Chapter Twelve
Customers
Customers stream into the room. Some bashful. Some pushing their way forward. I count seventeen in all. Too many for this tight space. Musky cologne and scented lotions assault my nose as the guests make their way to the bar, talking over themselves. There is one female to every four men. And the ages range from a pair of early teen boys to a woman in her sixties.
The Carnations descend upon them like flies on crap, each one donning her pink silk flower proudly. I stand staring at them idiotically, curious as to what the other girls—the ones ranked higher than the Carnations—are doing tonight, and why I don’t even have the lowest ranked flower to wear.
Then I recall Dizzy in detail. Dizzy bringing me wild-rice soup when I had the flu. Insisting on feeding it to me bite by bite so he could put a spoonful into his own mouth before giving me a turn. I must have told him a dozen times that he was going to catch what I had. He didn’t care. Soup is for sharing, Domino Ray. And I’ll catch what you have any ol’ day.
Later that night he left to try his luck with a new girl. Or maybe it was a boy. Sometimes I didn’t know with Diz. A part of me wished he’d stayed home, or that he remembered I was allergic to the mushrooms in his beloved wild-rice soup. But that’s not the point. The point is, Dizzy cares.
I straighten my wig and approach the bustling at the bar. Cain is more alive than I’ve seen him. He’s practically grinning as the women dote on his strong forearms and that precious dimple in his cheek. The patrons pay Cain with silver coins, and I spot a teenage girl with a fistful of them. Included in her palm is a bronze coin. The one she’ll deposit in the box outside.
No one approaches the teen girl. They’re too busy flirting with men in suits and the older women with heavy handbags. When the girl turns and faces me, I realize why. She’s missing the bottom half of her right ear. In its place is a flat stretch of hairless skin. I approach her immediately. Not because she’s an easy target, but because I can’t stand the thought of no else doing it. If she came here to be entertained, it’s probably because she’s lonely. And that’s a feeling I know well enough.
“Hey, my name’s Domino. What’s yours?” I sound like I’m in kindergarten.
The girl smiles and turns the right side of her face away so that I see only her left. “I’m Katy.”
I swallow, unsure of myself. “You don’t have to do that, you know.”
Her brows pull together in a question.
“You don’t have to turn your face away like that.”
Katy curls her fingers around her thumbs and glances down.
I’m drowning here. I haven’t had much social interaction outside of Greg and Dizzy in the past year, and I have no idea how to amuse this girl. “I’ve never played the piano before, but maybe we could try it together?”
She points to her scar. “I don’t have much of an ear for music.”
I cover my gut and laugh once, hard. “Oh, my God. That was really funny.” While the other girls drape themselves over the people at the bar, slowly inviting them to certain corners of the room, I motion Katy toward the piano. I’m three steps away when a girl dives in front of me.
“What do you think you’re doing?” she snarls.
Heat rushes to my cheeks. “I was going to play the piano with one of our customers.”
The girl looks to the ceiling and groans like I’m a complete moron. She has a mustache she’s trying to hide under a layer of powder. “You touch only the things you’ve helped pay for.” She flicks her hand. “So go away, little dog. Go sniff somewhere else.”
I turn to Katy, trying to maintain a smile. “Umm, maybe we could just talk?”
“That girl reminds me of my sister.” Katy watches the girl stride away with visible repulsion.
“Your sister sounds like a swell person.”
This time it’s Katy who laughs.
I scan the room, looking for a place that we might talk. When I don’t find an available spot, I nod toward the bar. It’s mostly empty now so we can grab two stools.
For two hours, Katy and I chat about her school and her dad and her affinity for buttermilk biscuits with honey. We talk about anything she wants, really. And it feels nice. I certainly don’t want to talk about myself, so this arrangement works perfectly. But after a while I notice Katy’s eyes veering to the other girls. The ones offering guitar solos and massages and tango dance lessons. If I don’t do something, I’m going to lose her interest. And her bronze coin. But what can I do? I don’t have access to any of the instruments the girls bought, and even if I did I wouldn’t know how to play them well enough. Then I remember what Madam Karina said about using my gifts.
“Cain, do you have a pen I can borrow?”
Back when I still attended school, I was pretty good with a pencil in my hand. And I can’t help wondering how much better I’d be after learning graffiti art. It’s different, sure, but it’s still translating a picture from my head onto a canvas.
Cain looks at me for a long moment, and then gazes at the curtained door. He seems afraid to lend me a pen, but that’s crazy, right? After hesitating, he meanders over and drops napkins and a pen a couple of feet down. I have to stretch to get them.
“He’s cute,” Katy says.
