“You really is Camila’s girl.” He mimics me, leaning back. “How many nights you out on the streets? Five? Six?” I don’t respond, but he can see the collapse, the fatigue in me, keeps talking. “My girls only out there two, maybe three nights a week and they raking in over two grand each. Lexi’ll tell you about it, won’t you?”
He’s talking to the girl directly beside me. I didn’t concentrate on her through the smoke until now, but the moment I focus on her, I want to edge away.
Lexi is small, under five feet, and she can’t be much older than fifteen. Her hair looks just like mine did when I was a little girl and Mama took care of it, tight coils framing her round face. You can tell she tried to paint her face, contour herself a woman, but she still looks so young. Her hands grasp her handbag tightly and she’s fidgeting with the strap.
“Hi,” she says to me, and I don’t think she’s trying to whisper, but her voice is shallow. She’s about to say something else when the door to the room opens and a man steps in.
“Yo, Demond, some niggas out here tryna take your shit.” It’s the same man who stood guard at the patio door, short and wide.
Demond stands and he’s even taller than I expected, close to the ceiling. “Fuck, man.” He takes two large steps and is out the door, slamming it shut.
It’s just me and the girls now. I watch them as they look around, like they’re trying to figure out where they are, like they ain’t had a moment to breathe and see it. I realize none of them have moved since I entered the room. Now a couple of them stand and start to walk around, picking up photos on the shelf or whispering to each other.
“One of Demond’s boys take you too? This your first stop?” Lexi’s voice is a little louder now, but it still sounds like she’s underwater, the sound floating out.
I look at her again, the smoke fading, and I don’t get it until I see the way she fiddles with the strap and her eyes shift wild around the room.
“I ain’t one of his girls. Nobody took me.”
When this comes out my mouth, something in her face droops, and a hope I didn’t notice was there disappears.
I scramble, thinking of Alé and Clara. “You got a phone? I can try to help you out, give you a place to stay and you can call somebody to come get you…” I fumble for my purse to get my phone, but Lexi’s fleshy hand reaches out to stop me.
“Ain’t nobody looking for me.” And she smiles this brutal, hollow smile that doesn’t belong to her face, and she continues to fondle the strap to her bag, not looking at me anymore.
The room has gone from musty to suffocating and all I gotta do is get out, get back to Camila. I stand and, again, all eyes in the room rest on me as I make my way out the door, leaving it a crack open so they might be able to breathe again.
After I found Camila, shirtless man from the front steps came looking for me, brought me out to the shed behind Demond’s house. When he asked me how much, I gave him a higher number than I’ve ever asked for from one man and he didn’t even flinch, just retrieved the bills from his pocket and pulled his zipper down. When I asked him what he wanted me to call him, he said I didn’t need to call him nothing, said he didn’t like no talking.
After shirtless left, his friend—sky man—entered the shed, asked for a turn. I didn’t even ask him what he wanted to be called because in my head he was just sky man and the moment you place a name to that, the fantasy of it dissipates.
I slip the dress back on, alone in the shed now, and climb back into my heels. My feet have swollen over the course of the night and I have to squeeze just to fit back into them. I exit the shed and the first image I see is Camila and her orange, shaking—this time to the actual music—but still she moves more graceful than I ever have.
I climb the steps up to the patio and the moment Camila sees me, she pulls me into her dance. I’ve had a couple more shots and I let the buzz crawl across my chest, bring me into the looseness of Camila, and we are in the music. The thump in my chest, belly swing side to side, hips roll, her body pressed on mine.
At first, I think the buzz is coming from my chest, another wave of tequila or something. But the beat of it is too linear, too compact to be produced from me or the dance. I fumble for my purse, removing myself from Camila to lean over the edge of the patio and answer my phone. I haven’t even spoken yet before the voice does. I know who it is without him having to tell me. I don’t forget any of their voices.
“Just got a call that you’re at a party. Two of us are undercover in there, gonna shut it down and do a whole roundup in maybe an hour. I’m parked around the corner. Be outside in five.”
He hangs up without a response. I don’t know his name, but I know his badge number: 612. That’s what I call him, what he told me to call him.
None of them have ever called me like that before and suddenly I’m looking around at all the bodies in the house, trying to figure out who is undercover. I place my phone in my bag and turn around to Camila, still twisting, grooving, shaking. Her eyes are closed and everyone around her is in a trance just watching her. What 612 said is finally registering and I tap her shoulder, but she doesn’t open her eyes. Trying again, I shake her lightly until she finally looks at me. Leaning into her ear, I tell her, “You gotta get outta here, this a sting.”
“Whatchu talkin’ ’bout, Kia?” She laughs, throws her arms up. “Relax.”
I try to tell her again, but I think the beat has entered her head because she isn’t moving, just opens her mouth and lets a laugh out so melodic it might as well be music.
Eventually, I leave her there: on the patio, dancing. Looking back at the image, I realize the people standing around her aren’t watching her, they’re guarding her, and something about my image of Camila suddenly appears so false. She’s a woman tricking herself into thinking she’s in control, but what if she tried to leave with me? Men would find her and take her back, just like any of those other girls in Demond’s room. Trapped.
I weave through the house and I swear it has only gotten more crowded and loud as we edge closer to two a.m. The eyes are a ravenous wanting now, like the night has swallowed them and spit out only desire. Out the door and down the steps, someone shouts something, but I don’t really hear it through the buzz and the relief of breathable air.
I look around for some sirens, flashes of color, a car. Across the street, a deep blue Prius rolls down the window and there he is, just like I remember: ginger hair and splotches of red on his cheeks. I cross the street toward him and the passenger-side door swings open for me. I climb in.
“This your car?”
He chuckles, no uniform, no badge, just jeans. “You know we have lives outside the station, right?”
I try to laugh with him, but no sound comes out, kind of like how Mama opened her mouth and let her jaw move, detached from the noise erupting from it.
He pulls away from the house and I take one last look at it, think of Lexi with her purse strap, Camila turning her body into a spiral.
“Where we going?” I ask 612, staring out the window. He’s one of the ones who’s hard to look at because part of me wishes this wasn’t him, that he was at home somewhere, reading a book to some redheaded child and not out here, with me. The way he grips the steering wheel makes me nervous, like he can’t hold it tight enough, like he’s about to rip it open.
He coughs. “It’s late, I’m taking you back to my place.”