The King and the Courtesan (35 page)

“I never made such an assumption.” Yogi shrugged. “I was just saying.”

I marched back to the living room. Kenny was happy to see me, and he quickly cuddled up next to me, holding my arm as his head dropped to my shoulder. I chuckled and squeezed the hands clasped over my bicep.

* * *

Without Yogi and Kenny around, the tension between Mimi and me only grew worse. She made frozen dinners, and we ate mostly in silence. I asked her about Joel, and she said she’d been asked to testify at his trial.

“You’re going to, right?”

“I don’t know.” She gulped down some gloopy sauce, peppered with small pieces of chicken and broccoli. I could barely keep it down, even though frozen dinners never disgusted me before. I was so used to the five-star meals I received at Ezekiel’s residence.

“You don’t
know
? Mimi, if you don’t testify, he might not even get put in jail. Do you want him walking around terrorizing you?”

“Like he’d get put in jail even if I did testify. I’m just Metro trash. No one cares about us, let alone some hoighty-toighty jury in Alpin. That’s the courthouse where it’s all going down.
Alpin
.” She shook her head angrily. “They have no right.”

“Well, they have to do
something
. Joel is a danger to society.”

She only nodded.

I peered at her suspiciously. “Do you still love him?”

“No.”

“Is that the truth?”

She gave me an annoyed look. “I learned my lesson.”

I decided to take her word for it. I was sick of arguing with her. We ate in silence for a few more minutes.

“You miss Mom?” she asked quietly.

“‘Course I do.”

Mimi sniffed. “Sometimes I wonder…would it be better if she were here still? Would you be what you are, and me, like this? Mom kept us together. She made us strong.”

“Maybe.” I always wondered what Mom would have done if I’d told her one of her boyfriends molested me. I’d always kept it secret for a variety of reasons. He hadn’t been an outwardly cruel man and seemed like an actual improvement to those before him. At that age, I was desperate for attention, especially from a man who didn’t seem to hate my existence. Only after my mother threw him out did I realize what he’d done—the mark it had left. After that, I found it impossible to trust men. He claimed to love me. I found sex much easier if I could remove the prospect of love from the beginning. This was probably why prostitution came easier to me than it might other women, ones who grew up with men who loved them without hurting them. For me, making sex a transaction was a method of protection. I never doubted that line between love and sex until Ezekiel. I didn’t
love
Ezekiel, of course, but I also wasn’t allowed my usual indifference. It forced me to look at my own ignorance of what love actually entailed.

“She’d yell at us,” Mimi said, half-crying, half-laughing. “She’d call us idiots for ending up like this.”

“I remember when she wanted us to go to college,” I whispered. “She would always say we’d get rich and she’d be mooching off us until she died.”

“What a joke,” Mimi hissed, suddenly angry. “Why the hell would she think that?
Why the hell
? As if we had the money or the ability. She lied to us. She fucking
lied
.” Mimi’s head fell into her arms, and she was sobbing again. “She lied,” she kept repeating.

I sighed and stood, gathering the dirty plates while Mimi wept. Mimi had always been the emotional one, just like Mom. Mom spent most of her life crying. Over men, over bills, over her children’s failures. That’s why, when I was just ten years old, Mom told me in secret, “If either of you girls becomes something, it will be you, Melissa. Mimi—she’s a beautiful, wonderful girl, and I love her more than anything—but she also has weaknesses, like me. She lets others’ opinions of her hold her down. But
you
, Lissa…you’ll fly off one day. You’ll just spread your wings and take off, and I fear Mimi and I will never hear from you again.” She had laughed, her eyes filled with glittering teardrops. “Think of me when you’re out exploring the world and making something of yourself, all right? Remember what I taught you.”

I stopped in the middle of the kitchen, a surge of rage rising inside of me, more anger than I’d felt since Mom’s death. My hands shook, and before I could even evaluate my reaction, I raised my arms and threw down the plates so hard that they smashed against the linoleum. Several pieces skittered all the way across the room, sliding under the refrigerator and cabinets. I raised a foot and stomped on the larger pieces. I wanted to hear that
crack
they made when they shattered, wanted to hurt something
so much
. I wanted to feel like Ezekiel—powerful, invincible. I only wished the plates could bleed, could scream, could beg me for mercy. I wished they had children, parents, families. I wished their fates rested with me, because that would make me important. It would make me feel
in control
.

