“Holy fuck.” I pinch the bridge of my nose with my fingers. “Did you find your friend?”
“No. But one girl remembered her. And can you believe this, Ark? Those contacts?” Blue laughs, but it’s not a happy laugh. It’s a laugh that says there’s more crying ahead. “Those contracts aren’t even honored. Imagine that. A girl sells her baby and she never gets paid. And you know why, Ark? Do you know why she never gets paid?”
I do know, but I can’t make myself stop her from telling me.
“Because they kill them. They rape us, they steal our children, and then our reward is death.”
“Were they all kidnapped? Or were they there to sell their babies?”
“I was the only one they locked up in the basement, so I can only assume the other girls were there for the money. They kept me company sometimes.”
“And no one tried to help?”
She shakes her head no. “They needed money—”
“Fuck the money. No one needs money that bad.” My shout scares her, making her shrink inward. “Sorry,” I whisper. “Sorry. It’s just, you can’t put yourself in that category, Blue. Don’t identify with them. You’re not like them. You were a prisoner. They were selling their children. It’s not the same thing.”
“I know,” she says in a soft whisper.
But I don’t think she does and I need to hammer it home. “You were a prisoner.”
“I still am.”
“No,” I say, leaning down to kiss her neck. “No, you’re free now, Blue.”
“I’m not though. They have me with that video. No one will believe my story. Not after I lied about where I was.”
“Did they force you to make that YouTube video?”
“What do you think?” she snaps.
Right.
We lie there in silence for a long time. Her breathing slows and she begins to relax. But I’m so amped up I feel like my brain might shatter. It starts to rain outside, making the atmosphere in here even more gloomy. There’s a clock on the wall that ticks off the seconds, and my mind is spinning with options.
But none of them feel right. None of them feel like they will make a difference.
Finally, after hours of lying there, I find myself able to talk. “What do you want to do about this, Blue?” I ask. She’s been so still, I almost thought she was asleep. But no one sleeps with this conversation hanging over them.
“I want to forget it ever happened.”
“What about your parents? Don’t you want to go home?”
She tucks her head into my chest and sighs. “I am home.”
After Blue falls asleep, I sneak out to my office and chain-smoke as I watch the clock. JD has been gone for hours now. And there’s no telling what he’s up to or what he might do. Fuck, if he’ll even show up for work tonight.
Finally, at eight forty-seven, he comes through the loft door. I’m sitting on the couch, my hand poised over the ashtray, ready to flick, when he appears.
“Since when do you smoke in the house?” he asks, closing the doors behind him.
“You had me worried, dude.”
“Since when do I miss work?” he says, grabbing a smoke from my pack on the side table and lighting up.
“You know that’s not what I meant. Please don’t insult me by pretending I was worried about the fucking job. You wanna tell me what’s going through your head right now?”
He takes a seat in the chair off to my left, inhaling a long drag of nicotine, before blowing it out in rings. “I can’t do it, man. I just can’t do it. Looking for them will suck me down a black hole I might never crawl out of. If you hadn’t come along when you did, I’d be dead right now.”
He’s said it before, but tonight it seems real. More real than ever. Because we’re all standing at the edge of something. Something that will change us forever. “Well, she told me a lot, JD. And I think you need to know what her story is before you make any decisions.”
He rolls his cigarette back and forth between his finger and thumb. “I’m not sure it will matter.” And then he looks up at me and his eyes are red. His face is pale. And I know where he’s been.
The cemetery.
“She’s dead. The baby is gone. Maybe dead too. And you know what, Ark? I’m tired of thinking about it. I’m tired of feeling this way about something I can’t change. And all these years you’ve given me the same piece of advice. Let it go. So that’s what I’m gonna do. I’m gonna let it go. Blue is here and maybe she’s not the love of my life, but she’s here. And I like her. I want to spend time with her. And you. We’ve got something good right now. We’re rich. We’re about to fulfill our deal with Ray and start our own site. We’ve got it all. Why fuck it up? Ya know? Why fuck it all up over something that can’t be changed?”
I do know. But I also know what he really wants to hear. That we’ll get those fuckers. That we’ll make them pay. That we will take every last one of them down. He wants to hear that because that’s what I’d want to hear if it was my girl who was killed and my baby who was missing.
“I hear ya,” I say instead. I’m not a hero. I’m the Prince of Porn. I sell come down a girl’s throat. I sell face fucks in public places. I sell filthy videos that degrade women and use my friend’s cock to make money.
I’m not the hero he’s looking for. I am scum.
“Still wanna work tonight?” I ask him after a few moments of silence, puffing out smoke rings.
“Why the fuck not,” he says, getting up to stub out his cigarette in the ashtray next to me. “Why the fuck not.”
“OK.” I nod. “Grab my gear bag. I’m just gonna go let Blue know we’re leaving and what time you’ll be back.”
“How’s she doing?” he asks, looking down the hallway to my room.
“I’m not sure, actually.” I open my mouth to tell him who she is and what she really did, but he turns away before the words can come out. And then I lose my nerve.
Maybe it’s better he doesn’t know. If he knew who she was, he might do something stupid.