“He doesn’t really talk.”
Katy grins mischievously. “I don’t need him to talk.”
I give her a scolding look like we’ve been friends for years. She giggles into her soda, the one Cain brought her after she laid a silver coin on the sticky bar. Holding the pen in my right hand, I study the napkin. I have no idea how I can compete with the entertainment behind me, but I’ll give it a shot.
I look once at Katy, decide what it is she wants most in this world. Then I draw. My tongue slides between my lips as I concentrate, and I keep my head down, working. She talks as I work, and I prod her with more questions. My drawing is sloppy, and my hand aches to replace that cold lifeless pen with a can of spray paint. I’d paint the entire room with her name if I could. Make people notice her in a good way.
I’m halfway through the drawing when the singing stops. For the last two hours, three girls have shared the microphone, one after another. I assume they shared the expense and that’s why they all got a turn. Now someone new steps up. A fresh, upbeat song starts on the jukebox, and I turn to see Poppet tapping her fist against her thigh in time to the beat. The lyrics begin, and Poppet starts singing an Adele song.
Katy cringes beside me, probably without realizing it, and the other girls start laughing. At first, their jeering is quiet. Then it grows louder, until you can hardly hear Poppet’s voice over the taunting.
“Shut up,” a girl coughs under her breath.
“Tone deaf,” another one says, louder.
I feel myself moving toward Poppet before I even realize what I’m doing. I don’t know this song, but I won’t let Poppet stand up there alone a second longer.
When she sees me coming, she raises her hands like I’m going to shove her off the mic. Her reaction tells me someone has probably done this to her in the past. I motion for her to stay put and join her in singing the ridiculous song, figuring out the words as I go. Mostly though, I just stand beside her. I can’t sing to save my life. I guess Poppet can’t either. But she lent me a black shirt and this dress I’m wearing, and she doesn’t deserve this kind of treatment.
In the movies, when something like this happens, the taunting eventually turns into encouraging cheers. In this scenario, it gets worse. Girls yell for her to stop the insanity, and a singer from earlier actually tries to sing over us. The guests seem to think it’s part of an act, and so they laugh, too. We’re almost to the end of the song when someone starts in on me.
“The freak is worse than Poppet,” a voice calls from the back. “Look at that lip ring. Who’s her father, Charles Manson?
It’s the last comment that stuns me. I figured if there were one off-limits topic in this place, it’d be parents. After all, how many of us would be here entertaining customers for bronze coins if we had Mommy and Daddy at home to steer us right?
Another girl joins the fun. “Hey, freak, was your mother attracted to murderers?”
I stumble two steps back. Katy is talking with another girl, and I’m standing in front of everyone, shaking, trying to control the voice in my head that tells me to shut these witches up. To burn them at the stake.
To burn them in their beds.
I’ll find the matches! Wilson cheers.
“I have to go,” I tell Poppet. I run toward the curtained door, but Mercy blocks my path.
“Get your butt back in there. Now!”
I shove past her and race outside. Once I’m standing in the front yard, surrounded by haphazardly parked vehicles, I gasp for air.
Lean over.
Hands on knees.
Breathe.
I’ve spent almost a year on the streets, and Dizzy isn’t the sort to get too close. But the girls here press in until my brain swells. I’m not used to this. Even at school, before my mother homeschooled me, I never had more than a couple of friends. And now I’m supposed to stand in a room overflowing with bodies and sweaty upper lips and smile when they tease me about my parents.
I can’t.
That’s not true. I can. Just not right this second.
They don’t know anything about my parents. They don’t know what my father did. Or what my mother did in retaliation. I realize this, but it still stings. Because what they said back there about my mom loving murderers? It felt like they undressed me. Like I was nude before an audience.
They got close to the truth, didn’t they? Wilson says. But not quite.
I circle the house and discover an uncovered porch. It’s a slab of concrete with a broken ceramic planter and two plastic chairs. On the ground between the chairs is an overfilled ashtray, rainwater turning the butts and ash into a gray pulp.
The chair scrapes across the concrete as I drop down, and my eyes fall upon the guesthouses. One on the left, for the Lilies, and one to the right, for the Violets. They look the same—one story white clapboard, miniatures of the main house, with empty flower boxes on the sills. One of the windows on the Lilies’ house is open, and morose music wafts out into the dry Texas night. I wonder what it’s like inside those houses. Whether the girls treat one another like family instead of competition.
The sound of approaching footsteps hits my ears.
I slouch farther into the chair, as if I can become invisible.
My heart thumps harder.
Cain rounds the corner, a cigarette dangling between his fingers.