The following morning he got up and couldn’t remember any of it. We asked him if he would be leaving that day.
‘Yes, I’m moving out today,’ he said. ‘Thanks for letting me stay, I hope I wasn’t too much of a bother.’ We left the apartment to do our day shift and when we returned we noticed that the lights were on. Rozario was still there.
‘What are you doing here?’ I asked.
‘The plumbers say my restaurant is going to take another two weeks to finish,’ he said casually. ‘I’m going to stay here.’
‘Can we please have our money back and we’ll find somewhere else to stay, until your restaurant is completed?’
‘No, you can’t have your money back, and fuck off for asking. You girls are stupid bitches. Don’t you know what I was playing at? Welcome to city life, you dumb whores.’
We left the house. We had lost all of our money, and we only had the clothes on our backs and the day’s work clothes in our handbags.
We stayed at the brothel over the weekend. Tony let us open the doors and take one hundred per cent of whatever we made. Tracy was unreliable but I had become good friends with Tony. I could have easily had a crush on him, but it was probably just a daddy complex. I was unfamiliar with older men genuinely being nice and generous and not expecting anything in return.
Monday evening I decided to try to talk to Rozario, but Tracy wasn’t interested in coming. Unless it came in a glass with ice or in a long amber bottle, I’d learnt, Tracy wouldn’t be interested.
As I let myself into the apartment with my key, I could hear a noise in Rozario’s room, but decided it would be best to go straight to my old room, get my gear and get the hell out of there. My plan went OK for all of five minutes. As I was packing, Rozario jumped me from behind, his elbow right under my chin, his hand ripping at my ear. With his other hand, he grabbed my key off the side table. At that moment I found my lungs. I screamed long and hard and loud.
Rozario was so startled that he took his hands off me and held them in the air. ‘Please don’t scream,’ he said in his thick Italian accent. He grabbed the key from his pocket, then with the sickest smirk you have ever seen placed the key down his pants. ‘I heard you come in, do you think I’m fucking deaf? I locked the deadbolt, now you can’t get out.’
‘Open the fucking deadbolt, you lecherous old prick,’ I yelled.
‘Come and get it with your mouth, whore, and while you’re down there, suck my cock.’
I snapped, completely lost the plot. I picked up a bottle of red wine from on top of the bookshelf, smashed it against the wall near Rozario’s head and waved it in his face.
‘Now open the fucking door before I cut your prick off!’ I yelled.
He got the message that I was deadly serious and opened the door as fast as he could, and there was a definite quiver in his voice now. Not that I could understand what he was saying, as he had reverted to Italian. I flew down those stairs as fast as my legs could carry me. Obviously too fast, as I ran straight onto the road and into the path of a taxi.
I don’t recall being hit. The next thing I remember is lying on the side of the road, a giant of a man cleaning the blood off my face.
‘Oh good, she’s alive, when the bitch comes around tell her to stay off the fucking road next time.’ Then the taxi driver got in his cab and left.
My Good Samaritan offered to drive me home, but I didn’t want him to know I lived in a brothel. So I grabbed my suitcase and purse and walked myself home.
The next day, Tony rang a few of his friendly police buddies on our behalf, and within ten minutes they were at the front door of La Belle Femme to make sure we retrieved everything that belonged to us from Rozario without incident. Once there, the police told us to go straight inside, get only our belongings and wait in the car for them. I followed their instructions to a tee. Tracy, on the other hand, decided to take liberties with Rozario’s portable stereo and the like. Rozario didn’t see her walk out the door with any of it; he was being detained in the bedroom. I could hear the police verbally abusing the shit out of him, after all, this was an unofficial visit. It wasn’t until Rozario started arguing back that the sound of beatings could be heard; for a second I even felt sorry for the perverted little prick. You could hear him pleading for them to stop.