had thought him charming in my mind, or somehow good-looking, something I wasn’t remembering from the shadow man who had taken her away. But I could not find the redeeming thing. His head was peanut shell in shape, he wore no cowboy hat now, and there was a joke of stripy black hair on top of the bulb. My mother had kissed this man, I considered. She had done everything with this man, no doubt. I didn’t have the words or sense to understand how. My mother had left me for this man.
He gestured to the wires surrounding an old-looking computer. “I have quite the following tuning in to my live broadcasts.” Each word was slow and boxed alone, long pauses between. “People like girls live. I call it improv. Strip ’em naked and throw them in front of a camera. You’d be surprised what happens. But you ladies aren’t the only stars. I like to share my stories from my bar-bouncer days. Once met a woman named Sally Fryer after she was abandoned by her no-good boyfriend in the parking lot and she lived with me six months. I got things to say. I mean, ’course I promote what I need to promote, I ain’t stupid. Don’t worry, we’ll get you famous real soon. Now, your face has some kind of sour thing to it, you ain’t real angel pretty like I thought but it’s okay, we can train you. What you looking around for like a lost pup?” he said, stepping in closer. “The future is now.”
He was a crazy person. We were not in the same mindplace. Something seemed to be emanating from him, an electric current of evil, or the lack of God, maybe, which was evil after all. It felt like each of my nerve endings was screaming run. I looked behind me at the door. It stood tall and heavy, locked in a complicated system of dead bolts and sliders.
“I can make a real movie out of you,” he said. “I’ve got plenty of gals that can be real good in it, too. Maybe we can do a whole doctor’s check-up thing. Boy, people still go whackjob for a nurse’s outfit. Don’t ask me why. Hospitals always got me soft, personally. Spent seven years in the silly house droolin’ on a deck of cards while they spooned me applesauce, but I been on the right meds for years, thank you, pharmaceuticals!” He bowed to no one. “Thank you, mary-juana!” He bowed again. “In any case, I’m gonna make you a star.”
He brushed the hair from my face and I felt a nausea roll up in me, tasted acid on my tongue. This was the bad energy that Daisy always talked about. I felt it. Evil, bad energy. Whatever. He had it. When my mother had stood here like me did she realize her mistake? Or had she realized it in the car ride up, perhaps when he’d driven her over the Peaches county line and the breeze had blown his cowboy hat back and she saw him at last. I must have some of my daddy in me after all, I knew then, because unlike my mother, my intuition button was lit up and working.
I followed him down the dark hall, turning back to the front door every step as if to mark my place. Brave, brave, I chanted in my mind. I heard the murmur of a television playing. My mother might be somewhere watching TV. I felt her close.
He opened a door to a small bedroom and inside it was painted completely red. The walls bled down to a maroon rug and the large bed was slanted to one side, covered in red satin and stained in dark blooms. The window was foiled. My idea of hell melted and changed. Hell was this room.
He patted the bed with a childish glee. “Nice, huh?” He took a white cowboy hat from a stand of costumes and his face was swallowed by it, the high forehead of sun-spotted skin gone. “I told you you had to be sixteen. You don’t look sixteen to me. But childbirth’ll age you right up. Soon you’ll look all dragged through the mud like every other Bessie out there who goes and pushes a bowling ball out of herself.”
I wished Hazel was here to slap him for me. “Who else is here?” I asked.
He looked at me some more, at my body, and I was freezing cold suddenly. I