“Melissa? Melissa, what was…?”

Before Mimi could get there, I was already out of the kitchen and running out the door, barely acknowledging the bodyguard sitting on the stairs, waiting for me. He didn’t even ask as I took the stairs two at a time. He just followed. And it made me feel better, this minion who had to do my bidding. It didn’t even matter that they weren’t my orders, but Ezekiel’s. As long as it
seemed
like he was
my
bodyguard. That was all I needed.

“Where to?” he asked once I slid into the car. I hadn’t even waited for him to open my door.

“The Ralston penthouse,” I muttered. I reached up to wipe away the tears I knew had to be there. But there were none, and I almost laughed.

I was in control. Always in control.

We didn’t drive directly to the Ralston penthouse, though. When we were just a few blocks away from Mimi’s house, I ordered my bodyguard to turn around and take me to my old workplace. I wanted to pay them a visit while I had an excuse to stay in Metro all night.

I stayed there for a few hours, talking and exchanging current Metro news. Only one tidbit was good—Susan, a thirty-five-year-old waitress-turned-hooker was getting married and giving up the profession to raise the daughter she was expecting in four months. All the other gossip involved cheating boyfriends, abuse, or robbery.

As the night grew later, and the work busier, Katelyn, a girl about my age who started working after I left, strode in wearing a lime green dress with a white faux fur coat. “Did you guys hear?”

“What?” I asked. Katelyn did a double take, unable to recognize me. I only knew who she was from what others had told me about her, and from the picture on the wall. All the girls had a picture on the wall. It was so customers had a choice if they wanted it. Plus, she had a discernible thick Metro accent that all my girls liked to joke about.

Katelyn slapped a newspaper on the counter. “So I was gettin’ cigarettes and a bottle of Fredrico to hold me over ‘til tommorra mornin’, and was talkin’ with this guy at the counter. ‘Parently, some guy was murdered, some big shot guy who was workin’ for the…” She trailed off as her eyes settled on my bodyguard, who stood just outside smoking a cigarette. “Who’s that guy?”

“Who was he working for?” Beth asked, re-applying her lipstick.

Katelyn shook her head. “We ain’t sure, ‘course, but we think he mighta been in cahoots with Blade.”

“Blade?” That got my attention. “Are you saying Blade killed him?”

Katelyn shrugged. “Who knows anythin’? These boys go out and get themselves blown up, and who the fuck knows why, ya?” She pulled a tube of lipstick out of her bra and approached a mirror. “I just stay out of their way and live my life.”

I nodded. Katelyn and her accent came from North Metro, arguably the most dangerous part of town. I didn’t know many people who talked like her; I tried to stay as far away from North Metro as I could. The southern part, where Mimi and I once lived, was known to be the safest due to its proximity to downtown.

The door suddenly slammed open, and a very disoriented Cordelia stumbled in. Even Beth, the hardest to surprise, stood and stared in shock. Cordelia did not look good. She’d lost significant weight and her hair looked like it hadn’t been washed in weeks. Her eyes were bloodshot, and there were bruises covering her shoulders. Despite the chilly night, she wore nothing but a bra and a pair of ripped jeans.

“My
God
, Cordelia!” Beth blurted.

“Melissa!” Cordelia’s jaw swung open, and her hands reached for me. “Melissa, you’re here! I thought I’d never see you again!”

I rushed forward before she could collapse, which seemed inevitable in her condition. She threw her arms around me and slumped when I took ahold of her, sobbing into my chest.

“What—what’s wrong?” I asked her, unsure if I even wanted to know.

“What isn’t wrong with her?” Beth suddenly snapped. “Goddamnit, Cordelia! You’re nothing but a dumb-ass!”

“Hey.” I shot a look at Beth. “Can’t you see she’s not in a condition to be yelled at?”

“Don’t tell me about her condition,” Beth barked. “She comes stumbling in here like that once every few weeks. I’m sick of it. She’s the only one to blame for her ‘condition,’ and I ain’t takin’ her bullshit answers for why she’s so fucked up.”

“Shut up,” Cordelia whimpered, squeezing me tighter. “Please shut up.”

“No!” Beth pointed a quivering finger at her viciously. “You get out of here. You’re not welcome here anymore! All you do is bring your little drug dealer
pimps
with you, and they give us all guff we don’t need. So go on. Get out. Leave us proper working girls in peace!”

