tell me to calm down. “I understand we don’t want to wake your daughter.”
“Get the fuck out of my apartment,” I said. And I reached into my pocket to grab my phone, but then I remembered it was charging on my kitchen counter.
“I mean you and your daughter no harm.” He stood up from the couch and I melted back into the shadows. I changed my grip on my beer bottle, letting it spill out into the carpet. If he came any closer I’d smash it against the wall and drive the sharp edges into his eerie gray eyes.
It had been a while since I’d given a man a beating. Not a lot of fights at the playground or in engineering classrooms—but I felt my body respond to the threat with a familiar hum.
I’ll show you harm, asshole.
From the inside pocket of his jacket he pulled out a slip of paper and put it down on the table, then lifted his hands very slowly.
“What is that?”
“An address.”
“For what?”
“It’s where Rosa Burns is working. Though she’s using a different last name these days.”
A white-hot fury erupted along the side of my face. Down into my heart. Just hearing her name made me feel crazy. “You know Rosa?”
“I don’t. But not for lack of trying.”
For a second the rage got worse as I imagined this guy trying to put his hands on Rosa.
“She’s very stubborn,” he said, like he was telling me something I didn’t know.
“Is she all right?” I asked. I’d tried to convince myself that I didn’t care, but I knew it was a lie. She was the mother of my daughter. I would always care.
“She is…surviving.” The way he said it told me a story I didn’t want to know.
“She living with her dad again, or…?”
The guy held up his hands. “I don’t have the answers to those questions,” he said.
“Yeah, you just here to give me a heart attack?”
“Settle a debt,” he said.
“I know all about the Burns family debts, and I want no part of it.” I nodded down at that address. “You can take that and go.”
“It’s not about her family.”
I laughed with all the bitterness I thought I didn’t feel anymore. “Everything. Everything is about her family.”
Her half brother and the father she called the sperm donor.
Not me and Ariella.
“There are some things we don’t get to escape,” he said.
The guy looked at me for a long moment and then slowly walked toward the door, leaving the slip of paper on the table.
He opened the door, the quiet night behind him. Down the street a baseball game was being played and I could hear the crack of a bat against a ball. Such a normal thing.
The man glanced out the door toward that sound, the distant cheering. A simple summer sound and he looked like he’d never heard it. Or, if he had, it was just always surprising.
“Nothing is simple,” he said. “Especially when we want it to be.”
And then he shut the door and the apartment felt cold and different. I set the empty beer bottle down and locked the door behind the guy. Used the deadbolt and the chain. Things I’d never used when I was in the house because this wasn’t that kind of neighborhood.
