Tracy took her time getting started. She reached into the gym bag and brought out a pack of cigarettes—Marlboro Lights—and a lighter. Once the cigarette was burning, she let a stream of smoke go up toward the ceiling, then waved her hand around out of consideration for Liann and me. The ceremony completed, Tracy fixed on me with a level gaze.
“I’ve seen you before,” she said. “I used to dance at the Love Shack, and you would come in there showing that picture of your little girl around. You showed it to me one night.” She took another drag, exhaled. “I have a little girl, too. She’s almost five. Cassie. She stays with my aunt while I work, but I see her sometimes.”
She wanted a response, so I provided one. “That must be tough,” I said.
Tracy nodded as though my words carried some eternal truth. “It is. It sure as hell is.”
Most of the twenty-year-olds I interacted with at the university came from privileged backgrounds and were often more worldly and widely traveled than I was. Tracy didn’t have that life. She didn’t spend her winters in Vail or her summers in Can-cún. More likely, she spent her whole life in the counties surrounding New Cambridge, and she’d carry the rough features and country accent common among locals with her the rest of her life, markers of who she was.
“What’s your little girl like?” Tracy asked.
“Tracy—”
“I want to know, Liann, that’s all. I’m curious.”
“It’s okay,” I said to Liann. “I don’t mind.”
But then I felt stuck. Four years of interviews with cops and reporters, four years of encapsulating Caitlin for flyers and Web sites. I never felt able to adequately sum her up so someone who didn’t know my daughter would recognize her. And I couldn’t help but wonder: would the picture I created of the twelve-year-old who walked out the door that day bear any resemblance to the sixteen-year-old young woman I hoped she lived to become?
“She’s smart,” I said. “Really smart.”
“You’re a professor at the college, right?”
“Yes.”
“Figures she’d be smart then.”
“She’s kind of quiet, too. She kept to herself a lot.”
“Is she pretty?”
“Yes. She has blond hair, very blond. And her eyes were—are—blue. Bluer than yours even.”
Tracy smiled, and I couldn’t help but think I was looking into the face of some older version of Caitlin, the one who never came home.
The bartender, Pete, came by carrying two cases of beer. His biceps pressed against his shirt like cannonballs.
“You’re almost on shift, Tracy.”
“Fuck off, Pete.”
Pete sighed and kept walking.
Tracy waited until he was gone, then leaned in and stubbed out her cigarette.
“I saw your little girl once. At the Love Shack.”
Despite the club soda, my mouth felt dry. I didn’t say anything ; I didn’t move, not wanting to create a vibration that might prevent her from telling me what I needed to know. Instead, I sat perfectly still while an icy sensation grew beneath my shirt collar and spread down my back. I waited.
Tracy dug into her pack and lit another cigarette.
“This was about six months ago, about six months after you came in there showing that picture around. Do you still have that picture with you?”
“Tracy, tell him the story, just like you told me,” Liann said.
Tracy glanced at Liann and nodded, looking a little like a chastened teenager. She flicked her ash onto the floor.
“It was a regular night, just any old night. I don’t remember what day of the week it was. Probably not a weekend since we weren’t that crowded. This guy came up to me and said he wanted to buy a lap dance. I told him, ‘Twenty dollars,’ and he said, ‘Sure,’ like it was no problem with the price. Some of them come in there and try to get the price down, or else they’re real careful how they ask because they’re hoping they’re going to get something more than a lap dance. They say, ‘Twenty dollars to go back there with you,’ you know, because they’re thinking if they don’t specify we might go back there and do something besides the lap dance. Something extra.” She shook her head. “They didn’t let us do that at the Love Shack. No way.
“At the Love Shack they have little rooms off to the side, three of them. That’s where we went for the lap dances. They weren’t much bigger than closets really, but there were those vinyl bench seats built into the wall, and usually another chair just sitting there in the room. Sometimes we got guys who came in who were shy, and they’d sit in the chair for a while, waiting. We’d let them do that for a little bit, but not too long. If they didn’t hurry up, they needed to go. There was money to be made.”
Tracy stared at the table and picked at a chip in the Formica. “Anyway, I went behind the curtain and into room number three to wait for the guy. I got kind of a bad vibe from him, just the way he talked and handed over the money.”