I frowned. “Beth.”

“It’s true.” Katelyn was smoking now. “She brings all these men in wit’ her, and then they hassle
us
, wantin’ us to work for them. I don’t need no man selling my body for me, thank you very much.”

“Have all of you forgotten? Cordelia is—or at least
was
—one of us.” I hugged her tightly when she whimpered. “You all consider
me
a part of this group, and yet I haven’t worked here in months.”

“You aren’t bringing lowlifes through here, making our jobs harder,” Rosa growled.

“You think Cordelia
wants
to be like this? This isn’t her fault.”

Beth laughed cruelly. “Not her fault? It was
her
who agreed to work for a pimp. She was tellin’ us all we were suckers for not doing the same. But look at her. They ruined her. I bet they don’t even pay you any more, do they, Cordelia? I bet they just shoot you full of drugs and then let their customers loose on you.”

Cordelia’s whimpering became full-blown bawling as tears soaked her face. Her grip on me shook, but never let go.

“Come on, Cordelia,” I whispered, pulling her out of the shop and onto the street. Cordelia threw herself off me, grabbing onto a lamppost and crying hysterically. I didn’t know what to do, so I stood and watched her. My bodyguard looked on curiously, but he didn’t say anything, either.

“I-I-I want t-to die,” Cordelia gasped, on her knees now. “Melissa, please. Just kill me. Please, kill me.”

“Cord—”

She turned around, glaring up at me. Despite the hopelessness in her eyes, there was some rage there, too. I knew she wasn’t angry with me, but it still felt like I had failed her. The truth was, I’d forgotten about her. I was so consumed by my position with Ezekiel that Cordelia’s problems rarely entered my mind.

“Look at you,” she muttered, trying to pull herself to a stand by climbing the lamppost. “Look at you, dressed in your fancy clothes with your perfect hair. You’re a goddamn princess.”

I stared at her sadly.

“I bet he treats you like a
fucking queen
, doesn’t he?”

“Hey,” my bodyguard began, but I held up a hand and shot him a look that said,
I can handle this
.

“Cordelia, tell me how I can help you.”

“Oh, right, I’m
sure
!” She blurted out a fake laugh. “I’m sure you can help me with all your money and your finery and your big shot boyfriend. It’s too late now, Melissa. It’s too late for your charity. I’m ruined. I’m dead. I’m
done
. There’s nothing you can do now.”

“I’m sure there is. Do you need a place to stay? If it’s a pimp you’re afraid of—”

“I ain’t afraid of
shit
. All that could happen to me already has.”

“Yogi told me you were going to work for a pimp, but that wasn’t long ago. How could this happen so fast?”

“I’ve been working for a pimp for a while now.” Cordelia swayed when she finally got to a stand. “I just didn’t tell Yogi. She’s as bad as you are. Always so put together, knows exactly what she wants. A goddamn
tranny
is less confused about herself than I am. How fucking pathetic.”

I decided that now was not the time to correct her use of
tranny
. “What are you on right now? Street dust? Something stronger?”

“I don’t know.” Cordelia smiled humorlessly. “That’s what’s so…funny. I never know what I’m on. I’m on whatever some guy gives me. It makes it all so much easier. It makes me forget things. Makes pain so far away.”

“Are you on Blue Kitten, Cordelia?”

“I told you, I don’t know! God, are you a fucking moron?”

I took a step toward her. “Cordelia, come back with me. Please? I’ll get you help. A bed to sleep in. You won’t have to worry about your pimp. You’ll be totally safe—”

“I don’t need you! Don’t you understand? I don’t need charity. I’m going to die. I’m trash. That’s what trash does. It lies in the gutter and,”—she clumsily kicked a plastic bottle, but it only skittered a few inches—“rots into nothing.”

“That’s not you talking. That’s the drugs talking.”

“I
am
the drugs. There is no difference between the drugs and me. Without them, I’m just dead.” Her face collapsed, and she shuffled over to me. Without warning, she fell to her knees and wrapped both of her arms around my legs, digging her face into my thighs. “I want to die.”

I slowly put my hands in her hair. I remembered when its shine and texture made her proud. Tears rose in my eyes as I watched her tremble and cry. I had failed her. Just like I had failed Mimi, and just like I had failed my mother. Even now, with all this money at my disposal, I was still helpless. If money couldn’t fix my problems, what could? What else was there?