You sigh. “The man who has always been there for you.”
“And why have you been? What do you get out of it? If it weren’t for the ready availability of perhaps dozens of other women at your disposal, I’d say it was just for the easy access to sex. A captive audience, if you will.”
“That’s not what you are to me, X.”
“Stop calling me that,” I snap. “I am not Madame fucking X anymore.”
“Then who are you?”
“I DON’T KNOW!” I shout the first two words, scream the third. Even Len twists his head to glance at me.
“Shall I call you Nameless then?”
“Do not mock me, Caleb Indigo.” My voice is thin, as the blade of a knife is thin.
“I’m not. Mockery is not my style.”
“What is your style? Pimping? Prostitution? That’s what those girls are, beneath the thin veneer of salvation. They are still prostitutes. But now they work for you, and you are their only client. Until you sell them to the highest bidder, and then they become bride-slaves. You convince them they have a choice, but do they, really? Rachel does not have a choice. If she returns to the streets, she will once again become Dixie, the whore. Dixie, the drug addict. So for now, she is your whore, and you are her drug. She has no choice.” I close my eyes and breathe out, letting the truth seep from my lips. “No more than I. We are your whores. We are your addicts. You are a drug, and you are in our veins.”
“You do not understand what you’re talking about, X, Isabel, whoever you are.”
“Whoever I am. Apropos indeed, Caleb.” I let a thick, tension-fat silence hang between us. “I’m going to ask you one question, and you will answer it truthfully, or I will never speak to you again.”
“All right.” You sound calm.
“How did you find me?”
A sigh. An outbreath of resignation. “You’ve been surgically microchipped. I paid the surgeon who reconstructed your face two point five million dollars to insert it.”
This is a shock that goes beyond even numbness, a shock so great I am able to remain utterly still and calm. “Microchipped? Reconstructed?” I touch the left side of my face, just above my ear.
“You don’t remember?” You seem puzzled.
“No.” I try, and fail.
I think back, but the days immediately after waking up are a blur, a haze of therapy and Caleb, surgeries and Caleb, nurses and Caleb.
“The entire left side of your face was . . . a mess. The right side was perfect, unblemished. The left . . . was not. I imported the most skilled and renowned reconstructive plastic surgeon in the world, and paid him a rather large amount of money to restore you to your former beauty. The two and a half million dollars I mentioned was just the bribe to implant the chip, mind you. I paid him more than quadruple that to drop all of his other clients and fly to New York and fix you.”
I suppose I should be impressed by how much you spent to have me fixed.
“When you say that I’ve been . . . microchipped—what does that mean?” I have trouble now forming words, forming breaths.
You do not answer for a moment. “The scar on your hip . . . it was always there, since the accident, I mean. When Dr. Frankel had you under to fix your face, however, he sliced into that scar, implanted a very small computer chip, and closed the incision, making it look as if it had never been disturbed. The microchip allows me to pinpoint your location, down to the nearest meter.” You lift your phone.
I don’t know what I am to think about your revelation. So I change topics. “Would you like to know the story Logan told me?”
“If you wish to tell me, I will listen.” Impassive, unconcerned. Disbelieving.
Too much so, perhaps?
“There was a car accident,” I say. “My parents were killed, and I wasn’t. They were immigrants. The police couldn’t identify me, but because I was in a coma I might never wake from, the investigation was closed, leaving me a Jane Doe.”
“I see.”
“You see?” I stare at you. “What does that mean, ‘you see’?”
“It means there are problems with his story,” you say. “Why could you not be identified? Were your parents illegal immigrants, that they didn’t even carry basic ID? And even if we assume some bizarre sequence of events leading to your parents and you being unidentifiable, why would the investigation just be closed? They wouldn’t just . . . give up. If Logan could figure out who you are, why couldn’t the police?”
“I . . .” My throat is dry and my spirit numb, my mind confused.
“Six years, X. I’ve spent six years of my life caring for you. You think I would hold back this kind of information from you, if it were that easy to find it?” Do I think so? I don’t know. You continue. “You’ve known me for six years, yet this man you’ve known for less than . . . what? I don’t even know? How much time have you spent with him? A few hours, at most? And you are ready to believe whatever he says.” You sound disgusted.
I have no answers for your logic.