you, my dear?”
“I’ve been thinking about our date,” I said. “About what you said. I’d like to … to stay over with you.”
“I’d like that, too. I suppose I might be able to slip out of town, for a last-minute business trip, if you know what I mean.”
“Great,” I said. Des nodded at me, encouraging me to go on. “I need to make one thing clear first. This is going to be … an investment.” That was the word Des told me to use. “After all, there’s only one first time for everything. If you know what I mean.”
He let out a small groan, like he had just had a taste of something delicious, and I felt the goose bumps rise on the skin of my arms. “Oh my goodness. Well. Whatever you need. I’ll let you know where, what room, as soon as I book.”
An hour later the text came through: a hotel name, and a room number with a winking face. We would meet on Tuesday—three days away—at 9:00. Des lifted the screen for me to see, threw her arms around me, and whooped. I wasn’t happy or afraid. Instead, an eerie calm slid into my gut, where the anger had been.
That night I put the purse on my nightstand. I would have liked it, if I hadn’t known where it had come from. If it didn’t make me feel nauseated to picture it on the side of the road—what road? God, why hadn’t I asked?—and what it meant that it had been abandoned. Maybe she got mugged, I told myself. It happened often enough. Des said the girls at the club all carried mace or pepper spray, because thieves targeted strippers, waitresses, bartenders. The ones they knew would have cash. After all this with Tom was over, I would try to find Peaches again. Ask her where the bag had come from, how many days it had been since she found it. Maybe whatever Peaches had to say wouldn’t lead me anywhere. Maybe whatever had happened to the bag was the betrayal the cards had said to watch out for. But something told me it was deeper than that. Me, Peaches, Lily, Julie Zale. And that it wasn’t over yet.
* * *
I KNEW that girls bled the first time, but it hurt so much that it felt like something must have gone wrong. That kind of pain could not be normal. But when he asked if I was okay, I told him I was fine, tried to shape my grimace into a smile. I wouldn’t have believed me if I were him, but that was the thing about people—they wanted to believe whatever was easiest to accept.
Afterward, I was surprised at how small the bloodstain was, on the sheets. The pain—and what had caused it—had seemed so much bigger than that. I knew it was strange to feel disappointed, but a part of me wanted to see those sheets soaked in blood, something I could point to and say that’s what they did to me. Tom and Des and my mother and the clerk at the desk who had handed me the key to the room, the woman who asked what floor when I got on the elevator, and pressed the button for me on the way up. Zeg, when he bartered with me for some stupid trinket I had lifted and made me take less than half of what he would sell it for. The bartenders and waiters who never even asked for my fake ID. The man who only had twenty bucks left in the wallet I stole. The girls at the spa who wouldn’t let me in to read people’s cards. This whole failing town and its closed casinos, its empty parking garages, the ocean and bay that hemmed us all in. I wanted a sheet bloodied enough to make everyone see how wrong it had all gone.
I slipped out of the room when the first hint of sunlight came through the blinds, my purse filled with the bills Des had told me to ask for up front. I hadn’t slept at all and my body felt light and drifty, like I was moving through a dream, but the bones of my face ached. A housekeeper trundled her cart down the hall and looked at the ground as I passed. In the elevator down, I saw myself reflected in the gold panel of buttons—my eyes dark with smeared makeup, my face pale, my hair